Iraqis Urged to Take Up Arms for Defense

A bombing casualty from the village of Armili is brought to a hospital in Kirkuk, Saturday, July 7, 2007. A suicide bomber detonated a truck packed with explosives in an outdoor market Saturday, killing at least 23 people and wounding at least 86 others in a village of Shiite ethnic Turkomen, Armili, 165 kilometers (100 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Emad Matti) (Emad Matti - AP)

But Iraq's national security adviser, a Shiite, insisted that the government still enjoyed broad support and he warned against any effort to replace al-Maliki.

"I can tell you one thing that after Maliki, there is going to be the hurricane in Iraq," Mouwaffak al-Rubaie told CNN's "Late Edition." "This is an extremely important point to make across and to the Western audience and to the Arab audience as well as the larger Muslim audience."

The idea of organizing local communities for their own defense has caught on here in recent months following the success of Sunni Arab tribes in Anbar province that took up arms to help drive al-Qaida from their towns and villages.

U.S. and Iraqi officials have said they hope to replicate the "Anbar model" elsewhere in the country, albeit under government supervision and control.

On Sunday, Lt. Gen. Ali Gheidan said the Iraqi army planned to raise volunteer forces in Diyala province, where U.S. and Iraqi forces have driven al-Qaida fighters from part of the capital of Baqouba. He said more than 3,800 volunteers had already been recruited.

"Their mission will be like the police, working under the Iraqi police," Gheidan told reporters. "They work as a protection for each area, and they will only be from the residents of that area. Their role is to hold onto territory after it has been cleansed by the military."

U.S. commanders have long believed the key to restoring security was the ability of Iraqi forces to hold on to areas cleared by American troops. Several senior U.S. officers have questioned whether the Iraqi police and army were capable of preventing insurgents from returning once the Americans had left.

Local defense forces would offer a way to compensate for weaknesses in the Iraqi police and army, but without careful controls, the system could backfire by promoting more militias in a country already awash in weapons.

Also Sunday, the British Defense Ministry announced the death of a British soldier who was wounded Saturday in the biggest British offensive against Shiite militias this year.