BAGHDAD — Hours after President Bush announced his latest plan to shore up Iraq's beleaguered government, some Iraqis were hoarding weapons, prepared to fight additional U.S. troops alongside the militias they say protect them.
Among the militiamen in the capital on Thursday was a man who asked to be identified as Abu Karrar. Affiliated with the Al Mahdi militia loyal to radical Shiite Muslim cleric Muqtada Sadr, Abu Karrar refuses to lay down his weapons until militia leaders give the word.
"This can be done only when there will be some guarantees, and only when security has improved," he said.
Abu Zahraa, 35, a Shiite who works as a building foreman in Baghdad, said he was not ready to trust the government, divided as it was into powerful Sunni Arab and Shiite factions.
"If the situation would remain like this, then we will never give up our weapons, because we are skeptical that there is a ... side that is able to provide us with security," he said.
Sheik Abdul Razzaq Naddawi, an aide to Sadr, said Al Mahdi members, particularly those in the sprawling Shiite slum of Sadr City, had been forced to arm themselves for protection against Al Qaeda in Iraq members and other fighters.
"The Sadr City residents say that they are targeted by Al Qaeda and the like, who have announced that they are launching a war against the Shiites," Naddawi said.
He said militiamen continued to carry weapons. "If these groups are attacked, they will defend themselves," he said.
The remarks from Sadr's camp and street-level sympathizers contradicted a renewed promise Thursday by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's government to disarm the militias and ban them from the streets.
Iraqi government officials approached Sadr this year and asked him to disarm his militia, but he asked for guarantees that Shiites in Sadr City would be protected, Naddawi said. Then a series of coordinated car bombs rocked Sadr City on Nov. 23, killing at least 215 people. Any chance of a cease-fire evaporated with the bombings.
"Things reached a level that one could not keep silent against," Naddawi said. "The situation exploded."
Even those who oppose the militias said Bush's plan would not work.
Khalid Furajee, 31, a Sunni grocery store owner, said he lived in fear of Shiite militias, and added that U.S. troops would only anger them.
