What’s Happening In Iraq?

How can the confrontation between the Maliki government and the Mahdi Army be best characterized?

Is this a legitimate-government-vs-bad-militia narrative?

for the first time since Saddam’s overthrow, the Iraqi government made what could prove to be the historic decision to assert its authority by laying down a direct challenge to the lawless militia groups that have turned large swathes of Iraq’s second city into a no-go zone.

Or is it much more cynical than that?

Much of the reporting on this fighting in Basra and Baghdad [..] assumes that Mr. Sadr and his militia are the bad guys who are out to spoil the peace, and that the government forces are the legitimate side trying to bring order. This is a dangerous oversimplification [..] The current fighting, which the government portrays as a crackdown on criminality, is better seen as a power grab, an effort by Mr. Maliki and the most powerful Shiite political parties to establish their authority over Basra and the parts of Baghdad that have eluded their grasp.

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