Blunders galore in US relations with the Sunni tribes

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The Bush administration has been so enthusiastic in touting its new alliance with Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar Province that it's easy to overlook two basic questions: Why did it take so long to reach an accommodation with the Sunnis? And is Anbar really a good model for stabilizing the rest of Iraq?

First, the what-took-so-long issue: The fact is, Sunni tribal leaders have been queuing up for four years to try to make the kind of alliances that have finally taken root in Anbar. For most of that time, these overtures were rebuffed by US officials who, not inaccurately, regarded the Sunni sheikhs as local warlords.

This disdain for potential allies was a mistake, but so is the recent sugarcoating of the tribal leaders. They are tough bedouin chiefs, sometimes little more than smugglers and gangsters. The United States should make tactical alliances with them, but we shouldn't have stars in our eyes. That tendency to over-idealize our allies has been a consistent mistake.

Like other journalists who follow Iraq, I began talking with Sunni tribal leaders in 2003. Most of the meetings were in Amman, arranged with help from former Jordanian government officials who had perfected the art of paying the sheikhs. One contact was a member of the Kharbit clan, which had long maintained friendly (albeit secret) relations with both the Jordanians and Americans. The Kharbits were eager for an alliance, even after a US bombing raid killed one of their leaders, Malik Kharbit, in April 2003. But US officials were disdainful.

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