The rhetoric is triumphalist, and the story-line simple and consistent. “We have made up our minds to enter this battle and we will continue till the end. No retreat,” said Iraq’s prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, on March 27. “As we speak, Iraqis are waging a tough battle against militia fighters and criminals in Basra, many of whom have received arms and training and funding from Iran,” said President George W. Bush in Dayton, Ohio. But the reality is less persuasive.

The offensive in Basra could only have been launched with the support of the United States of America, since Maliki has admitted that he “cannot move a company of troops” without American consent. It is really aimed mainly at the Mahdi army, the militia that backs Moqtada al-Sadr.

Moqtada al-Sadr is the main rival to Maliki’s Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq and its associated Badr militia for the loyalty of Iraq’s Shia majority. Basra is a key battleground for this struggle, not only because its two million people are almost all Shia, but because most of Iraq’s oil is produced nearby and exported through Basra. The militias need money, and Basra, with its flow of cash and oil, is the best place to cream it off.

The Mahdi and Badr militias have been waging a low- intensity battle in Basra for control of these resources for more than a year, and you can see why Maliki would want to use the army to tip the balance in favour of his side. You can also see why the Bush administration wants Maliki to win, for his party supports — indeed, depends on — a continued US military presence in Iraq, while Moqtada al-Sadr insists that all US troops go home. But it’s harder to see why they thought Maliki could win.

Unless Maliki and the US commander in Iraq, David Petraeus, have reliable intelligence that the Mahdi organization is less united and determined than it seems to be, this offensive doesn’t make sense, especially from the point of view of the White House.

Keeping secrets

As it was, the “surge” looked likely to deliver what the Bush administration most wanted: an apparent stabilization in Iraq that would let it leave office without having to admit failure. The more worldly-wise members of the administration would initially have seen this simply as a device to put the ultimate blame for failure on the incoming administration instead, but maybe they have started to believe their own propaganda.

The “stabilization” is more apparent than real, for two reasons. The new Sunni “allies” of the US include people who were trying to kill American troops a year ago. And on the Shia side, Moqtada al-Sadr was standing by to push out Maliki’s American-backed government as soon as US troop numbers in Iraq fell.

Three months ago, cynical advisers to President Bush might have said, “So what?” The bad things would happen early in the next administration, which looked almost certain to be Democratic, and Bush would get away clean. But now it looks as though John McCain has a real chance to win the presidency and continue Bush’s military commitment in Iraq.

Maybe they said to themselves: let’s not leave McCain a ticking time bomb. Let’s go after Moqtada al-Sadr, starting with his cash flow, which depends heavily on his militia in Basra. If this is what happened, it is a classic case of hope triumphing over experience. The Iraqi army probably cannot beat the Mahdi militia in open battle in Iraq’s big cities, and it may be left severely discredited if it tries. The US army certainly can beat Sadr’s militia, but that would be followed by a reversion to the guerrilla attacks that were causing such high US casualties before Sadr’s ceasefire.

Or maybe Petraeus and Maliki know something about the weaknesses of the Mahdi army that nobody else does.