Center for a New American Security

When Prime Minister Maliki launched his Basra offensive (principally targeting JAM and Iranian-backed special groups) in late March, the Iraqi Army (IA) suffered a string of initial setbacks and desertions. To stave off defeat, Multi-national Corps-Iraq rushed forward a surge of combat advisors (including advisors embedded and deployed with more capable Iraqi units from Anbar), aviation and ISR assets, U.S. special operations forces, and other "critical enablers." All told, perhaps 1,000 U.S. forces were sent down to stiffen Iraqi resolve and strengthen the capabilities of the IA. The result was profound.

Not too long ago, Dr. iRack toured Basra with the IA and saw a city that was formerly under the grip of militias and criminal gangs, but is now largely in the control of the Iraqi government. There are still tons of problems in Basra, including an appaling lack of essential services (the Maliki government has not spent any of the $100 million for reconstruction it allocated after the offensive) and the IA don't trust the local police (gunner in my Iraqi Army Humvee kept pointing at police as we drove through town, shouting "Ali Baba police, Ali Baba police!"), but things are considerably better and safer than they were.

This demonstrates the ability of a relatively small number coalition advisors to provide the "steel rods" in the "concrete" of the IA, enabling them to carry out complex operations. But why were the steel rods American? Because the approximately 4,100 British soldiers who own the battlespace in Basra failed to move out from their hunkered-down position at the Basra airport to support the IA.

Why? Part of the reason is British domestic political opposition to the war and the resulting aversion to casualties. But part of the reason is also the theory that the British adopted to justify/rationalize their draw down. The British believed it was their presence as occupiers on the streets of Basra that drove the violence in the city. They also believed that the more they did, the less incentive the IA had to take responsibility for local security. So, several months ago, the Brits pulled back and pushed the IA into the lead. (Indeed, even their Military Transition Teams took a "hands off" approach.) They cut a deal with JAM to allow a safe pull-back and to limit JAM attacks, so long as the British stayed out of the city center. This move led to a substantial decrease in JAM attacks on the British base at the airport, but the militias took over the streets and the IA could not dislodge them. When Maliki launched his rash offensive "Charge of the Knights" against JAM in late-March, the British, like the Americans, were caught off guard. (The British thought the offensive would be phased, and believed it wouldn't start until June-July.) When the IA got in trouble, the British insistence on Iraqi self-reliance and their reluctance to take steps that put UK forces at risk created a substantial delay in their response. As the NYT notes:

This ambivalence, these experts say, contributed to the confusion in which British troops delayed for six days joining the battle over Basra in March.

The result, as one British military expert with extended experience in Iraq put it, was that British forces stood by for several days while American troops helped Iraqi units regain control of a city that Britain, responsible for the city for nearly five years, had effectively abandoned only six months before.

British policy in Basra, and U.S. actions during the offensive, offer interesting lessons for the way ahead in Iraq. The problems created by handing Basra over to the Iraqis before the IA was ready caution against pulling out all U.S. forces (a position advocated by some on the left but, thankfully, not advocated by either U.S. presidential candidate). At the same time, the ability of the IA to succeed with a relatively small number of coalition (principally American) advisors and critical enablers suggests that the desire by some on the right to keep in excess of 100K troops in Iraq for the foreseeable future is also not necessary. One take-home message from Dr. iRack's recent trip to Mess-o-potamia was that we can and should be able to successfully shift to a much smaller military footprint in the not too distant future, moving U.S. forces out of the lead in combat operations and into a support role where they focus on a more limited set of missions.

After a ragged start, a fierce fight, and a truce brokered by Iran, the Iraqi Army re-took Basra. In the ensuing weeks, a city of fear has been replaced by the initial signs of hope. People are on the streets, lovers stroll in public without fear of being targeted, more women feel free to discard their headscarves (if they want too), and music can be heard again. Iraqi Army and police checkpoints dot the city to provide security, Sadr offices have been taken over, his posters have been trashed, and his militia has faded away. Maliki's popularity is on the rise.

Fact or fiction? A little of both.

A good piece in the WaPo today details this renaissance:

Two months after the Iraqi government ordered its fledgling military to root out the religious militias here in Iraq's third-largest city, Basra is beginning to awaken from a four-year dormancy. A recent week-long visit that included several dozen interviews revealed that many of the city's nearly 3 million residents are resuming lives that had been interrupted by an austere interpretation of Islam.

