Topic: Ministry To Oversee Guards

Washington Post
December 4, 2007
Pg. 16

The Iraqi government has ordered the Interior Ministry to take command of 12,000 neighborhood guards on patrol in and around Baghdad and to begin paying their wages, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, a ministry spokesman, said Monday.
The order suggests that the Shiite-led government is becoming more comfortable with an initiative backed by the U.S. military that has put about 60,000 mainly Sunni men on the streets of Iraq to guard their communities.