Iraq’s unpaid Awakening Councils
Awakening Councils have been credited with bringing relative security to towns and cities in Iraq.
Local Sunni fighters opted to stop fighting US-led forces in 2006, and help them fight al-Qaeda instead.
They are still on patrol, but they haven’t been paid since the US handed over its command to the Iraqi government.
Al Jazeera’s Omar Al-Saleh gained rare access to the city of Samarra and sent this report.
Residents of a Baghdad district afraid to return
Once considered a bastion of al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Baghdad district of al-Doura is now called “victory neighbourhood“, where attacks are rare. But as the US military prepares to withdraw from Iraqi cities, al-Doura remains a maze of cement walls built to enforce security and keep Shia militias out.
As Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel-Hamid reports, former residents say they are hesitant to return until al-Doura becomes the multi-religious district it once was.