TIME: Can Iraq's Militias
Be Tamed?
Saturday, April 01, 2006
As the killings continue, Time meets fighters on
both sides of Iraq's sectarian divide—and finds hope
that all-out civil war can be
avoided
By
MICHAEL WARE / BAGHDAD
As he steps onto the streets of Baghdad's Shi'ite
slum Sadr City, Saed Salah chambers a round into his
pistol and shoves it into the back of his pants. A
mid-ranking commander in the Mahdi Army, one of the
most potent of the armed militias that have carved
Baghdad into fiefdoms, Saed Salah has little to fear
from the authorities. The whole neighborhood knows
who he is. Motorists are aware that his fighters man
the makeshift checkpoints that dot the neighborhood.
Even though he has attacked U.S. troops countless
times, no one will touch him. If the G.I.s could find
him, they would slap him straight into Abu Ghraib
prison. But that's not likely to happen. The American
military may occupy Iraq, Saed Salah says, and an
Iraqi Prime Minister may be in power, but neither
owns these streets.
He's right. Iraqi army troops set checkpoints on the
main thoroughfares in and out of Sadr City, but they
are powerless in the face of the Mahdi Army. "They do
nothing. They can't even stop a vehicle," says a
member of a separate unit of the fractious militia as
he speeds past one of the checkpoints. A pickup truck
overflowing with gunmen toting AK-47s roars up from
behind. Their shirts are emblazoned with the name of
one of the country's most formidable armed groups:
mahdi army, protection committee, 2nd brigade. As
they approach the army checkpoint, no one makes a
move; instead of confrontation, there is
acknowledgment. A militia member waves from the
pickup, and a soldier sheepishly waves back. With
that, the gunmen barrel through.
In Baghdad today, the militias are consolidating
their power. A wave of sectarian killings since the
Feb. 22 bombing of a holy Shi'ite shrine in Samarra
has left hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of
Shi'ites and Sunnis dead across the country, with
more tortured and dismembered bodies turning up each
day. The U.S. military is pinning its hopes on the
Iraqi army and police to stand between the two sides
and bring calm to a volatile situation, but in many
parts of the capital, the U.S.-backed forces wield
less authority than the forces taking their orders
from men like Saed Salah and his boss, the rebel
anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Many U.S. and
Iraqi officials believe that hard-line Shi'ite
militias are behind the daily abductions and
executions of Sunnis and that they are doing as much
to rile sectarian hatred as terrorists linked to Abu
Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
Yet there's also evidence that the mainstream of
armed fighters on both sides is loath to allow the
extremists to drag them into full-scale war -- for
now. In more than a dozen interviews with militia
leaders, insurgent commanders and clerics, Time
sought out the men likely to be on the front lines of
a full-blown sectarian conflict. What they have to
say won't necessarily bolster hopes that Iraq can
avoid all-out civil war indefinitely. But few militia
members interviewed by Time believe that they are
fighting one now.
Their assessments largely accord with those of U.S.
military intelligence: that while rival death squads
roam unchecked, for now civil war is in no one's
interest but al-Zarqawi's. Militants on both sides
say U.S. forces remain a bigger enemy than their
countrymen. "The elements for civil war are all
there," says a senior U.S. military-intelligence
officer, "but this society is complex, and it still
hasn't generated self-sustaining sectarian strife."
What no one denies is that the violence is becoming
more brutal. U.S. officials say 25 bodies are found
each day, although it's unclear how many are victims
of sectarian killings. Unlike the terrorist attacks
committed by al-Zarqawi, sectarian violence rarely
bears a calling card. Shi'ite and Sunni militants
interviewed by Time say the worst killings are
carried out by small, secretive death squads that the
militants conveniently describe as rogue elements.
Windows into the machinations of the death squads are
rare, but U.S. and Iraqi forces have gained some
intelligence on them. Some operations have been
uncovered in Sunni-controlled areas, like those of
the radical Ansar al-Sunnah group discovered in
Latifiyah more than a year ago during a U.S. sweep
called Operation River Walk. Execution videos, swords
and instruments of torture were found by soldiers in
what were deemed to be killing rooms.
A March 26 raid on a Shi'ite militia complex --
believed to be a hub for a kidnapping and terrorist
network -- has raised suspicions that a death squad
may have been run out of the complex. Shi'ite leaders
claim that the 16 men who died in the raid were
worshipping peacefully in what turned out to be a
mosque. But Iraqi commandos and U.S. military
liaisons told Time that the dead perished in battle
with weapons in their hands. According to U.S.
military officials, more than 60 reports of
kidnappings or executions have been linked to the
mosque, including the slayings of three Iraqi
special-forces soldiers. Shi'ite leaders continue to
deny the allegations.
Such discoveries lend credence to those, like former
Prime Minister and chief U.S. ally Iyad Allawi, who
say Iraq is already mired in civil war. Yet despite
the bloodshed on both sides, the militants on the
front lines don't consider themselves in outright
conflict with one another. "War might be tomorrow or
one year from now; it all depends on the sparks made
by those seeking to inflame it," says Abu Mohammed, a
former top-ranking officer in Saddam Hussein's army
and now a key Baathist insurgent strategist. Another
Baathist insurgent downplays the pervasiveness of
sectarian hatred: "It's true there are death squads
killing Shi'ite and killing Sunni, and while they're
Iraqi, they're really the instruments of foreign
interests" -- referring to al-Qaeda and Iran. His
Shi'ite counterparts in al-Sadr's militia agree. Two
mid-ranking field commanders of the Shi'ite Mahdi
Army say the violence falls short of war with the
Sunnis. "Sectarian violence is made by the occupation
forces. There is no civil war," says Saed Salah as
members of his cell nod in agreement.
Both Shi'ite and Sunni militants insist they would
rather fight to rid Iraq of U.S. forces than take up
arms against each other. Abu Mohammed says there's
nothing to be gained by waging a costly religious
fight while the U.S. remains in the country. "The
Shi'ites are an inseparable part of the resistance.
We have to unite our efforts against the invaders, so
we must be careful to avoid a civil war that will
weaken us," he says. Contact between Sunni insurgents
and Shi'ite militias like al-Sadr's Mahdi Army have
been under way since the battle of Fallujah in 2004,
with both exchanging expertise and manpower. "We have
nothing against Shi'ites ... our dead are buried with
theirs, as theirs are buried with ours in Fallujah,"
says insurgent commander Abu Saif. It's a sentiment
echoed by the Sadrist leaders, who bear scars from
dueling with the U.S. "We have many relationships
binding us together," says Abu Zainab.
Still, few U.S. or Iraqi officials believe Iraq can
ever become a stable, functioning society as long as
political parties maintain their armed wings. The
U.S. would prefer that the Iraqi security forces
disarm the militias, but it hasn't happened. A senior
military official in Baghdad says the U.S. is
deliberately avoiding confrontations with the
militias. But last month alone, soldiers from the 4th
Infantry Division in Baghdad have had what the
official calls 19 "encounters" with militias,
including a shooting incident. The danger is that the
bigger the militias get, the more likely they are to
intensify their clashes over turf and authority. A
U.S. military-intelligence officer says there is
still some reason to believe that Iraqis will put
their common interests ahead of their rivalries. "In
this society, there are many ties that bind -- from
tribe to clan to educational, social and political,"
he says. "I don't think the threads have been cut."
If they ever are, it may prove impossible to put them
back together.