Former insurgents feel betrayed by U.S.

McClatchy Newspapers

BAGHDAD — Abu Fatma dresses in suits now. He cuts his hair short and talks like a politician.

He looked down at his tie and his clean gray suit.

“Don’t be fooled by my clothes,” he said.

Fatma agreed to put his guns aside as part of a deal with the U.S. military last year, but the former Sunni Muslim insurgent, once known as a killer with no mercy, is still a fighter. If the Americans don’t start keeping the promises they made to his group, he’ll fight again, he said.

“All our arms are from old army caches underground; they will allow us to fight another 20 years,” said the Kurd from the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk. “I’ve told the Americans, ‘If you keep alienating the people, all the Iraqis will fight.’”

Iraq’s fragile peace already is eroding — April was the bloodiest month in a year — and it could unravel completely as the U.S. draws down its forces and prepares to leave Iraq.

One key, Fatma said, is whether the Americans and the U.S.-backed Iraqi government begin to release detainees from Sunni groups that have stopped fighting, stop pursuing the groups’ members, protect them from the Shiite Muslim-dominated Iraqi government and help them make the transition from warriors to politicians.

The U.S. hasn’t fulfilled any of its promises, he said, and he and other mostly Sunni fighters who agreed to stop fighting in exchange for help from the U.S. military think they have been betrayed.

The Americans, they said, have stood by as the Iraqi government has pursued leaders of the Sahwa — the Awakening groups — and the Sons of Iraq, the Sunni militias that the U.S. military paid to stop fighting in exchange for cash, jobs and protection.

“[Other groups] ask us, ‘What did the Americans do?’” Fatma said. “This question has become the most embarrassing question I hear. ... I’m stumped and embarrassed. I don’t have an answer. I say, ‘Don’t lay down your weapons,’ because otherwise I would be dishonest.”

He and his army made a deal based on honor, he said. Its soldiers never took money from the U.S., and they’ve kept their promise to put their weapons aside.

Now Fatma wonders whether it was all a mistake. He doesn’t want to fight again, but he watches as leaders of the Awakening groups are detained and those from other former insurgent groups remain in hiding, wanted by the Iraqi government. He was tortured and detained multiple times for his part in the resistance, and he continues to use his nom de guerre instead of his real name because he’s still worried that the government will detain him.

If he has to fight again, he will, he said.

For now, though, Fatma is a deputy in a new political group that’s reached out to Sunni insurgent groups to enter politics. He hopes to win parliament seats in Iraq’s upcoming national elections.

It’s unclear how influential he and his group are, but one American military official said that he’d seen them produce results. He thinks that Fatma’s army has some 5,000 men and is a way to reach other insurgent groups.