In villages and farming communities on the northwest outskirts of Baghdad, Sunni and Shiite tribal leaders are working together to improve security in a way unimaginable a few short months ago.
Attacks on American forces have dropped dramatically in these former insurgent strongholds. That's thanks, in large part, to U.S.-funded efforts to give temporary security jobs to young Iraqis, some of whom used to be insurgents. Although security is improving, tribal sheiks are increasingly frustrated by the slow pace of help from Iraq's central government.
NPR's Eric Westervelt reports.
ERIC WESTERVELT: A teenager, wearing a powder-blue tracksuit and holding a battered AK-47, stands under a date palm tree in Taji, a rural area some 60 miles northwest of Baghdad. He and dozens of others here are Sunni members of the Concerned Citizens' Group, a temporary U.S.-funded tribal force that's proved to be a foundation of improved security across parts of central Iraq.
(Soundbite of Iraqi people in a meeting)
WESTERVELT: These young men with guns are helping to guard an extraordinary meeting. Some 50-area tribal sheiks, both Sunni and Shia, greet each other under a faded floral tent in the palm grove. They sip strong Arabic coffee and talk security, politics and money.
Twenty-six-year old Hussein Abid Hussein(ph) is one of the 4,500 paid, coinsuring-citizens members hired recently in the greater Taji area. But like others in the force, he's worried he won't get a permanent job in the Iraqi security forces.
Mr. HUSSEIN ABID HUSSEIN (Member, Concerned Citizens, Taji): (Through translator) We sent my files to the Iraqi Army, and they said there's no problem, but we're still waiting. It's just a promise.
WESTERVELT: Sunni Sheik Nadeem Sultan Al-Tamimi(ph), the leader of Hussein's tribe, says it's a huge problem. Sheik Nadeem wears a flowing brown gold-trimmed robe and a crisp-white kafia headdress. He praises the newfound cooperation among the tribal sheiks, and chides Baghdad for stone-walling.
Sheik NADEEM SULTAN AL-TAMIMI (Leader, Sunni Tribe, Taji): (Through translator) We got 800 of our 1,200 Concerns Citizens' members, who applied, approved to be hired into the permanent security forces. They were screened and everything but we're still waiting, nothing has happened.
WESTERVELT: U.S. military officials here share the frustration that Baghdad officials aren't moving fast enough to exploit the initial success of the Concerned Citizens' brigades.
U.S. Army Colonel Paul Funk, commander of the 1st Brigade of the 1st Cavalry division, is in charge of American forces in the areas where these sheiks live.
Colonel PAUL FUNK II (Commander, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division, U.S. Army): This is the third of these meetings we've had, and every time they come out here and promise us some stuff, and then they don't deliver. So now it's time for them to deliver.
WESTERVELT: U.S. officials are now pressing Iraq's central government to try to replicate the tentative achievements of the Concerned Citizens' brigade by quickly creating an economic version of the program. Creating sustained employment, Col. Funk argues, is the next challenge of this counterinsurgency fight.
Col. FUNK: Okay, let's call it the Civil Service Corps. Let's call it whatever we're doing, but if you take these concerned local citizens and put them towards a job where they have a reoccurring position - dig ditches, pick up trash, put in the waterline - all that involves a lot of labor, which really a labor for (unintelligible).
WESTERVELT: At the tribal gathering here, a few Baghdad officials show up and try to reassure the rest of sheiks. Dr. Fayol Al-Maliki(ph) is a senior advisor to Iraq's prime minister on tribal affairs and reconciliation. In coming months, he predicts an economic surge to these struggling tribal areas.
Dr. Fayol Al-Maliki (Senior Advisor, Prime Minister's Tribal Affairs and Reconciliation): (Through translator) I predict that the financial year 2008 will be an exclusive year in terms of services, reconstruction, and investment.
WESTERVELT: But Dr. Maliki is met with tepid applause and deep skepticism. Many sheiks complain that it's the first time they've seen anyone from the central government on the ground here in more than a year.
Sheik Sabah Al Zubair(ph) is a leader of an influential Sunni tribe in the Taji area.
Sheik SABAH AL ZUBAIR (Leader, Sunni Tribe, Taji): (Through translator) There are things the government can do. Our schools lack the simplest things - desks and doors. Our roads are unpaved. Farmers do not get enough irrigation water, or fertilizer, or seeds. These are government responsibilities. And so far, they're not reaching the outskirts of Baghdad.
WESTERVELT: And in something of a warning, the sheiks say the government's delay, quote, "is a reason behind terrorism." Hiring more of our people into the police and army would further reduce terrorism and crime, he says.
Sunni sheiks here say the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki looks to the largely Sunni areas and sees only political opponents.
U.S. Army Captain Robert Stigers(ph) displace a hand-drawn map showing how sectarian bloodletting, the last two years, had sharply withdrawn local village boundaries around Taji. Sunnis in one area; Shia in the other.
Captain ROBERTS STIGERS (Captain, U.S. Army): This one chunk of territory here, Sunni, that didn't get a representation out of the government.
WESTERVELT: Captain Stigers, with the 2A Cavalries, is standing in a blackened the palm grove, scorched to clear brush to better counter security threats that are no longer as big a worry now that local tribes here are allied with the U.S. But Stigers says patience among shakes is running thin.
Capt. STIGERS: These guys are kind of frustrated, because they cleared the area within a month or two, and now this mark in time until the government does its part.
WESTERVELT: Many of Iraqi ministries remain dysfunctional, but the sheiks blame Baghdad mantra is a bit one dimensional. There's deep lingering mistrust among tribes themselves, resistance to central authority, and a desire to maintain firm-local-tribal control over jobs and money.
Lieutenant Colonel Kurt Pinkerton leads the 2nd Battalion of the 5th Cavalry regiment responsible for a large swath of villages on the western outskirts of Baghdad.
Lieutenant Colonel KURT PINKERTON (Commander, 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry, U.S. Army): I mean, frankly speaking, there are some tribal leaders that say, hey, we want the peace, we want the stability, but we still want to be tribal. And those are the guys you kind of have to work with and make them understand that you could still have that tribal influence, but you have to have a government that works.
WESTERVELT: For lunch on this day, Iraqi sheiks and American soldiers stand against large, wobbly wooden tables, digging in by hand the giant platters of grilled-chicken and spiced rice. It's a display of tradition and unity. But it's a fragile unity. One, it seems, that could easily tear, depending now on how fast the central Baghdad government moves.
Eirc Westervelt, NPR News, Taji. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
