Seizing Defeat From Victory

Al-Sadr's Surrender Painted As "His Finest Hour"

Reading the American and European press in the last few days, you'd be hard pressed to see signs for hope in Iraq after the conclusion of operations against Muqtada al Sadr's Mahdi Army, most reports suggesting that al-Sadr has now achieved the upper hand despite the serious losses inflicted on his militias.

While operations continue in Basra against the JAM militia there (and British forces are held in place in case they are needed,) it can certainly not be intelligently argued that Sadr's northern militias won the contest.

According to blogger Bill Roggio, an unofficial tally of the open source reporting from the US and Iraqi media and Multinational Forces Iraq, shows some 571 Mahdi Army fighters have been killed, 881 have been wounded, 490 have been captured, and 30 have surrendered over the course of seven days of fighting, while, according to Brigadier General Abdel Aziz al Ubaidi, the operations chief for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense, "Fresh military reinforcements were sent to Basra to start clearing a number of Basra districts of wanted criminals and gunmen taking up arms. Preparations for fresh operations have been made to conduct raids and clearance operations in Basra ... [and] military operations would continue to restore security in Basra."

The effective surrender by al-Sadr has been described as him putting his demands to a beaten administration in Iraq, though it is hard to see how the losses in both manpower and resources that he has suffered would have forced the Iraqi government to seek terms.

Instead, in a desire for reconciliation and progress in the future they seem to be more than magnanimous to those who they will have to live side-by-side with in the future.

Despite claims that "al-Sadr demanded that government forces stop rounding up his supporters and free security detainees not charged with any crime -- two issues at the root of last week's deadly violence," it does not seem at all likely that the government will stop fighting with or locking up those members of militia groups engaged in illegal activities - the reason that the Iraqis started the operation in the first place.

According to an anonymous U.S. military source in the south of Iraq (who talked to The Long War Journal, al-Sadr's call to a halt to the militia's operations was as a result more of the losses inflicted and the fact that they were "running short of ammunition, food, and water.

"In short [the Mahdi Army] had no ability to sustain the effort"

This is hardly a state of affairs that would lead most observers to judge that the Iraqi government had been "embarassed" or "defeated."

Instead the operations have in the main been successful and we should be congratulating the Iraqi government for finally taking the action we have for a long time been calling for, namely removing the power of illegal private armies to adversely affect the country.

Good for them!