Ministers of Death; How to rein in Iraq's increasingly bloody militias? The government has a plan, but it's a pretty big gamble.

Byline: Scott Johnson (With Christian Caryl in Baghdad)

They call him the "Shiite Zarqawi," in testament to his brutality and growing political reach. And when Iraqi gunmen captured a U.S. Army translator, Ahmed Qusai al-Taie, as he left the fortified Green Zone two weeks ago, U.S. officials immediately suspected the notorious death-squad leader named Abu Deraa. American ground troops and warplanes hit the Shiite slums of Sadr City in a bid to retrieve the translator and nab his alleged captor. Two of the warlord's sons were reputedly killed in the raids, but he himself escaped. By late last week, he was back on his neighborhood streets, surrounded by armed guards and contemptuously handing out sheets of white paper, challenging residents to write down any complaints against him.

So ended another inconclusive chapter in America's effort to gain control of Baghdad's bloody streets. U.S. commanders are determined to track down men like Abu Deraa and capture or kill them. But the hurdles seem to grow ever larger. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki also says he wants to see Deraa and others brought to justice. Yet within hours of last week's operation, he roundly and unexpectedly condemned the raids and, a few days later, effectively nixed further efforts by ordering U.S. troops to dismantle checkpoints surrounding Sadr City, Abu Deraa's stronghold. U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad explains that the Iraqi government does not oppose its efforts to track down al-Taie's kidnappers. But the prime minister wants the search to be focused. "If you have information of where Abu Deraa is," he says Maliki told him, "go ahead. You don't need to come back to me for approval."

Clearly, however, there's growing discord between the prime minister and his U.S. backers. For starters, the two sides disagree about how best to dismantle the death squads. Maliki relies on the thousands of supporters of the largest Shia militia groups--Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and the Badr Brigades associated with SCIRI, the biggest Shia party in Parliament--for his political survival. He thus hopes to rein in the worst killers either by co-opting them or by engaging in what amounts to a proxy war by pitting the larger militias against their offshoots. (The Mahdi Army was once Abu Deraa's patron.)

Agree or disagree, U.S. officials have little choice but to go along, for Maliki is clearly eager to demonstrate that he is not under their thumb. "We have a dwindling influence," says a senior U.S. official, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the topic. "That prevents us from doing things that we might want to do, like going after Abu Deraa more aggressively."

The question is whether the death squads, numbering in the several dozens in Baghdad alone, can be tamed, let alone crushed. Abu Deraa epitomizes the problem. Deraa, meaning "shield," is a nom de guerre; the warlord's first name is Ismael and his last the subject of some dispute. What's known is that he started out as a foot soldier in the Mahdi Army and is the son of a fishmonger from one of the poorest slums of Sadr City. After last February's bombing of the Askariya shrine in Samarra, an important site for Shiite worshipers, he reportedly split from Sadr and embarked on a killing spree of his own. His gang is known to torture their victims with electric drills and dump their bodies in the craters left from the Sunni suicide bombers who plague Shiite neighborhoods. When al-Sadr joined the government last January, Abu Deraa reportedly called him a "coward" and cut ties.

Since then, he has become one of the most brutal Shia ...