I find it incredible that this is the end of 2007 and we are still confronted with how damaged and dangerous Iraq is.
This article is the first sign of progress I have seen in forever. Possibly because Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld are not mentioned once.
Iraq is a tribal culture not a John Wayne movie and it appears at least some people in the army finally get that and are trying solutions that might work in a tribal system. This is not a magic bullet but it sounds like at least a little progress - something we never hear about from our actual politicians.
This is a detail-rich article and well worth a read. It is also a good reminder that there are lot more dead Iraqi's than there are dead American's.
How Courting Sheiks Slowed Violence in Iraq
Marines Try Payments, Alliances in Anbar Area; Chasing Out al Qaeda
Wall Street Journal
August 8, 2007
"For three years we fought our asses off out here and made very little progress," says Lt. Col. Michael Silverman, who oversees an 800-soldier battalion in Ramadi. "Now we are working with the sheiks, and Ramadi has gone from the most dangerous city in the world to a place where I can sit on Sheik Heiss's front porch without my body armor and not have to worry about getting shot."
The success in Anbar Province, which lies west of Baghdad, hasn't come easily. The key to the U.S. campaign has been recruiting, cultivating, and rewarding tribal leaders. At points, the effort even involved a Marine general making several trips abroad to woo an important exiled tribal sheik to return home. The progress here, which has unfolded as violence elsewhere in Iraq has climbed, has become central to American hopes of success in the deeply divided country. President Bush has repeatedly touted it and U.S. commanders throughout Iraq are looking to export the Marine model.
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One of the driving forces behind the strategy in al Anbar is Brig. Gen. John Allen, a brainy and slightly built Marine officer. Gen. Allen has become an avid reader of Gertrude Bell, the British archeologist who in the 1920s drew the lines of modern-day Iraq. Her travelogues, dogeared and underlined, are scattered across his desk.
"When the tribes are at their best they live in a condition of splendid equilibrium," says Gen. Allen, quoting Ms. Bell. The lesson, he says, "is that the tribes are constantly shifting alliances to suit economic and security needs." In the process, they are also testing boundaries with U.S. forces and each other to see how far they can expand their power. About three-quarters of Iraq's population, both Sunni and Shiite, are members of one of the nation's 150 tribes.
Each tribe's leadership consists of a senior sheik and a council of several dozen sub-sheiks whose positions are typically hereditary. The sheiks oversee vast business networks that often include some cross-border smuggling, say the Marines. They award spoils and arbitrate disputes within the tribe. They also seek to place members in key jobs throughout the local and national government so that they can deliver money, power and influence. "Tribal society makes up the tectonic plates in Iraq on which everything rests," says Gen. Allen.
Saddam Hussein managed the tribes with a combination of cash and brute force, Gen. Allen says. When his government was toppled in 2003, the equilibrium among the tribes that he had constructed over three decades fractured into chaos. Some tribes aligned themselves with al Qaeda for religious reasons, linking with their Muslim brothers to drive out the occupiers, say the sheiks. Others were driven by economics. Smaller tribes saw an opportunity to align with the terrorists and amass wealth and power that had been denied to them.
More than 90% of the fighters aligned with al Qaeda in Anbar province in 2006 were Iraqis, who either came from Anbar or other parts of Iraq, Gen. Allen says. The remaining 10% were foreigners who provided weapons and money.
The al Qaeda leadership quickly moved to seize power from the tribal sheiks and institute Sharia law, which hews to a strict interpretation of the Quran. The tribal sheiks, who tend to be more moderate Muslims -- some keep a few bottles of whiskey stashed in their homes -- balked at that, and al Qaeda operatives began to slaughter them.
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In the fall of 2006, Sheik Sattar Al-Risha, a Ramadi tribal leader whose father and two brothers had been killed by al Qaeda, quietly approached the U.S. about forming an alliance to fight al Qaeda.
His top priority was to convince Sheik Mishan al Jumaily, the head of the powerful Jumaily tribe, to return from Syria. U.S. forces had killed one of his four sons in 2003 by mistake at a checkpoint. A second of the sheik's sons was killed by radical Islamists in 2005. "After he was killed, my wife died of a broken heart," Sheik Mishan says.
In late June, Sheik Mishan's third son was killed, by a roadside bomb outside of Fallujah. The following day he called Gen. Allen and said he wanted to return to Iraq.