But a few caveats should be noted:

But their new freedom in this historically cosmopolitan city near the head of the Persian Gulf comes with boundaries drawn by fear of the future. The root cause of their previous grievances -- well-armed militias fighting for power and economic resources -- continue to exert influence over day-to-day life.

Conservative Shiite religious parties, backed by these militias, still control government ministries. Security is brittle, ushered in by a temporary deployment of 30,000 Iraqi soldiers and expedient political cease-fire agreements. Corruption as well as a lack of basic public services, jobs and investment are deepening frustrations.

[. . .]

Basra's transformation is far from uniform, unfolding mostly on the surface.

It is still extremely rare to see women, even Christians, on the streets without a head scarf. Many women wear the black, head-to-toe abaya, either out of conservatism or fear.

"We're still cautious," Fatima said. "Anything can still happen."

On Al Jazaar Street, the city's most popular commercial district, Dhiya Jassim cranked up the 3,000-watt speakers in his DVD store, blasting a song by Egyptian pop star Amru Diab. The walls were covered with Western DVDs, many with sexually explicit scenes that would have drawn the ire of the extremists.

His dream is to open an arcade shop with sophisticated computer games, once forbidden.

"I am nervous that the black days could return," he said. "We're still afraid to start any big projects."

Samer Riad, 23, an artist, is still reluctant to paint portraits of women, another practice outlawed by the fundamentalists.

"I have canceled this idea from my mind," he said. He continues to draw portraits of shanasheels, the wooden grills that cover many balconies here, from which women can look without being seen by the world outside.

"I will not be restricted by anything, if this lasts," said Riad, referring to the security improvements.

In 2005, extremists ordered Mohammed, a plastic surgeon, to shut down his practice. "You are changing what God had created," he recalled them telling him. He refused -- at first.

Four times, he said, militiamen linked to a religious faction in the Basra government tried to assassinate him. They also destroyed $80,000 worth of surgical equipment during a rampage through his office. He fled to Syria, returning last year.

But he has no plan to reopen his practice.

"The government is still the same," said Mohammed, who asked that his full name not be used because he feared for his life.

Thus, in Basra, hope and fear, optimism and distrust co-mingle. Much of the news out of Basra is good, and, if the Iraqi Army and police can hold neighborhoods and prevent reinfiltration by JAM, it provides an opportunity for the Iraqi government to consolidate gains . . . if the Iraqi government seizes it.

The key will be to move toward improved governance--fast. When security is scarce, as it was in Basra for so long, that is what people prioritize and most desire. As security improves, however, people start shifting their hierarchy of needs and desires toward "quality of life" issues: jobs, entrepreneurial opportunities, health care, education, electricity, water, sewage, trash pick-up, etc. They also become less tolerant of local corruption. In other words, their expectations for a better life and for better governance rapidly increase. This is a sign of progress, but also creates its own dangerous dynamics if government performance doesn't keep pace with expectations. This race against rising expectations is a race to consolidate stability and government legitimacy. This is the heart of the "build" portion of clear-hold-build, and it must be done well before frustrations become so pronounced that people are tempted, once again, to turn to alternatives to the state (i.e., militias, Iranian patrons) that offer a competitive system of governance.

(For more on Basra, see here and this excellent photo gallery here.)

With things improving in Basra, the debate has resumed about British vs. U.S. COIN tactics in Iraq. For a long time, the Brits claimed they were operating in a very different environment down south from the Yanks in the central and northern parts of the country. But with the Basra offensive, the American and British models seemed to be tested in the same laboratory. The early post-mortem is shaping up something like this: the Brits were too soft and accommodating, which led to the take-over of Basra by criminal gangs and Iranian-backed militias, while the Iraqi Army (with critical U.S. support) went in hard and the gangs ran away. Poof, presto, things got better . . . and it's all because the Coalition moved away from the British model. True? The Brits don't think so. They argue that, regardless of the merits of their earlier approach, what facilitated the recent success was the British decision to pull out of the center of Basra, pushing the Iraqi Army into the lead. So it is the Iraqi face on the operations, not the doctrine.

Who is right? Dr. iRack thinks its too soon to tell. But as readers ponder the question, check out this good piece in today's NYT.

