What's going on in Iraq?

Yesterday at a conference in Baghdad, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a prominent Shia leader who is also the head of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq announced, "In gratitude to the efforts, sacrifices and heroic positions of our brothers and brave sons from the Badr Organization." "We must give them the priority in bearing administrative and government responsibilities especially in the security field," he added, while the "President" of Iraq, Jalal Talabani, listened on. The Badr Organization (formerly known as the Badr Brigade) was formed by al-Hakim's brother in the '80's to fight Saddam Hussein. It has long since received funding and other "support" from Iran. While civilians in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, Baquba, Baghdad, Haditha and other cities in Iraq continue to complain of being beaten, looted and humiliated by the members of the Iraqi Army who are members of both the Badr Organization and Kurdish Peshmerga, these militias now have the overt backing of the interim Iraqi "government." It is also being reported that members of the Badr Organization, who are essentially running much of the "security" in southern Iraq at this point, have been instituting Sharia law. Thus, women are reporting being threatened with death or rape if they attend university, and more conservative clothing rules are being enforced. Recently a Sunni cleric was assassinated in the south. Harith al-Dhari, the head of the influential Sunni group the Association of Muslim Scholars (AMS), recently accused the Badr of killing members of the AMS, when he bluntly announced, "It is the Badr Brigades which is responsible for these killings."

State Sponsored Civil War
Dahr Jamail's Iraq Dispatches