What Does the Future Hold for Iraq's Awakening Councils?

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan 9, 2008 — -- The U.S. troop surge in Iraq has been a qualified success -- a 60 percent drop in attacks, fewer bodies found on the streets, something approaching normalcy returning to the neighborhoods of Baghdad. And there's one surprising group that has played a large role in making this happen -- the Awakening Councils.

Most Awakening Council members are Sunni Muslims, and the group includes many who had been fighting as insurgents against Americans and have now turned their guns on al Qaeda. The Awakening Councils has been central to the U.S. security plan -- it has helped drive out jihadi and al Qaeda elements and proved central to the U.S. security plan.

The fighters of the Sunni Awakening are nearly 80,000 strong, paid for by the Pentagon, and independent of the Iraqi government. The Awakening Councils started in Anbar Province more than a year ago but really took off after the surge, and now scores of groups have effectively taken responsibility for law and order in their neighborhoods.

As Gen. David Petraeus told ABC News, "Tribe after tribe rejected al Qaeda, rejected its extremism, its oppressive practices and its indiscriminate violence. And watching that take place was very, very important, because it started to point a way ahead, which was that Sunni Arab communities were finally throwing off al Qaeda, finally realizing that the time had come to try to take a place at the table instead of continuing to resist and continuing to boycott what was going on in their country."

Sheikh Sabah Atham Khadem, a former insurgent who is now mayor of Jurf al Sakhr, south of Baghdad, reflected this change of attitude. He said al Qaeda was initially welcomed in his area and told ABC News that "at the beginning, when they got into our areas they were saying that they are here to liberate the country. All Iraqis want to see their country liberated, so we welcomed them."

But with the passage of time, things changed as people started to realize that al Qaeda had their own agenda and were using increasingly brutal methods.