RAMADI, IRAQ — From a podium decked in flowers and the Iraqi flag, a Sunni Muslim sheik in a pinstriped suit politely welcomed the Shiite guests who had driven up from Baghdad, before launching into a tirade about the lack of jobs and essential services in this former insurgent bastion.
The focus of his anger, however, was not the Shiite-led national government, but fellow Sunni Arabs on the Anbar provincial council.
Anbar is the success story of the U.S. strategy to combat the insurgency from the ground up by striking alliances with local leaders. But though the tribal sheiks' rebellion against the militants they once backed has calmed the region and opened the door to political dialogue with Iraq's majority Shiites, it has deepened divisions among Sunnis.
As violence has faded, an argument has been raging over who really speaks for Iraq's Sunni Arab minority: the province's largely secular and fiercely independent tribal leaders, who resisted the U.S. invasion, or the main Sunni political party, an Islamist group led by former exiles who cooperated with the Americans from the start.
In just over a year, Anbar's sheiks have helped accomplish what U.S. military might, and endless rounds of political negotiations, could not: driving out the extremists who had flourished in Iraq's western desert since the invasion in 2003. Pockets of resistance remain in Anbar, but the U.S. command says many of the Sunni insurgents, now allied with the group calling itself Al Qaeda in Iraq, are seeking new sanctuaries north of Baghdad.
Now, the sheiks say, it's payback time. They want more schools, better healthcare, clean water and reliable electricity for their war-ravaged province. They want jobs for their followers. And above all, they want a stake in government for their Iraqi Awakening Conference movement.
"Anbar is a tribal society, and the Awakening came from the tribes," said Sheik Ahmed abu Risha, who succeeded his slain brother, Abdul-Sattar abu Risha, at the helm of the movement in September.
The sheiks accuse the Iraqi Islamic Party, which controls the local councils in most Sunni areas, of hijacking development funds and monopolizing jobs for their own supporters.
"There is corruption up to here," Sheik Hameed Farhan Hays said, raising his hand to his forehead, after delivering his speech during a recent visit by a representative of Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government.
