Military Review English Edition March-April 2015 | Page 113

ANBAR AWAKENING

Response Program (CERP) funds, the U.S. military dis- emphasis on local control was antithetical to a national
bursed a total of more than U.S. $2 billion countrywide identity of the Iraqi security forces that the United
in Iraq during fiscal years 2005–2007 on things such
States had been trying so long to promote.16
as agriculture, irrigation, neighborhood beautification,
When working with one sub-national element,
electricity, and education.14
it was important for the United States to manage
In June 2007, MNF–I gained permission from the
the perceptions of other sub-national elements. No
Department of Defense to use CERP funds to pay the
matter how war torn Iraq was, the Shia and Kurds were
CLC and the SOI that, according to a U.S. government
closely watching what the U.S. government was doing
audit, cost U.S. $370 million for fiscal years 2007 to
with the Anbar Sunnis. Shia and Kurdish perceptions
2009.15 However, from spring 2006 to spring 2007, the
were important regardless of how the United States
key period for the Anbar Awakening, expenditures on
internally rationalized its Awakening program. For
the neighborhood watch units and Sahawa were much
example, to the Shia, there was a serious contradiction
more modest. It was not massive financial outlays and
of policy when the United States trumpeted Sunni mipublic improvements that accounted for the growth of
litias as a stabilizing force in Anbar while trying to limit
Sahawa in the crucial
the influence of Shia
period through
militias in the south.
spring 2007; rather,
Similarly, from the
it was the desire by
Kurdish perspective,
key tribal leaders to
the same contradicwrest control from
tion existed when
AQI and its local
the United States
affiliates and come to
lauded the virtues
power themselves.
of Sunni militias in
The Awakening
Anbar while critirequired Iraqis
cizing the Kurdish
who had a vested
militia security
interest in securing
presence in disputtheir own areas. The
ed territories in
Awakening’s emphanorth-central Iraq.
(U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Jason T. Bailey)
Iraqi police officers and members of Sahawa’s Concerned Local Citizens
sis on local empowTo overcome
(CLC) conduct a patrol 28 January 2008 with U.S. Army soldiers in Rusafa,
erment differed
objections, the
Baghdad, Iraq.
from concepts of a
United States had
“national” identity for Iraq’s security services, in which
to show that Sunni militias had state sanction in their
a recruit from one area of Iraq could be deployed anytransition into the ISF or their conversion into Iraqi
where in the country in an attempt to generate a uniPolice precincts, and later in the form of the CLC and
fied Iraqi security service. Real security in Iraq, where
SOI. Had the United States not been able to do this,
it existed, was an intensely localized affair. Residents
U.S. interlocutors would have had less credibility when
were familiar with their neighborhoods. They knew—
opposing Shia militias or asking Kurdish authorities not
and cared—who belonged and who did not. Local
to interfere in certain disputed areas. Some of the most
control allowed a recruit to be confident that he would
restless places in the world are those in which multiple
not leave his family vulnerable in a long-term absence.
people groups live inside or among artificially imposed
It also gave the security services credibility with the
national borders, and U.S. relations with any one of
people, as opposed to the precarious climate when a
those groups will affect the others.
member of another tribe or sect oversees security in
We can gainfully work with people who do not
what is effectively rival territory.
think and act like us—but we have to be ready to
It was not easy for some U.S. and Iraqi officials
defend doing so. Those who came to power in the
to come around to this way of thinking as the new
Anbar Awakening had few attributes that would please
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