The US-led occupation in Iraq faces its most serious test yet, with the prospect that all-out simultaneous uprisings by Sunnis and Shiites could plunge the country into chaos, military experts say.
The next few days will prove pivotal, and there is a real chance that Washington could be caught out with too few troops in the country to cope with spreading violence.
The US has vowed to arrest anti-US Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, said by supporters to be holed up in a heavily guarded compound in the Shiite holy city of Najaf.
Sadr's followers have clashed with troops from the US-led occupying force for days, in violence ranging from Baghdad's Shiite slums to several cities in southern Iraq.
US and British officials insist the insurrection does not represent a general uprising of the majority Shiite community. But experts say the truth will be clear soon.
"A trial of strength has started between the coalition authorities and Sadr," said Michael Clarke, director of the International Policy Institute at King's College London.
"This is not a trial of strength that will take months to decide. It will move one way or another in the next couple of days. I would say this is Iraq's most critical week since the end of the war," he said on Monday.
The test comes with less than three months until a deadline for Washington to hand over sovereignty to an appointed Iraqi interim government. That deadline -- politically crucial in the US -- increasingly appears in doubt.
The Shiite uprising has come at a time of sharply increased tension with minority Sunnis, mainly in the area north and west of Baghdad that had previously been the center of resistance. US forces have surrounded Falluja, the town where four security contractors were dismembered by an angry mob last week.
"The coalition has to assert its control of Falluja for its own credibility. You can't have no-go areas in Iraq if you intend to hand over power in June and then have elections," said Charles Heyman, editor of the journal Jane's Land Armies.
A `SMALL LIGHT'
The timing of the decision to go after Sadr is seen as a gamble: a bet on quickly suppressing his revolt against the risk of further enraging his supporters. The warrant is based on charges of plotting a rival cleric's death a year ago.
"The charge that's being used to arrest him is one that's been on the table for a year. The question is, why wasn't he arrested then?" said Christopher Langton of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Henner Fuertig, Iraq specialist at the German Institute for Middle East Studies, said it was not too late to prevent a Shiite revolt from spreading.
Most Shiites still gravitate toward the older, less confrontational cleric Ali Sistani rather than 30-year-old Sadr, who has for the past week been at the head of violent anti-US protests.
"[Sadr] is a political firebrand. He has political weight, but not religious gravitas, which would count against him in the longer run. He is a small light," Fuertig said.
"It all depends on how the coalition forces act. They need to be careful not to inflame the situation by involving innocent people. If they can just focus on containing Sadr and his followers, it would not necessarily spiral out of control," he said.
But current US troop numbers of 130,000 give General John Abizaid, the commander of US forces in the region, "few options" to contain unrest, Heyman said.
"When something like this happens, the old watchword is: the more you use, the less you lose. If it does become a general uprising across the Shia region of Iraq, the coalition will need more troops, and they will need them fast," he said.
British experience in Northern Ireland showed that 20 troops per thousand of population -- the equivalent of 500,000 in Iraq -- was the strength best suited to maintaining order in a restive community, Clarke said.
But a sudden call for reinforcement could also fan the flames, Clarke added: "That in itself is a big step toward a manifest crisis -- being seen to have to reinforce."
The prospect of simultaneous Sunni and Shiite uprisings -- the nightmare scenario for any force in Iraq -- has been faced before, when a Western army tried to pacify Iraq eight decades ago.
"The British took three years to turn both the Sunnis and the Shias into their enemies in 1920," journalist Robert Fisk wrote in the Independent newspaper. "The Americans are achieving this in just under a year."
Britain crushed that revolt with massive air strikes that killed thousands of Iraqi civilians.
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