Tribal Coalition in Anbar Said to Be Crumbling

Welch, a U.S. Army Reserve officer in Baghdad who specializes in tribal and religious affairs, said that "you will see, I think, in the next few days a complete severing" of relations between Abu Risha and other members of the council, and the formation of a new group.

Suleiman said 12 Anbar tribal leaders have signed an agreement to form a new coalition that would result in the dissolution of the Anbar Salvation Council and the purging of Abu Risha. "Those people have thrown themselves in the arms of the U.S. forces for their own benefit," he said.

Suleiman and Welch alleged that Abu Risha runs an oil smuggling ring and that his followers have worked as highway bandits on Anbar's roads, activities in which many tribal groups engage.

Abu Risha "made his living running a band of thieves who kidnapped and stopped and robbed people on the road between Baghdad and Jordan. That's how he made his fortune," Welch said. Tribesmen accuse Abu Risha of passing false information to U.S. forces about other tribal leaders in order to eliminate business rivals, Welch said.

Abu Risha denied these allegations and said Suleiman's work in Baghdad left him out of touch with day-to-day affairs in the province.

"I am in Anbar and I am the first fighter in Anbar. And what they are saying about it is jealousy and no more than jealousy. They are the enemies of success," he said.

Another member of the council, Raad Sabah al-Alwani, said he had not heard about Suleiman's complaints about the council or plans to dissolve it. "Impossible -- I am the head of the council for Ramadi," he said, referring to Anbar's provincial capital. "The Salvation is like one family. There are no problems between us and the members."

A U.S. Marine spokesman in Anbar, Maj. Jeffrey Pool, said that "we are not detecting any of the indicators of a major restructuring in Sahawa al-Iraq," using another name for the group. "The view from Baghdad will differ from the view from Ramadi."

The dangers of embracing tribal groups are perhaps most vividly illustrated by the U.S. experience in Afghanistan. There, the United States and its allies, particularly Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, armed Afghan mujaheddin groups, often organized along tribal lines, in their fight against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s. After the Soviets withdrew in 1989, those weapons helped fuel a civil war and subsequently became part of the arsenal used by the Taliban, Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda and other groups in the current fight against U.S. forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Eight policemen loyal to tribal leaders in the Anbar Salvation Council said in interviews that the U.S. military was giving them weapons, money and other materials such as uniforms, body armor, helmets and pickup trucks. In addition, the United States was paying salaries of up to $900 a month to tribal fighters, they said.

Col. Steve Boylan, a spokesman for Petraeus, said that supplies and funding for the police force came from the Iraqi government's Interior Ministry. "They may think they're getting paid by us because we're working with them so heavily," he said.

Abu Risha said that the U.S. military has given the police pickup trucks, Russian-made machine guns and pistols, and that salaries were paid by the Interior Ministry.