As Al Jazeera reported today:

Iraq's prime minister has threatened to disarm Shia militias and Sunni fighters by force if they refuse to lay down their weapons.

The tough talk from Nuri al-Maliki, who launched a crackdown on Shia groups last month, came as at least 13 people died on Wednesday in the latest clashes in Baghdad's Sadr City.

Al-Maliki said that the al-Mahdi army of Muqtada al-Sadr, a Shia leader, along with groups such as al-Qaeda in Iraq must be dissolved.

He demanded that they hand over their weapons, stop interfering in state affairs, give up wanted men and stop running their own courts.

"The alternative is the continuation of force and clashes until we reach the end, to get rid of the weapons and the gangs who are carrying weapons," he said.

"We can't build a state along with militias."

Well, well, give up willingly or we'll continue to hunt you down...
As Badger points out...

Prime Minister Maliki gave his response on Wednesday to the cross-party group of legislators that conducted a sit-in in Sadr City on Sunday and demanded and end to the fighting and an investigation of human rights abuses. Maliki told them the attacks in Sadr City will continue until the Mahdi Army is disarmed and dissolved (this is the first time Maliki has openly said that is the aim); he associated the Mahdi Army with AlQaeda and others as groups to be terminated; he said nothing about the Badr organization which is his own party's militia; he told the legislators it is they who are are responsible for the prolongation of the fighting; and in not-so-thinly veiled terms he threatened the legislators, telling them that if they continue to object, they could be charged with inciting to violence and fitna.

You're either with him, or you're against him...! Can you believe the audacity? Is Maliki determined to have every bloc turn against him? Apparently... (also from Badger's translation)

...Maliki threatened the voices of those within the system who criticize the government's military operations against armed groups, and he accused them of being instigators stirring up the state, adding: "These people--whether they are members of parliament or members of political blocs or parties, or [even] members of the government, who are not hesitant about stirring up fitna--these people will bear the responsibility". The Prime Minister said: "I say to them: Be patient because the affair will come to an end, and the judiciary is available, because it is you who are pouring oil on the fires and fanning the flames of fitna."

Got that? It's their fault they're in that mess, it wasn't Maliki's assault on Basra and Sadr City...! So what does Sec. Gates have to say...

US Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates admitted on Tuesday that the reduction in US troop casualties in recent months had ended in the past few weeks, because of the fighting in Sadr City in the capital. Over 40 US troops have been killed in April. Gates also brandished a second aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf at Iran, which the US accuses of supplying the Mahdi Army with arms that are used against US troops.

Juan Cole further points out the flaw in Maliki's grand scheme...

Professor Juan Cole, an expert on Iraq from the University of Michigan, told Al Jazeera that efforts to tackle al-Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group, had to some extent succeeded.

"Now Maliki and the American are turning their sights on the other major armed group outside the government," he said.

"There will be a lot of violence if Maliki attempts to eliminate the al-Mahdi army."

"The Sadr movement is a very large social movement, the Mahdi army is to some extent street gangs and young men with guns and you can't crush a thing like that very easily, its organic."

"You can't take a social movement out and shoot it."

Clashes between fighters and US and Iraqi security forces in the predominantly Shia neighbourhood of Sadr City have killed more than 900 people, according to Iraqi officials.

"There were 925 martyrs in Sadr City and 2,605 others have been wounded," Tehseen Sheikhly, spokesman for the government's Baghdad security plan, said.

Wow, that's a lot of Militia men killed and wounded, if there were no innocents killed or wounded as the US always claims... This is a sorry situation and it looks like there's no end in sight!