Sunnis at center of strategy for Iraq

Cooperation poses risks, experts say

WASHINGTON -- The cornerstone of the evolving war strategy to be outlined next week by Gen. David Petraeus and President Bush, a "bottom-up" revolt of Iraqi Sunnis against al-Qaida extremists, is risky and already riddled with problems, according to senior U.S. officers and Petraeus' top counterinsurgency adviser.

Fed up with al-Qaida's campaign of murder and intimidation, Sunni tribal elders and insurgents who had been fighting alongside al-Qaida and attacking American troops began last year to quit that fight and temporarily align themselves with U.S. forces. The movement, which began in the western desert province of Anbar, has spread to other predominantly Sunni provinces and some Sunni neighborhoods in Baghdad, contributing to a significant decline in violence there, U.S. officers said.

Taken by surprise that some 30,000 Sunnis are shifting from fighting Americans to cooperating with them, U.S. officials nonetheless have seized on the change as the most positive development yet in the Iraq war, and said it will be a major element in the report that Petraeus will make to Congress on Monday and Tuesday and in Bush's report to the nation later in the week.

On a visit to the heavily fortified U.S. air base at al-Asad this week, Bush hailed the "tribal revolt" as "vital to the success and stability of a free Iraq."

But the sudden growth of armed Sunni security forces amid Iraq's heated sectarian conflict carries significant risks for the United States and the Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, according to David Kilcullen, who just completed a tour as the top counterinsurgency adviser to the U.S. command in Iraq.

Writing in the online magazine Small Wars Journal, Kilcullen warned that these Sunni groups could become independent power centers in a fracturing Iraq or turn against the Baghdad government. Echoing the concerns of senior commanders, Kilcullen concluded: "It is clear that the tribal revolt could still go either way."

Kilcullen said the new Sunni security forces could help stabilize Iraq if the United States helps enforce strict controls on them, requiring that they swear allegiance to the Iraqi government, recording their fingerprints and retina scans for identification, providing advisers and trainers, and developing programs to disarm them.