And behind it all there's a price to be paid

From the Washington Post (Emphasis mine)

Iraqi forces were backed by U.S. and British reconnaissance planes as they launched their Basra offensive, an operation aimed at breaking the power of politically backed gunmen in the city.

The fiercest fighting took place in Basra neighborhoods where Iraqi forces targeted members of Sadr’s Mahdi Army, further risking the collapse of a cease-fire that Sadr declared last summer. His fighters’ stand-down has been widely credited with helping curb violence throughout the country during the U.S. troop buildup known as the surge.

From what I can glean from the Post, the real change in status quo came from the Iraqi security forces. Two days ago Sadr’s followers launched a civil strike planning mass protests and shuttering their stores.

But in recent weeks, Iraqi security forces have clashed with Mahdi Army militiamen and conducted large raids and arrests of Sadr followers in southern Iraqi towns such as Kut and Diwaniyah. Sadrist leaders in Baghdad said that they were still obeying the cease-fire and that the demonstrations would be peaceful.

The protests came a day after at least 60 Iraqis were killed in a wave of car bombings, suicide attacks and gun violence, and the U.S. military death toll reached 4,000.

Some of the uptick in violence may be attributable to elements of Sadr’s forces that aren’t following the ceasefire, but that’s not a major change from the hardly peaceful status quo. [Update: Spencer Ackerman thinks the first blow may have come from Sadr’s people who could have just been waiting out the surge.] At this point, the cease fire may be completely falling apart. So why the change? Sadr’s Shiite rivals are the biggest faction in the government. I’m guessing we went after Sadr in exchange for the Shiites withdrawing their veto of the election law. That happened four days ago and was personally negotiated by Vice President Cheney. We badly needed that election law because the Sunni Awakening Forces are increasingly restless over lack of pay and the fact that they need those election to displace other Sunni groups that got in the provincial government because they didn’t boycott the elections.

To be clear this is just a guess. But this is the sort of unpleasant faction balancing that we’re going to be doing again and again if we stay in Iraq. We’ll soon know whether we frakked this one up and the Sadr ceasefire completely breaks down. But rather than making tough call after tough call, the better choice is to get the hell out of Iraq.

[Update: Ilan Goldberg argues that the Sadr ceasefire may have been key to driving down civilian casualties. A co-worker of mine provided an alternate theory that we could be hitting Iran’s assets intentionally either as signal or to reduce their options for counterstrikes.]