Security and politics: get the latter right, and you'll have the former.(At War IV)

THE current fighting in Iraq was almost inevitable. The new political process we are putting in place is based on elections, and those who know that they are going to lose them have every reason to disrupt that process. The Sunni radicals and the Shiite rebel leader Moqtada al-Sadr realize that their only hope of achieving power is by resorting to force. It is hardly surprising that they are cooperating with each other, since a combined effort gives them their best shot at prevailing in a test of arms.

The more troubling confrontation is with al-Sadr, the 30-year-old son of the late, respected Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Muhammad Baqr al-Sadr. His followers are fanatical but few in number. Stymied politically, al-Sadr has built up his militia, the Jaysh al-Mahdi, or the Mahdi army. They are little more than thugs. In March, the Mahdi army drove out all the residents of Qawliya--a village rumored to be a red-light district-- and used a bulldozer to knock down their homes. Another tactic of theirs is to throw acid in the faces of scarf-less women and to threaten those who open women's centers.

Sadr's group is hardly the only militia in Iraq. Many of the tribal leaders, religious figures, and local politicians maneuvering for power in the new civil structures have also been actively recruiting armed groups of supporters. Believing that force equals power and order, too many otherwise democratically minded Iraqis are tempted by totalitarianism. The problem we face was captured well in a recent Oxford Research International poll: Asked what Iraq needs at this time, 86 percent said "an Iraqi democracy," but 81 percent said "a single strong Iraqi leader."

Faced with the militia issue, the Governing Council inserted into the March interim constitution the provision, "Armed forces and militias not under the command structure of the Iraqi Transitional Government are prohibited except as provided by federal law." That did not go far enough for some. The Washington Post editors complained, "No plan has been announced ... to disarm and dismantle" the militias. It thundered, "Only the United States has the means to force this vital step, and its time is running out."

So, it should have been obvious that in order to "disarm and dismantle" the Mahdi army, we would necessarily have to confront al-Sadr, as there was no way his forces could be co-opted into the new security services.

After threatening al-Sadr for weeks, the United States picked a fight with him. On March 28, in what al-Sadr's followers took as a provocation, we closed his newspaper. Then, when he reacted at Friday prayers the usual way--with incendiary rhetoric and some peaceful protests--we arrested his deputy, Mustafa al-Yaqubi. Not surprisingly, al-Sadr assumed this was the start of the confrontation we had long threatened, and so he reacted by pulling out all the stops. That is when the rebellion started.

One can make many arguments about whether it was a good idea to pick this fight now with al-Sadr. Maybe it would have been better to tolerate the Mahdi army so long as they confined itself to social issues. On the other hand, if a fight was inevitable, this is not a bad time to have it. Now, unlike after June 30, when Washington is scheduled to transfer power over to the ...