- BAGHDAD (IPS) -- Many Iraqis
have come to believe that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is just
as much a dictator as Saddam Hussein was.
-
- "Al-Maliki is a dictator who must be removed by
all means," 35-year-old Abdul-Riza Hussein, a Mehdi Army member from
Sadr City in Baghdad told IPS. "He is a worse dictator than Saddam;
he has killed in less than two years more than Saddam killed in 10 years."
-
- Following the failed attempt by the U.S.-backed al-Maliki
to crack down on the Mehdi Army militia of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr,
the situation in Iraq has become much worse. Iraq appears to be splintering
more widely under this rule than under Saddam's.
-
- Fierce fighting has broken out between Sadr's Mehdi Army
and Maliki's army and police forces in Baghdad, which comprise mostly the
Badr Organisation militia, the armed wing of the political group, the Supreme
Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC).
-
- According to statistics compiled by the U.S. military
in Baghdad, there has been a sharp increase in attacks against U.S. and
Iraqi security forces, from 239 in February to 631 in March. Most of these
attacks are believed to have been carried out by the Mehdi Army.
-
- The Mehdi Army is known to have substantial control of
the streets of Baghdad, Basra, and many other predominantly Shia areas
in southern Iraq.
-
- But there is also considerable Shia support for Maliki's
effort to disarm the Mehdi Army. "Those who shout loud against Maliki
and his legally elected government are all thieves and murderers and must
be executed," says Aziz Mussawi, a resident of Hilla, 100km south
of Baghdad, who fled for Baghdad when the clashes started there last month.
"These militias will destroy Iraq if left unleashed."
-
- Many Iraqis feel caught in a cross-fire in what they
see as a battle for power between the Shia factions. "Over a thousand
Iraqis got killed and more than that number wounded just for a game of
chess between warlords," Mohammad Alwan, a lawyer in Baghdad told
IPS. "All of them call for dissolving militias while they keep militias
of their own. Most of those in power in the government are militia leaders."
-
- Sadr and his followers are calling for unity, in an attempt
to bring as many Iraqis as they can, Sunni and Shia, to their side. The
rival Fadhila Party, that is powerful in many Shia provinces and in cities
like Basra where it holds the governorship, has also called for unity.
-
- It is widely believed in Iraq that parties who call for
unity are using the issue to get public support against federalism, seen
to be supported by the U.S. and Iranian backed parties such as the SIIC
and Maliki's Dawa Party. Many in Iraq see federalism as the break-up of
the country.
-
- After five years of occupation and suffering, with no
end to it in sight, many Iraqis have become skeptical of all political
and religious leaders.
-
- "Sadr is another face of the Iranian project, despite
their pretending to be a national movement," Jassam Hady, a colonel
of the former Iraqi army in Baghdad told IPS. "All those in the Iraqi
government in the so-called Green Zone have militias that have killed Iraqis
under one flag or another."
-
- Hady, like many Iraqis, believes that the current spasm
of violence will worsen as the two main Shia groups, the Sadr Movement
and Maliki's affiliations, continue to vie for power ahead of the provincial
elections slated for October.
-
- Division has broken out also within tribes; many have
now come to back Sadr, not because they like him, but because they hate
the Badr militia of Hakeem's SIIC and Maliki's Dawa party.
-
- "Our problem in the southern parts of Iraq and other
Shia dominated areas is that all options are bad," the chief of a
major tribe in Basra who fled for Baghdad, told IPS on condition of anonymity.
"Iranian controlled militias killed so many chiefs of tribes because
they refused to support these division projects concealed under the flag
of federalism."
-
- Several tribes in the south have formed unions to fight
the separation project, but some sheikhs have formed counter unions to
support the Badr and Dawa agenda.
-
- Most people seem to oppose any federalism that would
separate Shia from Sunni Muslims.
-
- "We will be weak without our Sunni brothers,"
says Shamil Mahmood from Sadr City, the east district of two million in
Baghdad. "The whole of the south will be swallowed by Iran, that will
humiliate us and treat us like animals."
-
- (*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration
with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who has reported
extensively from Iraq and the Middle East)
-
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