Dr. iRack is still traveling, but he wanted to call attention to a good piece in the NYT that summarizes the recent fight in Sadr City largely from MNF-I's perspective (it is a Michael Goron piece after all). The story also describes the Iraqi Army's entry into Sadr City. In the aftermath of last weeks truce with Sadr, the IA entered the JAM stronghold and met no opposition. As in Basra, however, this is not necessarily evidence that JAM has been defeated.

As it did in the southern city of Basra last month, the Iraqi government advanced its goal of establishing sovereignty and curtailing the powers of the militias.

This was a hopeful accomplishment, but one that came with caveats: In both cities, the militias eventually melted away in the face of Iraqi troops backed by American firepower. Thus nobody can say just where the militias might re-emerge or when Iraqi and American forces might need to fight them again.

[. . .]

While the planning continued, American military officials cited reports that Mahdi Army and Iranian-backed commanders were sneaking out of Sadr City and perhaps even Iraq. People close to Mahdi leaders in Sadr City said they knew some who were leaving for Lebanon by way of Iran.

“We have seen a lot of indications that some of the senior leaders within JAM and the special groups are preparing to leave or have already left Sadr City,” Colonel Hort said last week . . .

In other words, JAM has lived to (potentially) fight another day.

In the coming months, much will depend on how the Iraqi government capitalizes on the current lull to provide services and exert control.

The main military question now is whether Iraqi soldiers can solidify their hold over Sadr City in the coming days. And the main political one is whether the Maliki government will cement its gains by carrying out its long-promised, multimillion-dollar program of economic assistance and job creation to win over a still wary population and erode the militias’ base of support.

It is telling that the first thing the IA did was set up shop around hospitals and police stations in a clear bid to assert Iraqi government authority over the types of services JAM has used to "govern" in the area. COIN is a contest to influence and control the population. Let the game's begin.

Here's a question for the class: is the Iraq War still a counter-insurgency? Not too long ago, a very smart friend of this blog with years of experience in Iraq since 2003 wrote that Iraq was not merely an insurgency but a competition for power and resources.

That's the phrase Abu Muqawama had in his head watching Basra go up in flames last week, and that's also the phrase he had in mind as he read this op-ed in Sunday's New York Times by Anthony Cordesman:

EVEN if American and Iraqi forces are able to eliminate Al Qaeda in Iraq, there are still three worrisome possibilities of new forms of fighting that could divide Iraq and deny the United States any form of “victory.”

One is that the Sunni tribes and militias that have been cooperating with the Americans could turn against the central government. The second is that the struggle among Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen and other ethnic groups to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul or other areas.

The third risk — and one that is now all too real — is that the political struggle between the dominant Shiite parties could become an armed conflict.

Cordesman goes on to write, of the fighting in Basra, that...

There are good reasons for the central government to reassert control of Basra. It is not peaceful. It is the key to Iraq’s oil exports. Gang rule is no substitute for legitimate government. But given the timing and tactics, it is far from clear that this offensive is meant to serve the nation’s interest as opposed to those of the Islamic Supreme Council and Dawa.

A few thoughts: One, the fighting in Basra and Baghdad is, on one level, about asserting the control of the central government. That is a good thing. But two, on another level, the fighting that took place last week was about ISCI trying to set the stage for this fall's provincial elections. It wasn't about the central government versus local authorities at all -- it was about cold-blooded intra-Shia politics.

Do we have a dog in such a fight? Alas, we do. That dog's name is ISCI. As the same friend mentioned above has noted, historians studying Iraq decades from now will wonder why the United States allied itself with the Iran-backed ISCI instead of the popularly-supported Sadr movement. (Hint to those historians: it's because they dress well and speak English. This is what happens when you send smart but young Republican loyalists -- who only speak English -- to help run the CPA in Baghdad.) Once again, we have backed the loser:

American military and civilian officials were candid in telling me that the governors and other local officials installed by the central government in Basra and elsewhere in southern Iraq had no popular base. If open local and provincial elections were held, they said, Dawa and the Islamic Supreme Council were likely to be routed because they were seen as having failed to bring development and government services.

So where does this leave us? Well, on the ground, we should stick to FM 3-24 -- and Abu Muqawama isn't just saying that because if there was nothing "COIN" about this war he couldn't write about it anymore. No, the maxim employed by then-Major General James Mattis and his Marines in 2004 and stolen from some Greek guy -- first, do no harm -- is a good one. Keep doing the kind of population-centric COIN outlined in FM 3-24, boys, because if nothing else, it's not going to make the situation worse.

