| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq |
| U.S. Military Will Transfer Control of Sunni Citizen Patrols to Iraqi Government |
| 2008-09-02 |
| BAGHDAD — Come Oct. 1, the Iraqi government will take over responsibility for paying and directing the Sunni-dominated citizen patrols known as Awakening Councils that operate in and around Baghdad, American and Iraqi officials said Monday. The transfer will involve 54,000 Awakening members who are now paid by the American military to guard neighborhoods or, in some cases, simply to refrain from attacking American and Iraqi forces. Once the transfer takes place, the Iraqi government will have “full administrative control” of the Awakening cadres, said an American military official who asked to remain anonymous because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the subject. It was not clear whether the Iraqi government, which is dominated by Shiites, had given the Americans or the Awakening forces assurances about how long, or even whether, it would keep the patrols intact. Some senior Iraqi officials have expressed reservations about paying armed Sunni militias, which draw from the ranks of former insurgents. Awakening members have complained in turn that the Iraqi government has been far too slow in making good on promises to bring them into the Iraqi security ranks. A senior American military official said Monday that persuading the Iraqi government to absorb the Awakening forces had gone in “fits and starts” and had been far from smooth. But he noted that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki had now made a commitment to incorporate about 20 percent of the men into the Iraqi Army, national police or other security forces. He conceded, however, that if the Iraqi government decided to disband the Awakening patrols, the American government would have little leverage to dissuade it other than by diplomacy or by applying pressure at “senior levels.” Mowaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq’s national security adviser, confirmed that the Iraqi government would issue its first paychecks to the Awakening members on Oct. 1. He added that his government was still vetting the individuals to make sure they were not working with the insurgency. “Once we finish and start paying them, we will do what’s appropriate to do,” Mr. Rubaie said. “Some will go to the police and some to the army and some to civilian jobs and some will stay at their regular stations.” Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of American forces in Iraq, has said that the American military pays approximately 99,000 Awakening members across Iraq stipends of about $300 a month. About 5,200 others have been absorbed into the Iraqi security forces. Another 15,000 or so were given civilian jobs or accepted into training programs. The American military says the Awakening movement has been critically important in helping reduce violence in the capital and around Iraq, including in Anbar Province, where control was returned to Iraq on Monday. In fact, some American officers contend that the patrols have done more to quiet the country than the American troop increase known as the surge. They worry that any weakening of the movement could lead to greater instability. The American military official who discussed the payroll shift said no date had been set to transfer control of Awakening groups in other parts of Iraq. On Monday, few Awakening leaders in Baghdad seemed aware of the impending shift in status. Some said they had only recently signed six-month contracts with the American military. Many expressed concern that the Iraqi government would dissolve their units. “I don’t think that we’ll have a contract with the Iraqi government because they consider us as militias,” said Said Malik, who heads the Awakening security council in several neighborhoods in southwest Baghdad. “The Iraqi government won’t give the same prerogatives as the Americans do with us.” Some leaders also said they feared the transfer would give the Iraqi government further opportunity to drive out Awakening leaders whom the government considered active or former insurgents. In Diyala Province, the Iraqi military was ordered to arrest hundreds of Awakening members, Iraqi and American military officials have said. “The American forces put us in a dilemma,” said Sheik Salah al-Egaidi, commander of an Awakening cadre in the Dora neighborhood of Baghdad. “The Awakening is the reason for the security improvement in Baghdad, after finishing Qaeda and the militias, but they have sold us now. Our choices now are either to be killed or to be arrested or to leave Iraq.” His reference was to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown extremist group that American intelligence agencies says is foreign-led. Late last month, American military officials said that they hoped to shift as many as 58,000 Awakening members to the Iraqi payroll this year but that important issues, including how to vet them and what kinds of jobs and training they would receive, would have to be resolved beforehand. Mr. Malik, the Awakening official in Baghdad, said that so far, only 1,000 to 1,500 patrol members in his area had been given jobs in the security forces. Ali Bahjet, commander of the citizen patrols in the Sunni-dominated Adhamiya neighborhood, said one United States Army officer had assured him that “our contracts will be renewed for the next six months, beginning Sept. 1.” “We are sure that the Americans will continue financing our program because this program provided security to the American soldiers and not for the Iraqi ones,” Mr. Bahjet said. “But we are still worried about this development. If this handing over takes place, our fate will be unknown.” Sheik Ali Hatem al-Suleiman, leader of one of the largest tribes in Anbar Province, said the Iraqi government must bring all the Awakening members into its security forces. If it cannot, he said, “then it’s not a real government.” |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #3 They were a newspaper, weren't they? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2008-09-02 21:26 |
| #2 See STARS-N-STRIPES as per US concerns over SONS OF IRAQ groups. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-09-02 20:17 |
| #1 By, by Sunnis. |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2008-09-02 12:56 |