In Anbar, tribes turn against Al Qaeda

RAMADI, Iraq -- The Sunni tribal leaders met in a guarded compound on the edge of town, guests of an up-and-coming young sheik bent on avenging the murder of his father and the disappearance of two brothers at the hands of the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq.

The result was a decision by the fiercely independent desert tribesmen to throw their weight behind American troops and to join the local police and Iraqi army in droves -- a tactical shift that, at least for now, has helped put the brakes on the anti-government insurgency in western Anbar province that the U.S. has spent years trying to control.


U.S. Raids in Iraq Target Shiite Cells
May 27, 2007



By all accounts, the results in Anbar have been impressive: Where barely 200 police officers had served in Ramadi, the provincial capital, last summer, now there are more than 8,000. The number of attacks on U.S. forces dropped from 108 a week last year to seven during the first week of May.

"We started remembering what had happened [with Al Qaeda] and how things went, and we decided to fight," said Tariq al-Duleimi, who heads security for Sattar Abu Risha, the young sheik who was the host of the meeting at his compound last October.

A relative peace reigns

A relative calm now reigns throughout Anbar province, marked by the heavy police presence but also dogged by questions about the tribesmen's loyalties and indications the success may have merely pushed insurgent violence to other areas.

Last week, President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki seized on the turn of events in Anbar as a sign of hope for Iraq. But Anbar's successes, like the Sunni-dominated province itself, may be unique: The loose alliance of tribal and government leaders, dubbed the Anbar Salvation Council, relies on a handful of charismatic sheiks with common interests, and is unlikely to serve as a model for areas with more complex sectarian divisions and less traditional social structures.

The relative peace hardly means that Al Qaeda has surrendered Anbar province. Three deadly bombings wracked the Ramadi area last week, including a suicide attack on a sheik who supported the salvation council and a subsequent car bomb attack on his funeral procession.

Nevertheless, the reduction in insurgent attacks and daily gun battles, which have allowed a renewed focus on reconstruction projects, have been portrayed by U.S. and Iraqi officials as validation for the new U.S. counterinsurgency strategy of connecting with people rather than hunting and killing adversaries.

Provincial leaders, U.S. troops and aid agencies have rushed to engage local officials and restore government services to an area devastated by four years of urban conflict, lest America's new tribal allies change their minds again.

"It's surreal to us," said Maj. Rory Quinn, executive officer of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marines in Ramadi, a unit that has returned to ground it held last year at a time when cooperating with Americans meant death for sheiks and tribesmen alike. "We've got to walk the walk now, so they see a benefit for sticking their necks out."

U.S. and Iraqi officials want the Anbar experience to serve as an example.

"Our new strategy is designed to take advantage of new opportunities to partner with local tribes to go after Al Qaeda in places like Anbar, which has been the home base of Al Qaeda in Iraq," Bush said Thursday. On Tuesday, in a televised address on the first anniversary of his taking office, al-Maliki called on other tribal leaders and civil organizations to form similar salvation councils "in order to eliminate the disease of terrorism that is targeting Iraq." In Anbar, the key has been the tribal sheiks, U.S. officials said.

"The really profound change is what happens when a population denies the enemy the ability to take cover," said Marine Brig. Gen. John Allen, the deputy commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq, who oversees tribal outreach.

"Everything we do in the province, if we don't think about the tribe first, then we're probably going to end up thinking about it afterward -- wondering how we screwed it up," he said.

Still, the precarious quiet in Anbar has exposed regional rivalries between far-flung provincial towns and the capital and has laid bare difficulties in prioritizing reconstruction projects and paying new police officers. Though other tribes are expressing interest in joining forces with the Americans, sheiks who were not part of the original movement among Ramadi tribes are reluctant to join as subordinate members, Allen said.

The decision of young tribal members to join the Iraqi police, army and new Provincial Security Forces also raises the question of loyalty.

"Trust me, we feel like we're training many people who months ago were probably supporting -- either actively or passively supporting -- the insurgency," said Marine Brig. Gen. Charles Gurganus, chief of military transition in Anbar province. "We're more than happy that they've seen the light and changed sides here. And we're happy to have them as part of the team now."

Despite the misgivings, changes in the past two months have been pronounced.

At the Ramadi provincial government center, which had been under nearly constant siege since 2004, the streets are silent. Now a barracks for Marines, it is scheduled to be renovated for government use this summer