Newsgroup: it.cultura.militare
Titolo: U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies

U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: June 11, 2007
New York Times
BAGHDAD, June 10 - With the four-month-old increase in American troops
showing only modest success in curbing insurgent attacks, American
commanders are turning to another strategy that they acknowledge is
fraught with risk: arming Sunni Arab groups that have promised to
fight militants linked with Al Qaeda who have been their allies in the
past.
Iraq's Parliament Leaders Agree to Remove Speaker (June 11, 2007)
American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in
Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups
in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the
insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders
say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on
American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these
groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military
units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and
supplies.
American officers who have engaged in what they call outreach to the
Sunni groups say many of them have had past links to Al Qaeda in
Mesopotamia but grew disillusioned with the Islamic militants'
extremist tactics, particularly suicide bombings that have killed
thousands of Iraqi civilians. In exchange for American backing, these
officials say, the Sunni groups have agreed to fight Al Qaeda and halt
attacks on American units. Commanders who have undertaken these
negotiations say that in some cases, Sunni groups have agreed to alert
American troops to the location of roadside bombs and other lethal
booby traps.
But critics of the strategy, including some American officers, say it
could amount to the Americans' arming both sides in a future civil
war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up
Iraq's army and police force, whose manpower of 350,000 is heavily
Shiite. With an American troop drawdown increasingly likely in the
next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite
and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a risk
that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against
Shiites. There is also the possibility the weapons could be used
against the Americans themselves.
American field commanders met this month in Baghdad with Gen. David H.
Petraeus, the top American commander in Iraq, to discuss the
conditions Sunni groups would have to meet to win American assistance.
Senior officers who attended the meeting said that General Petraeus
and the operational commander who is the second-ranking American
officer here, Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, gave cautious approval to
field commanders to negotiate with Sunni groups in their areas.
One commander who attended the meeting said that despite the risks in
arming groups that have until now fought against the Americans, the
potential gains against Al Qaeda were too great to be missed. He said
the strategy held out the prospect of finally driving a wedge between
two wings of the Sunni insurgency that had previously worked in a
devastating alliance - die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein's formerly
dominant Baath Party, and Islamic militants belonging to a
constellation of groups linked to Al Qaeda.
Even if only partly successful, the officer said, the strategy could
do as much or more to stabilize Iraq, and to speed American troops on
their way home, as the increase in troops ordered by President Bush
late last year, which has thrown nearly 30,000 additional American
troops into the war but failed so far to fulfill the aim of bringing
enhanced stability to Baghdad. An initial decline in sectarian
killings in Baghdad in the first two months of the troop buildup has
reversed, with growing numbers of bodies showing up each day in the
capital. Suicide bombings have dipped in Baghdad but increased
elsewhere, as Qaeda groups, confronted with great American troop
numbers, have shifted their operations elsewhere.
The strategy of arming Sunni groups was first tested earlier this year
in Anbar Province, the desert hinterland west of Baghdad, and attacks
on American troops plunged after tribal sheiks, angered by Qaeda
strikes that killed large numbers of Sunni civilians, recruited
thousands of men to join government security forces and the tribal
police. With Qaeda groups quitting the province for Sunni havens
elsewhere, Anbar has lost its long-held reputation as the most
dangerous place in Iraq for American troops.
Now, the Americans are testing the "Anbar model" across wide areas of
Sunni-dominated Iraq. The areas include parts of Baghdad, notably the
Sunni stronghold of Amiriya, a district that flanks the highway
leading to Baghdad's international airport; the area south of the
capital in Babil province known as the Triangle of Death, site of an
ambush in which four American soldiers were killed last month and
three others abducted, one of whose bodies was found in the Euphrates;
Diyala Province north and east of Baghdad, an area of lush palm groves
and orchards which has replaced Anbar as Al Qaeda's main sanctuary in
Iraq; and Salahuddin Province, also north of Baghdad, the home area of
Saddam Hussein.
Although the American engagement with the Sunni groups has brought
some early successes against Al Qaeda, particularly in Anbar, many of
the problems that hampered earlier American efforts to reach out to
insurgents remain unchanged. American commanders say the Sunni groups
they are negotiating with show few signs of wanting to work with the
Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. For
their part, Shiite leaders are deeply suspicious of any American move
to co-opt Sunni groups that are wedded to a return to Sunni political
dominance.
With the agreement to arm some Sunni groups, the Americans also appear
to have made a tacit recognition that earlier demands for the
disarming of Shiite militia groups are politically unachievable for
now given the refusal of powerful Shiite political parties to shed
their armed wings. In effect, the Americans seem to have concluded
that as long as the Shiites maintain their militias, Shiite leaders
are in a poor position to protest the arming of Sunni groups whose
activities will be under close American scrutiny.
Iraq's Parliament Leaders Agree to Remove Speaker (June 11, 2007) But
officials of Mr. Maliki's government have placed strict limits on the
Sunni groups they are willing to countenance as allies in the fight
against Al Qaeda. One leading Shiite politician, Sheik Khalik al-
Atiyah, the deputy Parliament speaker, said in a recent interview that
he would rule out any discussion of an amnesty for Sunni Arab
insurgents, even those who commit to fighting Al Qaeda. Similarly,
many American commanders oppose rewarding Sunni Arab groups who have
been responsible, even tangentially, for any of the more than 29,000
American casualties in the war, including more than 3,500 deaths.
Equally daunting for American commanders is the risk that Sunni groups
receiving American backing could effectively double-cross the
Americans, taking weapons and turning them against American and Iraq's
Shiite-dominated government forces.
Americans officers acknowledge that providing weapons to breakaway
rebel groups is not new in counterinsurgency warfare, and that in
places where it has been tried before, including the French colonial
war in Algeria, the British-led fight against insurgents in Malaya in
the early 1950s, and in Vietnam, the effort often backfired, with
weapons given to the rebels being turned against the forces providing
them. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the Third Infantry Division
and leader of an American task force fighting in a wide area between
the Tigris and Euphrates rivers immediately south of Baghdad, said at
a briefing for reporters on Sunday that no American support would be
given to any Sunni group that had attacked Americans. If the Americans
negotiating with Sunni groups in his area had "specific information"
that the group or any of its members had killed Americans, he said,
"The negotiation is going to go like this: 'You're under arrest, and
you're going with me.' I'm not going to go out and negotiate with
folks who have American blood on their hands."
One of the conditions set by the American commanders who met in
Baghdad was that any group receiving weapons must submit its fighters
for biometric tests that would include taking fingerprints and retinal
scans. The American conditions, senior officers said, also include
registering the serial numbers of all weapons, steps the Americans
believe will help in tracing fighters who use the weapons in attacks
against American or Iraqi troops. The fighters who have received
American backing in the Amiriya district of Baghdad were required to
undergo the tests, the officers said.
The requirement that no support be given to insurgent groups that have
attacked Americans appeared to have been set aside or loosely enforced
in negotiations with the Sunni groups elsewhere, including Amiriya,
where American units that have supported Sunni groups fighting to oust
Al Qaeda have told reporters they believe that the Sunni groups
include insurgents who had fought the Americans. The Americans have
bolstered Sunni groups in Amiriya by empowering them to detain
suspected Qaeda fighters and approving ammunition supplies to Sunni
fighters from Iraqi Army units.
In Anbar, there have been negotiations with factions from the 1920
Revolution Brigades, a Sunni insurgent group with strong Baathist
links that has a history of attacking Americans. In Diyala, insurgents
who have joined the Iraqi Army have told reporters that they switched
sides after working for the 1920 group. And in an agreement announced
by the American command on Sunday, 130 tribal sheiks in Salahuddin met
in the provincial capital, Tikrit, to form police units that would
"defend" against Al Qaeda.
General Lynch said American commanders would face hard decisions in
choosing which groups to support. "This isn't a black and white
place," he said. "There are good guys and bad guys and there are
groups in between," and separating them was a major challenge. He said
some groups that had approached the Americans had made no secret of
their enmity.
"They say, 'We hate you because you are occupiers' " he said, " 'but
we hate Al Qaeda worse, and we hate the Persians even more.' " Sunni
militants refer to Iraq's Shiites as Persians, a reference to the
strong links between Iraqi Shiites and the Shiites who predominate in
Iran.
An Iraqi government official who was reached by telephone on Sunday
said the government was uncomfortable with the American negotiations
with the Sunni groups because they offered no guarantee that the
militias would be loyal to anyone other than the American commander in
their immediate area. "The government's aim is to disarm and
demobilize the militias in Iraq," said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a political
adviser to Mr. Maliki. "And we have enough militias in Iraq that we
are struggling now to solve the problem. Why are we creating new
ones?"
Despite such views, General Lynch said, the Americans believed that
Sunni groups offering to fight Al Qaeda and halt attacks on American
and Iraqi forces met a basic condition for re-establishing stability
in insurgent-hit areas: they had roots in the areas where they
operated, and thus held out the prospect of building security from the
ground up. He cited areas in Babil Province where there were "no
security forces, zero, zilch," and added: "When you've got people who
say, 'I want to protect my neighbors,' we ought to jump like a duck on
a june bug."

