Word: clc
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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...
American brass is banking on the Iraqi government filling that vacuum. The U.S. general in charge of training Iraqi forces said Friday that the Iraqi government will be taking more of a role in running the CLC program. "The government of Iraq is very much a part of the program,' said Lt. Gen. James Dubik, commander of the Multinational Security Transitional Command in Iraq, "and at some point they will run this program...
...rambling and hyperbolic Lt. Col. Mohammad doesn't hold back. The chief of the Iraqi Police in Saha says that CLC members beat, arrested and killed a group of men last month. "We know that some of the CLC guys were criminals. But now we will include them in the Iraqi security forces." As much as he complains about the CLC, Mohammad reserves his biggest criticisms for the National Police (not to be confused with Saha's own Iraqi police), with their paramilitary ethos and long history of pulling Sunni families from their cars or homes and shooting them execution...
...Baghdad. "I want to feel like I'm in one Iraq - with one army, one security force - not these different groups," says Sabeha Hassun, who owns a shop selling women's beauty and clothing supplies just up the street from an American military outpost where a double murder - of CLC members - happened in broad daylight last week...
...there is a checkpoint for a different group: Iraqi police, Pesh Merga, Badr corps. Most Iraqis have two ID's, one [so they can pass for Shi'ite] and one [so they can pass for Sunni]." The checkpoints serve at least one purpose, says Sheikh Ali, the Shi'ite CLC Godfather of Saha market: the guards burn the neighborhood's trash at night to keep warm. "The goats are starting to complain about that," he jokes...