I just want to piggyback a bit on the excellent post by Neil Stevens at RedState on erstwhile wannabe mullah Muqtada al Sadr's most recent declaration that his "Mahdi Army" will continue its "truce" for another six months with these quick notes:

Sadr keeps extending these "truces" and declaring new "cease-fires" for two reasons.

First, he has far less control over his "army" than is believed by the mainstream press and uninformed public. He makes these declarations not as a leader, but as a follower -- he has his finger in the air, and has again gotten the clear sense that the militia fighters whom he once counted as allies or minions haven't, at the moment, the stomach for continuing the fight, so he declares postemptively that there will be another "truce."

It's sort of like wandering into the middle of a one-way street, seeing that all the cars are going West, then stepping up to the podium and decreeing that "All traffic on this road shall now move West!"

Every time he does this (I count this as at least the fifth time, but I could be off by a half dozen or so), he risks being entirely outed as the fraud of a "leader" that he is -- each misjudgment of which way the wind is blowing on these issues takes another chunk out of the Wizard of Oz persona that he has presented both to the world and to his own countrymen. There's a man behind the curtain, and that curtain has been steadily drawn back over the last couple years.

Second, he and the his Sadrist political leaders are terrified of losing what little following they have left -- hence the trend of declaring these "truces" just as the Mahdi militiamen are about to get themselves into real trouble with Iraqi and coalition forces. 

The latest is no different. "Mahdi Army forces openly took up arms against the government after the Iraqi government started the assault on Basrah on March 25 to clear the city of the Mahdi Army and other Iranian-backed Shia militias," according to the Long War Journal. "Sadr called for his forces to leave the streets on March 30 just as Iraqi Army and police reinforcements began to arrive in Basrah." Pretty brave -- and pretty standard.

The LWJ continues:

Sadr and his political movement have become increasingly isolated since the fighting began in Basrah, Baghdad, and the South. The Iraqi government, with the support of the political parties, said the Sadrist political movement would not be able to participate in upcoming provincial elections if it failed to disband the Mahdi Army.

It's not being disbanded, yet (and any decision to do so would not be made by Sadr himself but, more likely, by the Iranian regime which has been the benefactor of the Shi'a "resistance" force's efforts at troop-killing and destabilization). However, it is also being shown as a mishmash of fighting individuals who are less under the control of the rebel cleric Sadr and his band of political representatives. Closely watching this (and what promises to be future truces and cease-fires) will reveal what power, if any, those leaders really have over their "Army."