It was an odd graduation speech for a Neighbourhood Watch. group. “We’re proud
of what you’ve done,” US Staff Sergeant Kason Fark, 25, told 50 Iraqi men
sitting crosslegged on the grass, sheltered from the burning midday sun by a
canvas awning, .
“Today we give you your badges, but they don’t let you enter people’s homes.
They don’t let you mistreat anybody. They only let you work with the Iraqi
Army and coalition forces. We’ll be very disappointed if we see you doing
wrong things, and there will be punishments.”
Sergeant Fark’s warning was understandable. The men before him had just
finished the three days’ training required to join the US military’s latest
– and most controversial - scheme to pacify Iraq. It has recruited as many
as 20,000 Sunni men to police their neighbourhoods in what it calls
“concerned citizen” groups with names like the Ghazaliyah Guardians, the
Amariyah Freedom Fighters and the Knights of the Two Rivers.
But by knowingly signing up Sunnis who have fought Shias, US troops and Iraqi
security forces - or all three - it is creating outfits that some fear will
one day metamorphose into well-trained Sunni militias America’s coalition
partners share that concern.
“We’re very alive to the risks of arming directly groups with whom there may
be a short-term coincidence of views and objectives but where any
sustainable control and loyalty is at best questionable,” a senior Western
diplomat told The Times.
The US military admits that some of the recruits have shady pasts. But it
argues that most turned to extreme groups like al-Qaeda merely to protect
their communities from US “infidels” or sectarian attack and now realise
that they made a pact with the Devil. It says that they now want to help to
drive out the extremists who have terrorised their neighbourhoods, and that
it is time to co-opt them.
“Absolutely it’s risky, but we’ve figured out ways to mitigate that risk,”
insists Major John Pirog, operations officer of the 2-12 Cavalry, which
oversees the programme in Ghazaliyah, the district of west Baghdad where
25-year-old Sergeant Fark addressed the newly trained Ghazaliyah Guardians.
Ghazaliyah is a once-pleasant, now devastated suburb of about 70,000 people
that succumbed last year to vicious sectarian warfare between its Shia north
and Sunni south. Earlier this year, as part of President Bush’s troop
“surge”, the military built three combat outposts in the worst areas and
managed to halt the fighting.
Shia and Sunni families are no longer being driven from their homes. The
number of killings has plummeted. Captain John Brooks, who commands one of
the outposts, said that he used to find more than ten beheaded, tortured or
disembowelled bodies dumped near his base each week, but now he doesn’t find
any.
The new challenge is to secure this extremely fragile peace before the surge
ends. There has been no hint of reconciliation between Ghazaliyah’s Shia and
Sunnis. The al-Mahdi Army, a Shia militia, still controls northern
Ghazaliyah, and al-Qaeda, though weakened, still has a presence in the
south.
Ghazaliyah’s only police station is in the Shia north, infested with al-Mahdi
militiamen and, in Major Pirog’s words, “absolutely corrupt”. Its policemen
would be lynched if they ventured south of the sectarian fault line.
The military’s answer is the month-old Ghazaliyah Guardians programme. It is
offering local Sunnis $350 (£175) a month to sign up, secure their streets
and - while it has al-Qaeda on the defensive – turn in the terrorists in
their midst.
It interviews and runs background checks on every applicant. A few
“irrec-oncilables” have been rejected - including three men released from US
detention days earlier and others who applied with false names. But military
commanders accept those that they deem to be “reconcilable”. “We’re not
fooling ourselves,” said Major Pirog. “We know some of these people have
really shady pasts. . . But it comes down to reconciliation. A lot of people
in this country have done bad things. At what point do you say ‘enough is
enough’ and start from scratch?” Successful applicants have their
finger-prints, irises and other physical characteristics recorded and are
supposed to pledge allegiance to the Government of Iraq. Once trained, they
are given a uniform of trainers, baseball caps and tan trousers and shirts
with a green-and-yellow “GG” shoulder badge. They then man the growing
number of checkpoints in southern Ghazaliyah, supervised by the Iraqi Army.
Initially, they are given a pair of binoculars and a mobile phone and told to
report anything suspicious. They are allowed two AK47s between the ten or so
Guardians per checkpoint. Once they prove themselves, they will be allowed
to mount mobile patrols and carry their own arms. The ultimate goal is to
incorporate them into the Iraqi police.
The US military is recruiting 1,000 Guardians. At the very least, say
officers, the scheme will keep potential troublemakers gainfully employed,
allow the military to keep tabs on them and deter further aggression by the
al-Mahdi Army.
That is the theory and, outwardly at least, the scheme is working well.
Hundreds of Sunnis have already signed up. In Ghazaliyah The Times found
smartly dressed Guardians manning checkpoints late into the night, searching
cars for terrorists, explosives and guns. US soldiers said they had already
passed on useful intelligence about weapons caches. The US military issues
press releases almost daily proclaiming the discovery of arms dumps and the
arrests of terrorists thanks to tips passed on by similiar groups. Delve
deeper and problems appear. Few of the Guardians approached by The Times
were motivated by a burning desire to serve their Shia-led Government.
Mahmoud Sadi, 25, said he joined because the Americans detained his brother
and he was his family’s only remaining breadwinner. Muhammad Ghazi, 23,
signed up to protect south Ghazaliyah from the al-Mahdi Army.
Another 45-year-old Guardian, who would not give his name, voiced hatred for a
Government that he called a puppet of Iran. Few relished the idea of
eventually integrating into the despised Iraqi police. Relations between the
Guardians and predominantly Shia Iraqi Army with whom they are supposed to
work are fraught.
Colonel Falah Jabir Hussain, of the Iraqi Army, complained that the Guardians
only provided intelligence about the Shia al-Mahdi Army. “They never give
information about Sunni militants,” he said.
Two nights earlier the Guardians had clashed with their army mentors when the
soldiers insisted on checking a van full of Sunnis that the Guardians knew
well. The Guardians accused the Army of repeatedly letting a notorious
al-Mahdi Army leader, wanted for sectarian killings, pass through a
checkpoint. The US military has now arrested him. The Guardians’ two
leaders, Colonel Ali Raad Hussan and Colonel Khalif Abdul Karim, former
members of Saddam Hussein’s army that fought the Americans in the 1991 Gulf
War and the 2003 invasion, insist that theirs is a purely defensive force
with no hostile intentions towards the Shias of north Ghazaliyah.
The Shias remain sceptical. They staged a demonstration against the Guardians
recently. They believe the US military is being hoodwinked and that the
Guardians will be policemen by day and terrorists by night.
“They are bad guys. They are very dangerous. The Americans have given them big
power for nothing,” said one man, whose family was forced by al-Qaeda death
threats to leave its two-storey villa on Ghazaliya’s faultline last
February.
The family returned in June after the US “surge” halted the violence. But, he
says: “If the Americans leave we would not feel safe. We would leave too.”
Captain Sam Cartee, 26, is helping to implement the Guardians’ programme from
an outpost on the faultline aptly named “Casino”. “When we and the Iraqi
Army leave you will just have Shia police and Sunni police protecting that
boundary line,” he said. “There could be nothing, or there could be civil
war.”
Divided loyalties
326 Shias died in sectarian bombings across Iraq in July this year,
compared with an average of 180 in May and June
53 Sunnis were killed in the same period, also up from average of 37 in
the previous two months
40,000 families, more than 200,000 people, have fled their homes in
Baghdad to escape sectarian violence since the fall of Saddam Hussein
Baghdad estate agents have begun charging to facilitate house swaps between
Sunni and Shia families living in neighbourhoods dominated by the other faith
Sources: UN; Brookings Institution
