'Sons Of Iraq' Beg Obama To Keep U.S. Troops There

Source Article HERE.

From 'Bloomberg': Omar Jaffar spends his days helping keep the streets of his Baghdad neighborhood safe for his fellow Sunni Muslims. He has an urgent message for President-Elect Barack Obama: "Don't take American soldiers away just yet," Jaffar said in his home in the capital's Adhamiyah section. They are needed for "maybe five years. Who knows? We need them."

Jaffar, 19, belongs to the Sons of Iraq, a paramilitary group of about 100,000 once-hostile Sunni Muslims that the U.S. pays to help pacify Baghdad and other regions. Though allied with the American military, the Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki views the group with suspicion, expressing fears that it may become a belligerent militia.

That leaves the Sons of Iraq suspended between competing agendas: an American one aimed at minimizing violence and an Iraqi government goal to marginalize potential internal enemies, said Terrence K. Kelly, a senior operations researcher for the Rand Corp. in Pittsburgh. "They would be exposed" if U.S. forces left, he said. "Iraqi security forces could come get them. That's their big worry."

Jaffar and about 1,800 fellow Sons of Iraq members in Adhamiyah help the U.S. hunt terrorists. The neighborhood once harbored members of Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network. Before the Sunnis began joining forces with the U.S., it also was a bastion for Sunni Muslim insurgents who bedeviled American forces with ambushes and roadside bombs.

Read more HERE.