Iraqi force elicits hope - and fear

In two weeks, coalition authorities and senior Iraqi party leaders will begin recruiting Iraqi militiamen to create a new counterinsurgency battalion. The fighters' purpose will be to tackle a wave of Sunni-driven violence that American officials predict will increase as the country moves toward autonomy.

The new force is intended to add muscle to the poorly equipped and ill-trained Iraqi police and Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, which increasingly have been shouldering the burden of maintaining security.

But Sunni Muslims warn that the new militia force - consisting mainly of battle-hardened Shiite and Kurdish fighters - will aggravate Iraq's strained sectarian and ethnic relationships. "This ... is a bomb that could explode at any time," says Sheikh Abdel-Karim Qubaysy, a prominent Sunni in Baghdad. Other Sunni clerics are warning that this could lead to Lebanon-like civil war.

The leaders of five Iraqi parties have pressed the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) to adopt a plan to build a special force of about 800 fighters drawn from the military wings of their own organizations (see sidebar).

Volunteers for the new battalion will be recruited in two weeks and assembled into subunits to gather intelligence on militants and carry out military operations, according to an official of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

"It shows that the Americans are growing confident in the ability of the Iraqis to handle their own security," says Sheikh Humum Hammoudi, a senior member of SCIRI, a Shiite party. "We used to have a big role in confronting Saddam Hussein. Now we will complete that role by building a secure Iraq."

For months, the CPA has voiced its opposition to armed militias in Iraq, considering them a potentially destabilizing presence that would undermine the revamped Iraqi security forces. In particular, the coalition authorities have viewed with distrust the Badr Brigades, the Iran-trained military wing of SCIRI which fields some 10,000 fighters. On the other hand, the peshmerga ("those who face death") a 35,000-strong militia composed of fighters from the two main Kurdish parties, has been tolerated because of its close alliance with the US.

"The national organizations we have promised to construct are the new Iraqi Army and the new Iraqi police force and the civil defense force," said Paul Bremer, the top US administrator in Iraq, this weekend. "These are national organizations.... We have welcomed the militias' cooperation with the national authorities, but they cannot continue as militias."

Still, with attacks by militants growing ever deadlier, the CPA appears to believe that the well-trained, combat-proven militiamen could be a useful addition to the counterinsurgency campaign. Furthermore, there are concerns that the Iraqi police are susceptible to infiltration by Hussein loyalists. That's not a risk with the Shiite and Kurdish guerrillas who remain hostile to the former regime.

"What the country needs is more Iraqis in the security forces," a CPA official says, "and what we have are people who are not contributing to security but could be."

The urgency in building a homegrown security apparatus is underlined by predictions that the militants will step up their attacks during the run-up to the transfer of authority from the CPA to a provisional Iraqi assembly.

"We expect to see an increase in violence as we move forward toward sovereignty at the end of June," Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the US military commander in Iraq, said on Sunday.

The leaders of all five parties involved in the planned militia battalion are among the 24 members of Iraq's interim Governing Council. The CPA stresses that all militiamen volunteering for the counter- insurgency battalion must put aside their allegiances to their political leaders and join as individual citizens.

A group of Shiite Iraqi National Congress fighters standing guard outside the Baghdad home of Ahmed Chalabi, the party's leader, say they have all volunteered to join the new force.

As members of the new battalion, would they arrest Mr. Chalabi if ordered to by the Iraqi government?

"No problem," says one cheerfully. "We would arrest him if he made a mistake. We have to turn a new page and support the Iraqi nation."

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