Center for a New American Security

Another good story on the Iraqi government's campaign to crack down on the Sons of Iraq in the LA Times. The piece also confirms the June 2009 date Dr. iRack noted on Thursday for the complete handover of the program to the Iraqi government. According to LTC Jeffrey Kulmayer, the coalition officer in charge of overseeing the SoI program: "Our goal is that by June 2009, the Sons of Iraq are out of business." According to the LAT, BG Dave Perkins, the MNF-I spokesmen, claims that Maliki is "well aware of the sacrifices the Sons of Iraq have made, that they were a critical element in bringing the security situation under control and that it is in their strategic advantage to assimilate them peacefully and orderly into Iraqi society." But Perkins' boss--Petraeus--is complaining about Iraqi government stalling.

Meanwhile, the government is arresting and chasing off SoIs in Diyala and, now, Abu Ghraib, and Haidar Abadi, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Dawa Party quoted in the LAT piece, makes it clear that Maliki and his allies are very reluctant to accommodate these guys: "The ones [SoIs] in Baghdad and Diyala province just changed their T-shirts. There are large numbers who were really Al Qaeda. We have to really look hard for those elements without blood on their hands." (See also this NYT piece.)

Mounting evidence seems to support this conclusion from CFR's Steve Biddle: "We want to have our cake and eat it too, support Maliki and the Sons of Iraq. . . . Maliki wants to make that as hard for us as possible. He wants us to choose him."

And in the context of the emerging SOFA timeline, the United States seems increasingly likely to make this choice by next summer. The LAT quotes Mullah Shihab Safi, the commander of the SoIs in Baqubah, who notes:

"We don't know what our stance will be if other things happen from the security forces, the Iraqi government or the Americans," Safi said. He recognizes that things have changed with his U.S. allies. "The Americans have made their compromises. They want the Iraqi central government authority to prevail, so they can withdraw to their bases."

Indeed.

Update: From the AP:

Iraq's government is grateful to U.S.-allied Sunni fighters but won't allow them to keep their weapons indefinitely, the prime minister said Saturday, hinting at a more intense crackdown on the Sunni groups. . . .

In a speech to Shiite tribal leaders in Baghdad on Saturday, al-Maliki mixed praise for the Sunni fighters with a warning. He said armed groups, alongside security forces, were tolerated for a limited period because their weapons were "aimed at the chests of the terrorists."

"So they (the Sunni fighters) deserve our gratitude and the inclusion (into the security forces) because we adhere to a policy that there are no arms but the arms of the government," he said.

Reports suggest that U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have agreed on a text for a SOFA (now called a "Memorandum of Understanding," or MOU), which will be attached to a broader Strategic Framework Agreement. The agreement still has to get approved by Maliki and then the Iraqi parliament, so it's a long way from being finalized--and maybe it won't happen at all. But when reading the leaked details of the agreement, Dr. iRack took note of a key date: June 2009

Apparently, the SOFA/MOU will call for U.S. combat forces to be out of Iraqi cities by the end of June 2009. Dr. iRack does not think this means that U.S. forces will actually be completely out of Iraqi cities by that date. Rather, he suspects it means that U.S. combat outposts and joint security stations will be handed over to Iraqi security forces by that date, at which point U.S. forces will go back to "commuting to work" from outlying FOBs. U.S. forces are likely to continue to partner, mentor, and advise the ISF, but their visibility on the streets--and their ability to monitor the ISF and influence events--will be greatly reduced. The SOFA/MOU also seems likely to call for the removal of remaining U.S. combat forces by the end of 2011, although this is an "aspirational" timeline. The exact details regarding the kinds of forces that might remain after 2011 remain fuzzy, but it appears that the agreement envisions the possibility of some U.S. troops in a support role past that date.

