No clear winner in Iraq’s ‘March Madness’

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No clear winner in Iraq’s ‘March Madness’
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, April 9, 2008

BAGHDAD — More fighting took place in Baghdad over the weekend, and American commanders will be watching the situation closely Wednesday when Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army was to take to the streets for a planned million-man march on Najaf.

But as Iraqis await these developments, it is still unclear who benefitted from the heavy fighting that exploded at the end of March, an event soldiers have dubbed “March Madness.”

American and Iraqi military commanders bill the firefights as a clear victory for coalition forces. But many analysts think the fighting showed cracks in Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government. The area’s swift return to normalcy after al-Sadr ordered his fighters to withdraw only reinforced the observation that his Mahdi Army still holds considerable sway over the country.

The uneven success from sector to sector and unit to unit doesn’t help clarify the situation.

Where the Americans engaged the insurgents directly, they usually prevailed — or at least chased the attackers away from the checkpoints and forced them into hit-and-run tactics. Helicopters pummeled attackers from the skies. Even the mere sound of Bradleys and tanks could be enough to halt an attack.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=53923