Firefights mark further splintering in Iraq

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Firefights mark further splintering in Iraq
This week's fighting in Diwaniyah between rebels and Iraqi forces highlights the growing power of militias in the country.
By Dan Murphy | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

CAIRO – Two days this week of fierce firefights between a Shiite militia and government forces in a usually calm town south of Baghdad left at least 80 dead and an unknown number wounded.

While the top US commander in Iraq said the battle came as a "surprise," it underscores a proliferation of militia groups throughout the country that is making central government control in many places merely notional, many Iraqis and foreign experts say.

The fight in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, between militiamen loyal to Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and local forces led by the country's most powerful Shiite parties, demonstrates the growing atomization in Iraq's war. Local politicians, gangsters, and would-be warlords are emerging around the country and taking up arms in service of local ambitions that frequently have little to do with Iraq's sectarian war.

The battle in Diwaniyah, which ended Tuesday when the US Air Force dropped a 500-lb. bomb on what it called a militia position, started just three days after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki led a peace conference among tribal leaders designed mostly to undercut Sunni-Shiite sectarian tensions. But, as Diwaniyah demonstrates, sectarian fighting is far from the central government's only security challenge.

"When you say 'civil war' it makes it sound like there are two sides fighting in Iraq,'' says Juan Cole, a professor of modern Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan. "There aren't two sides - there are lots of sides."

In much of the Shiite south, local leaders increasingly seek to carve out their own fiefdoms and the economic opportunities they generate.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0831/p01s02-woiq.html