As some of you are aware, the US military has formed an alliance with Sunni tribesmen in several provinces in order to combat the evil al Qaeda influence that is sweeping the country after our invasion and occupation annoyed the Saudis. Of course, it hasn’t been perfect, but sometimes you take a glass half-full and are grateful.

The real goal, of course, has always been the elimination of Iran as a regional competitor to American and Israeli power. Some whisper darkly that the Likud operatives and Nixonian revanchists who control American foreign policy still want to “get even” for the 1979 Islamic Revolution that embarrassed us when Iranian “students” seized our embassy and held the staff prisoners. But then, you know how whisper campaigns are.

Because Shiite Iran has been seen as the “real enemy” recent US efforts have been aimed at embroiling Iran in a war, leading to embarrassing claims of Iranian weaponry being supplied to the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al Sadr. Weapons such as EFPs, which have wrought havoc with our armored vehicles (in Sunni areas) were supposedly supplied by Iran. There have also been incidents of Iranian weapons and explosives labeled in English in an attempt to confuse people. Never mind the dissonant logic, just trust your government. Those Iranians are evil.

The US Army has been engaged in a campaign to whittle down the Shiite Mahdi Army in the region of Baghdad, even though Moqtada al Sadr reportedly instructed the Mahdi to stand down and not resist US forces.

Now, because the gambit of using Sunni tribesmen to combat al Qaeda has done so well in the wild west of Anbar, it’s been decided to bring these militias into Baghdad to fight the Shiite Mahdi Army.

The US is planning to move Sunni tribal militiamen into troubled areas of Baghdad to participate in American military operations, according to an Arabic-language news report, as controversy over US backing of tribal fighters boils on.

A source inside the Iraqi Interior Ministry has told Al-Melaf that the ministry has obtained information about the existence of an American plan to send Sunni tribal fighters to at least four Baghdad districts.

Al-Melaf’s correspondent reported that there are four brigades completing their training and equipment now in order to be prepared to take on their role in some of Baghdad’s areas.

These tribal fighters are to be under the direct command of the American military, and that they will participate in US forces military operations.

The tribal forces, according to al-Melaf’s correspondent will deploy in at least four areas of the capital, including Palestine Street, Waziriya, and two as-yet unspecified Baghdad districts.

The unconfirmed report, if true, could escalate the ongoing dispute between the uniformed Iraqi security forces and the US over its policy of arming Iraqi tribal fighters.

If a man had a history book, or maybe just a really good memory, he’d remark that we’ve been arming and training those tribesmen since some time late last year, somewhere between August, when COL Sean MacFarland discovered how much influence Sheikh Abdul Sittar had in Anbar, and December, when the Time article was published. In just over half a year, we’ve apparently accumulated these tribal forces, armed, paid, and trained them, and they’ve cleaned up the mess in the Wild West that we were so hysterical about last week, when people realized that the Bu$h malAdministration was intentionally conflating “al Qaeda” with nationalist insurgents.

In any case, the campaign has been wildly successful, as GEN Peter Pace announced yesterday. (See my article below “On Pondering Miracles”.) Contrast that with the 3 plus years we’ve been arming, paying, and training the Shiite national police and Iraqi Army. Those dudes are still incapable of doing much more than setting up independent death squads and capping Sunnis at checkpoints. Most of them are not able to go on independent patrols, and frequently don’t even show up when assigned to joint patrols with US forces.

(As an aside, the US Army IG should take a look at those training the tribesmen, because they’ve raised a force in six months that will now be imported into Baghdad to clean up a mess that our other trainers have spent more than three years trying to train Shiites to do. Somebody needs an “incompetent” on his OER.)

In this sense, it is significant in itself that the Interior Ministry is the source of the leak about alleged US plans to move tribal forces into the capital.

Meanwhile, the US points to its alleged successes against al-Qa'ida and other related militants in Anbar province as a model for other parts of Iraq.

In a separate report, al-Melaf writes in Arabic that a “security official” has noted that the number of corpses recovered outside of Baghdad has increased remarkably in the last three weeks.

The unidentified “security official” reportedly told the news agency and that these victims tend to be Shi'a, and that the acts of violence often happen in areas where the US has armed tribesmen.

The security official added that the Iraqi police receive “daily complaints” from the families of the victims, and from eyewitnesses, claiming that members of police forces assembled from Iraqi tribesmen, and from members of the deposed Ba'thist regime, are responsible for the killings.

The Interior Ministry has submitted a complaint to the US command on this matter, al-Melaf writes, but has not received a response.

The security official referred to the tribal forces as “new militias,” armed and supported by the Americans, al-Melaf writes.[emph added]

Ooops. Moving those Sunni “new militias” may be a bad idea, unless the goal is to enrage the Mahdi Army, and get it to boil out into the streets in armed combat.