SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2007
7:24 MECCA TIME, 4:24 GMT
Iraq vows to disband Sunni groups
Awakening council members are credited with reducing
violence levels in many districts [EPA]
Iraq's government has declared that it will disband
Sunni groups battling al-Qaeda in Iraq after
violence-wracked areas are calmed because it does not
want them to become a separate military force.
The statement on Saturday from Abdul-Qadir al-Obaidi,
the Iraqi defence minister, was the government's most
explicit declaration yet of its intent.
The Sunni awakening councils, or Concerned Local
Citizens, are backed and funded by the US as a vital
tool for reducing violence.
The militias are more than 70,000 strong and often
made up of former anti-government fighters.
"We completely, absolutely reject the Awakening
becoming a third military organisation," al-Obaidi
said at a news conference.
He said the groups would also not be allowed to have
any infrastructure, such as a headquarters building,
that would give them long-term legitimacy.
Al-Obaidi said: "We absolutely reject that."
Integration
The Iraqi government has pledged to absorb about a
quarter of the men into the security services and
military, and provide vocational training so that the
rest can find jobs.
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Integration would also allow Sunnis to regain lost
influence in the key defence and interior ministries.
The government has been vague about its plans and the
interior ministry has agreed to hire about 7,000 men
so far on temporary contracts, and plans to hire an
additional 3,000.
But the ministry has neither specified the length of
the contracts nor the positions the men would fill.
The Sunni irregulars have contributed to a 60 per cent
drop in violence in the last half of the year.
The infusion of thousands of US troops and a six-month
cease-fire by Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia leader, are
believed to be the other contributing factors.
Continuing violence
Although there have been far fewer attacks, violence
has by no means been eradicated.
A suicide car bomb exploded at a checkpoint manned by
Iraqi army and police in the western Baghdad
neighbourhood of Ghazaliya on Saturday afternoon,
killing four people and wounding six, a police officer
said.
On the southern outskirts of the capital, a roadside
bomb injured five bystanders near a hospital in the
town of Madin, police said.
To the north in Mosul, 360km northwest of Baghdad,
another roadside bomb targeting a passing police
patrol killed one policeman and injured two others,
local police said.
In Diyala, US soldiers discovered a Shia village that
had been systematically destroyed in an area where
al-Qaeda in Iraq has been operating in recent months.
Source: Agencies
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