IRAQ - The Sadrist Confrontations.

The Iraqi Army's National Guard on Aug. 28 battled fiercely for hours with members of Jaysh al-Mahdi in the southern city of Diwaniya. At least 81 militiamen and soldiers were killed. The violence, which one Iraqi general said included militiamen executing Iraqi soldiers in a public square, amounted to the most brazen clashes in recent memory between Iraqi government forces and Sadr's militia.

The fighting, after weeks of rising tensions and skirmishes between elements of the militia and US-led forces, could increase pressure on PM Maliki to find a way, whether political or military or both, to quickly rein in Sadr's forces. But in either case, the showdown will ultimately be among the Shi'ites themselves.

The battle erupted after a particularly violent weekend (Aug. 26-27) in Iraq for both US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, in what had been a relatively quiet month. The US military on Aug. 28-29 announced the deaths of 10 US service members in attacks on Aug. 27-28. With sectarian violence soaring, US generals and American Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad say that militias were now the single greatest threat to the stability of Iraq and that the Iraqi government must move urgently to disband them.

Maliki has refrained from strong condemnations of Jaysh al-Mahdi. Maliki relies on Sadr, popular among poor Shi'ites, for political support against rival Shi'ite politicians. Sadr controls at least 30 seats in parliament and several ministries, and he maintains close ties to Maliki's Shi'ite group, a faction of the Islamist Da'wa movement. Earlier in August, after the Americans called in air support during a raid with Iraqi forces in a Sadr stronghold in Baghdad, Maliki denounced the move by the Americans and said he had never given permission for it. But the fighting on Aug. 28 in Diwaniya underscored the recalcitrant, rebellious nature of Jaysh al-Mahdi and raised the specter of the two uprisings which Sadr led against the Americans and the Iraqi government in 2004.

Gen. Othman al-Ghanimi, a Sunni commander of the Eighth Division of the Iraqi Army in Diwaniya, said: After several hours of gunfire and mortars, "the clashes reached a point where members of the militias executed soldiers after their ammunition ran out in a public square, in front of residents. This is true terrorism and a crime". Jaysh al-Mahdi denied the reports of executions. The fighting ended only after Shi'ite politicians visited Sadr's office in Najaf to negotiate a ceasefire.

Gen. Ghanimi and other Iraqi Army and police officials said several militias were involved, not just Jaysh al-Mahdi. But they said the seed of the Aug. 28 violence was planted a week earlier when a roadside bomb they believe was placed by Jaysh al-Mahdi aimed at a senior Eighth Division officer, killing at least two Iraqi soldiers. Two days later, the Iraqi Army arrested a Jaysh al-Mahdi member and began an operation against the militia.

The surge in violence - with more than 100 people killed on Aug. 27-28 - came when Iraqi, US and British officials continued to assert that a civil war in Iraq could be averted. In fact, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the lead spokesman for the US military, on Aug. 28 said attacks and murders in Baghdad declined in August as a result of the deployment of about 12,000 additional US and Iraqi troops. He said several Baghdad areas that had been searched for weeks under a new security plan were reviving, with stores reopening, and children riding bicycles in the streets.

Sadr and Jaysh al-Mahdi remain an operational blind spot. Sadr City, a Jaysh al-Mahdi bastion, has not been searched thoroughly, though it is one of Baghdad's most violent areas. US forces have maintained some distance: even as the fighting raged in Diwaniya on Aug. 28, Gen. Caldwell said he had not been briefed on the battle.

Several clashes have erupted between Jaysh al-Mahdi and American-led forces this summer. In July, US and Iraqi troops stormed a building in Sadr City and engaged in firefights which killed or injured up to 40 gunmen before capturing a militia commander. Days later, British troops raided the town of al-Garma, near the southern city of Basra, and detained a Sadr official, Sajad Badr al-Sukany. At least one British soldier was killed.

Nasir al-Sa'di, a spokesman for the Sadr bloc in parliament, said the Sadr militant arrested by the Iraqi Army was tortured and may have been killed. According to Sa'di's account, the army began hitting a Jaysh al-Mahdi-dominated area late on Aug. 27. He said the soldiers killed civilians and damaged houses while Sadr militants "did not participate" at first, refusing to return fire. Gen. Ghanimi denied torturing the detainee, noting that Sadr men visited him on Aug. 26 and found him healthy. He said they had asked for the detainee's release, and that when the army refused, fighting broke out as the militias sought to free him. Gunfire riddled the streets from 2 am local time until early in the afternoon of Aug. 28. Polish troops helped Iraqi soldiers encircle the most violent areas, as US helicopters hovered overhead.

Khalil Jalil Hamza, the governor of Diwaniya, later shuttled to Sadr's headquarters in Najaf for discussions of a ceasefire. By 5:30 pm, the battled had ended. Hamza is a senior SCRIRI official. Jaysh al-Mahdi and SCIRI's Badr have fought pitched battles several times in Baghdad and the south in recent years.

Ambassador Khalilzad recently said Iran had been inciting Jaysh al-Mahdi to step up attacks against US-led forces in retaliation for the Israeli assault on Lebanon. Gen. Caldwell later said some militia elements had been training in Iran and had received weapons from groups or individuals in Iran, although it was unclear whether the Iranian government was involved.

With the neo-Salafi group al-Qaeda having renewed its call for all-out war against the Shi'ites, a series of explosions on Aug. 31 ripped through Shi'ite parts of east Baghdad, killing at least 67 people and wounding over 300. The well-organised attacks were aimed at Jaysh al-Mahdi. The explosions could ignite a wave of revenge killings by militiamen, continuing a pattern of reprisals.

On the political front, Shi'ite and Kurdish leaders on Aug. 31 decided to let the speaker of parliament, the Sunni Arab Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, keep his post after weeks of pressuring him to step down. The position of speaker is the third-highest-ranking job in the state, and an ousting of Mashhadani would have been the biggest shake-up in politics since the government was installed in late May.

Three days after US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that Iraq was heading along a difficult path to a "secure new future", a Pentagon report presented to Congress on Sept. 1 says sectarian violence worsened over the past three months, creating the most complex security challenge since the 2003 invasion. The report, mandated by Congress each quarter, was likely to add to growing calls for Rumsfeld to resign.

The covered the period since the Maliki government took office, when the Bush administration raised expectations of progress in quelling the violence while insisting that civil war was not on the cards. The report said: "Death squads and terrorists are locked in mutually reinforcing cycles of sectarian strife", adding: The Sunni-led insurgency remained "potent and viable. 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. Nevertheless, the current violence is not a civil war, and movement toward a civil war can be prevented".

Assistant Secretary of Defence Peter Rodman told reporters there had been progress in the economy and the number of trained Iraqi troops was up. But he said security conditions had deteriorated, adding: "Breaking the cycle of violence is the most pressing goal of coalition and Iraqi operations". The report said overall attacks rose 24% to 792 per week and Iraqi casualties increased 51% to nearly 120 per day. Democrats in Congress said the report showed that Rumsfeld and the administration leadership were disconnected from reality.