Rival Militias Threaten Iraq's South

Iraqi soldiers inspect damage to a police station destroyed in fighting on Friday in Amarah, 320 kilometers (200 miles) southeast of Baghdad Saturday Oct. 21, 2006. Relative quiet returned Saturday to Amarah where masked gunmen loyal to an anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr briefly seized control a day earlier in a bold confrontation with local security forces. Two days of clashes between elements of the Mahdi Army loyal to radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's faction left 25 dead among gunmen and police. (AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani) (Nabil Al-jurani - AP)

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The intensifying battle between Iraq's strongest Shiite militias _ the Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades _ threatens to destabilize Iraq's oil-rich south and compound chaos in the capital. The outcome also could decide whether Iraq stays whole or breaks up.

The militias have become the largest security threat to a country already rocked by more than three years of attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents on U.S. and Iraqi forces and the Shiite population.

Despite repeated vows to crush the militias, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has resisted U.S. pressure to move against the groups and their roaming deaths squads because he draws most of his support from the politicians who run them.

The Mahdi Army and Badr Brigades have repeatedly clashed since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam Hussein, most recently in the southern city of Amarah. Mahdi militiamen briefly took control of the city this month and fought gunbattles with the Badr Brigades-dominated police that killed 31 and wounded dozens.

"That was the worst time we had to go through in the city," said Abdul-Hussein Adnan, a 37-year-old teacher from Amarah. "Given the high number of casualties and the tribal nature of the city, I expect things to get worse. It's impossible in Amarah for someone to be killed and his killers not hunted down and killed in revenge."

In Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the major southern metropolis, tensions between the two armed Shiite groups simmers constantly, occasionally breaking into conflict.

The militias also have a long history of suspicion and mistrust in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.

Last year, Badr Brigades supporters burned part of the Najaf offices used by the Mahdi Army and its leader, radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Mahdi militiamen retaliated across the south by sacking the offices of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the country's largest Shiite party which has the Badr Brigades as its military wing.

SCIRI officials have deep ties to Iran, where many of them spent years in exile during Saddam's rule.

Although enmity between the two militias dates to the 1990s, it is now rooted in the desire of their political sponsors to dominate Iraq's Shiite community. They focus particularly on the Shiite heartland south of Baghdad, a region stretching over nine provinces that is home to Iraq's holiest Shiite shrines in Najaf and Karbala and much of the country's oil wealth.

The rivalry could shatter the unity of the Shiite community at a time when many of its members feel threatened by the Sunni Arab-led insurgency and are alarmed by what they see as a gradual shift of U.S. support away from them and toward Sunnis. The Sunni Arab minority oppressed the Shiite majority for decades before Saddam's ouster.

A Shiite official who has regular contact with Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq's top Shiite cleric, said al-Sistani was discreetly trying to defuse tensions between the Badr Brigades and the Mahdi Army.