Iraq bans militias

By Edward Cody
The Washington Post

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According to senior occupation officials, the most immediate effect of the order, issued in the name of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, was to formally outlaw the al-Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr, the defiant Shiite Muslim cleric who has confronted U.S. occupation forces in bloody clashes for the past two months.

The order also stipulated that al-Sadr and his lieutenants, as members of a now illegal armed group, are barred from holding public office for three years. That put a legal barrier in the path of mainstream Shiite political and religious figures who are seeking to draw al-Sadr and his followers away from armed resistance and into Iraq's postwar political process.

Al-Sadr's group rejected the ban, saying Allawi's government had no authority to hand down such laws.

"Iyad Allawi's agreement does not apply to the Mahdi Army," said Omar Ahmed Shaybani, an al-Sadr spokesman. "The Mahdi Army is not a militia. It is the Iraqis legitimately resisting the occupation. The Mahdi Army exists as long as the occupation does."

The ban was designed, in part, to dramatize the intention of Allawi's government, named a week ago, to increase security measures. The country has been shaken by car bombings and hostage-takings directed against foreigners and robberies and kidnappings directed against ordinary Iraqis by criminals seeking to profit from the disorder.

But whether the unelected interim government can enforce such an order remains doubtful, given the shaky security situation, said Abdul-Wahab Qassab, a retired general staff officer who runs the Azzaman Center for Strategic Studies in Baghdad.

"Unless there is a strong commitment from the political parties, I don't think the outcome will be positive," he said.

Nine other Iraqi political parties and movements have pledged to abide by the ban on militias and seek promised benefits, including job training and veterans' pensions for demobilized fighters, Allawi announced.

"All of these parties have accepted detailed plans, timetables and terms for the transition and reintegration of the armed groups under their authority or have already disbanded their militias," he said.

Occupation officials said the timetable calls for as many as 90,000 fighters to turn in their weapons and change status by the time Iraq holds elections next January.
 
The two main Kurdish groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, field more than 70,000 of the 102,000 Iraqis believed to carry arms in political groups, according to senior officials of the U.S.-run Coalition Provisional Authority who briefed reporters on condition they not be named.

The Kurdish region's two military organizations, whose fighters traditionally are called peshmerga, have a different arrangement, reflecting the semi-independence that Kurdish-populated northern Iraq has enjoyed for more than a decade.

About half are expected to join the national army or police forces, U.S. officials said. Thousands of others, they explained, will be incorporated into three specialized military units — mountain troops, counterterrorist forces and quick-reaction battalions — under the command of the Kurdish regional government that controls northern Iraq.

Adnan Asadi, a member of the Shiite-run Dawa party, said this arrangement should last only until Iraq gets an elected government, set for next January. At that time, he said, an elected national government must reassert authority over the Kurdish region and its military forces.

"This is a law and should be done," he said.

But Qassab, the former general staff officer, recalled the Kurds' repeated uprisings against rule from Baghdad over the past 30 years and suggested that their acceptance of central authority might not be so simple, particularly given the often ruthless suppression of their revolts by former president Saddam Hussein's army. That is one reason for their insistence on retaining local command over part of their peshmerga military, he said.

"They are very keen to keep the ability to enforce their will wherever and whenever it becomes necessary," Qassab said.

Shaybani, the spokesman for al-Sadr, said the exception for the Kurds shows that Allawi's government does not exercise real power and could not impose its will on them, in part, because their insistence on autonomy is supported by the United States.

"The peshmerga is an independent army, with a regional government," he said. "No Iraqi government can impose anything on that army or government."

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.