Buying Iraqi hearts and minds is latest US tactic

IRAQ:The US is funding a Sunni militia to lessen support for al-Qaeda in Iraq, writes Lara Marlowein Baghdad.

IF YOU can't fight 'em, buy 'em; if you can stop 'em killing each other, wall 'em in.

That could be the new mantra of the US army in Baghdad. Under Gen David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, 90,000 Sunnis have joined a US-backed militia called the Sons of Iraq. Thousands of concrete "T-walls" have separated warring Sunnis and Shia.

The measures have staunched some of the worst ethnic cleansing of the five-year war in the south Baghdad district of Sayidiya, where 60,000 people, the majority of them Sunni, are watched over by 78 soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division and a 600-strong Iraqi army battalion. The entire community is walled in. Everyone entering is searched at a single checkpoint.

"A year ago, there were pitched battles on the streets between the [Shia] Jaish al Mehdi and and [Sunni] al-Qaeda," explains Capt Drew Betson, the commander of A company 64 battalion.

"Sayidiya became the sectarian fault-line," Capt Betson continues. "A lot of people died here. Both sides were ethnically cleansed. Families were taken out in the gardens, shot dead and buried. We found a lot of shallow graves. When my unit arrived, this was a ghost town."

The overthrow of Saddam Hussein left the Sunni minority with a massive grudge against the Americans. "It's true that most of the resistance was Sunni," admits Shaker Odah (50), an unemployed engineer who is one of 513 approved "Sons of Iraq" in Sayidiya. Odah joined the militia out of necessity, and like several of the Sons and Daughters of Iraq I interviewed in the presence of US troops yesterday, he was surprisingly frank about his motives. "It is for the money more than belief," Odah said. "People just want to live."

The Sons of Iraq are part welfare, part political rehab. A high percentage are former al-Qaeda. "This allows young men to have a paid job," explains Capt Betson. "Granted, they are standing at checkpoints with AK 47s, but it's better we're paying them than al-Qaeda." He wants to use his Sons of Iraq to provide plumbing and carpentry services to the community.

In testimony before the US Senate last month, the US ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, called the Sons of Iraq "the best investment we've made in Iraq". The $16 million (€10.32 million)monthly tab is a mere fraction of the cost of vehicles that would have been destroyed, Gen Petraeus noted.

"We have basically rented their allegiance," complained Senator John Kerry.

Mohamed Hamid (18) guards a mosque in the boulevard the Americans call Spruce. "I wanted to be with the Americans, and they pay me $300 a month," he says. Like tens of thousands of other Sons of Iraq, Hamid dreams of joining the Iraqi police, but the Shia-run interior ministry won't have him. Nor has the Iraqi government yet agreed to pay the protection money - er, salaries - of the Sunni militiamen, as US lawmakers are demanding.

The "Sons of Iraq" started when Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, a tribal leader with a reputation for banditry on the Amman-Baghdad highway, turned against al-Qaeda in late 2006 after the extremists murdered his father and three brothers.

Abu Risha named his movement "al-Sahwa", the Awakening. He was given an office in the Green Zone, and was assassinated 10 days after he shook George W Bush's hand on television last September.

"There was turmoil about the name ," Capt Betson recalls. "Sahwa was not appropriate because it could have religious connotations. CLCs - Concerned Local Citizens - stuck the longest." He's amused to learn that the Provisional IRA often used the name "Concerned Citizens" ("Perhaps there are parallels. . .," he says.) Finally, the US military decided "at the highest levels" to call them Sons of Iraq.

The captain has also hired "Daughters of Iraq" to frisk women entering Sayidiya and the newly reopened Rafidain Bank, which was three times destroyed by al-Qaeda.

At the moment, the Sunni-Shia war is largely on hold, thanks to the US army. But many Iraqis fear it will resume when the US pulls out. "There will be a lot of trouble," Mohamed Hamid predicted.

"The Iranians will take over. We Sunni don't like the Iranians; we prefer the Americans - they're organised and educated." I heard the same refrain several times yesterday in Sayidiya.

An affinity between the US and the secular Baathist elite kept Washington allied with Saddam - against Iran - throughout the 1980s. Now it's been rekindled in the once luxurious villas of Sayidiya. "This area has former Baath party and the Baghdad elite," explains Capt Betson. "Originally, it was a good neighbourhood; it helps to have a more educated base." Col Jabar Hassan Alewei, the commander of the Iraqi army battalion in Sayidiya, is inseparable from Mohamed Hassan Ali, who has 236 Sunni Sons of Iraq under his orders. Both men were majors in Saddam's army, cashiered in the immediate aftermath of the invasion. Mohamed Hassan Ali wants to rejoin the army, but so far the Shia government refuses to take him.

As his helmeted, flak-jacketed "engagement patrol" travels down Spruce under the watchful eye of machine gunners mounted on Humvees, Capt Betson passes out "tip cards" with his interpreter's phone number for would-be informers. The US pays for information.

Some of the Iraqis greet the blond, blue-eyed young West Point graduate warmly.

He calls the local businesses upon which he bestows US financial aid "non-lethal targets", promises air conditioners for the containers in which women are searched, and a generator to make the street lights function.

"I have a problem with taxis parking on the other side ," Capt Betson scolds Col Jabar.

"Right now there are car bombs being made in Karrada. I had to talk very sternly to your officer here. I had to run two taxis away."

Some of the Iraqis who stand watching the US patrol from the pavement in front of their shops glare hatefully.

But Capt Betson won't let them impede his campaign for the hearts and minds of Sayidiya.

"It's the ones who are distrustful that I walk up to and shake hands with, as often as possible."