Concern Over ‘Concerned Local Citizens’

<div class="mini gray">Illustration by: Matt Mahurin</div>

<p><img class="left" width="165" height="165" alt="Nationalsecurity.jpg" src="/files/washingtonindependent/testing-icon-with/Nationalsecurity.jpg" /></p>

<p>When last we left the Concerned Local Citizens — the mostly-Sunni militias of ex-insurgents that we have euphemistically given a name befitting an old ladies’ neighborhood coffee klatch — the U.S. military was admitting that its system for ensuring they were only going after al-Qaeda was… <a title="trust" id="wk.y" href="../../../view/it-boils-down-to">trust</a>. But, naturally, there’s more.</p>

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One of the larger questions about the CLCs, as the military calls them, is whether the Shiite-dominated Maliki government will give the mostly-Sunni militiamen jobs in the Iraqi security services. The outgoing ground commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, recently <a title="told" id="mxfl" href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-fg-usiraq14jan14,1,352127.story?coll=la-headlines-frontpage">told</a> the Los Angeles Times, &quot;One of our biggest risks are CLCs and which way they’ll go.&quot; By which he meant: will the CLCs join the government, or fight against it — and U.S. forces as well?</p>

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<a title="Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security" id="g2j-" href="http://www.cnas.org/en/cms/?893">Colin Kahl of the Center for a New American Security</a> has an informed guess. As we were taking about the surge for <a title="my piece" id="itjl" href="../../../view/security-gains-from">my piece</a>, he mentioned the following chilling piece of scuttlebutt: &quot;I’ve heard multiple sources, inside and outside of the military and the administration, say they feel they’d be lucky to get 20 percent integration&quot; of the CLCs into the Iraqi security forces. That means &quot;you’re looking at something like 50 to 60,000 guys not integrated,&quot; Kahl said. &quot;Will these guys be satisfied as trash collectors?&quot; For that matter, the CLCs becoming trash collectors is contingent on the Iraqi government <i>paying them</i> to do so, and the Maliki government’s track record on such matters ain’t good.</p>

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What’s more, the idea that the CLCs who <i>don’t</i> get integrated into the Iraqi Security Forces will disarm flies against the face of four years of experience. Not a single Iraqi militia has been demobalized. None. There’s even a law on the books demanding it, called Order 91. No one cares. The people in charge of implementing that law have militias of their own. It’s very easy to create a militia. Dismantling one — that’s a different story altogether.<br />

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