Turning insurgents into informants

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A captured insurgent suspect in the town of Aitha in northern Iraq waits to be transported to jail as Iraqi police look on. Soldiers with 1st Squadron, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment say that a reconciliation program that has persuaded some insurgents to lay down their arms has produced valuable intelligence on others who refuse to stop fighting.


Turning insurgents into informants
By Drew Brown, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Friday, February 15, 2008

SHARQAT, Iraq — Reconciliation efforts over the past two months have persuaded at least a dozen key regional Sunni insurgents in north-central Iraq to lay down their arms and stop fighting, according to U.S. military officers here.

The amnesty offers have also contributed to the deaths of at least two insurgent figures who had orchestrated numerous attacks on U.S. and Iraqi forces in Ninevah and Salahuddin provinces.

The overtures have severely disrupted the ability of al-Qaida in Iraq and other Sunni insurgent groups to use the upper Tigris River valley as a safe haven to stage attacks in the northern city of Mosul, which remains a stronghold for Sunni militants, U.S. military officers said.

They also illustrate how U.S. forces are exploiting weaknesses in the insurgency in northern Iraq, which has been torn by mass defections of Sunni tribesmen and put on the defensive by the “surge” of U.S. troops in the past year.

Several U.S. military officers said the strategy has enabled U.S. and Iraqi security forces to cultivate sources among some former Sunni militants who have provided information on al-Qaida in Iraq, as well as their former colleagues within other insurgent groups.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=52494