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Sheikh Sittar, who welcomed The Times to his home twice in the past year, was probably the most heavily protected Iraqi leader outside the Government. An American tank stood outside his high-walled compound just off the Baghdad-to-Jordan highway. The area around had been razed to remove any cover for terrorists.

He described how the Awakening was launched last September after extremists killed his father and four brothers. The final straw came when al-Qaeda beheaded a fellow sheikh, then piled insult on injury by keeping his body so that it could not be buried immediately, as demanded by custom. “We began to see what they were actually doing in Anbar province. They were not respecting us or honouring us in any way,” he said. Sheikh Sittar urged hundreds of his fellow tribesmen to join the reviled Iraqi police. Other sheikhs followed suit. Using local intelligence and US firepower, they largely ousted al-Qaeda from Ramadi, Fallujah and other Sunni towns.

In his interviews he preached reconciliation between Iraq’s warring communities, pointing out that his own tribe was half Sunni and half Shia. He said that he wanted to bring security and stability to all Iraq, declaring: “In place of every improvised explosive device we will plant a flower.” During one interview three weeks ago, he was visibly un-nerved by our photographer’s long lens, fretting that it might be a disguised weapon.

Asked how many times he had escaped assassination, he replied: “Many times. I can’t count. But I’m not scared, because Allah gives you the first day you breathe and also the day you die.”

What General Petraeus told Congress

— The most significant development in the past six months likely has been the increasing emergence of tribes and local citizens rejecting al-Qaeda and other extremists. This has, of course, been most visible in Anbar province

— A year ago the province was assessed as “lost” politically. Today it is a model of what happens when local leaders and citizens decide to oppose al-Qaeda and reject its Taleban-like ideology

— Monthly attack levels in Anbar have declined from some 1,350 in October 2006 to a bit over 200 in August of this year. This dramatic decrease reflects the significance of the local rejection of al-Qaeda

— The tribal rejection of al-Qaeda that started in Anbar province and helped produce such significant change there has now spread to a number of other locations as well

Source: US Department of Defence

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