“我们基本上雇用恐怖分子”
沙龙 - 8月。 6日2008年 | 巴格达，伊拉克-笠头淡黄的衬衣与在胸口缝的伊拉克旗子， Alah AlJanabi和Mahmoud AlSamorai在焱热的太阳最近站立了在拥挤入口对奔忙的Dora市场。 AlJanabi， 30，在他的臀部骄傲地显示了一把发光的黑手枪; 当他轻拍了在进入市场的顾客下AlSamorai， 25，投掷了他的Kalashnikov攻击步枪在他的肩膀。 九个月前，二个人在伊拉克加入了伊拉克-美国的儿子-被资助，功能作为部分邻里安全手表和部分辅助军力103,000卫兵主要的逊尼派教徒组织和是有助的在填塞下来暴力。
什么这些人在这工作之前做了-，当宗派民兵和伊拉克安全部队通过Dora邻里进行了被投的争斗，杀害和人使受伤比分-是不明的。 当要求时，二看彼此并且耸肩了。 “没有工作”，最后说的AlSamorai。 可能他和他的同事在他们的家掩藏了，当发怒的宗派主义者战斗外面时。 但它也是可能的他们沿着逊尼派教徒民兵战斗了，象伊拉克成员的许多儿子，根据巡逻区域的美国部队。
“当SOIs站了起来，我们基本上雇用恐怖分子”， Lt说。 Justin Chabalko，使用军事首字母缩略词为伊拉克的儿子。 Chabalko的2-4第4个旅团的步兵营，第10山分部频繁地巡逻Dora市场。
2007年伊拉克的儿子在伊拉克被形成了，当逊尼派教徒部族领导，疲倦了于暴力并且幻灭与伊斯兰教的原教旨主义者例如AlQaida，被鼓励的部族成员-包括一些前民兵成员-守卫逊尼派教徒和混合居住区免受接管由宗派帮会。 美国人誉为伊拉克的儿子的创作主要外交成功并且同意提供经费给组织，支付每名成员月薪$300，尽管抗议从被什叶派教徒控制的伊拉克政府，未曾喜欢使被逊尼派教徒控制的战斗的力量合法想法。
被帮助的力量荡平逊尼派教徒叛乱在巴格达和在伊拉克的部族中心区域，例如不安宁的Anbar省。 但年前被看似一种精采解答到宗派暴力现在看似定时炸弹。 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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