Red on red action comes to Baghdad

AP/NY Times:

Iraqi and U.S. troops fanned out in a devastated Sunni neighborhood in Baghdad on Friday, residents said, adding they were holed up in their houses under a curfew that was imposed to restore calm after days of internal fighting between insurgent groups.

Northeast of Baghdad, an al-Qaida-linked suicide bomber blew himself up Friday in a house sheltering members of the rival 1920 Revolution Brigades, killing two of the other militants and wounding four in the strife-ridden city of Baqouba, police said.

The developments were the latest in an apparently growing Sunni insurgent power struggle as U.S. and Iraqi officials try to isolate the terror network by turning other militant groups and tribal leaders against it. The tactic has proven relatively successful in the western Anbar province, once considered the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, and Washington and the Iraqi government are trying to replicate it elsewhere.

Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday that U.S. military officers were talking with Iraqi militants -- excluding al-Qaida -- about cease-fires and other arrangements to try to stop the violence. He said he thinks 80 percent of Iraqis, including Sunni insurgents and Shiite militants, can reach reconciliation with each other, although most al-Qaida operatives will not.

Abu Ahmed, a 40-year-old Sunni father of four in Baghdad's Amariyah neighborhood, said he was among a group of residents who joined in the clashes with al-Qaida fighters on Wednesday and Thursday -- fed up with the gunfire that kept students from final exams and forced people in the neighborhood to huddle indoors.

Ahmed denied being a member of any insurgent groups but said he sympathizes with ''honest Iraqi resistance,'' referring to those opposed to U.S.-led efforts in Iraq but also against the brutal tactics of al-Qaida.

''Al-Qaida fighters and leaders have completely destroyed Amariyah. No one can venture out and all the businesses are closed,'' he said. ''They kill everyone who criticizes them and is against their acts even if they are Sunnis.''

''What al-Qaida fighters do is not jihad (holy war), these acts are just criminal ones. Jihad must be against the occupation, Shiite militias and those who cooperate with them,'' he added. ''Those fighters are here only to kill Iraqis and not the Americans. They are like cancer and must be removed from the Iraqi body.''

Other residents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution, said the clashes began after al-Qaida abducted and tortured Sunnis from the area, prompting a large number of residents, many members of the rival Islamic Army armed with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, to rise up against the terror network.

Official casualty figures were not immediately available. But a local council member, who declined to be identified because of security concerns, said at least 31 people, including six al-Qaida militants, were killed and 45 other fighters were detained in the clashes.

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The U.S. military and the Iraqi government congratulated Amariyah residents for standing up to al-Qaida.

''Government security forces are now in control of the Amariyah district,'' Iraqi military spokesman Qassim al-Moussawi was quoted as saying by Iraqi state TV. He also lauded ''the cooperation of local residents with the government.''

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The explosion in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, came as residents said al-Qaida is trying to regain control of the central Tahrir neighborhood from the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a group composed of officials and soldiers from the ousted regime who have allied themselves with local security forces against the terror network.

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This is how the clearing of Anbar started and it is a particular bad sign for al Qaeda forces in Iraq. They not only loss their base area in Anbar, but their rat line of supplies and replacements. The al Qaeda fighters appear to think that because "God" is on their side, they can do no wrong. This arrogance is alienating their would be allies. It is also giving the US the opportunity for progress in protecting the people in Baghdad through the surge.