BAGHDAD, 5 October 2007 — The Iraqi government lashed out yesterday at a US military initiative that pits civilians against Al-Qaeda fighters, accusing it of creating new militias in the war-weary nation. The accusation came as the US military detained a member of Parliament for suspected involvement with Al-Qaeda.
Prime Minister Nuri Al-Maliki’s media adviser Yasin Majeed said the government was now trying to bring armed groups set up by the US military under the control of the Iraqi Army. “There are groups which have set up checkpoints without coordinating with the government,” he said. “Apparently they coordinated with the US military. They should be placed under army control.”
Maliki and his Shiite United Iraqi Alliance parliamentary bloc this week sharply criticized what it said was a US policy of creating armed groups outside the control of the government. On Wednesday, Maliki delivered his own stinging condemnation of the US-led initiative. “There shall be no handing over of weapons away from the control of the state,” he told a news conference. “The state and the reconciliation committee formed by the government should be aware of those holding weapons.”
US Col. Robert Menti said this week that about 50,000 Iraqi civilians had joined 150 different initiatives across the country aimed at putting Al-Qaeda operatives to flight and restoring normal life to neighborhoods.
Initiatives range from powerful tribal leaders banding together to hunt down extremists to local programs in which volunteers wearing orange sashes and armed with AK-47s tip off police about suspect activity, or round up suspects.
The process was started by Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Reesha, a Sunni tribal leader in western Anbar province, who formed a powerful coalition of 42 tribes against Al-Qaeda. Abu Reesha was killed by a roadside bomb on Sept. 13 in an attack in the Anbar capital Ramadi.
According to influential MP Ali Al-Adib, the Shiite backlash against the mainly-Sunni initiative was sparked by the actions of a group of tribesmen from Anbar who were brought into Baghdad’s dangerous Saydiya neighborhood to clamp down on Shiite militias. “The groups started installing checkpoints and claiming to be members of ‘Iraq’s Awakening,’” Adib told AFP.
The US military said meanwhile that a member of Iraq’s Parliament was in US custody and being questioned after an Iraqi special forces raid on a suspected Al-Qaeda meeting. A spokesman for the Iraqi Parliament said the lawmaker was from the assembly’s main Sunni Arab bloc.
The man was held after a raid in the town of Sharqat, 260 km northwest of Baghdad, on Sept. 29.
