"우리는 기본적으로 고용하고 있었다 테러리스트"를
살롱 - 8월. 6 2008년 | 바그다드, 이라크 - 이라크 깃발을 가진 담황색 셔츠를 걸쳐서 Dora 떠드는 시장에 군집한 입구에 작열하는 태양에서 최근에 서 있는 Mahmoud Alah 가슴, 알루미늄 Janabi 및 알루미늄 Samorai에 바느질했다. 알루미늄 Janabi, 30는, 거만하게 그의 엉덩이에 빛나는 까만 권총을 표시했다; 그가 시장에 들어가 구매자의 아래 가볍게 치는 때 알루미늄 Samorai, 25는, 그의 어깨에 그의 Kalashnikov 공격 소총을 던졌다. 9 달 전에, 2 남자는 투자된 이라크 - 미국 -의 아들, 부분 인근 안전 시계와 부분 준 군사조직 병력으로 작용하는 103,000명의 팔 보호대의 주로 Sunni 조직을 결합하고, 그리고 계속 이라크에 있는 충전 아래로 폭력에서 쓸모 있다.
이 남자가 이 일 이전에 - 때 한 무엇을 싸운 종파적인 민병대 및 이라크 보안 부대는 Dora 인근을 통해서 전투, 살해를 그리고 사람들의 상처를 입는 점수 투구했다 - 불분명하다. 물을 때, 2개는 서로를 보고 으쓱했다. "아무 일도," 마지막으로 말한 알루미늄 Samorai 없었다. 어쩌면 그와 그의 동료는 그들의 가정에서 동안 밖에 격노한 종파적인 사람 싸우는 숨긴. 그러나 지역을 경비하는 미국력에 따르면 그들이 Sunni 민병대 나란히 싸웠다 또한 가능했던, 것처럼 이라크 일원의 많은 아들.
"SOIs가 설 때, 우리는 기본적으로 테러리스트를 고용하고 있었다," Lt를 말했다. 이라크의 아들을 위한 군 약어를 사용하는 Justin Chabalko. Chabalko의 제 4 여단의 2-4 보병 대대는, 제 10 산 부 빈번하게 Dora 시장을 경비한다.
이라크의 아들은 2007년에, 때 Sunni 부족 지도자 형성되고, 폭력에 피로하게 하고 이라크에 있는 알루미늄 Qaida와 같은 이슬람교 근본주의자 격려된 부족 일원과 종파적인 갱에 의해 탈취에 대하여 Sunni와 혼합 이웃을 감시하기 위하여 - 몇몇 이전 민병대 일원을 포함하여 - 환멸을 느꼈다. 미국인은 중요한 외교 성공으로 이라크의 아들의 창조를 강매하고 각 일원에게 결코 Sunni 지배한 싸우는 힘 합법화의 아이디어를 좋아하지 않은 Shiite 지배한 이라크 정부에서 항의에도 불구하고 $300의 월급을, 지불하는 조직을 융자하는 것을 동의했다.
바그다드와 Anbar 난폭한 지방과 같은 이라크의 부족 심장 지대에서 Sunni 반란행위를 진압할 것을 도움 받는 힘. 그러나 종파적인 폭력에 화려한 해결책과 같이 보인 얼마나 년 전에 지금 시한 폭탄과 같이 보이고 있는. Many of the force’s members once fought alongside al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgency organizations against American troops and the predominantly Shiite Iraqi security forces. And now, a joint U.S.-Iraqi government plan to disband the force could put up to 80,000 men out of work — and leave them armed and disgruntled.
As Iraq becomes safer, the Sons of Iraq are less essential to security. Under a draft plan by U.S. forces and the Iraqi government, 20 percent of the force will be gradually folded into Iraqi security forces, after careful screening and additional training. The rest, Americans say, will be offered basic vocational training, which would allow them to take up such jobs as janitors, secretaries, electricians and plumbers. As of June, approximately 17,000 Sons of Iraq members have joined Iraqi security forces.
But conversations with the Sons of Iraq members and their leaders suggest that the majority of them do not want to do anything that does not involve carrying weapons, traditionally an honorable status in Iraqi society.
“A lot of them would prefer doing that because it gives them power of carrying a weapon and providing security,” said Capt. Emiliano Tellado, a member of the 2-4 Infantry Battalion.
Potentially, 80,000 armed and trained fighters could soon find themselves unemployed, or employed in jobs they do not want — and angry at the American forces and Iraqi government because they didn’t get picked for service in the security forces.
