However, in 1983, the regular army had been sidelined, and the religious militias were now made the mainstay of the Iranian military.

The proposal for a Shiite religious militia initially received a tepid response from other, senior clergymen.

But the foreign terrorists, religious militias and criminal organizations operate from very different playbooks.

The confusion caused by withdrawal would be compounded as religious, militia and political loyalties divided inadequately prepared military and police units.

Likewise, it was evasive on how and when ethnic and religious militias, which could wreck a future Iraqi state, are to be integrated into a national guard.

The post-Communist new world disorder has made situations even more unstable as crumbling countries are fought over by ethnic and religious militias.

That hope rests, ultimately, on core components of the Sunni insurgency, and their rivals in Shiite religious militias, laying down their arms to build a common life.

He hinted that religious militias could be given a bigger security role if the government was incapable of protecting holy shrines.

Many inductees were made members of the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary religious militia that eventually became Iran's most ferocious battlefield force.

Thousands of people on Halmahera were killed in the fighting between religious militias.