Word: anbar
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...Michael Bills, the commander for U.S. forces in Mosul, has ruled out using so-called Concerned Local Citizens (CLC), bands of irregulars working alongside American and Iraqi troops in parts of Baghdad, Anbar Province and other areas of Iraq. "You got such a melting pot it's difficult to even fathom trying to do a CLC up here," Bills said of the Mosul area, where the population is complex mix of Iraq's ethnic and sectarian groups. The territory around Mosul has long been home to Kurds, Sunnis, Christians, Shi'ites, Yazidis and Turkmens. Bills fears any efforts to organize...
...officials are hoping Iraqi security forces are able to accomplish on their own what volunteer fighters have against the insurgency in places like Anbar Province, where a confederation of tribesmen turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq and began fighting alongside U.S. troops. An estimated 9,000 Iraqi army troops are in Mosul working with some 1,400 American soldiers. Additionally, about 9,000 Iraqi police are in the city as well. But so far Iraqi security forces have yet to make a significant display of force in Mosul...
...defeated the old-fashioned way. "You cannot kill your way out of an insurgency," Petraeus tells Time. "You're not going to defeat everybody out there. You have to turn them." And many of America's enemies were ripe for turning. Before the surge, elements of al-Qaeda in Anbar province were carrying out grisly atrocities against local Sunnis, including women and children, who refused to join the jihad against Americans. The Sunnis approached the Americans for help, and Petraeus was happy to oblige. The local uprising against al-Qaeda is known as the Anbar Awakening, and it gave...
...important factor, but so is the Iraqi ability to take over security from the American troops. Iraqi security forces have the nominal lead in nine of 18 provinces, having recently taken over from the British in Basra. A proposal to hand over security to Iraqi forces in Anbar this spring is now being considered. Anbar province has been the U.S. military's prize example in the dramatic suppression of the radical Islamists of Al Qaeda in Iraq...
...fighters have also been chased out of their former strongholds in Anbar Province and west Baghdad by so-called Awakening Councils and Concerned Local Citizens - groups of Sunni leaders and fighters that now cooperate with the U.S. military. According to Petraeus, even neighboring Sunni Arab regimes have stepped up efforts to prevent militants from entering Iraq...