Iraqi Shiites campaign against Kurdish arms ban exemption

The Badr Brigade "had given more than 2,500 martyrs" in the struggle against his Sunni-dominated regime, Supreme Assembly of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SAIRI) number two Abdul Aziz al-Hakim told the Azzaman daily.

"The decision to dissolve it goes against the agreement among opposition groups to incorporated their militias in the new Iraqi army to be formed soon," Hakim said.

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Even before the war, the Badr Brigade mounted occasional hit-and-run attacks from exile in Iran, but the US-led coalition barred it from entering Iraq.

Many of the brigade's members have since taken advantage of the post-war chaos to slip back into Iraq, but last week the head of the US-led occupation administration, Paul Bremer, banned all heavy weapons from June 15 and required coalition authorization for carrying of small arms.

The decree effectively dissolved all militias, except those of the Kurdish factions in northern Iraq, which were exempted as coalition members.

The head of coalition ground forces, Lieutenant General David McKiernan, made clear that the exemption would apply only to the three northern provinces which the Kurdish rebels held under Western protection even before the 2003 Gulf war.

But it sparked an angry reaction from SAIRI, which insisted that the ban be applied equally.

"Maybe we didn't fight with the coalition, but we didn't fight against them," SAIRI official Adel Abdul Mahdi told the New York Times last Friday.

"We want conditions where all militias are dissolved and we will not accept that other militias will be allowed to stay there with their weapons while we will not be there with ours."

US military officials suspect Iran of using the Badr Brigade to spread the Islamic revolution into Iraq, although Tehran denies this.