|
After US goes, Iraqi city faces vacuum
ISKANDARIYAH, Iraq The two sides squared off in a brightly patterned tent big enough to hold about 100 angry Sunni Muslim clan chiefs, the Shiite Muslim police chief, two Shiite government officials and overseeing all one frustrated senior U.S. Army officer.In the Arab world, such tents are put up for weddings, wakes or tribal gatherings where the local sheik hears grievances. The "sheik" in this case is Lt. Col. Michael Getchell, and the tent is the new battleground for American troops given the job of nation-building, city by city, in an Iraq battered by five years of violence. It's uncharted territory for U.S. commanders. Instead of going into battle, they are dishing out cash to businesses to generate jobs, listening to pleas to free relatives in American custody and trying to settle bitter rivalries between Shiites and Sunnis as Getchell was doing in that tent on the edge of Iskandariyah, a mixed-population city with a complex tribal structure. "Four or five years ago, we did not know any of this," said Capt. Michael Penney, 34, a soft-spoken Texan under Getchell's command who is on his second tour in Iraq. "It's challenging to adjust. Last time I was here, it was strictly security, chasing the enemy, but the way things are now, I had to adjust or risk failure." To see how the U.S. military is handling its new duties, The Associated Press embedded this reporter three times in recent months with a unit that shared a downtown post with Iraqi police in this city of 150,000 people along a busy highway 30 miles south of Baghdad. Iskandariyah was once one of the country's bloodiest warfronts. But the violence began to wane in mid-2007 after the U.S. troop surge and the decision by some tribal leaders and insurgents to cooperate with the Americans. For the past year, Getchell's troops from Fort Campbell, Ky., have struggled to hold the fragile peace together. So far it's working, despite occasional flare-ups. But American involvement in almost every aspect of daily life has expanded the vacuum to be filled when U.S. forces leave. Most of the American troops based here have moved to the edge of the city, and the last soldiers will leave Iskandariyah to head home next month. Some U.S. officers express confidence the calm will survive their departure, but the city's Sunni and Shiite sheiks are far more nervous. The opposite views are no surprise. While the Iraqis and Americans speak of each other as friends, and exchange hugs and kisses in Arab fashion, they often seem to be talking past each other. The U.S. officers are all about team spirit and getting down to business, while the Iraqis take tribal perspectives, tend to wander around the subject, and can be loose with the truth to smear a rival or gain advantage for their clan. Rest at link Posted by: ed 2008-11-11 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=254916 |