Mahdi army details

http://billroggio.com/archives/2007/08/sadr_calls_for_mahdi.php

This piece on The Fourth Rail provides a breakdown of the Mahdi army factions, for those of you who haven't been keeping up. Dealing with an 'organisation' as diverse as the Mahdi army has been and will be enormously difficult for the US and the Iraqi govmt. But now that the threat from the Sunni Baathists/nationalists has receded, the last three major threats to a decent life for Iraqi's are Al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Mahdi army and the Badr Brigades. All of them will have to be neutralised as military organisations before the real task of creating civic institutions and a genuine economy can gather momentum. Sadr must be aware that the most dangerous thing to do with a private army is use it- hence his 'freezing' of operations for six months. Whether that will remove the sword of Damocles from the Mahdi army is a different question. For the US, there can be no deviation from the task at hand- and that is the demilitarisation of Iraqi society.