BAGHDAD —

Gun-toting Sunni Arabs battling al-Qaida cautiously embraced Iraq’s Shiite-led government on Wednesday as the US military transferred responsibility for them to Baghdad.

The transfer of all 100,000 “Sons of Iraq” (SoI), as the U.S. military calls them, got underway with 54,000 men in the province of Baghdad.

Omar Samir, 36, a leader of one of the anti-Qaida groups known as Sahwas (awakening) in Arabic said the 63 fighters under his command in the capital’s Sunni district of Adhamiyah were happy to be paid by Baghdad.

“We’re really happy, we feel that from today we’ll be representing Iraqi law 100%. From now on, we’ll receive our orders from the Iraqi government,” Samir said.

He said his men filled out papers and underwent medical tests to join the police or the army.

The transfer was a long-standing demand of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, and the handover was agreed with the U.S. military in August.

Iraq’s National Security Adviser Muwaffak al-Rubaie said the government will pay the first salary at the end of the month, with the bill in Baghdad coming to around $15 million.

Control of the remaining Sahwas in central, western and north-central Iraq will be transferred gradually.

The mostly former insurgents who fought U.S. and Iraqi forces after Saddam Hussein’s fall in 2003, have helped curb the violence since late 2006 after they sided with the Americans to battle al-Qaida.

Baghdad has said 20% of them would be absorbed into the country’s security forces and that most of the rest would be considered for civilian jobs.

Some Sahwas have expressed caution about the transfer. “We are happy but also afraid,” said Abu Safa’a, a Sahwa leader. “I am concerned about those who do not join the security forces. They are going to be targets of al-Qaida.”

Takssin Saadi, 36, who is an electrician by night and a Sahwa by day, says he wants to exchange his day job for a position in the police.

“I want to be a policeman, but I think we are going to be integrated into the army, because there is an army base in the neighborhood,” he said.

If the Sahwas are not taken into the security forces or given state jobs, Iraq risks erasing security gains achieved since late last year, lawmakers and analysts say.

Kurdish MP Mahmud Othman said “the Shiite government looks at them as a political enemy. It sees them as Arab Sunni fighters who were former al-Qaida or insurgents fighting the government and they have to be punished.”

Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said “after the efforts taken by these heroic men which made several terrorist groups fade away, Baghdad is committed to absorb them into public life for rebuilding Iraq.”

U.S. commanders have also warned that those fighters who do not find employment could return to insurgent activities.

“The Sons of Iraq have paid a heavy price fighting al-Qaida with us,” the U.S. commander for Baghdad, Major General Jeffery Hammond, said last week.

“The whole world is watching what the government does with SoI transition, above all in Baghdad where it starts,” he said.

“Guys who are not successful, they could be back on streets, angry, al-Qaida will be recruiting them, and we take a step in the wrong direction.”

Joost Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group said the real problem was not the transfer, but the absorption of the militiamen.

He said if these Sahwas are not absorbed efficiently it “is very likely… the SoI will revert to insurgency as a way, probably unsuccessful, of achieving their objectives of rolling back Iranian influence and regaining power.”

Iraq has seen a downward trend in violence since the middle of last year. The number of Iraqis killed in September was 440, little changed from August.

Wire reports

4 Comments

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  rjd_jr at 08:28 AM JST - 2nd October

  Great news. Hand over control, all of it, to the Iraqis. Let them fight and die for their country, let the Iraqi government pay from their coffers of billions, not the U.S. taxpayer.

  Bring them home.

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  adaydream at 01:56 PM JST - 2nd October

  So we don't need to send all that many troops to Iraq in 2009.

  Bring the troops home. < :-)

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  WilliB at 09:20 PM JST - 2nd October

  This will blow up in their face. Fat chance that the Shiite government will tolerate the Sunni "sons of Iraq" running around with weapons. Welcome back, Al Quaida.

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  barfly08 at 04:32 PM JST - 3rd October

  Another milestone reached. Congratulations USA and George W. Bush !

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