[Peace-discuss] Buying off the insurgency

[Brussel Morton K.]

"All the Americans are doing is paying them just to be quiet," said  
Haider al Abadi, a leading member of Maliki's Dawa political party  
and the head of the economic and investment committee in the  
parliament. The Iraqi government, he said, can't "justify paying  
monthly salaries to people on the grounds that they are ex-insurgents."

The best that most of them could expect is to be placed in vocational  
training for trades such as bricklaying and plumbing, along with a  
slew of other unemployed people.

The government has allocated $150 million for such training. So far  
this year, the U.S. military has spent $303 million on Sons of Iraq  
salaries.

American officials declined to be interviewed on the issue without a  
pledge of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the subject. But  
privately they expressed concern.

"If they only take a portion of them it's possible they will return  
to their insurgent ways," one senior intelligence analyst said,  
acknowledging that most of the men now called the Sons of Iraq had  
been insurgents, for al Qaida in Iraq and other groups that  
considered themselves resistance fighters against Americans.

He called the issue the "long-term threat."



 From http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/21-5
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