While my initial take on the round was that Maliki won and Sadr lost, the consensus of left and right was that Sadr won and Maliki lost. Fortunately, I don't lose heart if my analysis is contrary to what the consensus is. This round was one battle in a long campaign that Maliki could win or lose depending on how the future unfolds. And contrary voices with more volume than mine are starting to appear.
Austin Bay on Strategypage hits the right tone, I think:
After his outlaw militiamen raised white flags and skedaddled from their latest round of combat with the Iraqi Army, radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr declared victory.
He always does. He understands media bravado. He wagers that survival bandaged by bombast and swathed in sensational headlines is a short-term triumph. Survive long enough, and Sadr bets he will prevail.
This time, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki issued a contrarian press release, however, calling the Iraqi Army's anti-militia operations in southern Iraq a "success."
Bay cites Iraqi figures of 215 dead, 155 arrested and 600 wounded Sadrists. And the campaign to disarm Sadr will take a long time to slowly strangle his movement. As I've noted, at some level Sar can't be treated as the Sunni insurgents and terrorists were treated. Sadr's support stems from real grievances about their government's ability to solve problems beyond the control of individuals. So too much force can provoke sympathy. Also, the objectives of each were different. The Sunnis wanted the collapse of the Shia-dominated government in order to seize power. The latter want to leverage armed might into political power within Iraq as it exists.
The Weekly Standard offers another take on separating what we know now with what we have yet to ascertain. And overall, what we know now is positive rather than negative:
This operation offers a number of extremely positive signs about the willingness of the Iraqi Government to address a fundamental challenge that has been plaguing it (and us) since 2004, the ability of the ISF to absorb country-wide efforts to light up the Shia community, and the increasingly overt malign role Iran is playing in the conflict. It can provide us with a critical opportunity to increase our influence in Shia Iraq and help encourage the development of local political movements there as we have done in Sunni areas. Most of all, it is the most overt and decisive recent engagement between our Iraqi allies and their Iranian foes. We should have no doubt about where our interests lie.
So the campaign will go on. Already we see this happening. The Sadrists, of course, rely on their loyal allies in the press to translate blindly ignorant boasting into battlefield success:
"We did not really throw everything we have into battle. We only fought in self defense," said a top Mahdi Army commander who spoke on condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals. "If (Prime Minister Nouri) al-Maliki has won, he would have dictated his demands. But it's we who did that," said the 37-year-old commander.
Meanwhile, the Iraqis continue to work the problem, with Iraqi forces visibly in the streets while Sadrists are indoors, with arrests still being made, and with the deadline for giving up heavy weapons still in place:
Lt. Gen. Mohan al-Fireji, who heads the joint Iraqi army-police forces in the area, led the convoy of armored vehicles into Hayaniyah at about 9:30 a.m. and the troops fired their weapons into the air to clear traffic. ...
The Basra joint operations center also announced that Iraqi soldiers had detained two suspected militia figures in the Qibla area, but a gunbattle broke out during the raid and an Iraqi army vehicle was set on fire.
The Interior Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, said Tuesday that 200 people had been killed, 600 wounded and 170 suspects detained during operations in Basra and he reiterated that an April 8 deadline for gunmen to surrender their weapons would be maintained.
And the fact that the Iraqi government is willing to fight this campaign is heartening. The failure of the British to leave a better Basra for the Iraqis is all too clear after round three. So don't expect Basra to be repaired in ten days when the British helped build what the Iraqis face now over Britain's nearly four years of control. (And I say this as a friend of Britain who values Britain's friendship and help. But too many peope were willing to belittle our fight in the center these last five years by pointing to the so-called success of the "softly-softly" British approach, which in retrospect only allowed cooperative Shia thugs to run the streets to allow the British a decent interval to retreat.)
At some point, the grinding operations attacking Sadr with flare ups like this last week will collapse Sadr's power. Recall too, that Sadr stayed safely in Iran for round three. I guess he wasn't all that confident despite the boasts of his cannon fodder who fell in droves in battle.
