Surge

You wouldn't know it from the mainstream media, but President Bush's troop surge in Baghdad is actually occurring. The CS Monitor has a full-length take from a Baghdad correspondent, with quotes from several Shi'ite locals. So far, things are positive, but not stunning:

[M]any Iraqis say they have seen some positive steps in the days since the surge officially came into effect last Thursday. And not just because several hundred Iraqis are reported to have been able to return home, or that the daily average of 50 dead bodies on the streets has dropped to single digits in recent days.

Some stories are particularly heartening:

[I]n the southeast district of Zafaraniyeh...[i]t is the new Iraqi commander who is making the difference. "He came and took the Shiite and Sunni clerics to lunch and told them: 'I am not a sectarian man, and all should be under the law, Sunni and Shiite,' " says [a] resident, quoting the new commander. " 'If you help me, we will help you. If you don't cooperate with me, you will be breaking the law, and I will crush you.' "

However, the key opponent - Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army - has not been engaged or disarmed by the Iraqi Army, which is likewise Shi'ite.

The cleric himself, this resident says, has ordered his followers – who battled US forces twice in 2004 – not to take on the Americans. Mahdi Army fighters confirm those orders. "We are following Moqtada's orders, and if he says don't fight [the Americans], we won't," says a Mahdi Army fighter who took part in those 2004 uprisings, and asked not to be named. "We know America wants to make a mass killing of Sadrists, so we should avoid this, by following Moqtada's orders."...

US officers say they expect both sides to have hidden their weapons or drifted away for the time being, until the surge passes.

The U.S. is walking a fine line in the amount of pressure it puts on the Shi'ite government. This may be the last chance, though, to really turn the pressure up. With Sadr allegedly in Iran, and his army lying low, government troops can start to build up a presence and full networks in the Sadrist neighborhoods. When the time is right - before the end of the surge, certainly - the U.S. needs to apply greater and greater pressure on the Iraqi regime to search, destroy, and disarm throughout the Sadrist neighborhoods. Then Sadr has two choices: lie low, and lose a great deal of his arsenal and apparatus, or fight back from an already weakened position. What's more, his command structure risks splintering, as local groups decide to fight or flee on their own.

The Mahdi Army is the single biggest obstruction to peace in Iraq. If the U.S. misses this opportunity to crush it, the surge can be considered a failure.