[R-G] Sunni Insurgents Exploit U.S.-Sponsored Militias

[Anthony Fenton]

POLITICS:  Sunni Insurgents Exploit U.S.-Sponsored Militias
Analysis by Gareth Porter*
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41436

WASHINGTON, Mar 3 (IPS) - For months, U.S. President George W. Bush  
and Gen. David Petraeus have been touting the programme of recruiting  
tens of thousands of Sunnis into U.S.-financed "Awakening Councils"  
as a master stroke of Iraq strategy which has weakened al Qaeda in  
Iraq and helps reduce sectarian conflict through "bottom up  
reconciliation".

But the mainstream Sunni insurgents who have been fighting al Qaeda  
appear to have outmaneuvered U.S. strategists by using Awakening  
Councils to pursue their interests in weakening their most immediate  
enemy, reducing pressures from the U.S. military and establishing new  
political bases, while continuing to mount attacks on U.S. and Iraqi  
government forces.

The biggest question surrounding the strategy from the beginning was  
whether it the Awakening Councils -- called "Sahwa" in Arabic --  
would be a haven for Sunni insurgents.

High-ranking U.S. officers issued public assurances last year that  
former insurgents would not be allowed to enter the programme, but  
last month, Iraqi government officials, including Prime Minister  
Nouri al-Maliki, began raising the spectre of "infiltration" of the  
Awakening groups by al Qaeda or "Baathists". Those are terms which  
have often been used by Shiite leaders to refer to the mainstream  
Sunni insurgents.

The U.S. command responded by denying that they have been infiltrated  
systematically by either al Qaeda or other "extremists". At a Feb. 17  
press briefing, Rear Adm. Gregory Smith admitted that individual  
extremists may have infiltrated some units, but rejected the idea  
that any "complete unit" of the Awakening had gone "bad".

Nevertheless, by the end of 2007 it had become clear the Sahwa were  
dominated in many places by the Sunni insurgent groups, and U.S.  
specialists were openly acknowledging it. The 1920 Revolution  
Brigades, a major Sunni armed resistance organisation, is the primary  
element in the Sahwa in Diyala Province as well as in parts of Anbar  
Province. One commander of the Brigades, Abu Marouf, brought 13,000  
of his fighters into the Sahwa in Anbar. His background as an  
insurgent commander is well-known locally but has never been  
acknowledged by U.S. officials.

Meanwhile, the 1920 Revolution Brigades also continues to wage war  
against U.S. forces. In March 2007, it announced the creation of two  
separate military "corps", one of which, the "Iraqi Hamas", was  
clearly intended to continue military operations against the U.S.  
military in Diyala and other Sunni provinces.

The 1920 Revolution Brigades did not join a new "political council of  
the Iraqi resistance" formed in October to unify the Sunni armed  
organisations fighting the U.S. occupation -- at least in its own  
name. But the Iraqi Hamas "wing" of the organisation, which continues  
to be affiliated with the parent organisation, did join the new council.

The de facto security force in Amiriya district of Baghdad is under  
the command of Abu Abed, a former Iraqi army captain who led a unit  
of another major resistance organisation, the Islamic Army of Iraq  
(IAI). He claims that the local Sahwa is drawn from both IAI and the  
1920 Revolution Brigades. The IAI has distanced itself from Abu Abed,  
at least publicly, but that move should be understood in light of the  
great reluctance of Sunni armed organisations to admit that they are  
cooperating overtly with institutions associated with the United States.

A recent incident in which U.S. troops killed or detained members of  
the Sahwa during operations against insurgents suggested that the  
line separating the Sunni insurgents targeted by the U.S. military  
and the Sunnis working with the U.S. military was nonexistent.

On Feb. 13, U.S. forces carried out an attack on an insurgent target  
west of Kirkuk, killing six insurgents and detaining 15. But members  
of the local Awakening Council complained that the six people killed  
and some of those detained were members of the Sahwa.

One of those detained was the head of the local 700-hundred-member  
Sahwa and leader of the Baghzawi tribe.

Col. Martin Stanton, who is in charge of reconciliation and  
engagement for the Multinational Corps-Iraq, acknowledged to the New  
York Times last December that the Awakening Council members came from  
the Sunni insurgency.

He described the Sunnis who joined the U.S. paramilitary groups as  
having been "hammered" by both al Qaeda and the United States.  
Stanton suggested that joining the Awakening groups was "probably a  
distasteful choice" for them, "because, after all, they viewed us as  
invaders, and they probably still do, but it was a survival choice  
and they made it."

Stanton had told investigative journalist Spencer Ackerman in  
November that the participants in the Awakening groups hadn't made "a  
fundamental break" with the insurgency.

Participation in the Sahwa appears to serve the interests of  
mainstream Sunni insurgent organisations at multiple levels. It has  
isolated al Qaeda's "Islamic State of Iraq" (ISI) and associated  
jihadist groups, which in turn causes some guerrillas factions to  
come back to the mainstream insurgency.

It also may have reduced U.S. military pressures on the Sunni  
nationalist insurgents. As the lines between pro-ISI and anti-ISI  
Sunni insurgents have hardened during 2007, U.S. military operations  
have apparently focused more on ISI and the insurgents aligned with  
it and less on the mainstream insurgents fighting against al Qaeda.

The U.S. command in Iraq provides no data indicating how many of its  
operations are directed at each of its adversaries. But Dan Gouré,  
vice president of the Lexington Institute, a conservative Virginia  
think tank, told IPS he estimates that the U.S. military command in  
Iraq has been targeting ISI in 60 percent of its operations and other  
Sunni insurgents in 30 percent of them. The other 10 percent, he  
says, are focused on the Shiite Mahdi Army.

Insurgents are still mounting about 700 improvised explosive device  
(IED) attacks every month, according to the latest statistics issued  
by the U.S. command. Although they are not broken down by source, the  
vast majority are certainly carried out by the same Sunni insurgent  
organisations that fight al Qaeda and have contributed tens of  
thousands of men to the Sahwa.

Participating in the Sahwa also gives insurgent groups a new semi- 
legal political base. When the rape and murder of two Sunni women,  
allegedly by Shiite militiamen, provoked Sunni protests in Baquba  
against the government earlier this month, hundreds of 1920  
Revolution Brigades fighters belonging to the Sahwa demonstrated to  
demand the dismissal of the provincial police chief. The  
organisation's spokesman in Baquba said they would "take up arms"  
against the police and U.S. troops if their demands were not met, as  
reported by IPS Feb. 13.

One U.S. colonel with long experience in Iraq told Lt. Col. Douglas  
McGregor (Army ret.), a senior fellow at the Straus Military Reform  
Project, that the Sunni insurgents' participation in the Sahwa may be  
a transitory stage in a "fight, bargain, subvert, fight approach" to  
achieving their long-term aims, as McGregor testified before a  
subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Feb. 8.

Those aims include the complete withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces  
and reducing the power of a Shiite-dominated government they believe  
represents Iranian interests in Iraq.

The Sunni insurgent strategy of flooding the U.S.-sponsored  
paramilitary forces with their own fighters appears to make the Sunni  
insurgency stronger than ever. Far from being a device for "bottom up  
reconciliation", the Awakening Councils have added powder to the  
powder keg of Sunni-Shiite tensions.

*Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst.  
The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance:  
Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in  
2006.

(END/2008)