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Al Qaeda and/or the other elements of Sunni insurgency seem to understand that the key to making Iraq completely ungovernable is destablizing the Sh'ia community. This can best be achieved by pitting the various Shi'a religio-political factions against each other.

There are many ways to do this. The most obvious is to convince the leaders of the factions (or their followers) that the other factions are conspiring to kill them, and the Americans either won't or can't stop them.

Whiskey Bar
The Ayatollah Sleeps With the Fishes
August 29, 2003

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The attack, coupled with the repeated assaults on American and Iraqis here, has prompted leaders of several political parties to say they had lost confidence in the ability of the Americans to protect their leaders and sacred places.

Today, they began demanding at least a more Iraqi face on the security forces. Indeed, many political leaders said today they might be unable to keep their own followers from moving against their enemies.

"The knife is at our neck," Said Nael Musawi, a Shiite religious leader, told a group of American soldiers standing guard at the gate of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, as thousands of demonstrators swirled about them. "I don't know how much longer I can control my people."

New York Times
U.S. and Iraqis Talk of Forming a Large Militia
August 30, 2003

Having committed one huge error in disbanding the old Iraqi Army, the Coalition appears to be on the brink of comitting an even worse one: letting the various factions on the Governing Council put their supporters on the street with guns:

The officials said the force could consist of thousands of Iraqis already screened by the political parties for prior affiliations with Saddam Hussein's government. Some Iraqi officials said that such a militia could ultimately take control of Iraqi cities from American soldiers.

Given the way the Council has handled its business so far -- carefully partitioning everything (seats, ministries, the rotating presidency) among the its various factions, it's hard to believe a new militia wouldn't be created in the same fashion. This how private armies get created. This is how Lebanons get created.

Such a scheme would also pose an immediate, potentially mortal threat to Sheikh Sadr's faction, which is not represented on the Council and thus would have no official militia wing to protect it.

That's the Badr faction, not the Badr Brigade, which is named after Sheikh Badr's father but is actually affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq -- the target of the Najaf bombing.

See how much fun this is?

Anyway, it almost seems as if the Coalition is trying to push Sadr into going off the reservation and launching an uprising. Which may or may not be the smart play. Forcing Sadr to move before he is ready might make it easier to crush him.

But it could also backfire. Other Shi'a factions might be unwilling to alienate their own supporters by participating in a strike against Sadr. And a strike that failed would be potentially disastrous: If Sadr and his people survived, and managed to launch a Shi'a insurrection, they would have little choice but to cooperate with at least some elements of the Sunni insurgency. Which might mark the beginning of a broader national liberation struggle that would make the U.S. position in Iraq completely untenable.

This may be taking an overly conspiratorial view of things -- although I'm not sure that's possible in the New Iraq®. Maybe the Coalition is simply switching to Plan B, which is to recreate the same feudal warlord system that now prevails in Afghanistan -- perhaps on the theory that in such an environment, the U.S. Army could turn Ahmad Chalabi into the biggest, baddest warlord on the block.

Leaving aside the fact that this strategy is failing badly in Afghanistan -- not to mention that it diametrically contradicts every word the administration has said about building a democratic Iraq -- it's foolish to think a country located in the heart of the Arab world (and sitting right next to Al Qaeda's Grand Prize, i.e. Saudi Arabia) can be treated like an obscure backwater in Central Asia.

If Iraq descends into warlordism, it's going to be even harder, if not impossible, to coax other countries into sending troops. In other words, it could make an expanded U.N. mandate practically worthless.

Which may be the strategy -- the neocon strategy for thwarting any attempt to bring Iraq under international supervision of any kind. Some time back I predicted the neocons would never agree to a meaningful U.N. role in Iraq -- because it flatly contradicts their neo-imperialist vision of American power, and (more particularly) because it would give Russia and the Europeans a potential opening to play a more meaningful role in the Israel-Palestinian "peace" process as well.

Have the neocons decided that handing Iraq over to factional militias is the preferable altenative? Or has the administration simply lost its collective head, and is just frantically trying to get bodies -- any bodies, as long as they aren't American -- onto the streets and into the line of fire?

Don't know. But one thing is clear: Unless the integrity and unity of the new Iraqi security force can be guaranteed -- ironclad guaranteed -- then the Coalition is taking an enormous risk. Because turning Iraq into another Lebanon would be about the greatest possible gift the United States could give Osama bin Laden.

Update 9/4/03 3:30 PM ET: A belated correction: the radical cleric opposed (and feared) by the Coalition is named Sadr, not Badr. Which is obviously not the same as the name of the armed wing of SCIRI -- the Shi'a group that is cooperating with occupation.

I could have sworn that I read somewhere that the two shared the same name. Which only goes to prove something I should have learned during my years as a journalist: It isn't what you don't know that will get you in trouble, it's what you think you know.