BAGHDAD — Militia commander Abu Maha had studied his quarry carefully, watching as the man acquired fancy suits, gold watches and the street name "Master." Now, heavily armed and dressed in an Adidas track suit, Abu Maha told his followers it was time to act against one of their comrades.
A dozen of them gripped their assault rifles and headed out. The Master, accused of sliding into immoral behavior after stoutly defending Shiite Muslims in Iraq's sectarian violence, was about to learn that justice in the Mahdi Army could be very rough.
Fighters such as Abu Maha have taken on a new role in recent months in the militia of Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr. Instead of battling Sunni insurgents and U.S. troops, they are now weeding out what they consider to be black sheep within their ranks.
Sadr, whose Mahdi Army has as many as 60,000 members, has been trying to make his movement a viable political factor, and more appealing to his hundreds of thousands of followers. In late August, he declared a six-month freeze in hostilities to rein in lawless elements after deadly clashes with a rival Shiite militia.
If Sadr succeeds, it could lead to a much more stable Iraq -- at least in the short term. U.S. commanders say they are optimistic so far. But it is not yet clear whether Sadr can control even the men such as Abu Maha on whom he is depending to establish order.
"What we want to do during this period is to establish a new order, to collect the people who are professional, educated and have good information, who are good, faithful in our social works and are helping the people," said Sadr's chief spokesman Sheik Salah Ubaidi.
Some local military leaders are following Sadr's orders, but several Mahdi Army members acknowledge that others are striking out on their own, continuing to commit acts of sectarian violence and sometimes attacking U.S. forces.
Sadr's movement emerged in 2003 as a counterweight to exiled politicians arriving in Baghdad with the Americans. His Mahdi Army began to provide an array of social services to the urban poor and courted the Sunni Arab minority with a nationalist message of resistance to U.S. forces.
Then as sectarian violence erupted into civil war by early 2006, his fighters reportedly began torturing and killing Sunni civilians in the name of fighting Al Qaeda in Iraq, the movement blamed for the car bombs used to devastating effect against Shiites.
The cleric has at various times reined in his militia leaders, including a cease-fire announced in January that unraveled. Many members continued their attacks, and Sadr's loyal followers hesitated to confront them.
But late this summer, faced with a major public relations problem, Sadr changed strategy again. His forces were widely blamed for a clash with the rival Badr Organization during a festival in the Shiite holy city of Karbala that left at least 50 people dead. He blamed the violence on rogue elements and vowed to eliminate them.
Now, all across Baghdad, militiamen loyal to Sadr's main office in the shrine city of Najaf are on the hunt for the purported renegades -- men such as the Master.
Abu Maha, a pious but violent man who brags about killing Sunnis, was assigned to police the Ghazaliya neighborhood.
The Master had arrived in the mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhood in 2006 to defend Shiites. Abu Maha acknowledged that he had once praised his efforts.
But Ghazaliya had become segregated between the Shiite north and Sunni south, and the Master no longer was doing anything for the community. Instead, he had taken to fancy clothes, prostitutes and kidnapping for profit.
Abu Maha's men gathered intelligence on his moral lapses, and in early November they made their move.
When they arrived at the Master's house, Abu Maha said, two prostitutes and a couple of thugs were sitting in his living room. They told his men that the Master was out back, about to kill his cousin.
The men went outside, seized the Master and took him to a nearby mosque, where they interrogated and tortured him for two days.
Abu Maha said they beat the Master with their rifles, burned his scalp with cigarettes and broke his arms and legs. He told the Master that he was being expelled from the Mahdi Army and warned him that he would kill him if he ever returned to Ghazaliya.
Then, he said, they threw the Master into the trunk of a car and deposited him at his home in another neighborhood. They haven't heard any more of him since.
In west Baghdad, Sadr's local offices regularly send out such enforcers. But across the river, the militia's punishment committee relies on a special force, the Golden Battalion, to discipline the worst offenders, who are taken to Najaf for punishment.
"They tell him he is fired, lecture him, make him confess to his wrongs. If he is stubborn and impolite, yeah, he gets it," said Abu Atwan, an official in Sadr's New Baghdad office.
