Iraqi tribesmen preparing for life without U.S. aid
Iraqi tribesmen preparing for life without U.S. aid
By The Associated Press
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Published: June 30, 2008
RADWANIYAH, Iraq — Capt. David N. Simms wanted the tribal sheiks to have no doubts — the $500,000 his unit spends every month to pay and equip local tribesmen to keep peace here will soon run out and they had better be ready when it's gone.
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Funeral services
Slain State Department worker to be remembered in Edmond
A funeral is planned Wednesday for a State Department worker from Guthrie who was killed by a bomb in Iraq last week.
Services are planned at the Henderson Hills Baptist Church in Edmond at 9 a.m. Wednesday for 57-year-old Steven Farley. A full military ceremony will follow at his burial at 2 p.m. at the Fort Sill National Cemetery in Elgin.
Loyalties are a concern
The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been reluctant to absorb large numbers of armed Sunnis into the Shiite-dominated security forces. American officials fear that many of the U.S.-backed fighters may turn their guns on the government unless jobs can be found for them.
"If we don't find work for the men, it will work against us,” said Asaad Nawar al-Ameen, a retired general in Saddam's army who heads the Sons of Iraq in Radwaniyah. "Al-Qaida can get them.”
The government already has accepted nearly 20 percent of Sons in Iraq members in the security forces and is pledging to find civilian jobs for most of the rest.
Meanwhile, it has introduced "support councils” made up of trusted tribal chiefs and their followers to support the security forces.
But that move is seen by leaders of the Sons of Iraq as an attempt to sideline them at a time when some of them are complaining that the Americans are abandoning them to a government they don't trust.
In Radwaniyah, the government recently named a wealthy businessman, Ayad Abdul-Jabar al-Jaborui, to head the new support council.
Kamal al-Saadi, a lawmaker from al-Maliki's Dawa party, said the leadership had worried about al-Qaida infiltration into the Sons of Iraq but now believed that "the government has become too strong for the Sons of Iraq to be a threat.”
Related Topics:
Politics, War and Conflict, World Politics, Terrorism, Islam, Peacekeeping and Security, Iraqi Politics, Islamism
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