US military may join Iraq against militia leaders

WASHINGTON -- US military officials say the Bush administration has given them new authority to target leaders of political and religious militias in Iraq who are implicated in sectarian violence, including the powerful Shi'ite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

Such a showdown, key to Bush's plan to increase the number of US troops in Baghdad, could spark a deadly confrontation with Shi'ite militias, which enjoy widespread popularity in Shi'ite neighborhoods. It could also erode support for the fragile government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who has agreed to the plan.

Senior US and Iraqi officials said last week that Maliki has pledged to confront the militias with the help of additional US troops. But many analysts doubt that Maliki has the will or the firepower to take on Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia is blamed for much of the tit-for-tat violence in the capital.

In recent months, Maliki and other top Iraqi officials routinely vetoed US raids on Sadr's operations, fearing the reaction of his legion of followers. Maliki's government kept a list of militia leaders who were off-limits to US troops, a senior Pentagon official told reporters in a background briefing in Washington, but now Maliki has agreed that the list would no longer be used.

The officials said the new approach will include pinpoint strikes against top leaders in the Mahdi Army as well as other militias from the Shi'ite majority accused of kidnapping and murdering civilians from the Sunni Muslim minority. They said they would focus on methodical man hunts for key leaders, such as the one in June that killed key Al Qaeda operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, rather than full-scale battles.

Pursuing the militias carries significant risks, both for Maliki, a far less popular figure than Sadr, and for the United States, which could be drawn deeper into dangerous urban warfare and an increasingly sectarian conflict.

"Even if the Iraqis had the will -- and that's a big question -- to do something about sectarian violence, it's going to be a very bloody business," said Phebe Marr, a specialist on Iraq's emerging political parties and author of "The Modern History of Iraq."

"This could make Sadr even more popular," Marr said. "He could play this as 'the imperialist Americans are coming to attack me.' "

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday that Sadr must be neutralized.

"The Iraqis are going to have to deal with Sadr," she said, in response to a question. "They're going to have to deal with those death squads, and the prime minister said nobody and nothing is off-limits."

Bush's plan envisions adding 17,500 more US forces in Baghdad -- which would more than double the American military presence there -- to operate alongside about 40,000 Iraqis from the army and police. The joint forces, which will include American units embedded in Iraqi brigades, would take on both Sunni insurgents and Shi'ite sectarian death squads, US military officials said Thursday in a background briefing.

Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Friday that Maliki's willingness to allow these joint forces to enter Sadr City and other key neighborhoods in Baghdad is "central to the success of this entire operation." Sadr City, a Baghdad slum with an estimated 2 million residents, was named after Sadr's father, a revered cleric assassinated during Saddam Hussein's regime.

But many politicians and military analysts expressed doubt that Maliki would follow through on pledges to support the crack down.

Senators Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, and Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat, told Rice at a Senate Foreign Relations hearing Thursday that their talks with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad three weeks ago left them with the impression that Iraq's fractured, Shi'ite-dominated government has little interest in stopping sectarian death squads from murdering Sunnis.

"Our mouths about dropped open when the national security adviser, Dr. [Mowaffak] Al-Rubaie, said . . . 'This is not a sectarian war,' " Nelson said.

Indeed, Rice acknowledged to the senators that Maliki's original request, made in the run-up to his meeting with Bush in November, was for US troops to withdraw to the outskirts of Baghdad, leaving the task of handling sectarian militias to Iraqis alone. But Rice said that after extensive talks with US commanders, Maliki eventually agreed to an aggressive US-Iraqi plan to tackle them.

"I think it's become such a critical situation for them that they recognize they've got to take on anybody who stands in their way of bringing population security," she said, in response to a question about whether Maliki could survive a confrontation with Sadr.

Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party is the weakest of the three Shi'ite parties that dominate Iraq's government. Dawa has no militia of its own.

Sadr, on the other hand, is believed to command the loyalty of some 60,000 fighters across Iraq, although specialists differ on how much direct control he exercises over them. His movement is so powerful that some of his followers were allowed to attend the execution of Hussein. They called out Sadr's name as the former dictator was being led to the gallows, a moment captured on a video that was viewed on the Internet around the world.

Sadr's followers control four key ministries and hold 30 of 275 seats in Iraq's Parliament. They cast the deciding votes that brought Maliki to power but suspended their participation in the government to protest Maliki's meeting with Bush in November. Rice said the Iraqi government was functioning without them. But the boycott has left Iraq's Parliament in turmoil. The US military has already gotten a taste of all-out confrontation with Sadr. In 2004 they used aircraft and tanks to drive off his forces from a Najaf cemetery near the revered shrine of Imam Ali. Sadr's movement went quiet for about a year, but then grew stronger, attracting tens of thousands more followers with his nationalist call for a unified Iraq and the withdrawal of US forces.

Sadr's vehement opposition to US troops has only raised his profile among Shi'ites who see his militia -- not American or Iraqi troops -- as their only protection from Sunni insurgents.

Paul Hughes, a retired Army colonel who served as a military strategist in Iraq, warned that Bush's plan to pacify neighborhoods with an overwhelming military presence is designed to fight a classic insurgency, not the sectarian conflict that has swept up thousands of armed civilians.

"There is this real minefield that the United States is going into," he said.

Three weeks ago, thousands of protesters took to the streets in Najaf after US and Iraqi forces killed a top Sadr deputy.

On Friday, Sheik Abdel Razzaq al-Nadawi, a senior official in Sadr's movement, warned that US soldiers who come to Iraq "may return in coffins."

Juan R. Cole, a specialist on Shi'ite Muslims and professor of Middle East history at the University of Michigan, said that Sadr's forces could simply go underground during the US military campaign as they did after the 2004 battle in Najaf.

"At that time, the Shi'ite political elite got together and made the case to [Sadr] that he should lay low or things are going to go badly for him," Cole said. "I think that's what is happening now. I am extremely skeptical that Maliki would be willing to sacrifice one of the few pillars of support that he has. . . . They will lie low until the 'surge' is over and then they will come back out."