In Iraq Patience Pays , Quitting Costs.

Good news trickles in from Anbar Province.  Tribes in Iraq are joining the U.S. forces to fight against al Qaeda.  CSM was the only media I could find that has this story, complete with pictures.Sheikh Abdel-Sattar Abu Risha: Head of the Al Anbar Salvation Council of tribes that oppose Al Qaeda, he claimed Tuesday that tribesmen killed Al Qaeda in Iraq's leader. 

Like dominoes, tribes reeling from a campaign of killing and intimidation by Al Qaeda have been joining, one by one, the US-led fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq in this Sunni Arab province. Last month, US Gen. David Petraeus told Congress that violence was down significantly here and that the tribes were key to the transformation.

 And this . . .

Message: US military poster shows Sheikh Abu-Risha staring down figures representing Al Qaeda in Ramadi.

But winning over the Bu-Fahed tribe was a coup. It had been one of Al Qaeda’s staunchest supporters, and traces its lineage to the birthplace of the puritan form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism in the Saudi Arabian province of Najd. It formally threw its lot behind Sheikh Abdel-Sattar Abu Risha.

and to the democrats in Washington who just want to leave Iraq . . .

Anbar’s provincial seat, Ramadi, which Al Qaeda declared in October to be the capital of its so-called Islamic state in Iraq, is now firmly in the grips of US and Iraqi forces.

US Capt. Jay McGee, intelligence officer with the 3rd Battalion, 69th Armor Regiment from Fort Worth, Texas, says that the motivation for the tribes to join the council is largely self-serving.

“Everyone is convinced Coalition forces are going to leave and they are saying, ‘We do not want Al Qaeda to take control of the area when that happens.’ For them, Al Qaeda is a greater threat long term.”

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