California Conservative

The US military has notched another impressive victory in the fight for reconciliation. Yesterday, the US military brokered a deal between 18 tribal and local leaders in volatile Diyala province.

The effort centered on the city of Khalis, near Baqouba, where U.S. and Iraqi troops are conducting an ongoing house-to-house sweep of the city. Earlier this week, around 75 sheiks and local leaders met at the Iraqi Army Headquarters in Khalis to air long-standing grievances with each other, suggest security improvements and pledge to work against al-Qaida in Iraq and other insurgent groups.

That’s a large contingent of local leaders to assemble in one place and air interfactional grievances. By itself, that’s a monumental task. It’s the first step in the reconciliation process, though. It had to be done before anything else could be done.

The good news is that these sheiks and local leaders have reached this agreement and they’re working to improve the security of their people. Once someone takes ownership of a problem, the odds that the problem will persist are minimal. The other good news to this agreement is that the Iraqi military was involved in this. That’s great news, especially with so many in Congress saying that the Iraqis need to step up.

As has been the case in other areas, many local residents have chafed at the continuing violence sponsored by the insurgents and the hard-line Islamic law imposed in some areas. In Baqouba, in particular, residents were shocked when local militant groups tried to enforce a no-smoking law.

The fact that these tribes have rejected the Al-Qa’ida way of life is another encouraging sign. By doing that, they’ve said with their actions that they despise the terrorists’ oppressive lifestyle.

“The sheiks are the backbone of Diyala,” U.S. Army Col. David Sutherland, commander of U.S. and Iraqi troops in the area, was quoted as saying. “We are not 25 major tribes with 100 sub-tribes; we are one tribe.”

Unanimity of purpose in wartime is essential to winning. Let’s see how quickly this reconciliation pays off.

Technorati Tags: Baqouba, Reconciliation, Diyala, US Army, Iraqi+Army, AQI, Terrorists

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Friday, July 27th, 2007 at 4:55 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Iraq, Military, Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.