Friction Infiltrates Sunni Patrols on Safer Iraqi Streets ("success" of the "surge?)

[groovedaddy]

(sounds like shaky ground indeed!)
BAGHDAD — In Adhamiya, a neighborhood that only a year ago was among the most dangerous in Baghdad, the violence last week seemed almost negligible. A shootout near a checkpoint left two people dead on Sunday. Another man was killed on Monday by a small bomb placed under a car.

Some residents hardly noticed.

But the deaths quickly drew the attention of the American officers stationed in the neighborhood. Both outbursts involved members of the Awakening Councils, the citizen patrols paid by the United States to fight the insurgency.

And both were seen as a worrisome sign of the tension and infighting that have rippled through the Sunni-dominated Awakening groups in recent weeks, just as the American military plans to transfer control of about half the councils to the Shiite-led government.

The American military credits the councils — whose 99,000 members are mostly Sunni Muslims, many of them former insurgents — with helping to greatly reduce violence around the country.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/world/middleeast/23awake.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin