Word: clcs
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...disintegration of the Iraqi security forces, al Qaeda-Iraq regaining lost ground, [and] a marked increase in violence." "American troops," said the President during his State of the Union speech on Monday, "are shifting from leading operations to partnering with Iraqi forces." But when it comes to CLCs, the transition will be difficult because the central Baghdad government does not trust these bands of armed former insurgents. "The Maliki government is not comfortable with these forces," says Korb...
...last few months. "We're paying them and training them so they're effective," says Lawrence Korb, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, of America's new partners, many of whom are former insurgents. But there are signs that these groups, called Concerned Local Citizens (CLCs) by the U.S. military, are already turning on each other in competition for territory. "There is some inter-militia fighting," said John Jones, State Department Provincial Reconstruction Team leader for Diyala province...
Jones, who was visiting Washington last month, says that the fighting has "by and large" not entangled coalition forces in hostilities. But what concerns officials is how to keep the CLCs in line as the U.S. presence recedes. President George W. Bush said in the State of the Union address that 20,000 troops will pull out of Iraq in the coming months. "When the American troops get out, you will have a vacuum. These guys will filter into it," says a U.S. official in Iraq about the CLCs. "It sounds good now because they are not shooting...
There are about 70,000 Iraqis in the CLCs, armed and funded by the U.S. But the Iraqi government has agreed to eventually take over the program, said General Dubik, with the plan to vet and absorb about 30% into the Iraqi police or Iraqi military. So what about the roughly 50,000 that would leave unemployed? "The others will go into some other civil service corps, vocational training or other job-related training," said, Dubik. "That system is still in development." The question is, will the unintegrated CLCs hold on to their weapons and potentially cause havoc? Korb asks...
...militias are already showing that they can take on a life of their own. "Some CLCs are street gangs," says the U.S official in Iraq, "somebody crosses into somebody else's territory, he's going to get shot." Already, there are cases of these neighborhood watch groups turning on each other in a contest for influence and territory. Diyala PRT leader Jones says that CLCs have helped calm the restive provincial capital Baquba in the short term. No easy task, as the city was the headquarters of al-Qaeda in Iraq as recently as last year. "I know in Baquba...