By Courting Sunnis, G.I.'s See Sinister Town Turn Almost Safe

By RICHARD A. OPPEL Jr., The New York Times, Published: July 17, 2005

QABR ABED, Iraq - These days, this town in northern Iraq is relatively safe, at least by the standards of the Sunni Arab-dominated areas of Iraq. For a village that long held folk status among Iraqis as one of the most sinister places in the country, that is quite a change.
As the insurgency gathered strength last year, Qabr Abed served as a weapons depot and safe haven for an unusually large number of home-grown insurgent commanders, including Mohammed Shakara, the Al Qaeda leader for northern Iraq and its biggest city, Mosul.
"It was for the insurgency what the Dominican Republic is to baseball," said Capt. Kevin Burke, who commands Company C of the First Battalion of the Fifth Infantry Regiment, which oversees Qabr Abed.
Now, however, the village has a homegrown police force that maintains checkpoints and conducts patrols - a rarity in rural Sunni Arab areas, where the police often hunker down in their barracks or, worse, conspire with insurgents.