At a command center in western Anbar Province, Iraqi military officials are handing out guns and cash to local Sunni tribal fighters who are battling militants for control of Iraq’s largest province. The United States, at the same time, is rushing shipments of small arms and ammunition to the Iraqi government and urging the Iraqis to pass the weapons on to the tribes. As Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki struggles to put down an insurgency led by militants affiliated with Al Qaeda, he has embraced the same strategy the Americans used in 2007, one that has been attempted with varying degrees of success by the authorities here for nearly a century: paying and arming […]