But let's stick with the June 2009 date for a moment. This date is important. You see, Dr. iRack has also heard from his contacts that this is the key date for transitioning the remaining Sons of Iraq contracts to the Iraqi government. There are currently 102,000 SoIs. The U.S. goal is to integrate about 16,000 into the ISF by the end of 2008, and provide another 26,000 civilian jobs -- a total of 40 percent of the SoIs would then be off the American rolls. The goal is then to transition the remaining 60 percent of the contracts to the Iraqi government to manage. Dr. iRack was under the impression that this was to occur on January 1, 2009 -- but he's now heard that it will happen in June 2009. Yes, that's right, the same June.

If true, this cannot be a coincidence. Instead, it likely represents a demand from the Iraqi government made during the SOFA negotiations. It makes sense that if the ISF will officially be "in the lead" in Iraqi cities in the summer of 2009, the Iraqi government would also want full control of the SoI program at that time. This means the Maliki government will be free to employ them if they so desire or, more likely, fire them, detain them, or use all that biometric and biographical information we've collected to do whatever else they see fit with them. Given the fact that Maliki and his allies hate these guys and, according to a recent interview with General Petraeus, the Iraqi government is purposefully slowing down the integration process, it is unlikely that Maliki and his buddies will be generous once they are in complete control of the program. And if recent behavior in Diyala and the newly reported crack down on SoIs in Abu Ghraib are any indication, things could get ugly.

So, if you're looking for a D-Day in Iraq, it just might just be June 2009, when U.S. forces are pulling back, no longer supervising the SoIs on a daily basis, and handing the whole shebang over the Iraqi government. Fireworks normally happen on July 4th in the United States. They may happen a bit earlier in Iraq.

Very disturbing story by Leila Fadel in McClatchy on growing tensions between the Iraqi government and the Sons of Iraq. She starts by recounting the now well-documented problems in trying to integrate the SoIs into the Iraqi security forces:

American military officials here have always said that the creation of the Sunni militias was at least as important to the precipitous drop in violence as the presence of 30,000 more U.S. troops, and that incorporating them into the security forces would go a long way toward bringing about the sort of reconciliation needed for long-term stability.

After initially embracing the idea of bringing the militia members into the security forces, however, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki hasn't followed through. A committee that Maliki formed to organize the militias' transition to full-fledged government security troops fell apart and was reconstituted only recently. U.S. officials acknowledge that the hiring of the Sunnis has slowed to a crawl.

U.S. and Iraqi officials agree that the Maliki government never agreed to hire more than 20 percent of the militia members. A Maliki ally said it was unreasonable to expect otherwise.

"All the Americans are doing is paying them just to be quiet," said Haider al Abadi, a leading member of Maliki's Dawa political party and the head of the economic and investment committee in the parliament. The Iraqi government, he said, can't "justify paying monthly salaries to people on the grounds that they are ex-insurgents."

The best that most of them could expect is to be placed in vocational training for trades such as bricklaying and plumbing, along with a slew of other unemployed people.

The government has allocated $150 million for such training. So far this year, the U.S. military has spent $303 million on Sons of Iraq salaries.

[. . .]

Abadi, the Maliki ally, was blunt in calling the militias a problem.

"You've created a problem here," he said. "You can't get rid of a program by shoveling it on the Iraqi government shoulders."

The Iraqi government has also been stepping up its efforts to detain, chase away, or otherwise exclude the SoIs/Awakening groups. Now, fast on the heels of actions against SoIs in Diyala (and escalating sectarian tensions), a senior Iraqi military commander is threatening a major crackdown in Baghdad. According to Fidel:

"We cannot stand them, and we detained many of them recently," said one senior Iraqi commander in Baghdad, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue. "Many of them were part of al Qaida despite the fact that many of them are helping us to fight al Qaida."

He said the army was considering setting a Nov. 1 deadline for those militia members who hadn't been absorbed into the security forces or given civilian jobs to give up their weapons. After that, they'd be arrested, he said.

What will the SoI response be? Here's a clue: many of these guys are "former" insurgents.

Some militia members say that such a move would force them into open warfare with the government again.

