Word: sattar
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Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was gloomy when I met him at his compound in Ramadi last December. A few days earlier a friend of his had died, U.S. Army Capt. Travis Patriquin, the military's tribal liaison for the area. Patriquin and Sattar had worked closely together late last year, when Sattar first emerged as the leader of a band of tribes around Ramadi coming together to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Sattar, like other tribal leaders of Anbar Province, had fallen out with al-Qaeda in Iraq after years of complacency and cooperation with insurgents targeting U.S. forces...
Patriquin was Sattar's link to the U.S. military presence in his territory. The two got along quite well by all accounts. Sattar had even made Patriquin an honorary member of his own tribe. But a roadside bomb killed Patriquin and two other Americans, just as U.S. military officials and tribal leaders were seeing the beginnings of gains in their nascent partnership against insurgents...
Patriquin's loss was deeply felt on both sides. Sattar himself seemed to be taking it very hard when I was with him. A notorious showboat and media hound, Sattar waved away TIME's photographer at one point, saying he was too depressed to pose for pictures. The sheik vowed to fight on nonetheless. Indeed, he swore revenge. For a time Sattar seemed to be making good on his pledge as tribal fighters loyal to him killed off and drove out insurgents from Ramadi, where al-Qaeda in Iraq had established a headquarters of sorts in the rubble...
...hand in other ways as well, demanding marriage to the daughters of local sheiks, forcibly recruiting teenagers as suicide bombers and imposing Shari'a law - including a ban on Western dress and smoking. "Last fall Army Colonel Sean MacFarland, the brigade commander in Ramadi, was approached by Sheik Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi," Petraeus said. "Several of the sheik's relatives had been killed by al-Qaeda. The story is, MacFarland guaranteed Abdul Sattar's security by putting an M1 tank section in [his] front yard and [a] police station across the street." By mid-March, tribal elements were helping...
...Europe will shower upon Abbas, there is no guarantee that his Fatah forces can turn the West Bank into a beacon of democracy and prosperity. Israeli intelligence officers say they are worried about the possibility of warfare erupting among Fatah's many, often rival militias. And according to Abdul Sattar Kassem, a political scientist at Nablus' an-Najah National University, West Bankers will turn against Abbas if they see fellow Palestinians suffering in Gaza. "This will bring more support for Hamas in the West Bank. People will take the foreign money, but they will whisper their support for Hamas," Kassem...