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U.S. offers jobs to blunt insurgency

HUDA, Iraq -- Children skip across a stream of untreated sewage on a side road, trash piles up in a dusty lot and there are few desks -- and even fewer chairs -- in the village school's dark, cold classrooms.

Huda, a Shiite village of about 3,000 southeast of Baghdad, sits on the edge of a region the U.S. military and locals say is dominated by insurgents and al-Qaida in Iraq. Here, many men are out of work, and the village is in desperate need of basic services.

Grinding poverty and disillusionment with the government and U.S.-led coalition can create fertile ground for insurgent or militia recruitment.

But the U.S. military believes it has a way to help residents and the village by providing jobs that also could dim the allure of militancy.

Modeled on a program under which the U.S. pays armed groups who turned against al-Qaida in Iraq, the military has begun recruiting villagers to improve sanitation, do repairs and pick up trash.

"It's a pilot program," said Capt. John Horning, a 36-year-old company commander stationed in the area. "We'll see how it works."

Each person hired will receive a salary of $300 a month, the same amount as members of the mainly Sunni armed groups known as Awakening Councils who now protect their neighborhoods with the help of American and Iraqi forces.

The Awakening Councils -- 70,000-strong and growing fast -- have contributed to a 60 percent decrease in violence across Iraq since June, along with a six-month cease-fire called in August by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for his Mahdi Army militia and an extra 30,000 U.S. troops sent into Baghdad.

"Here where security is better, we need the return to normalcy," Horning said. "We're putting dollars into the economy, to get people working. People see that there's hope, that there's an alternative."

But what happens when American forces leave?

"If we have a strong area and government, then there will be no problem," insists Sheik Zeidan Hussein Ali al-Masoudi. "The Americans are visitors. We must do something for ourselves. We want to live free. All Iraqis need is for the (foreign) forces to leave as soon as the work is done. ... All Iraqis want this."

The latest in Iraq

• U.S. admissions of Iraqi refugees are nose-diving amid bureaucratic in-fighting despite the Bush administration's pledge to boost them to roughly 1,000 per month, according to State Department statistics. The United States said it would improve processing and resettle 12,000 Iraqis by Sept. 30., but the number admitted has slid from 450 in October to 362 in November and 245 in December.
• Iraq's oil output climbed in November and the ministry in charge of production forecast on Wednesday that it could surpass 3-million barrels per day by the end of 2008. The prewar production was 2.58-million barrels per day.
• Four people were killed and 23 injured when a female suicide bomber blew herself up at a police checkpoint in Baquouba.

[Last modified January 3, 2008, 03:12:23]