The Anbar tribes keep their word

LA Times:

As tribal leaders from Iraq's troubled Al Anbar province met last week with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, pledging their support to clean out Al Qaeda insurgents, it soon became clear that they were as good as their word.

That day, at a mosque in the town of Ramadi, armed tribesmen seized four men — two Iraqis and two non-Iraqi Arabs — whom the tribesmen believed to be Al Qaeda fighters. The men pleaded for their lives, "for the sake of Islam, and for the sake of the prophet," according to a man who witnessed the incident during group prayers.

Their bodies were found a few hours later in a dumpster.

Abdul Jabber Hakkam, spokesman for a coalition of 11 tribes that have pledged to fight insurgents in Al Anbar, said that despite what apparently happened in Ramadi, the tribes' plan was not to dispatch suspects on the spot. Instead, he hopes his fighters will arrest suspects and take them to court or shun them until they leave.

"People have done this with their own personal weapons," he said. "Now each house that hosts a terrorist, they will force all the residents of the house outside, so they're on the streets," he said. When that is done, he predicted, the insurgents will "have no one to keep them, and they will withdraw."

"We are not just targeting Al Qaeda, but terrorists in general, because people miss real stability and freedom," Hakkam said.

...

U.S. officials say the decision of some tribal leaders to begin going after insurgents reflects growing public anger over attacks that have killed or injured more than 8,000 Iraqis, according to local government figures. They also say there has been growing alarm on the part of some tribal leaders over insurgents' demands for adherence to strict Islamic law. U.S. military leaders say that alarm has inspired a sense of partnership that didn't exist earlier.

"It's only frankly been the last six months that they've recognized two things: One, they can't do it themselves, and two … they had much more in common with the coalition than they do with Iran," said a senior U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But he said it was not clear whether the tribes would be able to mount an effective operation against the leading insurgent groups.

"The difference between targeted killings and a deliberate campaign that is successful in removing folks from the area, I have not seen," he said.

For many tribesmen, support for the government's efforts may be motivated as much by revenge as by hopes for reconciliation with the government: A car bomb in January killed more than 70 police recruits, many of whom were tribesmen, and a local clan leader was assassinated a month later. A popular cleric, Sheik Ayad Izzi, was shot to death in December in a killing that was later blamed on a fatwa, or religious edict, from a young Al Qaeda imam.

...
There is more. I think the surge in arrest and in killings of al Qaeda leaders has benefited from the cooperation of the tribal leaders. If they are smart, all they really need to do is provide intelligence on enemy locations and the identies of the perps.

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