Iraqi town grows calm after fed-up citizens form informal security team
By Teri Weaver, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, May 24, 2007
HABBANIYAH, Iraq
A crescent moon was rising, the birds were ending their songs and a group of Iraqi men sat on plastic chairs in their front yard, enjoying their tea. A man rolled out his rug in a corner of the yard and said his evening prayers.
The hosts sat down with a small group of Marines who were visiting this Iraqi neighborhood watch center on Sunday evening. Beyond the small patch of green grass and newly planted rose bushes were rings of protective barriers and concertina wire. Beyond the barriers lay the neighborhoods of Habbaniyah, a war-torn city between Ramadi and Fallujah that has grown quiet in recent weeks.
That quiet is a direct result of this neighborhood watch group, a band of 400 Iraqi men who carry guns, run checkpoints and have turned over weapons stockpiles and 250 suspected insurgents to the local Marines, according to Lt. Col. Jim McGrath, commander of the 3rd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment.
McGrath, 41, of Laurel, Md., says this group of volunteers is key to improving Iraq, and he hopes the trend expands to Baghdad. That may be a hard sell, considering a nearby Iraqi army commander is suspicious of the untrained and unpaid group. The U.S. military, however, already has given it an official name: an Indigenous Counter-Insurgency Force.
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