Troops making deals, releasing insurgents

WASHINGTON – U.S. forces in Iraq are striking a variety of “handshake agreements” with Iraqi insurgents and militia groups, sometimes resulting in the release of fighters detained for attacking coalition forces, U.S. military officials said in several recent interviews.

Such informal deals mark a significant tactical shift in the Iraq war and represent a potentially risky effort to enlist former U.S. foes in the battle against hard-line militants. But U.S. military officials in Iraq are aware that successful counterinsurgency campaigns almost always involve some form of forgiveness as a means to ending the fighting and achieving political reconciliation.

Though no formal arrangement exists for granting amnesty to insurgents, the current deals amount to a kind of don’t-ask-don’t-tell pardon system. U.S. forces cooperate with former enemies in exchange for information about roadside bombs, weapons caches and sanctuaries of al-Qaida in Iraq, the mainly Iraqi group that has sought to intensify the country’s low-level civil war.

“Our engagement efforts with groups who were once adversaries is about getting them to point their weapons at al-Qaida and other extremists,” Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, said in a briefing Thursday, offering the most extensive public comments on the subject thus far. “We are ready and willing to engage with key leaders of any groups opposing AQI (al-Qaida in Iraq) or other extremist groups.” He said that U.S. forces have reached deals with a variety of groups, both Sunni and Shiite, “throughout Iraq,” listing Baghdad, the provinces of Anbar and Diyala, the towns of Taji and Iskandariyah, the Arab Jabour region and southern Iraq.

“They’re all very different, they’re all very localized,” Odierno said of the arrangements. But, he added, they tend to follow three basic steps.

First, the leaders of the groups agree to stop attacking U.S. and Iraqi forces. Then they pledge to fight al-Qaida in Iraq. Finally, U.S. and Iraqi officials try to get them to become part of Iraqi security forces, usually the police.

“There are no signed agreements,” Odierno added. “They are … handshake agreements.”

He did not offer details about the number of agreements struck, or the number of people with whom they were reached.

A senior U.S. official in Baghdad said that the number of detainees released to tribal leaders so far is “very small and … on a case-by-case basis.”

He and others noted that the number of detainees held by the U.S. military in Iraq has increased to almost 22,000, from 15,400 six months ago, when the current counteroffensive began.