Sunni tribes turn against jihadis

The provincial leaders made a number of demands in return for their cooperation, Mr. Askaree says. They asked for weapons to fight the terrorists with, but the minister refused. Instead the minister agreed to step up recruitment of Anbar residents to the Iraqi security forces.

"If you want to participate in attacking the terrorists, you have no choice but to send your sons to volunteer for the Army and give the Army information on the terrorists," Askaree says the minister of defense told the gathered Anbar notables.

Those negotiations seem to have unsettled Zarqawi and his allies. But it remains difficult to gauge just how effective and how widespread the new wellspring of tribal support for the Iraqi government is.

A report released last September by the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) estimates that 4 to 10 percent of the country's combatants are foreigners. However, the report points out that this element represents a virulent strain of the militancy responsible for the most violent attacks. Furthermore, local insurgents have pragmatic demands and are more willing to compromise than Zarqawi-led fighters, who view the struggle in Iraq as part of a global jihad.

"If you can get real progress here, then it's a lot easier to end the insurgency by having the insurgents join the government than by hunting them down," says Anthony Cordesman, coauthor of the CSIS report.

Other military analysts have pointed to a decrease in US casualties in Anbar to show that the strategy is working.

Still, many Sunni Arab hard-liners remain defiant, and downplay the apparent rifts between foreign elements and local insurgents. "These are just a few sheikhs who want to get political power by claiming to be fighting the terrorists, and to be speaking for the resistance," says Sheikh Abdel Salaam al-Qubaysi, a leading member of the Muslim Scholars Association, a hard-line Sunni group that draws much of its support from Anbar. "They are slaves in the pockets of the occupation. They have no weight in the streets."

Mr. Qubaysi scoffs at suggestions that Anbar's tribes are starting to turn against the resistance. Last month's suicide attack on Sunni Arabs in Ramadi was not the work of the "noble Arab resistance," he says. "We know that 40,000 militants from Iran have to come to Iraq," he says. "I don't rule out that they did this to prevent Sunni Arabs from joining the Iraqi Army."

Sunni Arab politicians from Anbar also warn that this measured progress could wither just as quickly as it blossomed if the country's Shiite and Kurdish leaders don't respond to key Sunni Arab demands in negotiations to form a government.

Tariq al-Hashimi, leader of the Sunni fundamentalist Iraqi Islamic Party, laid out a 10-point ultimatum for the US and Iraqi governments last week. He demanded the release of political prisoners and the resignation of Iraq's controversial Shiite interior minister. He threatened "a massive civilian uprising" if his demands were ignored.

Another top Sunni demand, with a direct impact on negotiations with tribal sheikhs in Anbar, is ending the stringent debaathification law, which prohibits ex-Baath Party members above a certain rank from holding government positions.

On Thursday, the Ministry of Defense suddenly implemented a six-month-old order from the Iraqi Debaathification Commission that demanded the dismissal of 18 Iraqi generals, colonels, and majors. Most were Sunni Arabs from Anbar.

At a time when the government is trying to bring the provincial leaders on board to fight the insurgency, the decision sends the wrong message, says Mr. Alusi, the secular Sunni politician. "You're telling these sheikhs in Anbar that there's a place for their children in the new Iraq, but your actions say otherwise," says Alusi.

And even if Zarqawi and his ilk can be defeated in Iraq, this is no guarantee that the rest will be smooth sailing for the US. The same poll that showed Iraqi disapproval of attacks on fellow Iraqis, also reported that 88 percent of Sunni Arabs and 41 percent of Shiites approved of attacks on US forces.

It's a statistic that Jedaan, the tribal sheikh, is well aware of. "Iraq has its men, its honorable resistance, and we will drive out the Americans and liberate our country ourselves."

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