By Dominic Evans

ABU GHRAIB, Iraq, Sept 25 (Reuters) - Hundreds of Iraqi police recruits, some of them coaxed back from the anti-U.S. insurgency, graduated on Tuesday and pledged to help stabilise the volatile Abu Ghraib region just west of Baghdad.

Waving flags and chanting patriotic slogans the volunteers celebrated the end of their month-long training, which marked the first major police recruitment in an area which was once a stronghold of al Qaeda supporters.

"Today (you) represent the national Iraqi efforts ... to confront al Qaeda and terrorist cells and all the enemies of Iraq," Lieutenant-General Abboud Qanbar told the recruits.

The 800 local volunteers who graduated on a dusty parade ground in front of senior U.S. and British commanders will join 750 others who completed their course last week.

They will beef up an under-strength police force which U.S. officials say until now has been manned mainly by Iraqis from outside the region, chiefly because the largely Shi'ite government in Baghdad distrusted the local Sunni population.

"There's been a concern with the histories (of the recruits). Abu Ghraib's been a very volatile area," said Lieutenant-Colonel Kurt Pinkerton who helped train the recruits.

"The fact is some of these guys did resist (U.S. forces). The fact is some of these guys that are volunteers with us had disagreements with us," Pinkerton told Reuters.

"But when we screened them through all our intelligence agencies and through all the Iraqi intelligence agencies there was only 54 out of 2,400 that came up with what we consider too significant of a record."

He said Iraqi police, accused of being largely ineffectual across Iraq, could hardly have been expected to maintain security in Abu Ghraib with a staff of just 350 -- before the new recruits -- covering 600 square kilometres.

The police experiment in Abu Ghraib, notorious as the site of a prison where U.S. jailers were pictured abusing naked detainees in the months that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, could be mirrored across Iraq, Pinkerton said.

"AWAKENING" SPREADS

He said Sunni tribal sheikhs had cooperated with U.S. forces around Abu Ghraib in recent months, curbing violence and repeating a pattern seen in Anbar province to the west, where a self-styled tribal "awakening" has challenged al Qaeda.

Recruits said security in their town had improved dramatically over the last year. "The Anbar awakening started in Anbar, then came to Falluja and now Abu Ghraib," said Ahmed Salman, describing a spread east towards Baghdad.

"It's getting better. Before there was killing and looting and theft," said Yasseen Khalaf. "People were too fearful to go out on the streets. Now there is no fear".

Nevertheless, throughout the ceremony two U.S. Apache helicopters circled above the police base, which was decked out in dozens of Iraqi flags and ringed with razor wire.

And one recruit, Ahmed Salman, complained that a mainly Shi'ite brigade of the Iraqi army, the Muthanna brigade, was hindering Sunnis from tackling 30 or 40 known al Qaeda members.

"The Muthanna brigade is not letting the fighters of the awakening to enter Abu Ghraib to wipe out al Qaeda," he said.

And an elderly dignitary attending the ceremony complained that Sunnis would be reluctant to support the government because many were still in jail.

"These people, all their brothers are all still detained. If they were released, there would be a real awakening," said the man, who was dressed in the flowing brown cloak of a tribal leader but did not give his name.

AlertNet news is provided by