BAGHDAD — In Sadr City, an impoverished district of northeastern Baghdad, local people say the anger of Shiites against Sunni militants is ready to erupt into violence. “Iraq today is boiling like a volcano and it could blow at any minute,” said Ali Al-Husseini, a 27-year-old cleric. So far, Iraq's Shiite majority has stayed largely quiescent, despite the highest violence for five years, with car bombs and other attacks killing hundreds of people every month. But officials have told Reuters the government is looking at plans to create a government-backed Shiite militia to counter Al-Qaeda. The government hopes a unified force will help protect the population and prevent local Shiite militias taking matters into their own hands. Sunnis are not so sure. Such a project could be helpful if prominent locals, such as tribal chiefs, are involved, said Qais Al-Shathir, a senior Sunni lawmaker. “But if this project is adopted by political sides ... then this will certainly give official cover for the militias and this will negatively impact the security situation.” Three senior officials in the Shiite-dominated administration of Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki said the government plans to combine at least three Shiite militias into a single force. “All Shiite factions have agreed with this plan,” a senior official in Maliki's office said. The idea is to combine elements from the Asaib Al-Haq and Kata'ib Hezbollah militias, which ceased fighting in Iraq after 2011, as well as the Mehdi army, which is loyal to anti-US preacher Moqtada Al-Sadr and which stepped aside from the fighting in 2008. The plan, said the official, is partly designed to boost Maliki's credentials ahead of elections in 2014. “Maliki will present himself as the Shi'ite defender,” the official said. Maliki's delicate cross-sectarian political alliance was supposed to share power between Shiites, who make up just over 60 percent of Iraq's 32 million people, and Sunnis and Kurds, who make up roughly 20 percent each. But it has been paralyzed since US troops withdrew in 2011, stalling legislation and policymaking in a country that still needs to rebuild its infrastructure after years of war and sanctions. Tensions spilled onto the streets in December when thousands of Sunnis in the western provinces of Anbar, Nineveh and Salahuddin, in central Iraq, protested against Maliki, demanding he step down over what they saw as the marginalization of their sect. Protesters were furious after state officials arrested the bodyguards of the Sunni Finance Minister, Rafie Al-Esawi, on terrorism charges. Authorities denied the arrests were political, but Sunni leaders saw them as a crackdown. Esawi later resigned at an anti-Maliki rally. Tareq Al-Hashemi, Iraq's Vice President and one of the most senior Sunni politicians, has fled the country and been sentenced to death in absentia for running death squads, which he denies. Many Iraqi Sunnis say they see a sectarian hand behind Hashemi's case. These steps have undermined the power-sharing pact, forged after elections in 2010, between Iraq's different sectarian and ethnic groups. After the protests the government made some concessions, such as releasing hundreds of detainees and granting pensions to former army officers and members of the Baath Party that dominated Iraq under Saddam Hussein. But seven months on from the unrest, day-laborer Mohammed Abdullah said Sunni demands had still not been met. “The government does not recognize us, we do not recognize it and we will work to topple it because we are facing a crucial battle to prove the Iraqi identity,” the 54-year-old said in the city of Fallujah. — Reuters
