Gen. Bergner talks about the grass roots reconciliation

Blackfive has a long post on the press briefing with Gen. Bergner today in which the military is noticing the grass roots aspects of the reconciliation.

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GEN. BERGNER: Well, we have seen steady developments at the local level. And if you just went back over the last four weeks and kind of walked around west and northern areas of Baghdad, you would find that in Ramadi, they completed the Ramadi Covenant, which was a tribal-led but government-of-Iraq-involved and coalition -- or security-force-involved commitment to stop the violence and to work together. In Taji, about three weeks ago the sheikhs of Taji got together. They all signed a map, put their name next to the town that they represent. In Khalis, northwest of Baghdad, a similar commitment, I think by some 16 sheikhs representing 70-some others. And then in Baqubah, we've talked before about the tribal sheikhs and the provincial government and their security forces having reached some agreements on how they're going to work together and stop the violence.

So I could take you through Baghdad, as well. We've seen similar -- similar arrangements being grouped together in Amiriyah. We see similar ones in Ghazalia. The Ghazalia volunteers are now part of this local security force that's working with Iraqi and coalition forces. And then if I took you to south of Baghdad, in General Rick Lynch's area of operations in MND-Center, I could show you different groupings of 100 here, 400 there, where different individuals from the community have stepped forward and said, we want to stop help the violence, we want to work toward some sort of accommodation.

So there is a steady development at the local level as security improves and people feel like they can step forward and take that on. So we are encouraged by that. And you know overall in Anbar what that -- how that has profoundly changed. We've talked about that several times. And that's probably the most striking example of a place which just eight or 10 months ago nobody could have foreseen the change there. So, lots of momentum.

Much of it is enabled by the tactical momentum that the surge of operations is providing. But again, much work still to do. Still some very difficult ways ahead.

GRIM: I'd like to ask a quick follow-up about that. Under Saddam and, you know, for what amounts to living memory in Iraq, Iraq has been kind of a top-down society where the central government set the tone. What you're talking about is a lot of local efforts that are going to be kind of brought to bear -- I don't want to say against central government, but on the central government. Do you think that the nature of Iraqi society is changing in this regard, that it's becoming more of a bottom-up society, a locally driven society?

GEN. BERGNER: You know, that's a very good question, it's an interesting one, because on one level, it has been a centrally governed country, without question, but in this country the tribe, the family have always been the most powerful bond that the Iraqi people have felt. And so you have kind of a duality of centrally directed but, if you ask the people who they trust and who they want to work with, it's at the family, tribal and community level. So both of those exist and both of them are very real parts of the nature of Iraqi society.

What I hope you got a sense of in my initial comments was both of those are working, and if you looked at Baqubah as a pretty vivid example, that's a place where the local tribes and security forces are coming to these kinds of arrangements. And once they've gotten to that point, the Iraqi government, the central government, is coming in to connect and figure out so how do we provide this public distribution support that you need, because, as you said, that is a centrally directed food distribution program; how do we help improve the availability of fuel, because, as you said, that is a centrally controlled fuel distribution system still. So both of those are at work here, and that's really why it's so important to get them connected because you really need -- you need that confidence at the local level being reinforced and supported. They need to know their central government is going to actually do something for them.

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This is what I have been talking about for several days now and others are starting to notice. In some cases it is a matter of the locals engaging in a general uprising against al Qaeda and the terrorist because they feel those groups have been put on the defensive by the surge and they feel the Americans and the Iraqi Army will come to their assistance.

The good news is that the military has also noticed the bottom up movement and hopefully they can high light it in the September report where the Democrats will be belly aching about the lack of progress on the top down reconciliation. I think the bottom up type will be the more long lasting if we can build on it and let push the government in the right direction.