"Iraq today is boiling like a volcano and it could blow at any minute," said Ali al-Husseini, a 27-year-old cleric. So far, Iraq's Shi'ite majority has stayed largely quiescent, despite the highest violence for five years, with car bombs and other attacks killing hundreds of people every month. But officials have told Reuters the government is looking at plans to create a government-backed Shi'ite militia to counter al Qaeda, which is undergoing a resurgence in the country. The government hopes a unified force will help protect the population and prevent local Shi'ite militias taking matters into their own hands. Sunnis are not so sure.
Such a project could be helpful if prominent locals, such as tribal chiefs, are involved, said Qais al-Shathir, a senior Sunni lawmaker. "But if this project is adopted by political sides ... then this will certainly give official cover for the militias and this will negatively impact the security situation." Three senior officials in the Shi'ite-dominated administration of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said th government plans to combine at least three Shi'ite militias into a single force. "All Shi'ite factions have agreed with this plan," a senior official in Maliki's office said.
The idea is to combine elements from the Asaib al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah militias, which ceased fighting in Iraq after 2011, as well as the Mehdi army, which is loyal to anti-U.S. preacher Moqtada al-Sadr and which stepped aside from the fighting in 2008. The plan, said the official, is partly designed to boost Maliki's credentials ahead of elections in 2014. "Maliki will present himself as the Shi'ite defender," the official said.
It comes as the increase in violence, fed in part by the conflict in neighboring Syria where Islam's two main strands are also at odds, is raising fears that Iraq could return to the bloody days of 2006-2007 when tens of thousands of people died. "The aim of al Qaeda is clearly to provoke a civil war," a Western diplomat in Baghdad said. It was remarkable, the diplomat added, that a Shi'ite backlash had not yet occurred.
THE CATALYST