Does killing the enemy have an impact on the outcome of a battle? Over at The Wonk Room, a blog run by the Center for American Progress, I have been criticized for conducting "body counts" of Mahdi Army fighters. The author goes on to state that killing Mahdi fights only breeds more Mahdi fighters, so the effort is pointless.
I think we've seen this "dead bodies=success" mentality bleed out into pro-war blogs as well, where the numbers of insurgent dead are credulously relayed and uncritically reported as progress, irrespective of the collateral damage incurred in those deaths and of the galvanizing effects that this has on support for insurgency.
Well, it turns out I've been low balling the Mahdi Army deaths. I've estimated, based on a careful examination of the reports from the U.S. and Iraqi military, that 600 Mahdi Army fighters were killed in and around Sadr City since fighting first broke out on March 25. It turns out my estimate is below that of the U.S. military, which puts the number at 700, and way below that of the Mahdi Army, which puts the number at 1,000.
Col. John Hort, the commander of the Third Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division, estimated that some 700 militia fighters had been killed by air and ground fire since fighting erupted in late March. "It is pretty safe to say that we have killed the equivalent of a U.S. battalion," he said in a recent interview.
Some Mahdi Army leaders put the death toll slightly higher. When a truce was first announced, they threatened to refuse Mr. Sadr's order to stand down. "What about the martyrs?" a Mahdi battalion leader recently told a reporter. "A thousand martyrs, what did they die for?"
So, if you prefer the word of the Mahdi Army over the U.S. military, you'll see my numbers weren't manufactured.
But the bigger point is the effect the prolonged offensive against the Mahdi Army in Sadr City had on the Sadrist movement. The leadership of Muqtada al Sadr saw that the Iraqi government had no plans to halt the attack and were determined to push into the Mahdi Army stronghold. They saw the Iraqi government had the full backing of the U.S. military. The Sadrists also saw their combat power being ground down, and as the Mahdi commander said, "what did they die for?" The Iraqi government was determined to assert its writ in Sadr City, and was willing to destroy the Mahdi Army in the process.
There should be little doubt the casualties taken in Sadr City by the Mahdi Army had an impact on the Sadrist's decision-making process. Sadr and his political leaders had two choices: fight, and as the New York Times's analysis stated, have their combat power depleted further while they lost Sadr City anyway, or cut a deal and hope to fight another day. This is often portrayed as a "victory" for the Mahdi Army, but the fact is that in Sadr City, as well as in Basra, the Iraqi government achieved its goal of moving its forces into these cities to provide security and push the militias into the background.
