The citizens of Amiriyah got fed up with al Qaida late last month, and decided not to wait for the "surge" to come to town.
A battle raged Thursday in west Baghdad after residents rose up against al-Qaida and called for U.S. military help to end random gunfire that forced people to huddle indoors and threats that kept students from final exams, a member of the district council said....
Members of al-Qaida, who consider the district part of their so-called Islamic State of Iraq, were preventing students from attending final exams, shooting randomly and forcing residents to stay in their homes, the councilman said.
But it's tough for civilians to stay in a fight like this
The Saddam-era Iraqi Army veteran recognized by the U.S. military as the leader of the group was disappointed with the lack of local participation and eager for more tangible support from American forces.
“At the beginning it was great but after we had some people killed, a lot of people dropped out,” he told me, disheartened.
He said they had started out with about 150 volunteers but now had no more than 30 fighters. As for support from the American forces, “what support are they giving us?” he asked. “You saw with your own eyes – we had six or seven martyrs.”
He said they needed not just weapons, but American help in organizing a company and then a brigade.
“We need to be stronger in this neighborhood – the people of the neighborhood. We can’t do it alone. So if we work with the American forces we can start to have security here and then we’ll work on the other neighborhoods,” he said.
And he got what he asked for. Now the two groups are working together against al Qaeda
U.S. forces have begun conducting joint patrols with Sunni resistance fighters in the Sunni enclave of Amiriyah where a group of local leaders have banded together to fight al-Qaeda, U.S. Army officials said Tuesday.
Major Chris Rogers, executive officer of the 1st Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division, responsible for Amiriyah, said soldiers acting on information provided by the fighters had detained five suspected al-Qaeda members in overnight raids and were holding them for questioning.
He said the group had decided it did not want to be known as ‘the Baghdad Patriots’ the name given to it by U.S. forces.
“They decided they want to be called freedom fighters,” Rogers said.
I guess you'd call them dissidents.
