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Can Iraq's Militias Be Tamed?
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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Apr 19, 2006 01:02am |
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| Category | General |
| Media | Weekly News Magazine - TIME Magazine |
| News Date | Monday, April 10, 2006 07:00:00 AM UTC0:0 |
| Description | 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
Apr. 10, 2006
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.
[snip]
In Baghdad today, the militias are consolidating their power. |
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