Neighborhood Militias Add Another Armed Layer

The Sunni Arab men of the district have posted plainclothes spies on the corners to look out for suspicious strangers. They keep their cellphones close at hand, waiting for the ring that will call them to arms. When it comes, the men will pour from the surrounding homes, guns blazing.

Faced with the growth of Shiite militias such as the black-shirted Al Mahdi army and deadly abuses by the Shiite-dominated police forces, Sunnis in mixed-sect neighborhoods and cities throughout Iraq are stashing guns in their mosques and knitting themselves into militias of their own.

"We've made an agreement with the neighbors that if we have another attack, they'll pick up their weapons and fight the invaders," said Fares Mahmoud, deputy preacher of the El Koudiri Mosque here in the middle-class neighborhood of Arasat. "We are depending on the soul of the people to protect us."

In the last week, U.S. troops have clashed with Shiite militias, and American officials have expressed concern about their growing power. On the other side of Iraq's sectarian divide, the emergence of armed bands of Sunnis, often from middle-class or secular backgrounds, presents a disturbing indication of how close Iraq is to all-out sectarian war.

The Sunni neighborhood militias add yet another armed element to the Iraqi scene, which already features Sunni insurgents -- often militant Islamists or former members of Saddam Hussein's ruling elite -- who have been battling Iraqi and U.S. security forces for three years.

Among the Sunnis, "you have the [militant Islamic] Takfiris, the old Baathists, you have the people who feel they have been marginalized, you have Arab nationalists. If each of these groups is going to have its own militia, then God help us," said Adnan Pachachi, a Sunni legislator and the temporary speaker of the new Iraqi parliament.

"Unfortunately, the last election showed one thing: In order to win, you have to have a lot of money and you have to have your own militia," he said.

Amid the rising violence, many Iraqis feel they have little choice but to arm themselves and their neighbors.

"In Baghdad, for example, there is a perception that the police are not really there to protect them," said a Western official in the capital who would not speak on the record because of the political sensitivity of the topic. But "it is not an acceptable answer to bend to the presence of a militia to guarantee a particular neighborhood."