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A Dark Side to Iraq 'Awakening' Groups

A Dark Side to Iraq 'Awakening' Groups: "The thin teenage boy rushed up to the patrol of U.S. Soldiers walking through Dora, a shrapnel-scarred neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, and lifted his shirt to show them a mass of red welts across his back.

He said he was a member of a local Sunni 'Awakening' group, paid by the U.S. military to patrol the district, but he said it was another Awakening group that beat him. 'They took me while I was working,' he said, 'and broke my badge and said, 'You are from Al Qaeda.' '

The Soldiers were unsure what to do. The Awakening groups in their area of southern Baghdad could not seem to get along: They fought over turf and, it turned out in this case, one group had warned the other that its members should not pay rent to Shiite 'dogs.'"

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