2 BAGHDAD TALES FROM THE WAPO

Both point to the continuing sectarian nature of the conflict in Iraq.

One about the Shia:

Many Trainees Are Complicit With 'Enemy Targets'
By Joshua PartlowWashington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 4, 2007; Page A10

BAGHDAD -- The platoon of American soldiers was pinned down in an alley outside the holiest Shiite shrine in western Baghdad's Kadhimiyah neighborhood. Machine-gun fire sprayed from apartment windows and rooftops with a deafening clatter. The troops were 15 yards from their Humvees, but they didn't know if they could survive the dash.

Less than a mile away, a powerful Shiite parliament member stood inside an American military base, in the office of the Iraqi army brigade commander responsible for Kadhimiyah. The Americans had called for Iraqi army backup, but according to the brigade commander and American officers, the lawmaker would help ensure that no assistance arrived from the Iraqis that crucial day.

While no Americans were injured, it marked the start of the deterioration of security in Kadhimiyah, once one of Baghdad's safest neighborhoods. It also made plain -- "the first time the complicity was staring us right in the face," as one American soldier put it -- that the Iraqi army's problem in the area was about more than just being under-trained or ill-equipped.

...the Iraqi army in Kadhimiyah is so thoroughly infiltrated with Mahdi Army militiamen that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers say it is close to useless.

"The unit is basically combat-ineffective. We're trying to get them to develop enemy targets, but the enemy targets are their friends," Harty said. "I think the most they've ever found is one rifle, which is very ridiculous, and a waste of time."

The other about the Sunnis:

Signing Up Sunnis With 'Insurgent' on Their Résumés

By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, September 4, 2007; Page A11

The American military recruited Qaisi and thousands like him to fight the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, but Qaisi's most feared enemies are soldiers in the Iraqi army's Muthanna Brigade, and his allegiance does not lie with the government he is now being trained to serve.

In the villages around the Abu Ghraib district on the western outskirts of Baghdad, American commanders have achieved their goal of enlisting more than 1,000 of these local Sunni recruits into the Iraqi security forces.

"We don't trust this government. This government belongs to Iran," said the 29-year-old former security guard for a soft-drink company. "The Iraqi government knows we are innocent guys, but they want to kill us."

The soldier agreed that security had improved greatly in the area since the Volunteers began cooperating, but asked what would follow the defeat or ouster of al-Qaeda in Iraq: "I think there is some risk of them being Volunteers by day and terrorists by night."