"If they disband us now, I will tell you that history will show we will go back to zero," said Mullah Shahab al Aafi, a former emir, or leader, of insurgents in Diyala province who's the acting commander of 24,000 Sons of Iraq there, 11,000 of whom are on the U.S. payroll. "I will not give up my weapons. I will never give them up, and I will carry my weapon again. If it is useless to talk to the government, I will be forced to carry my weapons and my pistol."

The conflict over the militias underscores how little has changed in Iraq in the past year despite the drop in violence, which American politicians often attribute to the temporary increase of U.S. troops in Iraq that ended in July.

[. . .]

Farouk Abd al Sattar Hassan Mohammed al Obeidi, a deputy Sunni militia commander in the northern Baghdad neighborhood of Adhamiyah, wore a military uniform in an interview with McClatchy last week because he considered his men and himself to be soldiers.

He voiced frustration that his men had applied repeatedly to join the Iraqi Security Forces, to no avail.

"We wish we were part of the army. With deep remorse the government is sectarian," Obeidi said. He described his alliance with the U.S. forces as "the enemy of your enemy is your friend."

"The Sons of Iraq achieved security. Don't they deserve to enter the army?"

Obeidi will never see that happen. On Sunday, a suicide bomber on a bicycle killed him, along with five of his men and nine civilians.

And according to a senior intelligence analyst in the Fidel piece:

"If they only take a portion of them it's possible they will return to their insurgent ways," one senior intelligence analyst said, acknowledging that most of the men now called the Sons of Iraq had been insurgents, for al Qaida in Iraq and other groups that considered themselves resistance fighters against Americans.

He called the issue the "long-term threat."

Ya think?

Some argue that most SoIs would not revert to violence. Maybe. Perhaps most are tired of fighting. Perhaps most are deterred by the fact that the U.S. military (and perhaps the Iraqi government) have their biometric information. Perhaps most will be satisfied being plumbers. But here's a news flash: since there are 100,000 of these guys with guns, it wouldn't take most to revert to violence to cause a big problem. A mere 5-20 percent could cause a heck of a fireworks show. Remember, for years the U.S. military estimated the entire Sunni insurgency to be 8,000-20,000 guys.

Dr. iRack has been warning for months that their were signs that the Maliki government was planning to turn on the sahwa/Awakening groups/Sons of Iraq. Maliki considers the SoIs thugs and terrorists who should not be accommodated. Dr. iRack heard this often and repeatedly during his recent Baghdad visit. In the past few months, there have been growing signs that Maliki and his allies are (1) stalling SoI integration into the Iraqi security forces; (2) collaborating with other Iraqi parties to limit political participation by sahwa groups; and (3) arresting SoI members or chasing them out of the country. Dr. iRack has also heard credible rumors that Maliki hopes that his provocative treatment of the SoIs will encourage them to start a fight, giving Maliki an excuse to bring the Iraqi security forces down on them. Hard. Some of Maliki's concerns about the SoIs are legitimate, but a failure to accommodate them could spell big trouble.

In this context, recent news out of Diyala is deeply troubling. According to the AP:

The Shiite-led government is cracking down on U.S.-backed Sunni Arab fighters in one of Iraq's most turbulent regions, arresting some leaders, disarming dozens of men and banning them from manning checkpoints except alongside official security forces.

The moves in Diyala province reflect mixed views on a movement that began in 2007 among Sunni tribes in western Iraq who revolted against al-Qaida in Iraq and joined the Americans in the fight against the terrorist network. . . .

The effort in Diyala northeast of Baghdad began last month as U.S. and Iraqi forces launched an operation against al-Qaida and other extremists in that region.

Mullah Shihab al-Safi, commander of Sunni fighters in Diyala, told The Associated Press that many senior leaders of his group had been detained and fighters evicted from their offices. He gave no figures.

Another senior commander said security forces evicted his men from all but seven of some 100 offices in Diyala. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared arrest.

