Militias Wresting Control Across Iraq's North and South

There are two ways of looking at the WaPo's article on militias taking hold in northern and southern Iraq.

1) In the best of all possible worlds, this will be like the situation in Afghanistan, where local militias would keep order while being supervised by the American military. This would continue until the federal army would become strong enough to take hold.

2) In the worst of all possible worlds, this will be a situation that will cause Iraq to fracture along ethnic lines, which would be disastrous since there would be a quick grab for oil in the northern and southern area.

I hope that it's the former, but WaPo makes it sound like the latter. Troubling news indeed.