Friday, April 27, 2007
Tribal union in Anbar showing signs of success
Tribal, Insurgency
(Reuters) - A year ago, Iraq's Anbar was the most dangerous province for U.S. troops. Al Qaeda had dug in across the vast desert region. Iraqis were afraid to leave their homes in the local capital Ramadi, where insurgents held sway. Then last summer Sunni tribal leader Sheikh Abdulsattar Abu Risha gathered his fellow tribal chiefs together and created a police force to try to restore security.
Under the umbrella of the Anbar Salvation Council, Abu Risha says his initiative is showing early signs of success, with recruitment putting some 20,000 police on the streets of the Sunni-dominated province. "The situation (in Anbar) was unbearable before, people were tortured, shot dead, bodies littered the streets. We couldn't even leave our homes to bury the dead," Abu Risha told Reuters from Ramadi by a crackly satellite phone.
Abu Risha's initiative -- partly in response to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing of civilians in Anbar -- has revived 15 large police stations that now come under the control of the provincial police chief. Now, while car bombings still plague Anbar, and especially Ramadi, their number has fallen, U.S. military officials said.
And for the first time in three years, U.S. military deaths in the insurgent stronghold stretching across western Iraq number fewer than in Baghdad, where a new security crackdown began in February with additional troops. This week police arrested 30 insurgents, including members of al Qaeda, and seized three cars rigged with bombs near Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
Under the umbrella of the Anbar Salvation Council, Abu Risha says his initiative is showing early signs of success, with recruitment putting some 20,000 police on the streets of the Sunni-dominated province. "The situation (in Anbar) was unbearable before, people were tortured, shot dead, bodies littered the streets. We couldn't even leave our homes to bury the dead," Abu Risha told Reuters from Ramadi by a crackly satellite phone.
Abu Risha's initiative -- partly in response to Sunni Islamist al Qaeda's indiscriminate killing of civilians in Anbar -- has revived 15 large police stations that now come under the control of the provincial police chief. Now, while car bombings still plague Anbar, and especially Ramadi, their number has fallen, U.S. military officials said.
And for the first time in three years, U.S. military deaths in the insurgent stronghold stretching across western Iraq number fewer than in Baghdad, where a new security crackdown began in February with additional troops. This week police arrested 30 insurgents, including members of al Qaeda, and seized three cars rigged with bombs near Ramadi, 110 km (68 miles) west of Baghdad, police said.
"The number of attacks and incidents across the entire province has dropped significantly," said Brigadier-General Mark Gurganus, the U.S. Marine commander in charge of ground operations in Anbar, without giving details. At a news conference in Washington on Thursday, the U.S. commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, hailed Abu Risha and other Sunni tribal leaders. He said the Sunni Arab tribes were "helping transform Anbar province and other areas from being assessed as lost as little as six months ago to being relatively heartening".
Labels: Al Anbar, Al Qaeda in Iraq, Anbar Salvation Council, Brigadier-General Mark Gurganus, Sheikh Abdulsattar Abu Risha
