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Soldiers hope the enemy of their enemy is their friend

Aug- 2-2007 » Filed Under: 3/2 SBCT

(via FOB Tacoma)

By Mike Drummond and Hussein Khalifa, McClatchy Newspapers

BAQOUBA, Iraq — Several months ago, Abu Haider was aiming his weather-beaten AK-47 rifle at American soldiers. Now it pointed to the floor.

At a makeshift police station that once served as a farmer's union hall in Baqouba, the U.S. effort to enlist former Sunni Muslim insurgents in the battle against al Qaida in Iraq coalesced this week into an uneasy truce.

Abu Haider, as he called himself, and about 80 other mostly Sunni residents — some of them former members of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a fiercely nationalistic insurgent group — had arrived to register as security volunteers. An American soldier photographed and cataloged the recruits. The result: a neighborhood watch program with ammo.

Working with the Shiite Muslim-dominated Iraqi army, the volunteers will patrol neighborhoods and ask residents for tips on where to find insurgents. U.S. forces want to take advantage of the enmity that al Qaida in Iraq has generated among Shiites and Sunnis here and elsewhere in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

"We have a truce with the unbelievers," said Abu Haider, glancing at about a dozen American soldiers from the 520th Infantry Battalion of the 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, based at Fort Lewis, Wash. "Now, we're going to fight khawraj," the name he calls al Qaida in Iraq. The Khawraj, members of a sect who claimed to be true Muslims, fought Muslims after the Prophet Muhammad died.

American officials hope to replicate the success that a similar tactic had in curbing violence in Sunni-dominated Anbar province, west of the capital. Some U.S. military officials suggest that co-opting former enemies in Diyala, home to Shiite and Sunni Arabs and Kurds, could serve as a template for the rest of the country.

American commanders here said that fighting a common enemy that kidnapped, tortured and imposed a brutal brand of fundamentalist Islam could lead to broader security, sectarian reconciliation and a politically palatable U.S. military exit strategy.

It's a tall order, and the new alliance is a risky gambit. There's no guarantee that the mostly Sunni security volunteers won't target Shiite civilians, calcifying a perception either that the United States has chosen sides in a sectarian war or is in the unhappy position of backing both sides.

Moreover, if they succeed against al Qaida in Iraq, the former insurgents could use the intelligence they gain working with Americans to turn their guns on U.S. soldiers or on the Shiite-dominated Iraqi security forces, which are armed and trained by the U.S. but heavily infiltrated by Iranian-backed Shiite militiamen.

The omens aren't promising. Once he's finished rousting al Qaida from Baqouba, Abu Haider indicated, he and others will go back to fighting American troops. "Our aims," he said, "are to get the occupation forces out."

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