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Tribal Coalition in Anbar Said to Be Crumbling
Marines conduct a security patrol in Anbar province, where U.S. forces have has cooperated closely with the tribal Anbar Salvation Council.
(By Joe Raedle -- Getty Images)
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But police officials in Ramadi said they were getting very little from the central government.
"The Iraqi government has abandoned us, and we have received nothing from them except promises," said Col. Abdul Salam al-Reeshawi, head of a neighborhood police center. "More than 90 percent of the weapons and supplies come from the American forces, beginning with personal pistols and ending with medium machine guns and rocket launchers."
"When the Americans were sure of our intentions in exterminating al-Qaeda terrorists, they backed us up with weapons, cars and money," said Col. Ahmad Hamad al-Dulaimi, another top police officer in Ramadi. "Without the American forces, we couldn't do anything worth mentioning."
U.S. military officials said that virtually everyone in Anbar belongs to a tribe and that rather than ignore that fact, they were trying to exploit it. "There is an overlay of governmental structure and tribal structure, and the two, when they work well, mesh and, in a sense, complement each other in Anbar," Petraeus said.
But while the provincial police force is technically under Interior Ministry command, it is less certain whose orders police officers follow when they are out on operations.
"We take our current orders from the American Army, and we are connected to them by a center well known as the JCC," said Dulaimi, the senior police official in Ramadi. He was referring to joint coordination centers, which are U.S.-Iraqi military groups set up at the local level to monitor Iraqi security forces.
But lower-ranking members said they took their orders from tribal leaders, saying that was where their loyalties lie.
"We hate al-Qaeda, but at the same time we don't like the Americans," said Emad Jasem, 23, from the Soufiya district, north of Ramadi. Although they were cooperating with U.S. troops because of "overlapping interests," he said, "no one should jump to the conclusion that we are on the side of the Americans and support them. Our loyalty is to our community and our city."
Special correspondent Naseer Nouri in Baghdad and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
