"American officials still speak of creating a national army and police force that they say will represent all Iraqis, but the facts on the ground tell a different story. The Interior Ministry forces are basically the Badr Brigade, a Shiite militia, in national uniform; the Shiite political coalition needs the support of radical cleric Muqtada Sadr, so it lets his private militia move freely from Basra to Baghdad; and, of course, the Kurdish peshmerga militia constitutes a separate army that reports to Kurdish leaders, not to the national government in Baghdad."