Kharma, Iraq
In Iraq's Anbar province most of the U.S. military has moved beyond counterinsurgency and into "stability operations"--but not Company K, 3/3 of the Marines 6th Regimental Combat Team. Not entirely. This flat, grassy, and serenely rural farm country a few miles northeast of Fallujah, near the town of Kharma, is one of the few areas of Anbar province that still has some insurgency left to counter.

In the three days before I arrived for my stay with 3/3, the company had found seven IEDs on the roads within a mile of their tiny base. The various platoons on patrol, billeted in local houses, were still taking small-arms and mortar fire nightly.

Captain Jaisun Hanson, the company's sober and soft-spoken commanding officer, invited me to join him on a visit to several new checkpoints of the local Iraqi Civilian Watch--the informal neighborhood guards that have been springing up in many parts of Iraq. A small convoy took us to collect "Colonel" Salam, a former officer in the Iraqi Army, nephew of a sheik who was recently murdered by al Qaeda, and now a rising leader in the area. Salam has taken the lead in organizing the ICW in this little corner of Iraq.

Salam seems to have little idea how crucial his efforts are to the Coalition. The Marines here are "pushing out" from the area around Fallujah towards the operational "seam" between their jurisdiction and the Coalition forces of the Baghdad military region to the north and west. In a methodical application of "clear, hold, and build," the Marines are advancing a "clearing" line and backfilling it for the "hold and build" with Iraqi Security Forces and an array of civil affairs and reconstruction activities--including, crucially, the ICW.

When the major tribes of western Iraq pledged to join forces against the al Qaeda scourge, many sheiks pledged the young men of their families to organize for local protection. The commanders of the Marine Expeditionary Force have used the example of these leading sheiks to convince others to do the same. In particular, they have methodically courted each of the tribes around Anbar's two most important cities--Ramadi and Fallujah. This has been vital to establishing a "defense-in-depth" of the hard-won peace that now reigns in both cities -- formerly the redoubts of the Sunni insurgency.

It's a great start. But as with any great endeavor, the road ahead is mostly obscured by daunting challenges. During my visits, I observed three immediate problems: first, how to credential the participating individuals so that they are in some minimal sense "official"; second, how to make sure they are armed well-enough to be effective; and third, how to keep a force meant to retard civil strife from becoming an accelerants of it.

Proper credentials

The first night out we ran straight into the first of these problems at the newest of the checkpoints. Several of the ICW were armed but were missing some critical piece of identification.

The most basic kind of neighborhood watch is now operating in Anbar, requiring just a rudimentary credentialing of willing participants: their personal information and biometrics (fingerprints and retina-scans) are collected and entered into a central Coalition database for record-keeping and basic vetting. They are then given an official ICW identity card and a fluorescent yellow reflective belt.