Iraq Sunni tribes warn against arming Syrian opposition

When they see the plight of their Syrian kinsmen across the border, the Sunni tribesmen of western Iraq understand their rage. But with their own experience of civil war still fresh, they want to stop arms from feeding the conflict next door.   

Just a few years ago, this part of Iraq was caught in battle between al Qaeda, who used the area as a launchpad for their insurgency, and Sunni tribal leaders who wanted to kick them out.   

After countless deaths and years of street fighting, tribal leaders in what had been Iraq's most violent province wrested back control by 2008. Anbar's town of Habbaniyah now lies quietly, its people living in one-storey Spanish-style houses  dotting the dusty, tranquil flatland by the Euphrates.   

Sitting in a large, pink-walled room in a nearby village where they once discussed battle plans against al Qaeda, tribal leaders said arming Syrians against President Bashar al-Assad would fuel the conflict and raise the number of civilian deaths.   

"We do not accept that a single bullet reach the opposition from our sovereign land, from Iraq. The people and the authority have to solve it politically," Sheikh Hamad Hnein said in his home in "Coolie Camp", a village which still uses the name given to it by British troops at a nearby airbase who housed day labourers here in the 1930s.  

As ardent Sunnis, the tribal leaders who were part of the Sunni Awakening force that turned against al Qaeda, sympathize with the crisis in Syria, where the mostly Sunni population is facing a crackdown by troops loyal to Assad, who is from an offshoot sect of Shi'ite Islam.   

Many of the tribes in Western Iraq share kinship ties with Sunni tribes across the border in Syria who oppose Assad.   

"As simple people, we hope to do the impossible for the Syrian people. But this support, if it isn't rational and logical, if it's weapons and aggravation, then the people will pay the price, not the authorities," said Sheikh Khaled Khalifa.  

Iraqi officials and arms dealers have reported an influx of weapons and Sunni Muslim insurgents into Syria from Iraq, but so far it has not seemed to be an organized and sustained flow.   

Two Islamist militant groups in Iraq have rejected a call by al Qaeda to aid Syrian rebels in their revolt against Assad.   

The tribal leaders, some in western dress and others in traditional robes and headdresses, spoke languidly over cardamom-infused tea before Friday prayers. Plastic fans with fake bronze embellishments dangled from the ceiling.   

They acutely remember a time of violence. Just a hundred meters from where they sat, a suicide truck bomb killed at least 39 people when it exploded near a mosque in 2007 at the height of the sectarian warfare that engulfed Iraq.

Reuters