"U.S. commanders have successfully tested the strategy in Al-Anbar province and have held talks with Sunni groups suspected of prior assaults on U.S. units, or of links to groups that have attacked Americans, in at least four other areas where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the U.S. commanders say, these groups have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and other supplies.
But critics of the strategy, including some U.S. officers, say it could amount to the Americans arming both sides in a future civil war. The United States has spent more than $15 billion in building up Iraq's new army and police, whose personnel of 350,000 is heavily Shiite. With a U.S. troop drawdown increasingly likely in the next year, and little sign of a political accommodation between Shiite and Sunni politicians in Baghdad, the critics say, there is a strong prospect that any weapons given to Sunni groups will eventually be used against Shiites."
