BAGHDAD — Seven weeks into the U.S.-led security crackdown in Baghdad, leaders of the Al Mahdi militia of Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr acknowledge that their fighters are chafing under orders to freeze operations, and worry they could lose control of the sprawling organization.
Some members have defected to armed groups that have no intention of calling a cease-fire. Commanders have gone underground, leaving a leadership void as U.S. forces arrest members in raids. Some commanders have fled to Iran and others to southern Iraq. Rumors abound about the location of Sadr.
Senior leaders of Sadr's movement also worry openly that Iran has started to recruit Al Mahdi fighters to possibly confront U.S. forces in Iraq.
Sadr's movement is part of the U.S.-backed government, but now American and Iraqi officials face the danger that the Al Mahdi militia may splinter into dozens of armed groups no longer under a national command.
"If he is off the political scene, then we have a problem because you have to deal with several groups with unknown affiliations and agendas," said Laith Kubba, a senior director at the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy and a onetime spokesman for former Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. "There is nothing binding them but Muqtada Sadr."
The radical cleric has long been a two-edged sword for U.S. and Iraqi leaders. He commands somewhere between 10,000 and 60,000 fighters, many of whom fought U.S. forces in 2004. But he has a vast social welfare network and a broad Shiite movement that includes 30 lawmakers and six Cabinet ministers.
Looking to support Iraq's Shiite Muslim prime minister, Nouri Maliki, Sadr ordered a halt to Al Mahdi raids against Sunni Muslim areas, ceded the policing of Baghdad to Iraqi forces and counseled his militia to avoid any fights with U.S. troops.
But too many Shiites have been killed in bombings and too many members of the Al Mahdi militia are being arrested, several movement officials warn. The leaders risk losing the ability to restrain their followers when it comes to the U.S.-Iraqi security campaign, they say.
"Soon fighters might stop listening to their orders to stay quiet," said Abu Ferras Mutarri, the movement's political chief in Sadr City, the capital's Shiite slum. "If this deterioration continues, it will snowball."
