Quote Originally Posted by Presley Cannady
Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any effort by the US and host nation to arm, train and supply communities of internally isplaced persons? With a pool of some 2 million people who footed with their feet not to participate in the insurgency, seems a bit of a waste to wait for some number of enterprising sheikhs to make good on the idea first.
I don't believe that you can categorize the majority of IDPs as "voting with their feet not to participate in the insurgency". Most are simply families who were forced out of where they orginally lived by one sectarian militia or the other - or fled due to the violence brought down upon them by the presence of insurgents or foreign terrorists in their midst. If the violence had not come home to them, they were actually less likely to end up as members of any one of the spectrum of armed organizations that make up the insurgency.

The majority of unemployed unattached males of military age among the IDPs have already chosen to either serve with one of the opposition militias or with the ISF. Recruiting efforts for the ISF certainly reaches these people, although I can't state how effective it is. But I don't see the wisdom of recruiting, arming and training a militia made up solely of IDPs. Those who wish to exact revenge for their plight have already joined the opposing militia (more emotionally satisfying than ISF duty) - establishing such an entity under government sponsorship would appear to be counterproductive.