At a meeting this week, tribal leaders were offered concessions in exchange for allegiance.
By Solomon Moore and Richard Boudreaux
Los Angeles Times, 09 February 2006
BAGHDAD — U.S. and Iraqi officials have begun bartering prisoners, aid and key positions in the army and police for the allegiance of Sunni insurgents, in an effort to lure them away from foreign Al Qaeda fighters in Iraq's most restive province.
The latest attempt to capitalize on recent clashes between insurgents and foreign fighters brought together eight major tribal sheiks from Al Anbar province with the top U.S. military official in Iraq, Army Gen. George W. Casey; Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari and high-ranking members of Iraq's security and intelligence agencies.
The five-hour meeting Tuesday was the highest-level, most detailed parley with Iraq's largest Sunni Muslim Arab tribes since the wedge tactic was adopted late last year.
It took place as the nation's divided ethnic and religious groups jockeyed for positions in a Shiite Muslim-dominated government.
"We are engaged with leaders, including tribal leaders and others, to encourage them to suspend their military operations with the aim of ending the insurgency and working together with us against the terrorists," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said in an interview Wednesday.
Sunnis have been pushing to balance their minority status by diminishing Shiite control of internal security and national defense forces since the Shiite-led faction won the largest share of votes in Dec. 15 national elections.
"I think it is critical that the security ministries be given to people who are broadly accepted across sectarian and ethnic lines and that they are not people who are sectarian or divisive and that they are not people with ties to militias or armed groups," Khalilzad said.
In recent weeks, Sunni Arab leaders have been depicting their community as a persecuted minority. They say that under Interior Minister Bayan Jabr, a Shiite appointee with ties to the Badr Brigade militia, police have conducted unwarranted raids as well as assassinations in Sunni communities, a contention supported by top U.S. and Iraqi officials.
In January, Iraqi soldiers captured a police death squad, Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the American commander in charge of training an Iraqi police force, said in a recent interview.
Iraq's most influential Shiite politician, Abdelaziz Hakim, called Wednesday for the security forces "to continue strongly confronting terrorists but with more consideration to human rights."
Saleh Mutlak, a Sunni Arab party leader who attended the Tuesday meeting said that a few hours later, police shot into the rear of his car after waving him through a Baghdad checkpoint.
Sunnis at the gathering also complained about a succession of U.S.-led military operations in Al Anbar and the capital.
On Monday night, U.S. forces raided a Baghdad branch office of the Iraqi Islamic Party, the largest Sunni political group, after their convoy came under fire on the same street.
Mowaffak Rubaie, the Iraqi government's national security advisor, said that during Tuesday's meeting Jafari promised to recruit more Sunni Arabs into the army and police forces and to direct more economic development aid to Al Anbar.
Rubaie and Sunni tribal leaders at the meeting said that Jafari also pledged to release at least 140 prisoners in coming weeks. The detainees, Rubaie said, were from various regions of Iraq, and that more releases would be forthcoming.
It is still unclear, however, whether the tribal leaders wield enough influence to quell the insurgency in Al Anbar. And some of the sheiks appear to favor forming their own militias to police their cities, a tendency the central government finds troubling.
"We always demanded that the Americans get out of the cities and leave the security situation to us," said Sheik Ali Abdalla, leader of several tribes in the Ramadi region. "They did not listen to us, and see what happened to our beloved cities? Most of us left Anbar and are now living in Baghdad."
Tribal sheik Osama Jadan said his Al Anbar community had formed an armed group, similar to Shiite militias prevalent in Baghdad and in the south of Iraq, to fight insurgents.
"We started our operations three weeks ago, and they have been fruitful," he said. "We caught one of [guerrilla leader Abu Musab] Zarqawi's assistants, and after an investigation of him … we handed him over to the Iraqi army and joint intelligence."
Mohammed Askari, an advisor to Iraq's defense minister, said the government was discouraging the formation of Sunni militias and was pushing tribal leaders to recruit their youth for the national army and police.
"Then they would get their weapons like any other Iraqi soldier or police officer," Askari said. "We told them that the doors are wide open."
The talks between the government and Sunni leaders are taking place amid continuing sectarian violence.
On Wednesday, Ahmed Abdel-Wahab, a Sunni Arab city council member, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Hawija, about 50 miles north of Baghdad.
Shiites also came under attack, even as security was heightened for the culmination of Ashura today. The holiday, which marks the 7th century martyrdom of Shiite saint Imam Hussein, has been marred in the last two years by Sunni insurgent attacks.
Sami Mudafar, the minister of higher education and a Shiite, escaped unharmed in Baghdad when a bomb-rigged car exploded near his passing motorcade. Two of his guards were wounded and a bystander was killed, police said.
A group affiliated with Al Qaeda in Iraq, which is Zarqawi's organization, claimed responsibility on a radical website.
At least eight other people were reported killed Wednesday, including four unidentified men who were found handcuffed and shot in Sadr City, a Shiite slum in northeastern Baghdad.
Six people were wounded on a Baghdad street when gunmen fired on a group of Shiites performing the ritual self-flagellation associated with Ashura.
Times staff writers Borzou Daragahi, Saif Rasheed, Caesar Ahmed and Suhail Ahmad contributed to this report.
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Citation: Solomon Moore and Richard Boudreaux. "U.S., Iraqi Officials Woo Sunnis," Los Angeles Times, 09 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-fg-sunnis9feb09,0,2846019.story?coll=la-news-a_section
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