But tactics only get you so far. If the strategy isn't sorted, the tactics can be world-beating stuff and still fail. (Charlie's favorite historical example: Germany in WWII.) So politicians in Washington better get their act together and sort out the big picture. On the one hand, the president and his policy-makers need to decide at what point these intra-Iraqi political disputes become none of our business. Why should U.S. soldiers and Marines die so some fat Iraqi politician can have a greater share of the oil revenues? And folks in the opposition -- including all the presidential campaigns (you too, McCain) and Congress -- need to start prodding the president along by asking the tough, critical questions about the decisions we're making. What is our responsibility to the central government? How can we avoid allowing our soldiers to be the shock troops for the ruling party who is nervous about an election defeat in the fall? And finally, echoing a question then-Major General David Petraeus asked a Washington Post journalist on the eve of the war, how does this all end?

Update: One a lighter note, The Bateman has been watching those videos of Kansas basketball fans and has revised his opinions of Western culture, the war in Iraq, and Jaish al-Mahdi:

Heretofore he has made what he thought were valid, if broad, observations about the nature of Western culture. These were observations generally set in contrast to the state and nature of, for example, seemingly "extreme" cultures which derived the value of individuals from concepts of "honor." The theory was that "Islam" was not at the core of issues, but the misunderstanding of multiple "honor cultures" might be at the root. The killing of those without "honor" being a central element. These are concepts of human behavior which had, more or less, died off in the late 19th century in North America and most of Europe. It has, after all, been some 200 years since members of the President's cabinet shot at each other with pistols and the intent to kill. The death knell of this cultural trend, The Bateman believed, came twixt WWI and WWII.

Prompted by curiosity stemming from Charlie's apparent behavior (since he doesn't follow many sports), The Bateman has now seen the YouTube videos of Kansas fans.

His hypothesis is now shattered. JAM should dream of such fanaticism as the Kansas fans display.

Abu Muqawama will be cheering for UNC for the first time in his life next weekend.

Certified smaht guy Colin Kahl writes in to explain events in Basra so Charlie doesn't have to (though, really, AM has done a bang up job on the explanation front so far).

The violence is Basra is clearly a "shaping" operations for the upcoming provincial elections, but that is only part of the story.

This is what I think happened. In February, Abdul Mehdi, the ISCI VP, nixed the provincial powers law that set up provincial elections. Why? In part because ISCI (very pro-federalist) thought the law did not give enough power to provincial governors. But, as many observers have noted, ISCI is very concerned that provincial elections will empower the Sadrists/JAM in southern Iraq, where ISCI/Badr currently controls "official" power but JAM owns the street. Then, suddenly, Cheney flies to Iraq, meets with Hakim and others, and ISCI withdraws its opposition to the provincial powers law. Elections back on, but the JAM problem remains. Was there a quid-pro-quo to greenlight an Iraqi Army/Badr offensive to clean out JAM from Basra to pave the way for ISCI doing better in the elections? I don't know. But whether there was or not, this is clearly the logic driving Maliki's decision. About a week before the Basra offensive began, General Mohan, the Iraqi leading the operation, basically admitted that this was the objective.

The question is why now? There is *no way* the adminstration wanted this to happen before the Petraeus testimony and, despite my Cheney conspiracy theory, they may not have wanted it to happen at all. I think they (and MNF-I) really were caught with their pants down and have very poor intelligence about the south (a huge indictiment of our neglect of intra-Shia dynamics in-and-of-itself). There is also some evidence that the Iraqi Army was caught by surprise--they appear to have thought the offensive was going to happen in June, but Maliki told them to go now. Why? Well, looking back at the week or so before the Basra operaton, JAM was stepping out in Kut and elsewhere in the south-central portion of the country (the Shia heartland) and there were whispers that the ceasefire might break down in Baghdad. One hypothesis is that Maliki (and ISCI) accelerated the operation in Basra as a pre-emptive strike, figuring it would be even harder to dislodge JAM if they waited. In doing so, they may have created a self-fulfilling spiral with JAM. And, if the offensive in Basra fails to dislodge JAM but succeeds in derailing the Sadr ceasefire, Iraq is going to get caught in a Shia-on-Shia death spiral.