The U.S. military confirmed the Diyala actions but gave few details. Fighters were only pushed out of buildings they did not own, a military spokesman, Capt. Matt Rodano, said.

Although there has been no general crackdown on Sunni volunteers elsewhere, some leaders outside Diyala have been arrested in western Baghdad and south of the capital — both one-time al-Qaida strongholds.

Government officials would not comment on specific claims about the push in Diyala. But aides close to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, said the government was not willing to tolerate the existence of armed groups with "blood on their hands."

"The continuation of the Awakening Councils as they are now is unacceptable," said Ali al-Adeeb, a close al-Maliki aide and a senior member of his Dawa Party.

A top Iraqi security official with access to classified information said authorities were especially suspicious of the Diyala groups because many of their estimated 14,000 fighters had been members of al-Qaida in Iraq.

But acting against the Sunni movements could alienate the once-dominant minority Sunni Arabs at a time when overtures to them appear to be making headway.

"We fought the Americans for four years and we fought al-Qaida, too," said al-Safi, a former Iraqi army commando during Saddam Hussein's regime who fought in the 1980-88 Iraq-Iran war. "We are an experienced armed group. We are fully capable of bringing the house down."

Since the rise of the allied Sunni movement, America has spent some $200 million on salaries, equipment and training for the fighters, which now number nearly 100,000. The U.S. goal is for many of them to be integrated into the Iraqi army or police, providing the fighters with long-term incomes. . . .

But the Iraqi government has stonewalled U.S. efforts to get most of the Sunni fighters into the Shiite-dominated security forces.

It has repeatedly changed requirements for enrollment in the police and army, canceling and changing application forms without warning or insisting that training camps were full. . . .

One Shiite official who is close to al-Maliki said the prime minister believes his successful crackdown this year on Shiite militias has given him enough authority to go after Sunni armed groups without alienating Sunni politicians.

This is a story that all Iraq watchers should keep a VERY close eye on. Maliki may be making his move.

Update: "Badger" takes aim at Dr. iRack's analysis by attacking his name. Seriously? OK people, for the last time, the name is a joke. Anyway, a more detailed response is in Badger's comments stream.

When the Sunni Awakening began among Anbar’s tribes, and then those tribal militia asked to be integrated into the Iraqi security forces, Maliki didn’t really care. Anbar was far away, strategically and economically peripheral, and Sunni-dominated. Anything that undermined AQI in that backwater was fine by the prime minister so long as it didn’t pose a threat to Baghdad.

As the Awakening spread into greater Baghdad in the summer of 2007—starting in places like Ameriya, where former insurgents like Abu Abed (now on the run) and farsighted commanders like LTC Dale Kuehl from 1-5 CAV (who comments on this blog!) forged pacts against AQI—suddenly the sahwat did not seem like such a great idea to Maliki. After all, unlike the tribes of Anbar (which might as well have been hillbillies from Kentucky), the newly formed “Sons of Iraq” (SoIs, formerly known as “Concerned Local Citizens”/CLCs) contained numerous members of the Islamic Army of Iraq, the 1920 Revolutionary Brigade, and other Sunni insurgent groups. Maliki was petrified of forming and then integrating these groups because he feared creating a “fifth column” inside the ISF (that is, another fifth column to compete with all those Badr guys!).

In the summer and fall of 2007, Petraeus tried to get Maliki to reach out to the growing number of SoI groups and begin integrating them into the ISF. For commanders at MNF-I and MNC-I, this was a key element of engaging the nearly 80 percent of Iraqi combatants they had deemed “reconcilable.” Maliki said no. Petraeus asked again. Maliki said no. Then, in the lead up to his September 2007 Congressional testimony, Petraeus really put the screws to Maliki and the prime minister relented, but Petraeus could only get Maliki to okay integrating about 1,500 SoIs from rural Abu Ghraib. (Abu Ghraib borders Anbar on the western outskirts of Baghdad and thus was seen by Maliki as less of a threat.) But, even then, the Maliki government slow-rolled the process. First they blamed Abu Ghraib’s SoIs for attacks on Iraqi army checkpoints they did not commit. Then the Ministry of Interior required that SoI recruits from Abu Ghraib be trained at a police training station in east Baghdad, requiring them to drive through Shia-militia-infested neighborhoods where they could easily be attacked. (The U.S. military created a work-around for this particular move by training some of the SoIs on a nearby FOB and using helicopters to ferry the rest.)

