Lynch: US will continue to back Sunni tribal police even as Anbar force splinters

Above: Sheiks of the Anbar Sahwa ('Awakening') Council listen to a presentation by Prime Minister Maliki in Ramadi in March

The U.S. military will cautiously continue arming and training local Sunni Arab tribal police units to fight al Qaeda, its top generals say, even though a much-praised model in western Iraq is unravelling.

Tribal sheikhs gathered in Anbar province, once the most dangerous area in Iraq, on Wednesday to discuss abandoning the Anbar Sahwa Council, held up by Americans as an example of how Sunni Arab Iraqis have united to combat Sunni Islamist al Qaeda.

That strategy is being expanded into insurgency hotbeds in western Baghdad and Diyala and Salahaddin provinces...

Major-General Rick Lynch, who commands an area across central Iraq from Baghdad's southern suburbs to the Euphrates River, said the strategy was necessary because there were some areas in his command which had "zero, zilch" security forces.

Read the rest at Reuters/Alternet

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