Bottom-line: Recent violence shows that the gains of the surge are fragile, but that fragility is *not* a consequence of the size of our troop presence, but rather a failure to address the fundamental political disputes that motivate the combatants on all sides of the sectarian and intra-sectarian divide(s). Much of the recent progress is a result of the combatants deciding to take a "time-out" rather than representing a permanent turning point. The only pathway to lasting success is political accommodation. No number of U.S. troops can keep a lid on things if the combatants all decide to come out to play. Basra (and increasingly Baghdad) demonstrate that in spades.

Karen DeYoung's article in the Washington Post nicely captures two things: One, how tenuous a situation we have right now in Iraq, and how the gains of 2007 can be wiped out frighteningly quickly, and two, what an absolute mess the British Army left southern Iraq. This is what happens when you march into Basra Province thinking it's an Arabic-speaking Country Armagh. This is what happens when you equate a lack of violence with everything going well -- and ignore the militias who are taking control of the streets. This is what happens when you decide to do peace-keeping rather than counter-insurgency.

As outlined by several civilian and military officials, none of whom was authorized to speak on the record, a victory in Basra against what Bush described as "those who believe they are outside the law" could prove Maliki's mettle. "Basra's been a mess for a long time," said a U.S. official in Baghdad, "and everybody's said to Maliki, 'What are you doing about it?' "

But this official and others said that if the fighting in Basra leads to a breakdown in the cease-fire observed since August by the bulk of Sadr's forces elsewhere in the country, it could easily shatter the tenuous U.S. security gains of recent months.

The violence has already spread to Baghdad, where Iraqi and U.S. forces yesterday continued sporadic fighting with militia members in the sprawling eastern enclave known as Sadr City. Despite indications that many of the fighters were mainline Mahdi Army, U.S. officials chose to consider them members of "special groups" that have resisted Sadr's authority. To acknowledge otherwise would be to declare a de facto end to the cease-fire.

A renewal of significant violence in the capital and the surrounding area of central Iraq could lead to the collapse of U.S. security arrangements with former Sunni insurgents known as the Sons of Iraq. "All the same players and all the same weapons are still out there," said Stephen Biddle, a military expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who has advised Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

"There is nothing preventing Iraq from going right back to October 2006 except voluntary agreements by the players. That's why Basra is so dangerous," Biddle said. "It's a real policy problem" for the administration, he said, "and the fact that there are no coalition forces on the ground in Basra is really coming home right now."

Biddle said that "if this thing collapses, there will be a lot of pressure [from the military] to halt further withdrawals of U.S. troops." About 9,000 troops have been withdrawn since last year, with an additional three brigades scheduled to come home by the end of July. An aide to Petraeus said yesterday there are "no plans on slowing anything at this point."

U.S. forces have stayed away from southern Iraq since they passed through rapidly on their march to Baghdad in the spring of 2003. The southern part of the country is overwhelmingly Shiite, and the U.S. focus during the first three years of the war was on the insurgency emanating from Sunnis backing Saddam Hussein and from the group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

At the same time, British forces had been given control of the south. While U.S. officers frequently disparaged British tactics as tepid, the administration was reluctant to criticize its key international ally. British forces eventually withdrew from the region and the city of Basra and are now largely confined, in reduced numbers, to a base near the Basra airport. In December, Basra became the latest province to be placed under complete Iraqi government control.

Even if they had wanted to move into the south at any point over the past five years, however, U.S. forces were already spread thin in the rest of the country. The sectarian warfare between Sunnis and Shiite militia groups that erupted in 2006 led Bush last year to deploy an additional 30,000 troops, which were concentrated in Baghdad and the surrounding area.

A National Intelligence Estimate last August warned that "intra-Shia conflict involving factions competing for power and resources probably will intensify as Iraqis assume control of provincial security" in the south. In Basra, it concluded, "violence has escalated with the drawdown of [British] forces there. Local militias show few signs of reducing their competition for control of valuable oil resources and territory."

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad has a valuable telephone interview with JAM commanders in Basra up on the Guardian's website:

Shiek Ali al-Sauidi, a prominent member of the Moqtada al-Sadr-led movement in Basra, said his men were being targeted not by the Iraqi government but by government militias loyal to the rival Supreme Islamic Council faction.

"They are a executing a very well drawn plan. They are trying to exterminate the Sadrists and cut and isolate the movement before the September local elections," he said in a telephone interview with the Guardian.

