Tribal Awakening or Rude Awakening in Iraq?

Tribal Awakening or Rude Awakening in Iraq?

Thursday, Nov. 29, 2007 By ROBERT BAER


A Sunni volunteer refuses to be photographed in Muqdadiyah, Iraq.

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If I hadn't read it in Tuesday's White House press briefing, I would have taken the whole thing as a hoax. But indeed, on Tuesday Bush met with the head of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, Abd al-Aziz Hakim, to discuss the "tribal awakening."

Never mind that the last thing Hakim wants to do is hand power over to the tribes, his real objective being to turn Iraq into a Shi'a Islamic republic. Or that Iraq's tribes are no more ready than any other Iraqis to share power, equitably divide Iraq's oil revenues, or compromise on any of the other issues that are causing Iraqis to kill each other.

I know what life raft Bush is clinging to. The Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar province have in fact turned against the insurgency, and, yes, brought down the level of violence. But that doesn't mean Fallujah has turned into Crawford, Texas. Nor have the bombings in Baghdad stopped, even if the tribes have helped walk Iraq back from the abyss.

The Bush administration would like us to believe we picked up a new ally in the war on terrorism, that there's momentum on our side. In fact, the Administration has been so encouraged by the success in Anbar that it intends to use it as a template in Pakistan. In 2008, the Pentagon will nearly double the money it gives to the Frontier Corps, a Pakistani paramilitary force recruited from the tribes along the Afghan-Pakistani border. The Pentagon is hoping they will do what Pakistan's army couldn't, find bin Laden and drive the Taliban out into the open.

Before Bush puts on a burnoose and starts thinking he's Lawrence of Arabia, he needs to understand that Anbar's tribes came over to our side because they figured out that the only thing that stands between them and getting crushed by the Shia is our troops. They don't really care about our war on terrorism. He should also keep in mind that an estimated 40% or so of foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudis, another tribe that happens to be fighting on the wrong side. Tribes are tricky like that.

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U.S. sponsorship of Sunni groups worries Iraq's government

By Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — The American campaign to turn Sunni Muslims against Islamic extremists is growing so quickly that Iraq's Shiite Muslim leaders fear that it's out of control and threatens to create a potent armed force that will turn against the government one day.

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But that hasn't calmed mounting concerns among aides to Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who charge that some of the groups include "terrorists" who attack Shiite residents in their neighborhoods. Some of the new "concerned citizens" are occupying houses that terrified Shiite families abandoned, they said.

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"There is a danger here that we are going to have armed all three sides: the Kurds in the north, the Shiite and now the Sunni militias," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst who's now at The Brookings Institution, a center-left policy organization in Washington, D.C.

Underscoring the division, Sunni politicians said the creation of the groups was justified because it made up for the U.S. decision to disband Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led army shortly after Baghdad fell in 2003. They also said the groups helped balance the infiltration of Iraq's security forces by Shiite militias during the rapid U.S.-sponsored expansion of those forces in 2004 and 2005.

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"When the U.S. leaves, what we'll have are two armies," said Sami al Askari, a Shiite lawmaker who speaks to Maliki daily. "One who's loyal to the government and one not loyal."

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