Word: macfarlands
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...Conversely, enhancing the Iraqi population’s sense of autonomy has led to positive security results. In Ramadi, for example, Col. Sean MacFarland, commander of the 1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armored Division, consulted sheiks and discovered that a major concern of potential police recruits was the safety of their families, whom al-Qaida frequently intimidated and threatened to murder. MacFarland’s brigade proposed that if tribal leaders encouraged locals to join the police force, the army could construct police stations in the locals’ neighborhoods. This active collaboration expanded the autonomy of tribal leaders...
...Some al-Qaeda elements overplayed their hand in other ways as well, demanding marriage to the daughters of local sheiks, forcibly recruiting teenagers as suicide bombers and imposing Shari'a law - including a ban on Western dress and smoking. "Last fall Army Colonel Sean MacFarland, the brigade commander in Ramadi, was approached by Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi," Petraeus said. "Several of the sheik's relatives had been killed by al-Qaeda. The story is, MacFarland guaranteed Abdul Sattar's security by putting an M1 tank section in [his] front yard and [a] police station across the street...
...Sittar himself embodies the kind of difficult issues MacFarland and other U.S. commanders face in co-opting tribes in their efforts to wage war in Anbar Province. Until this summer, little distinguished Sittar from dozens of other sheiks in and around Ramadi except his reputation as a ringleader of successful highway bandits. After the fall of Saddam Hussein, Sittar is said to have made a fortune by nabbing cars moving along the unguarded roads of Anbar Province. As the insurgency began to take shape in Anbar Province in 2003, Sittar extended help to al-Qaeda in Iraq, then...
...under his banner, about 40 in all, echo the sentiment, which seems sincere enough even if other motives have factored into their decision to take up the cause now, three years into the insurgency. The U.S. is simply glad that the enemy of its enemy is now a friend. MacFarland acknowledges that the reasons Sittar and other tribal leaders have for cooperating with U.S. efforts in Anbar Province remain somewhat murky even to him. But what matters most to MacFarland are the results he's getting from Sittar as the two work together against their common enemy in Ramadi these...
...slightly improved situation in Ramadi offer hope that the arrangement will continue to work for the foreseeable future. Sittar says the tribes would never turn against Americans, and he stresses again and again his commitment to building up the Iraqi government and deferring authority, eventually, to it. MacFarland puts much faith in Sittar and takes him at his word. But MacFarland also realizes how abruptly tribal politics can change directions, turning allies into enemies. "Tribes are like countries," he says. "They don't have friends, they have interests. Right now we're both to them. Down the road, would they...