IRAQ: The latest efforts by US forces to bring order to Iraq by declaring a gun amnesty is threatening to tip Baghdad into anarchy. Dozens of local self-defence organisations in the capital have pledged to fight any coalition attempt to disarm them.
With June 1st set as the deadline for the handing in or registration of weapons, guns and ammunition are being stockpiled in houses with community leaders refusing to give them up until the security situation in the capital improves.
The organisations, set up in poorer, Shia-dominated parts of the city to guard against looters, have hundreds of members who fear the registration procedure is a US ruse to take their weapons away.
Sheikh Halim al-Fatlawi, who is in charge of one defence organisation which has turned his neighbourhood into a no-go area for US patrols at night, said: "We will never give up our weapons whilst our women and children are threatened every day they walk upon the street. If the Americans come into our homes looking for guns, we will take it as an act of aggression and fight against them."
The decision to disarm larger paramilitary groups as well as smaller organisations may also disrupt talks between the US administration and Iraqi groups over the future make-up of a civilian government in Iraq.
The proposed disarmament of the Badr Brigade, the military wing of the main Shia organisation SCIRI, with over 20,000 members, has caused unease. SCIRI's leadership has threatened that it will end all dialogue over fears they will be marginalised in any future government without an armed following.
A spokesman for the organisation said: "Everyone wants to see greater stability in Iraq, but it is for the Americans to create the right atmosphere for disarmament to begin. That atmosphere does not exist at present."
Such sentiments will come as a reminder to US planners in Iraq that eager though they may be to step up the pace of reconstruction, much has still to be done to prepare a security framework.
A high-profile crackdown on gun markets in the capital last week has caused the trade to go underground.
Weapons must now be bought in dingy shops and back alleys, although in Sadr City, a notorious slum on the outskirts of Baghdad, traders still offered their wares openly, hiding them beneath their stalls when US patrols passed.
A stall holder, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of arrest by the Americans, said: "There are just as many guns as there were before, except now people are angry that they have become criminals if they try to protect themselves when American soldiers are more interested in protecting themselves than us."
Distrust and anger at the US presence in Baghdad is rife, with gunshots and the sound of explosions part of the clockwork of life in the city.
One note of hope was offered by a US soldier on patrol in Sadr city when he stopped to watch a poster being mounted of the religious leader after whom the slum has been named, where once stood a large portrait of Saddam Hussein.
"It makes you kind of happy to see them getting on with their lives like that," he said, until it was pointed out to him that Sadr was the leader of a fundamentalist Shia organisation who was killed by Saddam 30 years ago, and that the organisation was already beginning to regroup itself on an anti-US platform.