Last Sunday, when Moqtada al-Sadr announced a ceasefire that he'd reached with the Iraqi government, it seemed pretty obvious from its terms and from the context of the fighting in Basra and elsewhere that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had been humiliated in this confrontation. At first however the traditional news media adopted the spin coming from the Iraqi and American governments that the truce amounted to a victory of sorts for Maliki in his "decisive and final battle" against Sadr's militia.
Slowly the American media came to realize that the victory might be a tad "ambiguous". Then came detailed reports of the stunning desertion rate among Iraqi forces sent to Basra, perhaps as high as 30 percent. Any remaining ambiguity has now evaporated in the Mesopotamian sun:
Iraq's prime minister on Friday ordered a nationwide freeze on raids against suspected Shiite militants after the leader of the biggest militia complained that arrests were continuing even after he ordered fighters off the streets.
The announcement was a major shift from comments Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki made a day earlier, and came after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr — whose Mahdi Army militia fought government troops in the southern city of Basra and in Baghdad last week — hinted at retaliation if arrests of his followers did not stop.
These arrests had provoked the unrest before Maliki's attempt to clamp down in Basra. Sadr had demanded an end to them in his ceasefire proposal. With an empty show of bravado, Maliki later hinted that the arrests would continue unabated. Now he has crumbled completely.
Al-Maliki's move appeared to be a goodwill gesture toward al-Sadr and his followers. But it was also a dramatic turnabout: He said Thursday that he intended to launch security operations against Mahdi Army strongholds in Baghdad, including Sadr City, home to some 2.5 million Shiites and the militia's largest base.
Al-Maliki said last week that gunmen in Basra had until April 8 to surrender their heavy weapons, but Friday's statement made no mention of that deadline.
This is the leader whom George Bush backed as the man to unify and stabilize Iraq. It's a sad commentary on Bush's acumen, of course. Less noticed perhaps is that Maliki is also the guy who will play a big role in John McCain's campaign. McCain has premised his entire foreign policy on the argument that the US cannot ever allow a "power vacuum" to emerge in Iraq. Maliki is a walking, talking power vacuum.
Thus it's telling that the Iraqi Prime Minister's name has all but disappeared from McCain's campaign website during 2008. In 2006 McCain was occasionally willing to criticize Maliki's record in public, but once the McCain "surge" began it became expedient to stick to praising the Iraqi Prime Minister for every modest sign of "progress". There were frequent references to Maliki in 2007 at McCain's website. As the presidential campaign heats up, then, it will be interesting to see the extent to which McCain tries to distance himself from an Iraqi leader upon whose incompetence so much depends.