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| Hidden: Iraqi police in Diyala Province hide their identities from Al Qaeda-linked militants. Sam Dagher |
Risky US alliances in Iraq
Frustrated with the Iraqi Army, US forces cultivate ties to ex-insurgents.
from the July 17, 2007 edition
Page 3 of 3
Last week, neither he nor his 40 LRF comrades were able to return to their village. It is now in the grips of AQI militants, who even rebuilt, within hours, all the footbridges destroyed by the US aerial bombardment just two days before, according to Col. Mahmoud Tayeh, the police chief in the Sherween area's main town, Dalli Abbas.
Fear of the militants has also crept up to Dalli Abbas itself. Nearly 100 of the 180 policemen in town quit after the mutilated body of one of their colleagues was found outside the station. Attached to it was a succinct handwritten message: "Quit or you're next."
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Colonel Tayeh says that the fleeing policemen took with them AK-47s and pistols, and added that "some of them were coerced to join the terrorists."
The remaining policemen slept at the station. When they ventured out to the town's potholed and garbage-littered streets, they wore black ski masks for fear of being identified by militants. And, in a further twist, some of these same holdouts are suspected of being on the payroll of Al Qaeda militants, says Tayeh.
Temporary friends
These ever-shifting allegiances and the fine line between friend and foe provide a hint of the dangers associated with this new US strategy despite its short-term viability.
"The long-term problem is that you are working with fractured social forces," says Toby Dodge, an Iraq expert at Queen Mary, University of London.
"The danger is that once they run Al Qaeda out, they may turn on you, the Iraqi government, or both."
Lt. Col. Keith Gogas, who commands the Diyala-based 6-9 Army unit, agrees with the concept of the LRF, but says he thinks the term itself may be problematic. He's working to cement local ties in other creative ways.
Last Friday, he reunited a local tribal sheikh with his nephew, whom he helped get released from a US-run prison after the man had been detained for nearly 10 months on suspicion of being a member of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia and committing crimes against Sunnis in Diyala.
"You see how loyal and truthful the Americans are," says Sheikh Saad al-Siriwati to his kinsmen as he puts his arm around Colonel Gogas. "My tribe and I are eternally indebted to Gogas."
Abu Saida, the predominantly Shiite town of Shiekh Saad, has come a long way from being one of the most violent in Diyala to the most cooperative with US forces in the fight against extremists.
But just as the line between friend and foe is murky so, too, is the division between war and peace.
As Gogas and his men returned to their base, they encountered Iraqi policemen on the road who reported an attack on the mixed village of Harbitla in which 12 Shiites were killed. Separately, the commander of the Iraqi Army battalion who the Americans had been working with was killed by a roadside bomb.
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