Reading Basra and the core of the ISCI/Sadr split

The general consensus appears to be that the Maliki government lost and Sadr won, but I think the CS Monitor nails it: The US and its Iraq policy were the real loser.

But this time, analysts say, the widespread instances of surrender among the Iraqi forces and the seizure of their equipment and vehicles by the Mahdi Army shows that despite all the funding and training from the US, Iraq's soldiers remain greatly swayed by their sectarian and party loyalties and are incapable of standing up in a fight without US backing.

The fighting has also firmly wedged the US in an intra-Shiite struggle that has been bubbling for some time and will probably only intensify. The battle has also spawned more popular anger and frustration, especially in places like eastern Baghdad, toward both US forces and Mr. Maliki's government, which already had been teetering on the verge of collapse.

The thing to remember is that there's an underlying cultural division between the ISCI and Sadr's movement. The ISCI and many in Maliki's government are perceived to have fled to Iran during the worst of Saddam's atrocities against the Shia.

Sadr's father was symbolic because he stayed in Iraq through it all, and that's why Sadr's movement is a movement of the poor and lower class. Those were the people who couldn't get to Iran, and, as they suffered under Saddam (and then the US,) the Sadr family were the ones who stayed with them.

That's a good part of the underlying conflict here, and one of the reasons that Sadr's stance towards Iraqi nationalism has such appeal. It's not so much a religious or sectarian division as a division of history and experience.