Since then, little has changed. Yes, more SoIs have been integrated, but not nearly enough. And every step appears to require twisting Maliki’s arm to the breaking point. With Maliki's newfound (over)confidence in the capabilities of the ISF, moreover, he is growing less amenable to this kind of tactical pressure every day. There is a genuine possibility that the prime minister will basically tell the “thugs,” “criminals,” and “terrorists” in the SoIs to go screw themselves. And, as provincial elections approach and Maliki strikes deals with the IIP/Tawafuq (Green Zone Sunnis who are natural competitors to the SoIs), the incentive to marginalize and crack down on the political activities of the Awakening groups grows.

Shunning the sahwat is incredibly dangerous. As Michael Wahid Hanna explains in an excellent new article:

The dangers posed by resentments among members of the sahwat could easily be exploited by insurgent groups who continue to wage a violent campaign against U.S. and Iraqi forces, resulting in wider violence. A reversion to outright violence could also lead to full-scale renewal of sectarian warfare aimed at the Iraqi security forces, which are seen by many Sunni Arabs as an extension of a sectarian government led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which has viewed the sahwat warily as barely rehabilitated terrorists with designs on central authority.

At the moment, U.S. forces pay most of the SoIs and sit on them so they don’t cause trouble. But as the number of these groups have proliferated across the country, this has deeply enmeshed U.S. forces in policing overlapping webs of local tribal, clan, criminal, and insurgent competitors. As Hanna notes, this relationship is inherently unsustainable over the long-run:

The sahwa campaign has continued and expanded far beyond Anbar province and has reached mixed areas of the country such as Nineveh, Kirkuk, Salahuddin, and Diyala provinces. Due to the multiplicity of these groups and the terminology used to describe them, the U.S. military has begun to refer to all such volunteers as "Sons of Iraq," although Iraqis still refer to these groups as sahwat without distinguishing by geography or origin. Following the initial realignment in Anbar province, which established the precedent and mechanisms for U.S. sponsorship, newer branches were established in a more explicitly calculated process; a greater risk now is that personal, tribal, or group agendas may overtake the central mission of community policing and enforcing security.

Continuation of this mission by the U.S. military inevitably runs the risk of dragging the U.S. military into local disputes and creating enemies out of those members of the community who have not benefited from U.S. assistance. David Kilcullen, a former senior counterinsurgency advisor to the MNF-I, has described how local disputes between al-Qaida in Iraq and various Iraqi tribes spun out of control, resulting in violence and "revenge obligation[s]." With U.S. forces identified as the sponsor of certain tribes and groups, if the competition and jockeying for limited resources among tribal groups and clans breaks down into outright violence, U.S. military forces will become targets within such feuds.

This type of violence could also result if U.S. proxies overstep their bounds in their attempts to extend their influence or engage in predatory or criminal behavior. If U.S. proxies are engaged in such behavior, resentment among the local populace could escalate and result in destabilizing violence aimed at both the sahwat and their U.S. military sponsors, who will be seen as complicit in such lawlessness.

Legitimate U.S. attempts to police their sahwa allies are likely to create serious frictions that could undermine the precarious relationship between U.S. military forces and their local allies.

