Sheik Fatih Kashif Ghitaa, a Shiite cleric who runs the Al Thaqalayn Center for Strategic Studies, which has ties to the country's ruling elite, said the American effort to ease out of Iraq could end in failure.
"Now they would like to withdraw as rushed as they came," Ghitaa said this month. "Suddenly, they say, 'Build your own democracy,' when we face multiple problems: some in security, some with economics and some with corruption."
Ghitaa said armed Sunni Arab groups are bound to challenge the Shiite-led government in the months ahead. He said Iraqi officials had mostly squandered an opportunity to reconcile with former insurgents, who had turned on al-Qaida in Iraq, by failing to provide them with job opportunities.
"Al-Qaida will return to them and say, 'They gave you nothing,' " Ghitaa said.
In Sadr City, residents reeled from the blast in a market that sold pigeons, hens and geese.
"We come here every day. We sell and buy birds. It was the peak hour. Suddenly there was a huge burst of fire and smoke. I was 70 meters away. My hand was injured by shrapnel," said Haitham Ali, a 37-year-old merchant. "Most of the wounded were young men. There were women and children as well."
Market stalls were set ablaze. Volunteers carried out wounded children; some of the injured were pushed out on carts. Others had limbs blown off, Ali said.
Cement barriers, common around Baghdad neighborhoods to ward off such attacks, had been positioned around the market since April, when a pair of car bombs rocked the commercial strip.
For the past year, the Iraqi army has policed Sadr City and hemmed in radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia, which once controlled the district. The bombing was likely to embolden supporters of the Shiite militia, who wish the group's fighters again would control the district.
Residents described U.S. military helicopters buzzing overhead and said that Iraqi soldiers were firing wildly after the blast.
"They are opening fire randomly in a frightening way. It's causing confusion and fear among citizens. They did the same thing after the bombing of late April and they are doing the same now," said Ahmed Majid, a 35-year-old employee at the Water Ministry. Majid accused Shiite political parties in the government of being behind the attacks.
"I'm sorry that the big bombings are coming back and accompanying the withdrawal of the U.S. forces. It seems that the Iraqi forces are unable to maintain security at all," Majid said, adding that he thought Shiite parties affiliated with Iran were behind the attack.
The district's mayor, Hassan Kareem, insisted that al-Qaida in Iraq or the Baath Party was behind the explosion.
However, a member of the district's local council, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he believed the bombing could be linked to a power struggle among Shiite factions. He refused to say which side he thought was responsible but noted that violence had been rising in Sadr City, including a spate of smaller bombings and killings.
"I'm not of the opinion the attack was Baathist or al-Qaida," the council member said. "It was Shiite."
