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We reported on the formation and early activities of the Anbar Salvation Council several weeks ago. This group's rise drew extensive coverage in the Iraqi and Arabic media, but was largely ignored in the western press.
Since then? Well, nothing. But this week in the London Times, Martin Fletcher reports from Ramadi:
Fighting back: the city determined not to become al-Qaeda's capital.Read the whole thing. (Hat tip to Bill Roggio, who will soon be reporting from Iraq himself.)While the world’s attention has been focused on Baghdad’s slide into sectarian warfare, something remarkable has been happening in Ramadi, a city of 400,000 inhabitants that al-Qaeda and its Iraqi allies have controlled since mid-2004 and would like to make the capital of their cherished Islamic caliphate.
A power struggle has erupted: al-Qaeda’s reign of terror is being challenged. Sheikh Sittar and many of his fellow tribal leaders have cast their lot with the once-reviled US military. They are persuading hundreds of their followers to sign up for the previously defunct Iraqi police. American troops are moving into a city that was, until recently, a virtual no-go area. A battle is raging for the allegiance of Ramadi’s battered and terrified citizens and the outcome could have far-reaching consequences.
The situation is fragile. The Sunni Shieks are not fighting alongside Americans - they simply recognize the greater threat is al Qaeda.
As one US officer put it, the sheikhs are only “pro-American in the sense that they are fighting the same enemy”.But there is progress being made:
The US military wooed the sheikhs over what one US officer described as “hundreds of cups of chai and thousands of cigarettes”. They agreed that their chosen instrument should be the police force, which was practically defunct thanks to al-Qaeda death threats against anyone who dared to sign up. In June there were only 35 recruits; in July Sheikh Sittar sent 300 members of his 30,000-strong Resha tribe for training.Note that record from last month - one that went unreported during the record violence. These are the people who Abu Hamza al-Muhajir — aka Abu Ayyub al-Masri (the late Abu Musab al Zarqawi's replacement as leader of al Qaeda in Iraq) gave until the end of Ramadan to repent and swear allegiance, or die. Apparently he has his answer:Last month a record 409 new recruits were dispatched to the police academy in Jordan, and 1,300 are now signed up, many of them former Baathists. The US and Iraqi armies have armed and protected them against al-Qaeda attacks, and as fear of al-Qaeda has dissipated, so the process has accelerated.
Inside the heavily fortified Abu Faraj police station, just north of Ramadi, the recruits all said that they had been too frightened to join before. “Right now almost all the tribes are fighting the terrorists — the women, the children and even the dogs are fighting them,” said Major Saidey Saleh, the station commander and former Saddam army officer who bears the scars of four al-Qaeda bullet wounds in his right thigh.Ramadi is a city ruined by war - and a city still at war, but a growing (albeit fragile) hope for the future remains.
Update: The Airstrike that Wasn't
More: Progress in Al Anbar
And follow the thread of this story here.
