U.S. Plans to Form Job Corps For Iraqi Security Volunteers

Approaching their next progress report to Congress in March, Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker do not want to have to explain that the much-hailed "awakening" is falling apart because Maliki failed to capitalize on the opportunity it presented to incorporate Sunnis into national life.

U.S. officials were encouraged when Maliki told Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno at a meeting of his national security committee Sunday that the government was willing in principle to take over at least part of the program and fund the volunteers. "I think that's a big step forward," Odierno told CNN. Maliki's only stipulation, a Western diplomat said, was that the security recruitment not be extended into overwhelmingly Shiite southern Iraq.

Maliki's Shiite advisers had long expressed deep reservations about the CLC program, and U.S. officials said his agreement indicated a willingness to break with them. "It's not so much the ministers that were the problem," said the Western diplomat. "But this Dawa clique of advisers around him were just dead set against it," he said in reference to Maliki's Dawa party.

The specifics of what the Iraqis have agreed to remained imprecise and confusing. Government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said in a telephone interview that some CLCs would be integrated into the security forces while others would be given non-security jobs. But he offered no breakdown and said they would be made "part of the security troops of Iraq, and there will be a transition period to take them and keep them integrated with the Iraqi security."

The Western diplomat said the government has agreed to take over 12,000 CLC contracts in Baghdad. At a news conference Wednesday, Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, the Iraqi military spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, said the Baghdad police would take the 12,000 volunteers and recruit an additional 45,000 in the capital.

The slow pace of government vetting is largely what caused U.S. officials to decide that the CLC program should become a job corps. With tens of thousands of current U.S. contract-holders, the Iraqi government only last week completed months-long vetting of an additional 2,000, beyond the 1,738 already given police jobs in the town of Abu Ghraib, west of Baghdad. At least 8,000 of the U.S.-paid volunteers remain in the vetting pipeline.

Tariq al-Hashimi, Iraq's Sunni vice president, said in an interview that he had not received any official word on a decision to integrate them into the government.

"Hopefully, this will be the first step to accept and accommodate al-Sahwah after months of pushing to address this issue," Hashimi said, using the Arabic word meaning "the awakening" for the CLCs. "I think we have reached a turning point. Either we go ahead and make this program sustainable for the future and encourage people to shoulder the responsibility to fight the takfiris," he said, referring to religious extremists, "or the whole process will collapse and the government will be held responsible for the consequences."

The government voiced little concern during the early days of the CLC program, when it was largely restricted to Sunni-dominated Anbar province. U.S.-supplied statistics on the volunteers do not include most of the Anbari recruits -- believed to number around 25,000 at the height of the initial "awakening" -- many of whom now serve as local police in that province.

In the absence of definitive Iraqi steps, the U.S. military is moving ahead with its own CLC transition. Only about 21,000 volunteers have said they want to join the Iraqi police, according to U.S. figures.

Ahmad Abdul Salam, a 24-year-old volunteer in Diyala province, said he supported an Iraqi government takeover. Jobs and monthly salaries, he said, would help Iraqis turn away from war, he said, adding that "the occupier will not stay forever and will leave Iraq sooner or later."

Jubair Rasheed Naif, who lives in Baghdad's Jadriya neighborhood and works with a local volunteer group, disagreed. "Definitely there will be problems of organization if the Americans aren't in charge," he said. "I expect also that the salaries will be reduced."