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US campaign against ISIL brings flashes of deja vu
Phil Sands, September 13, 2014
It was around 2007, when the predecessors to ISIL had reached the peak of their power, that US military commanders acknowledged airstrikes and ground troops alone could not defeat the group.
The Americans, at the time still deployed in Iraq, asked the Sunni tribes of the western deserts to help get the job done. And it was – with a ruthless, low-tech efficiency.
Iraqi tribal forces, handed rifles and modest salaries by Washington, swept through areas that had been held by Islamist extremists – often with those same tribes’ connivance – and cleared them out.
US forces quietly admitted that Sunni tribesmen knew much better than they did where the most hardline members of the Al Qaeda franchise were based, and that they were able to deal with them in a currency both sides well understood.
No drones, no courts, no trials, no secret renditions or embarrassing publicity from Guantanamo Bay.
Instead, a bullet in the back of the head, a shallow grave – and no questions asked. http://www.thenational.ae/world/middle-east/us-campaign-against-isil-brings-flashes-of-deja-vu
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