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Sunday 7 September 2008

The Sunni side of Tikrit

The Sunni side of Tikrit: progress in Iraq

Where people are turning to the Coalition for protection

It is happening because of the ‘tribal awakening’. Sunni tribal sheikhs are contracted by the Coalition to keep the peace. If there are bomb attacks and shootings on their land, they know the payments will stop. ‘We’re bribing them,’ a US army major told me, ‘but it’s working.’

Much of the money is handed over in payments for a local security force: official title, the Concerned Local Citizens or CLCs. Out on patrol with the Americans, we regularly came across this Iraqi version of Neighbourhood Watch. They would be armed with Kalashnikovs, setting up makeshift checkpoints, wearing ski-masks, usually without any kind of uniform, looking for all the world like insurgents.

At one time, no doubt, some had been â” but the Americans accept that. Co-opting individuals, or even whole groups, is part of the strategy. The Iraqi security forces tend to have family or tribal ties with many in the ‘resistance’. Everyone knows everyone. Captain Ahmed, for instance, probably wanted to persuade the old man’s insurgent son to change sides rather than automatically send him to prison.

The Americans have finally been able to exploit the tensions between the mainly foreign Wahhabi fanatics of al-Qa’eda and the more moderate Sunni population. As a measure of the success of this approach, just after we left, there was a day-long gun battle â” not involving the Coalition or the Iraqi security forces at all but between a Sunni ‘resistance’ group and al-Qa’eda.

Sunnis, especially in Baghdad, have also been coming round to the view that the Coalition might just be their best chance of avoiding genocide at the hands of Shiite death squads. Above all, say US commanders, ordinary Sunnis are just sick of the war and are turning against those who remain in the insurgency.

In most places we went to in and around ad Dawr, the American troops were still greeted with shrugs when they asked about insurgent activity. But not always. Just outside town, they stopped at a clay and mud hut. Barefoot children played amid goats and chickens. The man of the house came out and â” much to the Americans’ surprise â” said he knew where to find the kingpin organising bomb attacks along the main road.

More articles from: Paul Wood | this section

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