So what is the answer? The answer is to start using strategic leverage by putting direct pressure on Maliki from the highest levels of the U.S. government to integrate the SoIs or risk losing U.S. support to the ISF (that is, move to effectively end our open-ended commitment to Maliki), combining it with the tactical leverage produced by the existence of the Awakening groups themselves (which our commanders and diplomats already use). As Hanna concludes:

By offering unqualified support for the government regardless of its intentions with respect to the sahwat, the United States is undercutting the growth of local Sunni Arab political representatives and their formal transition to the political arena. This support for the government is also diluting the not insignificant leverage that the sahwat have accumulated by dint of their ability to control levels of violence and the past participation of many of these groups in insurgent activity. A future outbreak of communal conflict would be devastating for Iraq and U.S. national interests, but the unfortunate current reality is that the support of organized armed forces remains a prerequisite for political legitimacy and power in Iraq. While the strategic calculus for many former insurgents has shifted to encourage cooperation with U.S. military forces at this juncture, the specter of future violence and the strength of the sahwat as an armed counterweight to the government are important points of leverage for these groups in their negotiations over legislation affecting the Sunni Arab community and central government support for economic development.

Very interesting piece by Ned Parker in the LAT on the rise and fall of Sons of Iraq (SoI) superstar Abu Abed (the guy on the far right in the picture above). Abu Abed came to prominence by creating a group of Sunni security volunteers (the "Knights in the Land of the Two Rivers") to join with U.S. forces to fight AQI in the turbulent Baghdad neighborhood of Amiriya. His group, and groups like it, came to be known as Concerned Local Citizen (CLCs) but are now called SoIs. There are now approximately 100,000 SoIs; 80 percent are Sunnis. Some saw Abu Abed as a hero who fought AQI terrorists; other saw him as a would-be warlord with a very dark side and a proclivity toward brutal methods. Regardless, Abu Abed became the poster child for the expansion of the Sunni Awakening (and "bottom-up" reconciliation) from its origins among the tribes in Anbar to include many "reconcilable" Sunni militants in greater Baghdad and nearby provinces (Babil, Diyala, Salah ad Din).

But now Abu Abed is on the run and hiding in Jordan. The Iraqi government is investigating him for a series of crimes and his SoI group in Amiriya has been taken over by his once-friend, now-rival Abu Ibrahim. Why does any of this matter? As the LAT explains:

Abu Abed's flight into exile shines a light on a violent power struggle pitting upstart leaders like him against Iraq's entrenched Sunni political elite and its Shiite-dominated government. The frictions could easily shatter the Sons of Iraq -- and open the door to Al Qaeda in Iraq's resurgence.

Perhaps even more significantly, the charges against him belie the notion of an Iraqi government moving toward reconciliation among its Sunni and Shiite populations.

The Shia-dominated Iraqi government considers many of the SoIs to merely be fronts for "former" insurgents. They are right, but they draw the wrong conclusion. Ending insurgencies and civil wars usually requires the government and counterinsurgent forces to hold their noses and make some accommodation with groups that used to be killing them. This is the lesson of the Sunni Awakening, but it's not clear the Iraqi government has internalized this lesson.

The government considers Abu Abed a former militant with blood on his hands.

"If he has done something, let the legal system take its course. It is not just with Abu Abed, but all the people," said Tahseen Sheikhly, an Iraqi government spokesman for Baghdad military operations. "They were part of the major problem of violence in Iraq."

Maliki and his inner circle of advisers--perhaps, most notably, those involved in the Implementation and Follow up Committee for National Reconciliation (IFCNR)--are paranoid that too much SoI integration will allow infiltration of the ISF by Sunni insurgents. And Maliki et al's growing (over)confidence in the prowess of the ISF has not put them in a compromising mood with these "thugs" and "hooligans." As a result, Maliki has been slow to integrate SoIs or provide them other forms of gainful employment despite repeated promises to do so. Again, the LAT notes:

Amid the political skirmishing, the committee set up to integrate U.S.-backed Sunni fighters into the security forces and public works jobs has stalled.

Iraqi officials have been cryptic about the reason. Sheikhly acknowledged that the committee's efforts had slowed to a crawl, but said it was because the committee had shuffled members.

