Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, has said militias should gradually be disbanded and melded into Iraq's security forces, but he offered no specific proposals for doing so in his recent 24-point national reconciliation initiative.
The U.S. military said the raid in eastern Baghdad was launched to apprehend "an insurgent leader responsible for numerous deaths of Iraqi citizens." Iraqi troops came under fire from a rooftop, triggering a 43-minute gunbattle after which the insurgent leader was arrested. There were no U.S. or Iraqi casualties, the Americans said.
U.S. officials did not identify the insurgent. Residents of the Shiite slum Sadr City said they believed the raid targeted Abu Diraa, a commander in the Mahdi militia of radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but he apparently had escaped.
The U.S. statement said only that the insurgent was involved "in the transfer of weapons from Syria into Iraq" in an effort to break away "from his current insurgent organization." The statement made no mention of any U.S. role but residents said they could hear American aircraft providing cover during the raid.
Also, the United States said Thursday that Iraqi and American forces arrested Adnan al-Unaybi, commander of a Mahdi militia force. The statement said he was arrested north of Hillah, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Taking down the Shia militias is necessary to reduce the general level of violence in Iraq; to assure the Sunnis that they can indeed stop fighting wihtout just being targets for revenge attacks by Shia militias; and, as I mentioned before, as a measure to deprive Iran of a means to strike back at us if we attempt either regime change in Iran or just strike his regime with an aerial campaign.
So what reason is most important to hit the illegal militias now? We'll see if this is part of a general push or a couple isolated events. We've taken actions this year and then things seem to settle down, so I don't know if this is a slow concerted effort or no effort at all.
We aren't just going to let Sadr get away with murder, two revolts, and continuing intrigues, are we? Or is it actually possible that Sadr has abandoned armed resistance?
