Nir Rosen - Aftermath

Driving west, we entered the Anbar province. Looking at the desolate flat desert with a few trees, Abu Salih said, “Iraq is beautiful.” Past the town of Abu Ghraib we saw a pickup truck with a large Russian anti-aircraft gun called a Dushka affixed to its back. The Dushka was often used as a heavy-infantry machine gun. Somali warlords had made it famous by placing it on their “technical” vehicles. “Now that’s the Awakening,” Abu Salih said, wistfully gazing at the Dushka. “How can we stand up to Gen. Abdul Karim with only Kalashnikovs?” We drove by more Awakening Council men with American Hummers and Russian PKCs, or belt-fed machine guns. “Ooh, look at that PKC,” Abu Salih said.

We drove by the large yellow Awakening Council flag. The flag bore the Bedouin coffee pot as its symbol, stressing the group’s Bedouin origins, of which some Sunnis were proud. Some Shiites, in turn, prided themselves on a settled farmer heritage. “Hopefully we will have this flag today,” said Abu Salih. We were meticulously searched before entering the Awakening Council headquarters, our pens checked, our candy squeezed. Inside a large opulent guest hall, supplicants sat on long sofas lining the walls. Abu Risha, brother of the slain founder of the movement, sat on an ornate throne under a picture of his brother Sattar. We were served tea by Bangladeshi servants, and he ignored us. Eventually he turned to our group and asked, “How is Dora?”

We followed him into a smaller office, where three of the rival men from Dora were sitting. They referred to Abu Risha with deference, calling him “our older brother” and “our father.” It was a strange phenomenon, urban Sunnis from Baghdad pledging their allegiance to a desert tribal leader, looking to the periphery for protection and representation, a reversal of past roles. But the Americans had empowered Abu Risha, and Baghdad’s Sunni militiamen hoped to unite with him to fight their Shiite opponents.

Abu Husam, one of the rivals, told Abu Salih that his men were merely guards, not the Awakening. “You are military and we are political,” he said. Abu Jawdat, the elderly leader of ISVs in an area adjoining Abu Salih’s, bristled. “We are a political entity,” he said. “We are not mercenaries.” Abu Risha’s political adviser attempted to calm the increasingly loud men. “Dora is big and can’t have one leader,” he said. “Are we in the time of Saddam Hussein?” He explained that the Awakening Council was preparing for national elections and that they should have elections in Dora as well to decide who will represent the Awakening there.

“Who fought Al Qaeda in Dora?” demanded Abu Yasser. “We all fought,” said Abu Husam. “No, you didn’t,” Abu Yasser snapped. “I fought and I won’t let somebody who I was protecting and was behind me come in front of me and say he fought. I was in the Army of the Mujahideen.”

Abu Husam stood up and accused Abu Salih of having been an Al Qaeda member. Abu Salih turned red and waved his arm over his head. “Nobody lies about Abu Salih!” he shouted. One of his companions jumped to his defense and explained that he belonged to the 1920 Revolution Brigades and was wanted by the Americans. “No, he wasn’t,” laughed Abu Husam. All the men spoke with respect of the resistance and jihad. To them this was merely a hudna (cease-fire) with the American occupation while they fought the Iranian enemy, meaning Iraq’s Shiites.

The men who fought Al Qaeda believed they deserved to be the new leaders. Abu Yusef explained that he had defended Dora’s Tawhid Mosque from the Mahdi Army and the Iraqi National Police. “I won’t let somebody who was behind me come in front of me,” he said. He was backed by Muhammad Kashkul, Osama’s former rival and a former officer in Saddam’s feared intelligence service. Kashkul fought alongside several resistance groups in the area, and still clashed with his American paymasters over his hatred for the local INPs.

Abu Salih was forced to kiss Abu Husam, but in the end Abu Salih and his men, and not their rivals, left with the Awakening Council flag. They would be the new political bosses for their area. On the way back they listened to Bedouin music about Arabs standing together even when the whole world confronts them. Abu Salih recited the songs. In one of them a guy swore he would get in his GMC and use his PKC and marry an Iraqi woman.

The previous night Osama received a phone call from the Americans. They had decided to appoint him head of a new tribal advisory council, something Maliki had just created, even though the makeup of the councils was vague. Osama didn’t know he was even a candidate, and he was not sure he wanted the added responsibility, though he knew it would help him protect his men. He explained that he made good money as a KBR contractor and that his wife wanted him to quit this Awakening business. In December he only made one thousand dollars from the ISV contract, and in January he made two thousand dollars. It was not a lot, he explained. He was also increasingly frustrated with the Americans. They were one week late paying him, and his men were agitated. Some suspected that he had been paid but kept the money for himself. A few days earlier Brig. Gen. Abdel Karim’s men had opened fire on Osama’s neighborhood and beat some of his men with their rifles. When the Americans did nothing, Osama threatened to quit and withdraw all his men. He argued with Lieutenant Colonel Reineke. “Reineke keeps telling me Abdel Karim is a good guy, he is the government,” Osama said. “I said, ‘Fuck the government. If I leave Al Qaeda will take over Dora.’”

Amriya, in western Baghdad’s Rashid district, was one of the first neighborhoods to feel the full blast of civil war and mass population displacement. Long a resistance stronghold, it soon became as fearsome as Dora. The Samarra bombings of February 2006 accelerated this, as Shiites in Baghdad, particularly those in the Iraqi Security Forces who were linked to the Shiite militias, saw Amriya—with its large Sunni population, former links to the Baath Party, and current links to Al Qaeda along with Sunnis from Anbar—as a prime target for attack. The Sunnis, in turn, fought back ferociously. As it turned out, Amriya was the first place in Baghdad where the Awakening phenomenon of the Anbar was replicated. American collaboration with Sunni militiamen—many of whom were former resistance fighters—succeeded in radically changing the neighborhood.

Lieut. Col. Gian Gentile’s squadron had been based in the west of Rashid district since January 2006. He and his men were among the first squadrons to go through the newly created COIN Academy in Camp Taji, just north of Baghdad. “The week course was essentially a course in Galula 101,” he told me, in reference to the French theorist of counterinsurgency. “We used what we learned at Taji often in the months ahead. I never thought that more troops were needed, since I concluded early on that there were limits to what American combat power could accomplish and at some point Iraqis had to take over for the destiny of the country.”

Gentile had been leading counterinsurgency operations with a primary focus on transitioning security responsibilities to the Iraqi Security Forces. However, after the Samarra bombings, it became clear to him that their primary purpose was to try to arrest the violence and protect the local population.

Gentile began to grasp after the Samarra bombings that the orgy of violence unleashed by it was actually a civil war. “The Sunnis regarded the government as their mortal enemy,” he said, “and in many respects, they were correct. For the first half of 2006, when we were in West Rashid, we worked only with national police and the local police. After Samarra, within days, their links to Shiite militias and sectarian killings became clear. We did our best to curb this, but it was very difficult to do so.”