By the time I get to Basra
It’ll be smoking … whatever al-Maliki was smoking when he decided to go after al-Sadr’s guys. (No, I’m not headed to Basra; that was just a riff on an old Glen Campbell tune about Phoenix).
John Amato provides the latest update.
With al-Sadr restoring the conditional ceasefire, he’s granted al-Maliki an out that permits him to save a little face, but it’s clear that the coalition he heads will now have to turn to al-Hakim if they plan to try and takedown al-Sadr before October’s elections.
The Brits knew that where there’s oil, there’s plenty of corrupt factionalism ever-present but that it made no sense to keep the rancor alive by fighting al-Sadr’s Shia bloc there. That was a losing strategy before the handover and it’s a losing strategy still.
