Two days later, the Associated Press and other news agencies reported that the Pentagon recently submitted a report to the U.S. Congress, titled, “Measuring Security and Stability in Iraq.” The report provides facts showing the increased toll among Iraqis recently.

Tit-for-tat suicide bombings and killings that escalated with the bombing of a Shiite mosque in February have intensified in the last three months. They have been carried out by militias loyal to one or the other of contending capitalist parties vying for the upper hand in the Iraqi government. The bulk of the victims are ordinary working people—Sunni and Shiite.

“The security situation is currently at its most complex state since the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom,” the report said, using the Pentagon’s name for the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The Pentagon document covered the period since the government of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was seated May 20. From that date through August 11, AP said, the average number of attacks against U.S. personnel and Iraqis was 792, about 25 percent higher than the 641 attacks reported on average between February 11 and May 19—the previous record for any counting period since the war began. Iraqi casualties, including civilians and military and police personnel, have reached nearly 120 per day, up from 80 the previous reporting period.

“Conditions that could lead to civil war exist in Iraq, specifically in and around Baghdad, and concern about civil war within the Iraqi civilian population has increased in recent months,” the Pentagon report said.

In response, “U.S. commanders have increased U.S. troop levels by about 13,000 over the past five weeks, to 140,000, mainly due to increased violence in the Baghdad area,” AP reported.  
 
Rift between premier, Washington
In a rift between Washington and its client regime in Baghdad, the new prime minister condemned the U.S.-led assault in early August in Sadr City against a militia loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr, who aims to establish an Islamic Republic in Iraq and says his movement is the Iraqi branch of the Palestinian Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Al-Maliki was also at odds with Washington when he issued a statement in July condemning the Israeli assault on Lebanon as “criminal.”

The two-hour battle in Sadr City broke out when U.S. and Iraqi troops attempted to arrest a member of al-Sadr’s militia charged with involvement in “punishment and torture cell activities,” reported al-Jazeera.

Al-Maliki said he was “very angered and pained,” adding that the U.S.-led attack undermined “national reconciliation.” He apologized and promised “this won’t happen again.” The Iraqi premier then reportedly sent an envoy to Sadr City to offer cash payments to families of the dead and wounded.

Aides to al-Sadr said the attack on their group was punishment for a large rally in Sadr City they organized to back Hezbollah and oppose the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Tens of thousands of Al-Sadr’s supporters participated in that rally, according to press reports.  
 
Bourgeois forces vie for power
Wealthy Sunnis have charged that death squads targeting prominent Sunnis operate out of the Shiite-dominated interior ministry. After taking office al-Maliki transferred the former interior minister, a senior figure in the governing Shiite bloc, to the ministry of finances, but has not appeased Sunni opponents.

Some who oppose the U.S.-led war in Iraq have portrayed such groups organizing attacks on U.S. occupation forces as “progressive.” Since the U.S.-led overthrow of the Baath Party regime of Saddam Hussein, which was based among the country’s Sunni minority, wealthy Sunnis have sponsored various groups that have organized suicide bombings, kidnappings, and beheading of hostages. They have targeted not only U.S. troops and Iraqi officials but many civilians. Their actions have increasingly taken place in Shiite neighborhoods, markets, and mosques in an effort to gain leverage and posts in the government.

Among those captured in the defeat of Baathist forces in Fallujah two years ago was Moayed Ahmed, a leader of the Army of Mohammed and a former member of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Abdullah al-Janabi were among those who escaped the brutal U.S.-led assault on that city.

Al-Janabi is from a wealthy family of landowners who had close ties to Saddam Hussein. Many of the Baathist regime’s weapons factories and military testing and research facilities were located on his family’s lands.

Al-Zarqawi’s group, al-Qaeda in Iraq, has increasingly focused its attacks on Shiites. In response to the rout of Baathist forces from Tall Afar last year, for example, Zarqawi said al-Qaeda would launch a “comprehensive war on the Shiites all over Iraq.” Zarqawi was killed by the U.S. military this year.  
 
Shiite militias: same class character
Shiite militias involved in the fighting have a similar class composition and use bourgeois methods like those of their Sunni opponents.

Al-Sadr has not supported any of the U.S.-backed governments in Iraq. But his movement has seats in the National Assembly and now heads several ministries in al-Maliki’s administration.

In April 2004, at the instigation of the U.S. occupation authority, an Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for al-Sadr for the murder of a rival Shiite cleric who had returned to Iraq with the aid of U.S. troops.

In March 2005 al-Sadr’s militia attacked a picnic of students at the University of Basra. Students said they were accused of violating Islam by girls and boys meeting together and playing music.

The Badr Organization, formerly the Badr Brigade, has the largest militia. It is associated with the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Leaders of SCIRI spent years in exile in Iran. That’s where many of their 10,000 militiamen operating today were trained.

One component of Badr is an elite commando outfit—the Wolf Brigade. Many Sunnis hold it responsible for revenge killings. Last year, the U.S. military fought alongside the Wolf Brigade in operations against Baathist forces in Mosul and Samarra, according to the New York Times.
 
 
Related articles:
‘U.S. troops out of Iraq now!’ is a ‘too inflexible’ demand says Communist Party USA, calling for a ‘phased exit’  
 
 
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