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Sunni Guards Brace For New Bosses

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The Associated Press

Published: September 26, 2008

BAGHDAD - The quarrel didn't last long.

Angry Sunni fighters temporarily abandoned their checkpoints in a western Baghdad neighborhood after Iraqi soldiers briefly detained some of their colleagues, whose U.S.-backed patrols have helped curb violence.

The dispute last weekend, although relatively minor, points to a deeper and more complex test Wednesday, when the Shiite-led government will assume authority over the Sunni fighters, also known as Sons of Iraq.

Many of the fighters are former insurgents and suspect their new masters want retaliation rather than reconciliation. Much of Iraq's ceaseless violence in 2006-07 was sectarian-based, with Sunnis and Shiites launching horrific attacks on each other.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has vowed to reward those who joined in the fight against al-Qaida in Iraq, which lost most of its Sunni strongholds when local tribesmen turned against the extremist group and joined the U.S. payroll. The United States considers the initiative a test of the government's willingness to reconcile with Sunnis.

But tens of thousands of mostly Sunni neighborhood guards - a key element in the sharp drop in attacks in Iraq since last year - are deeply uneasy about the Iraqi government. Some Sons of Iraq groups, also labeled Awakening Councils, have complained about arrests and harassment by police and soldiers.

"They want to occupy checkpoints instead of us," said Wahab al-Zubaie, an Awakening Council spokesman in the western Baghdad district of Abu Ghraib, where the weekend dispute took place in the neighborhood of al-Hamdaniya.

Al-Zubaie warned security could deteriorate if Sunni fighters are sidelined because they know "movements of al-Qaida members and their whereabouts" better than government forces do.

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