Others are more explicit. Sheik Fatih Kashif Ghitaa, a prominent Shiite who runs a think tank with close ties to the government, said Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had frozen the committee because of Shiite anger over America's failure to act against fighters such as Abu Abed.

One Western official agreed that the government's decision was deliberate.

"The coalition twisted Maliki's arm on the committee," the official said on condition of anonymity, referring to the prime minister's decision to create the body last year. "And now he has decided, we don't need it. As far as he is concerned, this is an American problem."

This is a huge mistake. Separate from the merits or demerits of the Abu Abed case specifically, Abu Abed is not just a guy--he is a symbol. His treatment, in conjunction with other evidence of disdain for the SoIs emanating from Maliki and his coterie, could signal that former Sunni fighters will be locked out (and chased out) from integration and accommodation efforts. If so, there is a real risk of the SoI program imploding, taking much of the recent security progress with it. As Abu Abed himself warned: "Al Qaeda will come back and the government and Iraqi army will be helpless to defeat them. People will have lost their faith in the government because of the way they treated me and others."

The Abu Abed story has a different angle too. It seems that the final straw for the Iraqi government came when Abu Abed pivoted from just mobilizing local SoI groups to wanting to participate in politics.

In recent months, Abu Abed had been organizing like-minded fighters around Baghdad and northern Iraq for provincial elections in the fall. U.S. officers believe his transition to politics could have proved the last straw for the government.

"Certainly you can draw the conclusion because he was getting involved in the political process to engage Sons of Iraq leaders to form a political party, the Iraqi government actively targeted him," said a U.S. military officer, who declined to give his name because of the subject's sensitivity. "I don't know that I can say it outright, but it certainly does seem that way."

The "Green Zone parties" are clearly worried that an emerging cadre of leaders at the local level will start to undermine their grip on power in the provincial elections, setting up a potential clash between the "powers that be" and the "powers that aren't" (local and tribal entities) in the months ahead. This is true of the continuing intra-Shia clashes between Dawa/ISCI and the Sadrists, and it will likely become increasingly apparent between the Iraqi Islamic Party (IIP) and Sunni tribal and SoI groups.

Troubling.

Update: As the U.S. transitions control of SoIs to the Iraqi government, Maliki isn't stepping up. Good summary of recent problems and risks from the AP.

Update II: motown67 noted a report by Reuters about the arrest of another group of SoIs in Ahdamiya. An accompanying picture from a related protest (below) ran with this caption: "Members of the U.S.-backed Neighbourhood Patrol take to the streets during a protest demanding for the release of their leader and five other members who were arrested by the Iraqi army in northern Baghdad's Adhamiya district June 28, 2008. An Iraqi army officer said the army arrested five members of the Neighbourhood Patrol and their leader on Thursday in connection to the kidnapping of five civilians in Adhamiya. The script on the placard reads: 'Arresting Members of Awakening Council encourages violence in Iraq'."

The U.S. military is conducting another experiment. It is allowing Sadr City residents to form groups analogous to the predominantly Sunni “Awakening Councils” and “Sons of Iraq” (SoI) groups. According to the Washington Post:

U.S. military officials began planning the new program as early as May, when troops were engaged in deadly fighting in Sadr City. They wanted to base the initiative on a U.S. program known as the Awakening movement among Iraqis but called the "Sons of Iraq" program by Americans. About 103,000 men across the country are involved, and more than 80 percent are Sunnis, the military says.

Lt. Col. Frank Curtis, commander of a civil affairs battalion in Sadr City, was put in charge of creating a version of the program tailored to the Shiite area of more than 2 million people. As he prepared last month to present the program to a local Shiite leader, he took a standard proposal used elsewhere in the country and crossed out the words "Sons of Iraq."

Underneath it, he wrote: "Neighborhood watch." No one wanted Shiites to boycott the initiative because they thought it was tied to a program dominated by Sunnis.

[. . .]

The Americans have renamed the program "Neighborhood Guard." Eifler said the Iraqis told him the phrase "Neighborhood Watch" made them sound like spies.

