New York Times: Members of the Sunni Awakening Councils, the former insurgents who switched sides to help bring calm to Iraq, are increasingly being besieged from all sides.
The New York Times
By ALISSA J. RUBIN
Published: April 12, 2009
BAGHDAD — Members of the Sunni Awakening Councils, the former insurgents who switched sides to help bring calm to Iraq, are increasingly being besieged from all sides.
Thirteen members were killed by a suicide bomber while they gathered to collect their pay south of Baghdad on Saturday, in the latest of a string of attacks against Awakening members in recent weeks. Some of the Sunnis also worry that the Shiite-led government has begun singling out the councils’ leaders for arrest while their chief patron, the American military, slowly abandons them.
One of the most notable cases is that of Sheik Maher Sarhan Abbas, whom the government detained 27 days ago, according to his family and fellow Awakening leaders.
Sheik Maher’s arrest took place in secret and came to light when The New York Times by chance contacted someone who had seen him in jail. It was one of several such cases in recent weeks that have worried not only Awakening members, but also some American diplomats and military officers.
The Sunni leaders have long been targets for Islamist militants and Shiite militias. And there have been other arrests of senior Awakening leaders in the past few weeks.
Some leaders accuse the government of trying to purge them, or at the least of moving too quickly on anonymous accusations against them.
Tensions between the Sunni Awakening groups and the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have been present from the start. American efforts to transfer the Awakening security forces from the American payroll to the Iraqi security forces were initially resisted by leaders in Baghdad, who say that many of the Awakening leaders are still actively supporting antigovernment insurgents.
Sheik Maher, however, was an admired local symbol for the Awakening movement, which began two years ago when American officials started courting Sunni tribes, offering money if they turned against insurgent forces.
The sheik’s Shiite neighbors trusted him and his Sunni followers so much that they took them into their own homes when the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia was still strong. United States soldiers at a nearby base say they considered him a reliable ally, and still do.
Yet on March 15, just after midnight, heavily armed men flung deafening smoke grenades into his home in Hawr Jab, a small village on Baghdad’s southern outskirts, his family said.
They burst into the bedroom where Sheik Maher and his wife were watching television as their 3-year-old daughter slept in a small bed next to them.
“He thought Al Qaeda had finally come for him,” said Shada Rasheed, 23, his wife, as she cradled their daughter in her arms.
The Times learned of Sheik Maher’s detention from another Awakening leader, Raad Ali, whom the Iraqi government had similarly detained on terrorism charges but had released under pressure from the Americans.
Asked about Sheik Maher’s detention, Mohammed Salman al-Saady, who leads the ministerial office that deals with Awakening groups, said he knew nothing of the case.
But he said: “An Awakening member is forgiven for everything except murder. The right question to ask is, ‘Why was this person arrested?’ ”
Sheik Maher had long known he was wanted by the Sunni militants he had spent much of the past two and half years fighting. But the troops who arrested him told his family members that they had been sent directly by the prime minister’s office.
Accompanying the Iraqis were American forces, the family members said. The captain of the local American unit said the troops were probably from a Special Operations unit, which typically does not inform the local forces of raids.
“When they detained him, we were all shocked,” said Capt. Kip Kowalski, the American commanding officer at the joint security station in Hawr Jab, near Sheik Maher’s home.
Captain Kowalski’s unit apologized to the family but said they were powerless to help; the local Iraqi Army unit forbade Sheik Maher’s Awakening followers from holding a peaceful demonstration to demand his release.
“He’s the local council leader here,” Captain Kowalski said. “We didn’t have anything on him, but as far as helping to get him released, it’s a government of Iraq arrest. If they have a warrant it just has to work its way through the process.”
Many Awakening officials, and some American officers who work with them, say they believe that arrests of people like Sheik Maher are the result of a new strategy by Sunni extremists to get their most effective enemies off the streets.
Former members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the theory goes, secretly tell the government that the Awakening leader is himself a Qaeda infiltrator and should be arrested for past crimes. Under the Iraqi legal system, if there are two witnesses, the government can issue a warrant, detain a suspect and then investigate.
A second approach is for members of Qaeda families who have lost some of their relatives to violence to sue the Awakening members, who often are responsible for killing Qaeda members during the last two years of fighting, said Captain Kowalski, who says his unit has heard of several similar cases.
Detention can sometimes last months, and people who are detained on terrorism charges have “no visitors, no lawyers, no sun,” Mr. Ali said, describing the conditions during his detention, which lasted a week.
First Lt. Jobie Siemer, of the First Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry, who has worked closely with Sheik Maher in Hawr Jab, said, “There are a lot of good people around here who I know killed a bunch of people, but they were defending their land and they were helping us and that was a good thing.
Shiite government officials have long been suspicious of the Sons of Iraq, worried that they could become the armed core of a future insurgency. But for their part, Sunni Awakening leaders say the government may be too quick to accept accusations against them.
“They should do research for three months before they arrest people,” said Mr. Ali, the Awakening leader in Ghaziliya, who saw Sheik Maher in detention.
“This is how the terrorists are trying to come back in. It is one of their plans to remove us, to get us off the street and then they can sneak back in,” he said.
A senior American official in Iraq was also skeptical of the motives for the arrests. “Why is the government doing this?” said the official, who asked not to be named because he is not authorized to speak to the news media.
“Every time we said to the government, ‘You have to let this guy go,’ they do it, which they wouldn’t if they thought he was really dangerous,” the American said. “I think they have their hand in the sectarian cookie jar.”
The 13 Awakening members who died Saturday were at an Iraqi Army base in Babil Province collecting their meager pay, which had been delayed for three months. Everyone in the room was dressed in the same Awakening uniform, suggesting that the bomber slipped in disguised as one of them.
At least 12 Awakening figures have been killed in Babil this year, the police said.
Saoud Auda, 30, a father of eight, was badly burned in the suicide bomber’s attack, which came just after he had been paid.
“I was looking forward to going home and paying the grocer and buying my little son a toy airplane,” he said. “But my money burned with my body.”
Rod Nordland and Sam Dagher contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Abeer Mohammed from Hilla, Iraq.