"The Sadrists are the only Shia resistance movement against the occupiers and we have wide popularity. We are going through a battle of existence we will fight to the end. We either survive this or we are finished." ...

Sauidi said the Mahdi army was well equipped for the fight ahead. "We have captured lots of their vehicles, machine guns and mortars. We have new RPGs we got from their supply trucks. Our fighters know how to use the side streets as their battle space."

As fighting between the Shia Mahdi army and Shia Iraqi soldiers continued, witnesses described the scenes in Basra.

A resident of the poor neighbourhood of Hayaniya said: "The situation is very difficult in Basra, all the side streets are controlled by the Mahdi army. Even if the army has lots of tanks, the Mahdi fighters are controlling the streets. The fighters are driving in captured Iraqi Humvees and waving new guns."

In other news, President Bush correctly described the fighting as a "defining moment" in the history of the new Iraq. Abu Muqawama just hopes it turns out to be as cheerful a defining moment as the president thinks it will be. Also, is this a sly dig at the see-no-evil, hear-no-evil British approach to Basra Province in 2003?

"From the beginning of liberation, there have been criminal elements that have had a pretty free hand in Basra," Bush said. "And it was just a matter of time before the government was going to have to deal with it."

The Washington Post is now reporting that U.S. armored units have taken the lead in Sadr City while the Iraqi units -- surprise! -- hang back and let the Americans do the hard fighting:

BAGHDAD, March 27 -- U.S. forces in armored vehicles battled Mahdi Army fighters Thursday in Sadr City, the vast Shiite stronghold in eastern Baghdad, as an offensive to quell party-backed militias entered its third day. Iraqi army and police units appeared to be largely holding to the outskirts of the area as American troops took the lead in the fighting.

Four U.S. Stryker armored vehicles were seen in Sadr City by a Washington Post correspondent, one of them engaging Mahdi Army militiamen with heavy fire. The din of American weapons, along with the Mahdi Army's AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades, was heard through much of the day. U.S. helicopters and drones buzzed overhead.

There are obvious dangers here, but none more obvious than the fact that the U.S. is now doing Maliki's dirty work for him (and Iran, and ISCI, and the Badr Brigades) in the run-up to the provincial elections this fall. Now we know this is the prelude to this fall's provincial elections, so why the hell are we getting involved? If that Stryker platoon was just on patrol and started getting fired at and returned fire, okay, but that's not what JAM is saying happened:

Several Mahdi Army commanders said they had been fighting U.S. forces for the past three days in Sadr City, engaging Humvees as well as the Strykers. By their account, an Iraqi special forces unit had entered Sadr City from another direction, backed by Americans, but otherwise the fighting had not been with Iraqis. "If there were no Americans, there would be no fighting," said Abu Mustafa al-Thahabi, 38, a senior Mahdi Army member.

If Abu Muqawama was leading one of those U.S. units into Sadr City past a bunch of Iraqi Army soldiers hanging out on the outskirts, he would not be happy. He would be asking himself a) why is he the one establishing the authority of the Iraqi state and not the Iraqi Army and b) why is he duking it out with a militia with broad popular support so that another Iran-backed political party can win a bigger share of the vote in the fall?

Now Iraqi Army units are calling for U.S. and UK military units to lend direct support in Basra as well.

In Lebanon, in September 1983, the U.S. lent direct support to what it assumed was a national institution, the Lebanese Army, in the battle at Souk el-Gharb. By doing so, it became, in the eyes of the rest of the Lebanese population, just another militia. The U.S. history in Iraq is more complicated, obviously, but what's happening now is the U.S. is throwing our lot in with ISCI in the upcoming elections. And all Abu Muqawama is saying is, there better be a whole lot of quid pro quo going on as well.

Charlie would prefer that Maliki, et al. had picked a different week to launch a major offensive in Basra...she has a chapter to finish goddammit! She'll leave the heavy lifting to AM (who's been holding down the fort nicely, don't you think? Of course, it's his fort, but still. Been a bit abandoned at his post as of late.) Anyway!

Spencer suggests that we / competing Shia factions may be throwing Maliki under the bus by giving him ownership over the Basra offensive.