“Neighborhood Watch”? “Neighborhood Guard”? Boring. Dr. iRack thinks “Sons of Sadr” (SoS) sounds much better. (Plus, you know, when you’re in trouble, you can put out an S.O.S. for an SoS).

Anyway, like the Sons of Iraq in Sunni areas, the SoSs are meant to provide local security—and, in this case, alternatives to JAM—in Sadr City. But, just as many of the Sunni security volunteers are “former” members of the Islamic Army or 1920 Revolutionary Brigades or other insurgent groups, there can be little doubt that many of SoS are JAMsters. JAM was always partly an employment opportunity for impoverished Shia youth. Now many of these same guys can get a paycheck from the Americans.

The young men acknowledged, however, that they were all at their posts to collect a wage in a district where unemployment is rampant. The $300 salaries are distributed by their leader, Bassim Abdullah Qassim, who said he was contracted by the U.S. military to hire and oversee 105 men over three months.

Lt. Col. Brian Eifler, commander of the U.S. battalion in Sadr City, said there was skepticism initially that Sadr City residents would volunteer to work with Americans. But he said the turnout has been overwhelming.

More than 270 people showed up one day last week looking for jobs in Jamila, he said, suggesting that fear of Sadr's militia, the Mahdi Army, is subsiding in at least some parts of Sadr City. All of the applicants are vetted by the U.S. military and must be vouched for by a tribal leader, Eifler said.

But Eifler said he does not inquire whether they belonged to the Mahdi Army. When asked if he hoped former militia members would apply, Eifler said: "Absolutely."

"They maybe were out riding the fence and now they have a chance for good solid employment," said Eifler, 39, of Detroit. "I think that's an opportunity."

In and of itself, it is not a problem if some JAMsters join these new U.S.-backed SoSs. Indeed, it could serve as a great mechanism to siphon off rank-and-file militants and gradually draw them into legitimate employment. But, as with recruitment of local security volunteers in Sunni areas, the program generates risks of blowback, especially if temporary employment contracts don’t become permanent.

Toting AK-47 assault rifles for a $300-a-month salary, the young men are viewed by U.S. officials as the best way to address a dearth of security forces in Sadr City, the site of bitter clashes this spring between U.S. forces and militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The officials hope the initiative will lead some militia supporters away from violence by paying them to protect the area.

But even officers helping to create the program acknowledge there is risk in supplying weapons to men who may have recently encouraged violence against U.S. troops. "Are these guys all going to be lily-white angels? No," said Maj. Byron Sarchet, information operations officer for the brigade responsible for Sadr City. "We need to tread lightly."

There is also the issue of arming even more militias that stand outside the state apparatus (cuz that is exactly what Iraq needs!). With the SoIs, the U.S. military emphatically argues that they don’t “arm” these groups—they simply pay guys who bring their own weapons to the fight. This is apparently not the case with the SoSs, however. For example:

The 11 men on duty Wednesday were carrying some of the 48 AK-47s that Qassim said the U.S. military supplied him Tuesday. He said that the Americans did not have enough weapons for all of the men at the moment, but that the Iraqi military pledged to provide the rest.

"Neither the American military nor the Iraqi army were supposed to hand us weapons -- each volunteer was supposed to bring his own from his house," Qassim said. But at an initial meeting of 65 guards, it turned out that only five owned rifles. "So the Americans realized they had to help."

Eifler said the AK-47s came from seized weapons caches and that the U.S. military would continue to provide them as needed to the guards.

"Guys can't just go out and buy an AK-47 -- there's no AK-47 store," he said. "So we'd rather make sure these guys are outfitted and give them a job instead of having them turned away."

So, here we go again. We are purchasing short-term stability and gambling that we can organize and control the forces of disorder. So far it’s worked out okay in Sunni areas, although there continue to be rumblings among Awakening groups. Dr. iRack hopes we can pull it off in Sadr City.