"For General David Petraeus, the American commander, the Awakening has
proved a powerful force with which to increase the impact of his surge
of 30,000 US troops earlier this year.
By allying the US forces with Sunnis opposed to Al-Qaeda, the general
has engineered victories over the brutal foreign fighters that seemed
almost unimaginable 12 months ago.
US-backed Sunni militias have spread eastwards from Anbar across Baghdad.
They already number 77,000, known collectively as “concerned local citizens”.
This is more than the Shi’ite Mahdi Army and nearly half the number
in the Iraqi army.
Exotically named groups such as the Knights of Ameriya and the
Guardians of Ghazaliya strut the streets in camouflage uniforms,
brandishing new AK47s that the Americans say they have not supplied.
Last week I entered the western Baghdad district of Ameriya by crossing
check-points manned by the eager “knights”. Not only had some of them
been members of groups aligned with Al-Qaeda eight weeks ago, but they
had now created a virtual enclave surrounded by concrete blast walls.
First they tired of Al-Qaeda’s beheadings, bombings and strange demands,
such as a ban on salads containing (male) cucumbers and (female) tomatoes,
and on ice cubes because the Prophet Muhammad never had them.Then the militias threw in their lot with the Americans to get rid of
Al-Qaeda, but without losing their animosity for the occupying forces
that many of them had been fighting.
It is little wonder that Shi’ite sheikhs have been queueing up
this month to air their worries about the Sunni militias to
Ahmad Chalabi, a former deputy prime minister who is now
in charge of reconstruction and who straddles the sectarian divide.Chalabi has come to an accommodation with the Sunni sheikhs of
Sab al-Boor, where Haji and his daughter lived: they will get better
services – electricity, schools, factories reopened to create jobs –
if they guarantee security for 100,000 refugees to return home from
temporary shelter in Baghdad."
-- "American-backed killer militias strut across Iraq",
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article2937104.ece