Recent U.S. success in Anbar province raises two questions
The Bush administration has been so enthusiastic in touting its new alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province that it's easy to overlook two questions: Why did it take so long to reach an accommodation with the Sunnis? And is Anbar a good model for stabilizing the rest of Iraq?
First, the what-took-so-long issue: The fact is, Sunni tribal leaders have been queuing up for four years to try to make the kind of alliances that have finally taken root in Anbar. For most of that time, these overtures were rebuffed by U.S. officials who, not inaccurately, regarded the Sunni sheiks as local warlords.
This disdain for potential allies was a mistake, but so is the recent sugarcoating of the tribal leaders. They are tough Bedouin chiefs, sometimes little more than smugglers and gangsters. The U.S. should make tactical alliances with them, but we shouldn't have stars in our eyes.
I began talking with Sunni tribal leaders in 2003. Most of the meetings were in Amman, arranged with help from former Jordanian government officials who had perfected the art of paying the sheiks. One contact was a member of the Kharbit clan, which had long maintained friendly (albeit secret) relations with both the Jordanians and Americans. The Kharbits were eager for an alliance, even after a U.S. bombing raid killed one of their leaders, Malik Kharbit, in April 2003. But U.S. officials were disdainful.
During a visit to Fallujah in September 2003, I met an aging leader of the Bu Issa tribe named Sheik Khamis. He didn't want secret U.S. payoffs -- they would get him killed, he said. He wanted money to rebuild local schools and roads and provide jobs for members of his tribe. U.S. officials made fitful efforts to help, but nothing serious enough to check the insurgency in Fallujah.
A Sunni tribal leader who pushed bravely for an alliance with the Americans was Talal al-Gaaod, a leader of one of the branches of the Dulaim tribe. Looking back through my notes, I can reconstruct a series of his efforts that were mishandled by senior U.S. officials: In August 2004, he helped arrange a meeting in Amman between Marine commanders from Anbar and tribal leaders there who wanted to assemble a local militia. Senior U.S. officials learned of the unauthorized dialogue and shut it down.
Gaaod tried again in November 2004. Again, the official U.S. response was chilly. In the spring of 2005, the tireless Gaaod began framing plans for what he called a "Desert Protection Force," a kind of tribal militia that would fight al-Qaida in Anbar. The proposal was gutted by U.S. officials in Baghdad who derided it as "warlordism."
What finally happened in Anbar was that Sunni tribal leaders -- tough guys with guns who know how to use them -- began standing up to the al-Qaida thugs who were marrying their women and blocking their smuggling routes. The initial U.S. response in mid-2006, I'm told, was ho-hum. More warlords. But Green Zone officials began to realize this was the real deal, and a virtuous cycle began in Anbar. It could have happened much earlier.
The American plan now, apparently, is to extend the Anbar model and create "bottom-up" solutions throughout Iraq. For example, I'm told that U.S. commanders met recently with the Shiite political organization known as SCIRI and gave a green light for its Badr Organization militia to control security in Nasiriyah and some other areas in southern Iraq, and thereby check the power of Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army.
These local deals may make sense as short-term methods for stabilizing Iraq. But we shouldn't confuse these tactical alliances with nation-building. Over time, they will break Iraq apart, rather than pull it together. Work with tribal and militia leaders, but don't forget who they are.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group