JUST ANOTHER MISSION ACCOMPLISHED:

U.S. Hands Off Pacified Anbar, Once Heart of Iraq Insurgency (DEXTER FILKINS, 9/02/08, NY Times)

On Monday, following a parade on a freshly paved street, American commanders formally returned responsibility for keeping order in Anbar Province, once the heartland of the Sunni insurgency, to the Iraqi Army and police force. The ceremony capped one of the starkest turnabouts in the country since the war began five and a half years ago. [...]

[A]s the parade marched along Main Street, the signs seemed mostly good. The ceremony was a mostly Iraqi affair, with American marines and soldiers wearing neither helmets nor body armor, nor carrying guns. The festive scene became an occasion for celebration by Iraqis and Americans, who at several moments wondered aloud in the sweltering heat how things had gone from so grim to so much better, so fast.

“Not in our wildest dreams could we have imagined this,” said Mowaffak al-Rubaie, the national security adviser. “Two or three years ago, had we suggested that the Iraqis could take responsibility, we would have been ridiculed, we would have been laughed at. This was the cradle of the Sunni insurgency.” [...]

[B]y late 2006, the Islamic Movement of Holy Warriors began laying ambushes against Qaeda fighters, Mr. Faraji said. At roughly the same time, a Sunni sheik named Abdul Sattar Abu Risha approached the Americans for help and formed the first Awakening Council. By early 2007, the Islamic Movement of Holy Warriors had formed its own Awakening Council, and today Mr. Faraji is a colonel in the Iraqi police.

As for the Americans, Mr. Faraji said that his views had evolved. “They made mistakes, and so did we,” he said. “The past is past.”

Today, nearly 100,000 Iraqis, many of them former insurgents, are on the American payroll. Many, like Mr. Faraji, have been taken into the security services.

In some parts of Iraq, including Baghdad, the Shiite-led government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki has issued orders to arrest hundreds of Awakening Council members it considers dangerous and expressed intentions of decommissioning the groups, nervous that so many Sunni gunmen are being allowed to roam freely. Mr. Maliki’s desires are aggravating sectarian tensions in these places.

But so far, the arrangements in Anbar seem immune to those strains. Perhaps because the province is almost entirely Sunni, there are no sectarian tensions to speak of. Only 4,000 people are still on the Awakening Councils’ rolls here, American officials here say, suggesting that many of the former insurgents have already been absorbed into the local police forces.

The striking turnaround in Anbar Province, accomplished by making deals with Sunni tribal leaders, has inevitably raised a question here: Could the Americans have avoided years of bloodshed by reaching out to the tribal leaders five and a half years ago?

“Yes, yes,” Mr. Rubaie said, shaking his head. “But they didn’t know.”

Don't you just love a parade?

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 2, 2008 11:55 AM