csua.org/u/d3n -> www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/20/AR2005082001317.html
Manage Your Newsletters Militias on the Rise Across Iraq Shiite and Kurdish Groups Seizing Control, Instilling Fear in North and South By Anthony Shadid and Steve Fainaru Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, August 21, 2005; Page A01 BASRA, Iraq -- Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Ir aqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, a ssassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their contro l over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the cou ntry's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political l eaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi offici als. While Iraqi representatives wrangle over the drafting of a constitution i n Baghdad, the militias, and the Shiite and Kurdish parties that control them, are creating their own institutions of authority, unaccountable t o elected governments, the activists and officials said. In Basra in the south, dominated by the Shiites, and Mosul in the north, ruled by the K urds, as well as cities and villages around them, many residents have sa id they are powerless before the growing sway of the militias, which ins till a climate of fear that many see as redolent of the era of former pr esident Saddam Hussein.
Their growing authority has enabled them to control territory, confront their perceived enemies and provide patronage to their followers. Their ascendance has come about because of a power vacuum in Baghdad and thei r own success in the January parliamentary elections. Since the formation of a government this spring, Basra, Iraq's second-lar gest city, has witnessed dozens of assassinations, which claimed members of the former ruling Baath Party, Sunni political leaders and officials of competing Shiite parties. Many have been carried out by uniformed me n in police vehicles, according to political leaders and families of the victims, with some of the bullet-riddled bodies dumped at night in a tr ash-strewn parcel known as The Lot. The province's governor said in an i nterview that Shiite militias have penetrated the police force; an Iraqi official estimated that as many as 90 percent of officers were loyal to religious parties. Across northern Iraq, Kurdish parties have employed a previously undisclo sed network of at least five detention facilities to incarcerate hundred s of Sunni Arabs, Turkmens and other minorities abducted and secretly tr ansferred from Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, and from territories st retching to the Iranian border, according to political leaders and detai nees' families. Nominally under the authority of the US-backed Iraqi a rmy, the militias have beaten up and threatened government officials and political leaders deemed to be working against Kurdish interests; one b loodied official was paraded through a town in a pickup truck, witnesses said. "I don't see any difference between Saddam and the way the Kurds are runn ing things here," said Nahrain Toma, who heads a human rights organizati on, Bethnahrain, which has offices in northern Iraq and has faced severa l death threats. Toma said the tactics were eroding what remained of US credibility as t he militias operate under what many Iraqis view as the blessing of Ameri can and British forces. "Nobody wants anything to do with the Americans anymore," she said. Because they gave the power to the Kurds and t o the Shiites. "Here's the problem," said Majid Sari, an adviser in the Iraqi Defense Mi nistry in Basra, who travels with a security detail of 25 handpicked Ira qi soldiers. Referring to the militias, he said, "They're taking money f rom the state, they're taking clothes from the state, they're taking veh icles from the state, but their loyalty is to the parties." Whoever disa grees, he said, "the next day you'll find them dead in the street." British officials, whose authority runs through Basra and parts of southe rn Iraq, have called the killings "totally unacceptable." "We are aware of allegations that men in police uniforms, whether they ar e genuine policemen or not, are carrying out serious crimes in Basra," s aid Karen McLuskie, a British diplomat in Basra. "We are raising our con cerns with the Iraqi authorities at the highest level." One of the most powerful militias in southern Iraq, the Badr Organization , which is blamed for many of the assassinations, denied any role in the killings. The head of the group in Basra, Ghanim Mayahi, said his organ ization was only providing "support and assistance" to the police throug h lightly armed militiamen. "There is no law, there is no order, and the police are scared of the tribes. Badr is not afraid, and it can face th ose threats," he said. In the north, Kurdish officials acknowledged that people they deem terror ism suspects from across the region have been taken to several Kurdish-r un detention facilities, but they said the practice was initiated by the Iraqi government with the blessing of the US military. they have no place to put them and here it is safe," said K arim Sinjari, the minister of interior for the Kurdistan Regional Govern ment and a senior official in the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
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