Al-Janabi and al-Samorai applied for jobs in the Iraqi police nine months ago for the first time, and reapplied twice since. They have not heard back from the Iraqi government, and they could well be among the many thousands who don’t get to join Iraqi security forces. But both dismissed the idea that they would lay down their guns and take up other work tools.
“That is not my job,” al-Samorai responded, firmly.
“I want to defend my people,” said al-Janabi.
A key question is, to what extent have members of the Sons of Iraq such as these severed their past allegiances. Working as U.S.-paid neighborhood guards was supposed to rehabilitate those who once fought against American and Iraqi forces, said Capt. Brett Walker, the spokesman for the 2-4 Infantry Battalion. Over time, approximately 18,000 Shiite members joined the force as well, working mostly in Shiite and mixed neighborhoods and ostensibly bringing some sense of sectarian rapprochement.
But some of the organization’s Sunni members may still be cooperating with sectarian militias, acknowledged Tellado. Even if the Sons of Iraq continues to function in its current format, the organization is a wild card as far as its members’ loyalties are concerned.
Several months ago, the 2-4’s soldiers detained one Sons of Iraq leader who was once associated with al-Qaida in Iraq, Tellado said. “He had a bad background, and it finally caught up with him,” he explained. “There was a possibility that he was still active” in the extremist Sunni organization. The man is now in Camp Bucca, a giant American detention center in southern Iraq.
“Sometimes they don’t reform,” Tellado said.
Chabalko said that some Sons of Iraq in his area use their positions “as an opportunity to play both sides of the fence, usually the guys at checkpoints.” American soldiers say that Sunni members of the force extorted money from Shiite civilians and attacked people they believed were members of Shiite militias.
In Baghdad’s religiously mixed Risala neighborhood in May, U.S. Army medics treated a man who had been beaten and kicked in the face and torso by Sons of Iraq, who believed that the man was an informant for the Mahdi army, the militia loyal to the anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. The man survived because the local Sons of Iraq leader, Karim al-Gortani, happened by and ordered them to stop, said U.S. Army Capt. Sean Chase, whose soldiers treated the man. Chase suspects that Gortani, a former Iraqi army colonel under Saddam Hussein, at one point was either a member of al-Qaida in Iraq or Jaish al-Islami, another Sunni extremist group.
In Dora, where 450,000 people live, the Sons of Iraq have not carried out any overt acts of violence, U.S. soldiers say — at least not to the Americans’ knowledge. But that could be because Dora, a middle-class neighborhood that is home to many former officials of Saddam Hussein’s government, is almost homogenously Sunni.
Yet, even here the Sons of Iraq have a potential nemesis — the Iraqi National Police, a SWAT-like organization that patrols Dora. On many streets, members of the two armed groups man checkpoints together, but there is little amicability between them. “At first there was no open conflict, but there was open verbal conflict,” Tellado recalls.
In order to create a rapport between the Sunni guards and the Shiite officers, who also enjoy little trust from Dora’s Sunni population, the Americans have made the Sons of Iraq formally subordinate to the police force.
“On payday, I hand the money over to the [National Police] supervisor, and he hands the money to the SOI leader, and that guy hands the money to SOI members,” Tellado said. “It literally takes place in the same room.”
American military leaders understand the fragility of the peace between the Sons of Iraq and Shiite security forces, and the importance of keeping the Sunni force happy. “We’re gonna continue to pay the SOI guys until the government takes over or until they transition into other jobs,” said 4th Infantry Division Lt. Col. Steven Stover, the spokesman for American troops in Baghdad.
“These Sons of Iraq will eventually go away, and now the most important thing is to find jobs for all those individuals,” Lt. Col. Timothy Watson, the 2-4 commander, recently told a gathering of Sunni leaders in Dora. “It’s just as important providing jobs as it is security.”
Nonetheless, local leaders say the Sons of Iraq remains suspicious of the policemen. Hashem Ajili, one of the senior neighborhood leaders in northern Dora, said American presence is crucial to mediate any potential conflicts between the two groups.
“Currently the relations are getting better — with the support of coalition forces,” Ajili said. If the Americans leave, will the two groups be at each other’s throats? Ajili smiled, and responded diplomatically: “If the coalition forces go back to the States, I am afraid I don’t know what will happen between those two elements.”
Eddie Bello, an Iraqi-born cultural advisor to the American military in Iraq, was more specific. “It is like sitting on a volcano,” he said. “You never know when it will explode.”
Anna Badkhen has reported from Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Somalia, the West Bank and Gaza. She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, David Filipov, and their two sons.
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