Iraqi village takes reconciliation into its own hands

By Alaa Shahine

MUELHA, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraqi police Captain Abdul-Rahman al-Tamimi lined up the men to give them what he called the first rule on manning a road checkpoint.

"If your father comes here at night. Do not trust him. Frisk him," he said, leaning on his AK-47 automatic rifle.

"No sectarianism at this checkpoint. We are all Iraqis. Your aim is the same aim of the police: Get rid of terrorism."

While the majority of neighborhood police units across Iraq are made up exclusively from Sunni or Shi'ite Muslims, this unit in the village of Muelha in Babel province south of Baghdad is an unusual example of efforts towards national reconciliation.

The 11 men present, wearing reflective yellow belts and armed with AK-47s, are members of four tribes from the two Muslim sects that have been locked in a vicious cycle of tit- for-tat violence that has killed tens of thousands of people.

Their tribal sheikhs say they are fed up with slow progress towards reconciliation by Shi'ite and Sunni politicians and the fighting between Shi'ite militias and Sunni al Qaeda gunmen, who have infiltrated their communities to recruit fighters.

Two joint checkpoints were set up in religiously mixed Muelha last week to control a road cutting through crop fields dividing Sunni and Shi'ite communities in the village. Militants from both sects have been using the road to launch attacks.

"There was some tension that the killings caused," said Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Getchell, commander of the 2nd Battalion of the 502 Infantry Regiment, part of the 3rd Infantry Division Taskforce.

"But I think that them coming together, and manning checkpoints together, has eased some of that tension," he said.

U.S. and Iraqi officials credit neighborhood police units, along with the deployment of 30,000 extra U.S. troops, for a big drop in bloodshed across Iraq in recent months.

In the provinces south of Baghdad, 26,000 men have enrolled in the neighborhood police patrols. Out of 96 units, only 16 are mixed, while 50 are exclusively Sunni and 30 are Shi'ite, the U.S. military says.

ASSASSINATION

The incident that led to the creation of the two joint checkpoints in Muelha was the assassination of Emad al-Gertani, a prominent Sunni tribal sheikh more than a month ago by a suspected al Qaeda suicide bomber from a fellow Sunni tribe.

The killing sparked tension among Sunnis in the village. Some of them also accused Shi'ite tribes of allowing the assassin to pass through their areas.

"That was a very tense time for the people of Muelha," Getchell told Reuters. "I was very concerned that it would trigger ... (mutual) accusations and violence."