Thread: Shiite government turning on the awakening movement

Is the Malaki government harboring a sectarian agenda? Should the United States act to stop this?

From the New York Times
August 22, 2008
Iraq Takes Aim at Leaders of U.S.-Tied Sunni Groups
By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr.

BAGHDAD — The Shiite-dominated government in Iraq is driving out many leaders of Sunni citizen patrols, the groups of former insurgents who joined the American payroll and have been a major pillar in the decline in violence around the nation.

In restive Diyala Province, United States and Iraqi military officials say there were orders to arrest hundreds of members of what is known as the Awakening movement as part of large security operations by the Iraqi military. At least five senior members have been arrested there in recent weeks, leaders of the groups say.

West of Baghdad, former insurgent leaders contend that the Iraqi military is going after 650 Awakening members, many of whom have fled the once-violent area they had kept safe. While the crackdown appears to be focused on a relatively small number of leaders whom the Iraqi government considers the most dangerous, there are influential voices to dismantle the American backed movement entirely.

“The state cannot accept the Awakening,” said Sheik Jalaladeen al-Sagheer, a leading Shiite member of Parliament. “Their days are numbered.”

The government’s rising hostility toward the Awakening Councils amounts to a bet that its military, feeling increasingly strong, can provide security in former guerrilla strongholds without the support of these former Sunni fighters who once waged devastating attacks on United States and Iraqi targets. It also is occurring as Awakening members are eager to translate their influence and organization on the ground into political power.

But it is causing a rift with the American military, which contends that any significant diminution of the Awakening could result in renewed violence, jeopardizing the substantial security gains in the past year. United States commanders say that the practice, however unconventional, of paying the guerrillas has saved the lives of hundreds of American soldiers.

“If it is not handled properly, we could have a security issue,” said Brig. Gen. David Perkins, the senior military spokesman in Iraq. “You don’t want to give anybody a reason to turn back to Al Qaeda.” Many Sunni insurgents had previously been allied with Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia and other extremist groups.

Even before the new pressure from the government, many Awakening members were growing frustrated — and at an especially delicate time. United States and Iraqi negotiators have just completed a draft security agreement that next year, Iraqi officials say, would substantially pull American forces back from cities and towns to be replaced by Iraqi security forces.

Awakening members complain, with rising bitterness, that the government has been slow to make good on its promises to recruit tens of thousands of its members into those security forces. General Perkins said only 5,200 members had been recruited in a force of about 100,000.

“Some people from the government encouraged us to fight against Al Qaeda, but it seems that now that Al Qaeda is finished they don’t want us anymore,” said Abu Marouf, who, according to American officials, was a powerful guerrilla leader in the 1920s Revolutionary Brigade west of Baghdad. “So how can you say I am not betrayed?”

After he said he discovered his name on lists of 650 names that an Iraqi Army brigade was using to arrest Awakening members west of Baghdad, Abu Marouf fled south of Falluja. His men, he said, “sacrificed and fought against Al Qaeda, and now the government wants to catch them and arrest them.”

The Shiite-dominated government has never been pleased with the continuing American plan to finance and organize Sunni insurgents into militia guards, charging that they will stop fighting only as long as it serves their interests.

“These people are like cancer, and we must remove them,” said Brig. Gen. Nassir al-Hiti, commander of the Iraqi Army’s 5,000-strong Muthanna Brigade, which patrols west of Baghdad, said of the Awakening leaders on his list for arrest.

The Awakening began in western Anbar Province in 2006 as the violence in Iraq peaked and Sunni tribal leaders began feeling pressure from all sides, and then spread around the country as a means of Sunni self-preservation.

The United States military focused its operations on Sunni insurgent groups, cooperating meantime with the Shiite-led government. The bodies of dozens of Sunnis surfaced on streets every morning, the victims of Shiite death squads. And many Sunnis themselves grew disgusted with the large number of civilian casualties in near-daily suicide bombings.

The American military began paying many members of the Awakening movement as the program expanded, even including Shiite members who make up about one-fifth of the program. Now they are paid roughly $300 a month by the United States to guard checkpoints and buildings and — for those who used to be insurgents — to no longer blow up American convoys and shoot American troops.

Although the “surge” is often described as the turning point that led to lower violence, a number of American officers contend the Awakening that began well before the surge in 2006 in Anbar Province and continued in Baghdad last year was the most significant reason for the decline. In some places, American casualties plunged within weeks of the Sunnis joining with American forces.

Col. Kurt Pinkerton, the former American battalion commander who oversaw the Awakening program established west of Abu Ghraib last year, said it was critical to quelling violence.

“I don’t think that area would have been calmed without those guys,” he said, giving credit to three of the most important members, including Abu Marouf, who are now being tracked down by General Nassir.

General Nassir says he has orders to arrest Abu Marouf, whose older brother, Col. Faisal Ismail Hussein, was also a guerrilla leader before he became the Falluja police chief. General Nassir also says he has orders to arrest Abu Azzam and Abu Zachariyah, brothers who were leaders of the Islamic Army of Iraq but who were publicly hailed by Colonel Pinkerton and other American commanders last year for bringing relative peace to an insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

The general says his orders come from the military’s Baghdad Operations Center, which he said is taking orders from Iraqi judicial authorities. He acknowledged some disenchanted fighters may take up arms again “like a drug addict who quits only to take drugs again.”

But he says that reconciliation is impossible and that he would quit before he ever worked with former insurgents with blood on their hands. “They committed crimes and attacked the Iraqi Army and the American Army, and there is no way to rehabilitate them,” he said. Despite the government’s new aggressiveness against the Awakening, the program is far from finished. While going after hundreds of leaders and people the government considers dangerous, relations remain largely good with Sunni tribal sheiks in Anbar, where the Awakening was born.

General Perkins also noted that American and Iraqi officials had tentatively agreed to a plan to hopefully transfer 58,000 American-paid militia guards this year onto Iraqi government payrolls under the command of the Baghdad Operation Center, which reports to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.

But he said the transfer will not happen until crucial issues are resolved, such as how militiamen are vetted and what sort of jobs or training programs they will eventually go into.

And while American officials are insistent that the program to pay militia guards continue to operate, General Perkins said it was not yet clear what recourse the military would have to prevent the Iraqi government from ending the program once it took control. “We don’t want this to be a dead-end, kick them to the curb kind of thing,” he said.

Despite the threat of arrest by General Nassir’s troops if he returns to his home village west Baghdad, Abu Azzam, who had been an Awakening leader between Abu Ghraib and Falluja, said he has been able to travel to Baghdad to meet with aides to Mr. Maliki to discuss how the Shiite-dominated government and former Sunni guerrillas might be able to reconcile.

“Our men worked hard and deserve appreciation and not punishment from the government,” he said.

He described the discussions as “not going well,” though he said some Maliki aides preferred a more conciliatory tack.

“For now, everything is stopped,” he said. He also said he feared the pullout of American troops, whom he saw as restraining the Shiite government from taken even harsher action against the Awakening. “America is the only one asking us not to fight the Maliki government.”

As part of the Awakening’s efforts to transform itself into a political movement, Abu Azzam has organized a political slate for the coming provincial elections and says he has renounced violence for good. He is optimistic that some former fighters will not return to armed conflict if the government refuses them jobs, he said.

But he acknowledged, “Part of them will fight the government if they are not recruited into the security forces.”

Reporting was contributed by Mohammed Husain from Baghdad and Ibrahim Bin Ali, Iraq; Riyadh Mohammed from Baghdad; Campbell Robertson from Diyala Province; Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan; and Iraqi employees of The New York Times from Falluja, Ramadi and Diyala.