Page 2 of 2 US MILITARY
BREAKS RANKS, Part 1
A salvo at the White House By Mark Perry
But it was a group
of military commanders, working on the ground, who
eventually took the lead, using the Fallujah
effort as their model. After dispatching a marine
combat team to help Fallujah's tribal leaders
fight al-Qaeda, similar efforts sprang up among
army units patrolling in Tel Afar and in Ramadi
where, five months after Coleman's Fallujah
initiative, American military officers began
tentative approaches to the Rishawi tribe.
By September, the Americans and Ramadi's
Sheikh Abdul Sattar
abu
Risha had come to an agreement - and the nascent
Anbar Salvation Council, a grouping of 25 tribes,
had been formed to fight al-Qaeda. The killing of
Risha in a car bomb attack in September of 2007
was a clear setback for the strategy of recruiting
tribal leaders to end the insurgency and turn
their guns on al-Qaeda, but by then the strategy
had spread to enough provinces, Pentagon officials
say, that Risha's murder actually solidified the
growing anti-al-Qaeda front.
The strategy
had even taken hold in Babil province, the heavily
fought-over area south of Baghdad - in "the
Triangle of Death" - where contacts with the
insurgency were put in the hands of the 501st
Parachute Regiment. Since at least September of
last year, according to published reports,
officers of the 501st have been cooperating with
Babil's Sunni tribal leaders to drive what
American officers describe as "extremist elements"
- insurgents affiliated with al-Qaeda - that had
become rooted in the province.
In fact,
the first contact with the tribal leaders of Babil
took place five months before the first payments
were made, in May of 2007. At first the leaders
were even more hesitant to sign up with the
Americans than their co-religionists to the north,
in part because of pressures brought against them
by the Shi'ite-dominated government - which
mistrusted the Awakening Council movement.
Then too, Babil province was in the hands
of Shi'ite political leadership, who were even
less enamored of the American initiative than the
Shi'ite leadership in Baghdad. But the Americans
pushed hard for the alliance, telling Babil's
Sunni leaders that the Baghdad government was
incapable of providing them with local security,
or effectively fighting off the al-Qaeda's threat.
Babil's leaders were inevitably convinced
- in part because their hatred of al-Qaeda (and
their mistrust of the Shi'ite-run government) ran
so deep. But for the Americans, the new alliance
came with a price. During September of 2007 alone,
US military officers dispensed well over
US$200,000 to Babil's tribal leaders, including
$370 for each provincial policeman hired by
Babil's Janabi tribe, a potent and influential
force in southern and western Iraq.
The
payments were and are a source of unease for
American military officers, who fought the Janabis
for two years in the province - and who lost
American soldiers in attacks led by Janabi
insurgents. "They used to want to kill me, now
they want to sign a contract with me," a senior
officer of the 501st told the Times of London.
"It's hard to get your head around, but it is
working."
The Mansour bombing
But the price has not only been paid by
the Americans. The negotiations between US
military officers and insurgents in Babil carried
out during the late spring and early summer of
2007 were a source of increasing sensitivity
inside the Iraqi government and were denounced
both inside Iraqi religious circles and inside the
Hawza - the institutions that constitute the
centers of learning in the Shi'ite religion -
where an expansion of the Anbar strategy war
particularly controversial.
"The imams
denounced this. They even talked against it during
Friday prayers. For them, this was just another
American attempt to subdue Iraq. It was one thing
for the Americans to recruit Sunnis to the
awakening - that's fine. But it is another thing
entirely to do this in Shi'ite areas, which are
more independent, and have a history of being
subverted by outsiders," an Iraq government
official said at the time.
Senior American
military officers were warned by Iraqi officials
that they were playing with fire in the areas
south of Baghdad, but the American pleaded that,
to prove its worth, the program needed to go
forward outside of Anbar. This was particularly
true in those areas not dominated by Sunnis. As a
part of the effort to highlight the success of the
Anbar initiative, the Americans called for a
meeting of the Awakening Councils with Iraqi
government officials on June 25 at the Mansour
Melia Hotel in Baghdad.
But just hours
before the meeting was to convene, a suicide
bomber penetrated three levels of security and
killed 12 Iraqis, including six members of the
Anbar Salvation Council. The blast was so powerful
that it blew the doors off the Mansour's heavily
enforced dining room and caved in the dining room
ceiling.
The Mansour bombing was a
political catastrophe for the US and its new Sunni
allies. Among the dead was Sheik Abdul-Aziz
al-Fahdawi of the Fahad tribe, Sheik Tariq Saleh
al-Assafi and Colonel Fadil al-Nimrawi, both from
the al-Bu Nimr tribe, and Iraqi General Aziz
al-Yasari and Sheik Husayn Sha'lan al-Khaza'i of
the Khaza'a tribe. Also killed was Sheik Fassal
al-Gaood, a former Anbar governor and the
successor to Talal al-Gaood - the man who had
first approached US military leaders in Amman in
2004.
Gaood's loss was deeply felt at the
Pentagon, where civilian officials had been
pressing for an opening to the insurgency since
the fall of Baghdad. "This was a blow," a Pentagon
official confirms. "We knew both men [Talal and
Fassal] and admired their courage." Worse yet,
while "Muslim extremists" were blamed for the
murders, senior US officials suspected a range of
suspects, including Iraqi government security
officials who had been less than cooperative with
the US military in promoting the Anbar initiative.
These suspicions were highlighted by
reports that the meeting at the Mansour was called
so that the Anbar officials could discuss
expanding the "Awakening of the Tribes" into
Shi'ite areas. Now that initiative seemed
endangered. "The bombing was as clear a message as
we could get," a Pentagon official later
speculated. "While everyone's attention was
focused on how this hurt us in Anbar, the real
message was that we should end our efforts in the
south."
The coda to the Mansour bombing
was a triumphant broadside from US military
officers that they would remain undeterred by
"these despicable terrorist acts". In fact, senior
military strategists began to tread more lightly,
particularly in Shi'ite areas. According to a
senior Iraqi official with ties into the nation's
complex tribal network, in the wake of bombing the
US military began to "sketch out and think
through" inter-sectarian tribal relationships.
Babil was the key, where the emerging
strategy was to focus on recruiting respected
Iraqi leaders with close tribal ties to those
leading the Awakening movement in Anbar. In Babil,
military officers began to refocus their efforts
on the Janabi tribe, according to a Janabi family
member with access to the tribe's decision-making.
The choice of the Janabis was purposeful - even
insightful.
The Janabis are nearly
ubiquitous in a large crescent of the country
running from an area south of Baghdad in an arc to
the west and north. For the Americans, the
recruitment of the Janabis was crucial - since
some Janabis are Sunni and some Shi'ite.
Additionally, high-profile Sunni and Shi'ite
Janabis served both in Saddam's government and as
leaders in the anti-American insurgency.
Recruiting the powerful tribe to the side
of the American military, even in the face Iraqi
government opposition, became a key not only to
"turning Iraqi guns on the real culprits", as one
serving officer notes, but to "stitching together
a political front that is based on something other
than wishful thinking".
A senior Iraqi
observer with ties to the tribal network confirms
this view: "The Janabis in the south have strong
links to those in the north, tribal links, but you
should know some are motivated by sectarian
concerns and some are simply extremists." The
question remains, of course: what happens when the
American money dries up? "The answer to that
question is simple," this Iraqi says. And then he
laughs: "When the money goes, they go."
Tomorrow, Part 2: Military felled by 'trust
gap'
Mark Perry is a director of Conflicts
Forum
and author of
Partners in Command (Penguin Press, New
York, 2007).
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