Soldiers hope the enemy of their enemy is their friend

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Source: McClatchy Newspapers

Soldiers hope the enemy of their enemy is their friend
Mike Drummond and Hussein Khalifa | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 31, 2007 06:40:04 AM

BAQOUBA, Iraq — Several months ago, Abu Haider was aiming his weather-beaten AK-47 rifle at American soldiers. Now it pointed to the floor.

At a makeshift police station that once served as a farmer's union hall in Baqouba, the U.S. effort to enlist former Sunni Muslim insurgents in the battle against al Qaida in Iraq coalesced this week into an uneasy truce.

Abu Haider, as he called himself, and about 80 other mostly Sunni residents — some of them former members of the 1920 Revolution Brigades, a fiercely nationalistic insurgent group — had arrived to register as security volunteers. An American soldier photographed and cataloged the recruits. The result: a neighborhood watch program with ammo.

Working with the Shiite Muslim-dominated Iraqi army, the volunteers will patrol neighborhoods and ask residents for tips on where to find insurgents. U.S. forces want to take advantage of the enmity that al Qaida in Iraq has generated among Shiites and Sunnis here and elsewhere in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad.

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