„Wij waren fundamenteel Hurende Terroristen“
Salon - Augustus. 6, 2008 | BAGDAD, Irak dat - lichtgeele overhemden met Iraakse vlaggen aantrekt die op de borst worden gestikt, bevonden Alah zich al-Janabi en Mahmoud al-Samorai onlangs in de verschroeiende zon bij de overvolle ingang aan de drukke Markt Dora. Al-Janabi, 30, toonde trots een glanzend zwart pistool op zijn heup; al-Samorai, 25, slingerde zijn de aanvalsgeweer van de Kalashnikov over zijn schouder aangezien hij onderaan een klant tikte die de markt ingaat. Negen maanden geleden, sloten aan de twee mensen zich bij de Zonen van Irak - de gefinancierde V.S. -, meestal Sunni organisatie van 103.000 bewapende wachten die als van het de veiligheidshorloge en deel van de deelbuurt paramilitary kracht functioneert, en is instrumentaal in opvulmateriaal onderaan geweld in Irak geweest.
Wat deze mensen voorafgaand aan dit werk - toen sectarische milities en Iraakse veiligheidskrachten vecht geworpen slagen door de buurt Dora, het doden en het verwonden scores van mensen deden - is onduidelijk. Wanneer gevraagd, keken twee naar elkaar en opgehaald. „Er waren geen banen,“ definitief bovengenoemde al-Samorai. Misschien verborgen hij en zijn collega in hun huizen terwijl het sectarische vechten buiten woedde. Maar het is ook mogelijk dat zij naast de Sunni milities vochten, zoals vele Zonen van de leden van Irak, volgens Amerikaanse krachten die het gebied patrouilleren.
„Toen opgestaane SOIs, wij fundamenteel hurende terroristen waren,“ zei Lt. Justin Chabalko, die het militaire acroniem voor de Zonen van Irak gebruikt. 2-4 van Chabalko het Bataljon van de Infanterie van de 4de Brigade, de 10de patrouilles van de Afdeling van de Berg vaak de Markt Dora.
De zonen van Irak werden gevormd in 2007, toen Sunni stammenleiders, die van geweld worden vermoeid en die met Islamitische fundamentalisten zoals al-Qaida in Irak worden ontgoocheld, stammenleden - met inbegrip van sommige vroegere militieleden - aanmoedigden om Sunni en gemengde buurten tegen overname door sectarische troepen te bewaken. De Amerikanen wierven overeen de verwezenlijking van de Zonen van Irak als belangrijk diplomatiek succes en kwamen om de organisatie te financieren, die elk lid een maandelijks salaris van $300, ondanks de protesten van de shiite-Overheerste Iraakse overheid betaalt, die nooit van het idee van het wettigen van de sunni-Overheerste het vechten kracht hield.
De kracht geholpen Sunni insurgency in Bagdad en in stammenheartlands van Irak, zoals de restive provincie onderdrukken Anbar. Maar wat een jaar geleden gekeken als een briljante oplossing aan sectarisch geweld nu als een tijdbom kijkt. 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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