sempre piu' furbi i bushisti...
U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies 
 
 
By JOHN F. BURNS and ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: June 11, 2007
New York Times
BAGHDAD, June 10 — With the four-month-old increase in American troops
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alliance — die-hard loyalists of Saddam Hussein’s formerly dominant Baath
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neighbors,’ we ought to jump like a duck on a june bug.”
-- 
visitate 
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OK, starting a new religion war
Well done
Back to ancient ages !!!

 U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies 
Mi stanno ascoltando finalmente.
Era ora che aprissero qualche libro di storia.
-- 
In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, 
stand like a rock. -- Thomas Jefferson

 Era ora che aprissero qualche libro di storia.
speriamo che abbiano letto anche le pagine in cui hanno armato chi poi gli
si e' rivolto contro , vedi osama e company.
-- 
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 si e' rivolto contro , vedi osama e company.
Le leggende urbane sono dure a morire eh?


 Mi stanno ascoltando finalmente.
Io ho sentito che i tentativi di schierare i sunniti contro al qaeda
sono stati moltissimi fino ad ora in Iraq e invariabilmente si sono
rivolti contro gli americani. Dopotutto l'agenda della WH e dei
nazionalisti sunniti non potrà mai coincidere.

 Le leggende urbane sono dure a morire eh?
puoi fare maggiore chiarezza su questa affemazione?
grazie
Jack