SUNNI ARAB'S POWER STRUGGLE IN IRAQ!

By Roger Hardy - BBC Middle East analyst.

They are about 70,000-strong. They have brought a new degree of calm to Sunni areas of Iraq - and, for US President George W Bush, they represent one of the few success stories of 2007. The self-styled Awakening Councils, made up of former insurgents who have switched sides to fight al-Qaeda, are a key element in the current US strategy in Iraq.

But among the country's competing factions and militias they are winning distinctly mixed reviews. In security terms, says Joost Hiltermann, Iraq analyst with the International Crisis Group, they have undoubtedly helped reduce the violence in some parts of the country. "They've brought quiet back to Anbar province and Sunni neighbourhoods of Baghdad," he says.

In Anbar the councils are made up of tribesmen who have turned against al-Qaeda because of its brutal Taliban-style rule in areas where it held sway. In Baghdad they comprise former insurgents, including ex-Baathists.

Allies, enemies or rivals?

But while welcomed by some Iraqis for restoring calm to their neighbourhoods, these groups have also stirred up resentment, mistrust and outright hostility. Al-Qaeda has denounced the leaders of the Awakening Councils as traitors and targeted them for assassination. In several recent cases the Americans have been unable to protect their new Sunni allies - one reason why they have launched a new offensive, dubbed Phantom Phoenix, to "pursue and neutralise remaining al-Qaeda in Iraq and other extremist elements".

Meanwhile, the Shia-dominated government is distinctly wary of the Awakening movement. It fears the Americans are arming and funding groups who represent a potential threat. Tribesmen are famously independent-minded. Having switched sides once, might they not do so again - especially when the Americans begin to draw down their forces later this year?

"Shia fear and mistrust towards these people is huge," says Mr Hiltermann. And, for their part, the Sunnis of the Awakening movement mistrust a government they tend to see as a proxy of Iran. A further complication is that the newly emergent Sunni forces want a political reward for joining the fight against al-Qaeda. That means more jobs and services in their areas - and a bigger slice of the political pie.
And it sets them on a collision course with Tawafuq, the main Sunni bloc in the parliament in Baghdad.

"There is a Sunni power struggle," says Ahmed Hashim, a professor at the US Naval War College and author of a study of the Iraq insurgency. "Tawafuq sees the councils as muscling in on its political preserve."

In other words, while the Awakening movement has brought a new degree of calm to Sunni areas, its longer-term impact is far less clear. Are the Americans unwittingly creating a new set of Sunni militias of uncertain loyalty? And will their emergence aggravate, rather than resolve, the question of who speaks for Iraq's aggrieved - and fragmented - Sunni community?
BBC NEWS REPORT.