Sunni forces fray after U.S. military halts payments

BAGHDAD

Word began to spread at daybreak in the Sunni districts south of Baghdad: A top anti-insurgent fighter and three family members were slain overnight in their village.

When the news reached the local sheik, he counted the number of men he had left. It was barely enough to fill the small mosque for the funeral.

“We are losing ground,” said Sheik Mustafa Kamil Shebib, a leader of an anti-insurgent Sunni militia that was once funded by the U.S. military. “We are becoming scared again.”

There is no doubt that overall violence in Iraq is just a fraction of its level several years ago. But there are hints that one of the main forces that helped turn the tide - the Sunni tribes that joined the U.S.-backed fight - could be increasingly fraying in critical areas near Baghdad.

It’s difficult to measure the pressures on the Sunni groups, sometimes known as Awakening Councils, or Sahwa in Arabic. They have been hit by a steady barrage of revenge attacks since their uprising against insurgents about three years ago. There also is grumbling in the ranks over delayed or missing pay after the U.S. military stopped bankrolling the militias last year and turned over the accounts to Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government.

What happened in the village of Al-Manari before dawn Thursday is just one snapshot. It touches, however, on some potentially worrisome themes for Iraqi and U.S. authorities: the increasing boldness of the insurgent reprisals and the cries for help from Awakening leaders who are a front-line buffer for Baghdad as U.S. forces withdraw.

“We have no [Awakening] checkpoints in the area anymore,” said Sheik Shebib, who leads Awakening militias in the Arab Jabour area just south of Baghdad. “Now, al Qaeda is coming back and we are feeling more and more powerless.”

Few places have such a direct connection to Baghdad’s security as Arab Jabour - a collection of industrial zones, villages and palm and citrus groves in the Sunni belt around the city’s southern doorstep. It’s a gateway to the capital that was used by insurgents before they were crippled with a two-pronged squeeze: the U.S. troop surge in early 2007 and the Sunni militia uprising.

In an air strike in January 2008, U.S. warplanes dropped 40,000 pounds of bombs in just 10 minutes on a part of Arab Jabour to clear one of the last insurgent strongholds in the area.

The Awakening groups took over. Across Arab Jabour - like many Sunni areas around Baghdad - they became de facto security bosses and grass-roots spymasters with a steady American paycheck. They knew the U.S. funding would eventually end, but most expected the Iraqi government to pick up the tab or bring the Awakening tribes into the standing security forces.

Both plans have faltered to some extent. Awakening Council leaders such as Sheik Shebib complain that government pay has been sporadic and the Shi’ite-led security commanders have been slow to bring aboard the Sunni militiamen.

Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, even mentioned the struggles to pay the Sunni fighters as being among the reasons for potential security gaps as he faced an angry parliament after the Dec. 8 bombings in Baghdad that killed at least 127 people.

“Al Qaeda had the upper hand, then the Sunni groups had the upper hand and now it seems the insurgents are trying to regain their strength around Baghdad,” said Hadi Jallu, a political analyst in Baghdad. “This is a fight that is not finished yet.”

A U.S. military spokesman, Lt. Col. Philip Smith, declined to comment on whether Awakening groups are under increased pressure. “Sahwa members have been attacked since their beginning because of their efforts to bring security to the Iraqi people,” he said.

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