But. The dangers of picking and choosing who the Iraqi premier should be outweigh any imperial temptations we may feel. We'll be just as responsible for Prime Minister Next-Up's mistakes as we are for Maliki's. And the Iraqis will never trust any leader that foreigners pick for them. In what's shaping up to be the Second Sadrist Intifada, you go to war with the prime minister you have, not the prime minister you might want.

And Danger Room has good coverage. First of the mysteriously disappearing Brits. (Charlie was reading this BBC article yesterday and had to actually search the doc for any mention of the British Army. There was but one.) David Axe suggests that the Marines are more likely to be called in than the Brits. And Noah Shachtman wonders out loud:

So the Brits bail, and Basra is "essentially divided up among Shi'ite party mafias, each of which had its own form of extortion and corruption," as Anthony Cordesman puts it today. Isn't this an extremely bad omen for an American troop withdrawal, under a would-be President Obama or Clinton? How would a country-wide draw-down be different than this local one?

Ugh, good question. Spence, Phil, want to chime in? One answer is that the Brits adopted a "peacekeeping" mindset in Basra and never really engaged in a broader COIN or CT effort. That meant that all the myriad Shia groups were able to pursue their (relatively) non-violent political agenda and consolidate control over the political levers of city. There's a chance (albeit not a big one) that our COIN efforts in Anbar, Baghdad, and elsewhere have undercut the political bases of these groups and made a Basra-style breakdown less likely. Time will tell.

Second, DR has a good excerpt from the now sub-only Iraq Slogger who notes that not only has the fighting spread to Baghdad (obvi), but competing Shia groups have turned on each other:

Fighting has also erupted between the Mahdi Army and rival Shi'a factions. Locals report that at 10:30 am on Tuesday the militia attacked offices of the Badr organization, loyal to the rival Supreme Iraqi Islamic Council, one of the major partners in the Maliki government and a bitter rival to the Sadrist current in Iraq's Shi'a community.

Six members of Badr have been killed, according to preliminary reports from locals to Slogger, including two in Sadr City.

Also, NPR reported this morning that there were instances of Iraqi Army soldiers taking off their uniforms and joining up with the Mahdi Army in Basra. This scares the sh*t out of Charlie, but she hasn't seen it reported elsewhere. Anyone else confirming?

Back to the trenches.

Update: More from Noah at Danger Room, including a great discussion of the how the US ends up on the same side as Iran in its assault on JAM and Sadrists.

Update II: Spencer responds to Noah's original question:

Here's what I'd add to that. Withdrawing without any political strategy, as the British did from Basra, leads to a vacuum like the one we're seeing now. Sadr rushes in. The Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq rushes in. The Fadhila party maneuvers between the two. Forces ostensibly loyal to the government, pinioned between all sides, find ways to accommodate the existing power on the streets. In other words: chaos.

So to avoid chaos -- and I recognize this is banal and generic -- you can't just pull up stakes. Some sort of political accommodation has to occur alongside a strategy of extrication. There will be some good suggestions coming out of various think tanks and government offices over the next several months that put flesh to bone here. But the broader point is this: if we decide we're just going to order the post-surge forces out of Iraq in X number of months/years, and nothing accompanies that decision on the political-diplomatic end, then yeah, Basra probably will be a prologue. But if we spend the time between now (well, between a Democratic president's inaugural, realistically) and then working on some Undefined Diplomatic Strategy, then we have our best shot -- and it's not a sure shot; I'll be the first to admit -- at extracting ourselves with a minimum of chaos.

Update III: But Phil at Intel Dump cautions:

Oh yeah, and another thing. Every time you think of the "adviser model" for Iraq, you should think of this operation in Basra. Because this is the end result of the U.S. advisory effort to date -- which has focused on creating well-trained and equipped units at the tactical level, but has basically failed at the national, strategic level. The leaders of the Iraqi security forces at the ministry level are as bad as they ever were. And the national government is about as bad. Training and advising Iraqi units at the brigade level and below is well and good. But if you fail to properly shape the national command structure, you're handing those units over to leaders who will misuse them.

Charlie isn't fully convinced by Phil's argument here...and she wants to for more evidence on IA performance to come in (still waiting on confirmation of IA defections). Basra is a witch's brew of how things go bad in irregular environments, and this assault doesn't immediately strike Charlie as a "misuse" of IA troops. That said, advising at the brigade and MOD level is, and likely always will be, a weakness of our advising efforts and has to be addressed in conjunction with any withdrawal strategy.