A Report From IraqThis same pattern of improved security leading to demands for government services has been evident even in areas that seemed implacably opposed to an American presence. Colonel Dominic Carraclio commands the Third Brigade of the 101st Air Assault Division in the Triangle of Death, a few miles southwest of Arab Jabour. The brigade that preceded him, from the 10th Mountain Division, lost 69 men, but it did such a thorough job of eradicating the insurgents that Carraclio has lost only one soldier since taking over in November. On his third tour in Iraq, Carraclio dispersed his brigade in 24 battle positions across 300 square kilometers holding half a million Sunnis. Along a road next to the Euphrates where the prior battalion encountered an IED every day and lost 29 soldiers, Carraclio set up two patrol bases. One base, called Dragon, was in the hamlet of Owesat, where three American soldiers were kidnapped in May. Dragon is manned by 50 Americans and 500 CLC volunteers. "I’m trying to get the CLCs paid," Captain Wendall Stevens, Dragon’s commander, told me. "They stand their posts every night. They’d make good village policemen, but I doubt that will happen." The Ministry of Interior authorized the hiring of 600 policemen for the district of Yusufiah. American soldiers recorded biometric and background data on 3,000 CLCs and submitted them as candidates in July. To date, not one has been approved by Baghdad. With security greatly improved, Colonel Carraclio’s soldiers have been trying to jump-start the economy. Wherever a local CLC unit has been formed and paid, local grocery stands pop up alongside the road. Carraclio’s rifle companies have processed 2,500 micro-grants, each with a ceiling of $2,500, for residents requesting seed, fertilizer, and start-up goods for tiny stores. Frustrated that a frozen chicken from Argentina cost less than a local chicken, Carraclio has been studying the economics of poultry farming. All 11 brigades we visited were heavily involved in development projects, advised by Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Teams, made up of contractors and civilian officials from the State Department and other U.S. government agencies. The military has complained for years that it has been carrying the burden unassisted, and the EPRTs are a relatively new concept, created to redress the imbalance. The counterinsurgency field manual calls for all American brigades to “clear, hold, and build.” There is no equivalent manual to guide economic doctrine. Some EPRTs emphasize micro-loans, while others favor micro-grants. Larger projects depended on local conditions. In theory, the Americans, civilian and military alike, should have pressed Iraqi government officials into undertaking the task. Knowing the government would fail or not even try, the Americans chose to take its place. But this has come at a cost. "The fundamental problem," Carraclio told me, "is that districts like Yusufiah have no connection to the provincial government. No representative from the ground level down here can complain to the national level about the lack of services." The pattern inside Baghdad has been much the same. In the Sunni districts, volunteers slowly came forward when we began to patrol the streets daily from outposts in some of the most violent neighborhoods. In the Dora district, Dr. Mouyad al-Jubourihad, a cardiologist, proposed a list of projects and was given funds from the military’s Commanders’ Emergency Response Program. Students painted the gloomy concrete barriers with bright colors; trash trucks hauled away the garbage; backhoes leveled the dirt for small parks; entrepreneurs opened shops and brought in generators to sell power. Outsiders were quickly reported to the CLC, who called the Americans. Rental prices in the neighborhood tripled. The economic resurgence in one part of Dora illustrates what a dynamic local leader can do when provided with security and funds. This is precisely what the Iraqi government has not been doing. "We Sunnis had what we call sahwa, an awakening," Dr. Mouyad said. "An American soldier was blown up outside my windows. My children were screaming. I said, ‘Enough!’ You Americans had your own awakening. No more rough stuff. It’s good here now. We’re together—American soldiers and my neighbors. It’s the government that needs an awakening." The Sunni Awakening has spread to the most hard-core districts. Al-Qaeda in Iraq held Amariah in a vise until a local insurgent leader, Abu Abid, turned against them in west Baghdad, after they killed his uncle and held his cousin for ransom. Over the summer, Abid fought al-Qaeda in the streets, backed by American patrols. In the course of a few weeks ,we found 40 bodies—strangers unclaimed by any families. Abid joined the CLC movement, bringing 300 fighters with him, and the insurgents fled the district. In the fall, an Iraqi army battalion moved inside the district. The CLC was forbidden from patrolling; Abid’s men were told to stand watch with Iraqi soldiers at checkpoints. With police scheduled to arrive in the district, Abid feared that his CLC would be shoved out and abandoned. His house had been attacked twice, and he was fatalistic about his chances of surviving. "With Americans, things improved," he said. "We are a victory for the Iraqi government, but they won’t support us. We don’t want to be left out. If the Americans leave us, it will be a disaster." Abid neatly summarized the dilemma we face. How can we effectively transition the 80,000 CLCs that have come into being over the course of the last year from American sponsorship to Iraqi ownership? The sahwa, or awakening, among the Sunnis delivered a crushing blow to al-Qaeda and to the larger insurgent movement. The tribes are no longer fighting the Americans, and neither are tough city gangs like Abid’s. Instead, they have come over to our side— but this does not mean they are loyal to the Prime Minister, Nouri al Maliki. Senior American officials have proposed to the Ministry of the Interior that 20 percent of the CLC join the police. The rest would be temporarily employed in public works, like the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression. Maliki has been loath to offer police jobs, and the CLC has been loath to turn in their guns for shovels—if funding for such jobs were available, which has not been the case. Maliki, who has done little to curb the Shiite militias, views the CLC as a nascent Sunni militia. Reluctant to include Sunnis in the police force, he has kept them outside the government, running the risk of engendering the very militia he wants to avoid. "CLC is the top story of 2007," Colonel P. J. Dermer, a key adviser, told me. Field commanders are concerned that they will be cut loose by summer. Although senior generals assured us this would not occur, they had agreed with Maliki not to extend the sahwa into the south, where Shiite tribes offered to band together in opposition to the extortionist Shiite militias. Maliki adamantly opposes any Shiite awakening. It might lead to demands for local representation, and weaken the power of his Dawa Party in future elections. F. J. "Bing" West, who served as a marine in Vietnam and as an assistant secretary of defense under President Reagan, is the author of The Village and No True Glory: A Frontline Account of the Battle for Fallujah.
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