BAGHDAD — Ali Abdul Jabbar, an Awakening commander in the Adhamiya neighborhood, sat tautly in a battered green armchair at his headquarters early Wednesday afternoon, waiting for the Iraqi Army to come and try to arrest him.

His men — armed with Kalashnikov rifles, ammunition pouches hanging from their chests — guarded the door, prepared to defend him if the army arrived. Other members of the Awakening Council, one of the Sunni-dominated citizen patrols backed by American forces here, lounged around the room, drinking Pepsis and observing a one-day strike called in protest of Mr. Jabbar’s rumored status as a wanted man.

But a few hours later, the atmosphere appeared to have calmed. Mr. Jabbar and an Iraqi Army captain stood in front of the neighborhood’s Abu Hanifa mosque, shaking hands and exchanging mutual expressions of support and friendship. The strike was called off. And the warrant was forgotten, if it had ever existed; the captain told Mr. Jabbar it had never been issued.

The escalating events of the morning, and the abrupt turnaround by midafternoon, offered a vivid illustration of the mounting tensions between the Awakening Councils and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government, which is mainly Shiite. American and Iraqi officials have said that the Iraqi government will take full control of the Awakening patrols in and around Baghdad on Oct. 1.