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Date: 9 February 2004
New York Times
By EDWARD WONG
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 8 - Several of the biggest political parties in Iraq say they are determined to keep their well-armed militias despite American opposition to the idea.
hey contend that the militias remain necessary in light of the lack of security throughout the country.
Having had scant success so far in persuading the militias to disband, occupation officials are searching for a new policy that will help disarm the groups, whose members total in the tens of thousands, said a senior military official.
But less than five months remain until the transfer of sovereignty to an Iraqi government, leaving the Bush administration little time to deal with what many officials here consider an incendiary problem.
In the rugged north, Kurdish militiamen called the pesh merga patrol the roads. In the south, members of the Badr Organization, a militia run by a prominent Shiite political party, work with the police to secure the cities, said the group's leader.
Iraq's instability - and fog-shrouded political future — leave the parties with no incentive to disband the militias, experts say.
"It's all a matter of confidence in the future," said Joost R. Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group, a conflict prevention organization. "You're not going to give up your weapons if you think you're going to fight again in the future."
Militia leaders say the groups can help stabilize the country, something they argue that American troops have been unable to do.
Several politicians say they may push to have the Iraqi Governing Council enshrine the existence of the militias in an interim constitution due Feb. 28, with the justification that the armed groups can serve as emergency forces.
Some even suggest that American officials should transfer oversight of security entirely to Iraqi forces - including the militias.
"The issue is just like cleaning the city," said Hassan al-Amari, the leader of the Badr Organization, estimated to have at least 10,000 members. "You can't keep the city clean without the help of the people themselves."
All along, the Americans have worried that private armies like the militias could inflame a nation already divided along ethnic and religious lines. Starting in the mid-1970's, militias fought each other in the Lebanese civil war.
The major militias here are attached to parties dominated by Kurds or Shiite Arabs, who make up a majority of the population but were long excluded from real power. The other main group, the Sunni Arabs, do not have political parties with militias and fear retribution for their years in power.
"People don't like the militias," said Samir Shakir Mahmoud Sumaidy, a Governing Council member and a Sunni Arab. "They think they are going to destroy what we are building here."
The continuing presence of the militias "holds real danger," said Mr. Hiltermann of the International Crisis Group. "If you give real power to these militias, how do you fold them into a big army? They might not want to join."
There are three groups the American military considers to be active militias. First, there is the pesh merga, whose 50,000 soldiers are split between the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. Next is the Badr Organization, a unit of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a powerful Shiite party. Then there is the Mahdi Army, formed by Moktada al-Sadr, a virulently anti-American cleric who is Shiite.
The senior military official estimated the number of the Mahdi Army in the "high hundreds to thousands," and said its antioccupation stand "concerns us greatly." In October, members of the militia ambushed American soldiers in Sadr City, a sprawling Shiite slum in Baghdad. Two soldiers and two Iraqis were killed in firefights.
Days later, other members of the Mahdi Army, named for a mythic Shiite imam who is supposed to reappear to lead an apocalyptic battle, reportedly fought in the city of Karbala against American soldiers and supporters of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-stani, the revered Shiite cleric.
A representative for Mr. Sadr said the Mahdi Army helps the police in Sadr City and guards institutions like mosques. "The Americans have failed to provide security, not only in Sadr City, but in all of Iraq," said the representative, Sheik Amir al-Husseini. "Sadr City has taken it upon itself to provide peace and security to the people."
The Mahdi Army's main rival is the Badr Organization, formerly the Badr Brigade. Leaders changed the name after the group's Iranian-trained members entered Iraq following the American invasion. They now call it a "humanitarian" or a "political" group, though they boast its members help the police secure the streets of large cities, sometimes with AK-47's, sometimes through intelligence gathering.
Some Iraqi police officers have accused the Badr group of assassinating former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party, though militia officials deny that.
Many Shiite Arabs, led by Ayatollah Sistani, are demanding direct elections before the scheduled transfer of sovereignty on June 30. Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite party overseeing the Badr Organization, said the group could help provide security at polling stations if given "special permission" by the Americans. But many people find the idea of using party militias at polling sites disturbing.
The Badr Organization is dwarfed by the pesh merga, an obvious presence in the northern Kurdish region, with their baggy uniforms and Kalashnikov rifles. They were trained to fight against Mr. Hussein's forces and to protect the no-flight zone declared by the American and British governments in 1991.
After the twin suicide bombings in Erbil on Feb. 1, pesh merga - meaning "those who face death" - set up checkpoints every couple of blocks in that city.
Kurdish leaders say they want to retain broad autonomous powers in the region, including the use of the pesh merga. Militias can be kept as reserve forces, similar to the National Guard in the United States, said Barham Salih, prime minister of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan.
As the Governing Council tries to define federalist powers in the interim constitution, Kurdish leaders will probably argue for the right to keep the pesh merga, especially given their memory of mass killings of the Kurds under Mr. Hussein's rule.
Mr. Amari, the head of the Badr Organization, said his Shiite party had not yet asked the Governing Council to legally approve the militias, but would do so if the Kurds and others pushed for that right. Once the country is stabilized, he said, those armed groups should be dissolved.
The two other political parties that had militias at the time of the American-led invasion, the Iraqi National Congress and the Iraqi National Accord, supposedly disbanded their armed groups over the summer.
The Congress's militia, numbering at least 1,000, was trained and equipped by the Pentagon, while the Accord's force was backed by the Central Intelligence Agency.
But the Iraqi National Accord now runs the Interior Ministry, which controls many of the country's security forces, including the police. The Congress retains many armed guards. A spokesman for the Iraqi National Congress, Entifadh Qanbar, said "militias are very important in certain areas" and could serve as emergency forces.
"It will counter the Iraqi army, so it will prevent coups d'état," Mr. Qanbar said.
The Coalition Provisional Authority lets Iraqis keep properly licensed small arms, a policy that allows militia leaders to say their weapons are legal.
The American military has discovered illegal caches of artillery in the hands of some political parties. Last month, in the northern city of Kirkuk, considered a powder keg of ethnic tensions, the 173rd Airborne Brigade found rocket-propelled grenade launchers and mortar rounds in the offices of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
Occupation officials are experimenting with absorbing the militias into national defense units. Five major parties with militias contributed about 100 people each to the formation of the 36th Battalion of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps last month. The battalion has mixed the different soldiers at the squad level.
But it is unclear how well this works. Asked to allow a reporter to observe the battalion in action, the American military declined, citing "operational considerations."
Election Discussions Begin
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Feb. 8 (AP)- United Nations experts met with Iraqi leaders for the first time on Sunday to discuss the chances of holding early elections.
In attacks on Army convoys, one American soldier was killed and three were wounded, witnesses said. The soldier was killed when a roadside bomb exploded near Mahmudiya, 20 miles south of Baghdad, a military spokesman said.
In southeastern Iraq, a convoy of Japanese soldiers arrived as part of their country's first military deployment in a hostile region since 1945.
American and European officials said the United States believed that it had found at least $300 million hidden in bank accounts by Saddam Hussein but lacked the evidence to get countries like Syria and Switzerland to turn over the funds. Investigators said much of the money could already be gone.
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