US-backed Sunni death squads crush al-Qaeda in Iraq but may turn their guns against Shiite-controlled government
December 23, 2007 11:23 am Sunni Insurgents Fight al-Qaeda in Iraq 
Ned Parker / Los Angeles Times
CHANGING ALLEGIANCE: Abu Abed, far right, with members of his paramilitary group. A former insurgent and officer in Hussein’s army, he helped drive Al Qaeda in Iraq out of Amiriya.
Ned Parker, Ruthless, shadowy — and a U.S. ally - Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2007
BAGHDAD — “Abu Abed, you’re a hero,” the retired Shiite teacher shouted from the home she had fled last winter, when the bodies of Shiites were being dumped daily in the streets of her Amiriya neighborhood.
The fighter, wearing green camouflage and dark wraparound sunglasses, kept walking, his hand swinging a black MP-5 submachine gun.
No more than 5 feet 6, with a roll of baby fat, this Sunni Muslim gunman is an unlikely savior of Amiriya: a former intelligence officer in Saddam Hussein’s army, a suspected onetime insurgent, a man who has photos of his brothers’ mutilated corpses loaded in his cellphone.
To many Iraqis, Abu Abed is a Sunni warlord whose followers have spilled the blood of Shiite Muslim civilians and U.S. troops. But to the people in Amiriya, he is the man who has, with ruthless efficiency, restored order to a neighborhood where the insurgent group Al Qaeda in Iraq held sway.