US plans to train security forces in Anbar

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) A key part of the US plan revealed by the Pentagon on Friday calls for training as many as 5,000 Sunni tribal fighters in Anbar province, a mostly Sunni enclave west of Baghdad where Islamic State has besieged the Haditha dam complex and allegedly carried out massacres of Sunni tribes who refused to join them.

The Shiite-dominated Iraqi army is unpopular in Anbar, however, and is unlikely to fight hard to retake Sunni territory or to win support from Sunni residents, who see them as an occupying army, U.S. officials say. But a Sunni militia trained and armed by the U.S. could turn the tide in the province, officials said. /End/