INITIAL THOUGHTS ON THE BASRA THING.

This looks to me like a clean victory for Sadr. In the words of the immortal Jim Malone, if you open the door on these people, you have to be prepared to close it; Maliki couldn't close it, and now he looks pathetic. It's becoming clear that Maliki or elements within his government asked Sadr to ask for a ceasefire, which indicates that the former believed there was no chance for victory.

The broader point is that the Iraqi central government utterly lacks meaningful coercive capacity. Training is all well and good, but after all the development of skill is something quite different than the development of capacity; the well trained Army that fought in Basra and Baghdad lacked the wherewithal to deliver victory against Sadr's militia. And of course when the central government tries to exert its authority and fails, it is weakened as a result.

The Surge and the broader tribal strategy has utterly failed to create Iraqi state capacity. Divide and rule is a fine strategy for running a territorial empire, but a poor one for attempting to make a new state.

See Spencer for more.

--Robert Farley