BAGHDAD (IPS) — Despite the huge media campaign led by U.S. officials and a complicit corporate-controlled media to convince the world of U.S. success in Iraq, emerging facts on the ground show massive failure.

The date March 25 of this year will be remembered as the day of truth through five years of occupation.

Fighting had raged for more than four days since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki last Tuesday ordered the security forces to raid strongholds of Shi’a militiamen loyal to the cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in the southern port city of Basra. On Sunday, Sadr ordered his militiamen to stop fighting Iraqi security forces, but as of that day, 488 people had been killed and more than 900 wounded, according to reports from the Iraqi Interior Ministry.

Dozens of militiamen from both sides were killed in the clashes that broke out in Baghdad, Basra, Kut, Samawa, Hilla and most of the Iraqi Shi’a southern provinces between members of Sadr’s Mehdi Army, the largest militia in the country, and members of the Iraqi government forces, that are widely known to comprise members of a rival Shi’a militia, the Badr Organization.

The Badr Organization militia is headed by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, who is also head of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC) that dominates the government. The Dawa Party is headed by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

“Mehdi Army militias controlled all Shi’a and mixed parts of Baghdad in no time,” a Baghdad police colonel, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS. “Iraqi army and police forces as well as Badr and Dawa militias suddenly disappeared from the streets, leaving their armored vehicles for Mehdi militiamen to drive around in joyful convoys that toured many parts of Baghdad before taking them to their stronghold of Sadr City in the east of Baghdad.”

“Every resident of Basra knew the situation would explode any minute between these oil thieves, and that Basra would suffer another wave of militia war,” Salman Kathum, a doctor and former resident of Basra, who fled for Baghdad last month, told IPS.

For months now there has been a struggle between the Sadr Movement, the SIIC, and the al-Fadhila Party for control of the south, and particularly Basra.

Falah Shenshal, an MP allied to al-Sadr, told al-Jazeera Mar. 26 that al-Maliki was targeting political opponents. “They say they target outlaw gangs, but why do they start with the areas where the sons of the Sadr movement are located? This is a political battle…for the political interests of one party (al-Maliki’s Dawa party) because the local elections are coming soon (due later this year).”

President Bush had hailed the government offensive as a “positive moment” and said it offered proof that the fledgling Iraqi government could defend itself. Conservative strategists continue to use the overall drop in violence in Iraq as a vehicle to bolster the fallacious logic that the troop “surge” has been an unqualified success. And so, at least discursively, a “success” for the Basra offensive should reflect the long-term gains made by the “surge.”

“The surge,” said Bush earlier this month, “has opened the door to a major strategic victory in the broader war on terror…We are witnessing the first large-scale Arab uprising against Osama bin Laden, his grim ideology and his terror network. And the significance of this development cannot be overstated.”

While it is true that the surge has helped contain violence, it was initially implemented to provide the breathing space for political reconciliation that has not yet occurred between opposing factions.

“The security gains that we have seen are real, but they are perishable,” said Michelle Flourney of the Centre for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington-based national security think tank established in 2007.

“Since November, things have sort of leveled off and it seems very difficult to drive down levels of violence any further,” she said during panel discussion last week at the Washington-based think-tank the Centre for American Progress. “The only way we will get below this plateau is through political accommodation.”

The battles over the past week underscore a more troubling reality: the rhetoric coming from the White House cannot be corroborated on the ground, and in the long term, will have a damaging impact on the U.S. goals in Iraq, and broader national security and strategic objectives. In spite of the military force used by Maliki — in addition to air support provided by the U.S.-led coalition forces — the most recent conflict to erupt in Iraq will most likely be mitigated by negotiation.

As McClatchy Newspapers reported Sunday, Iraqi lawmakers traveled to the Iranian holy city of Qom during the weekend to win the support of the commander of Iran’s Quds Brigades to persuade Sadr to order his followers to stop military operations against the Iraqi government.

The influence of Iran cannot be overstated, and more troubling for the Bush White House, runs counter to their military and political objectives; to presumably pacify Iraq by limiting Iranian influence. It appears that Tehran has used the latest incident to bolster its own position, in the process undermining that of Maliki and his patrons.

“The Qom discussions may or may not bring an end to the fighting but they almost certainly have undermined Maliki — who made repeated declarations that there would be no negotiations and that he would treat as outlaws those who did not turn in their weapons for cash,” according to McClatchy.

“The blow to his credibility was worsened by the fact that members of his own party helped organize the Iran initiative,” it said.

The fighting came just as the U.S. military announced the death of their 4,000th soldier in Iraq, and on the heels of a carefully crafted PR campaign designed to show that the “surge” of U.S. troops in Iraq has successfully improved the situation on the ground.

“I wonder what lies General David Petraeus (the U.S. forces commander in Iraq) will fabricate this time,” Malek Shakir, a journalist in Baghdad told IPS. “The 25th March events revealed the true failure of the U.S. occupation project in Iraq. More complications are expected in the coming days.”

“This failure takes Iraq to point zero and even worse,” Brigadier-General Kathum Alwan of the Iraqi army told IPS in Baghdad. “We must admit that the formation of our forces was wrong, as we saw how our officers deserted their posts, leaving their vehicles for militias.”

Alwan added, “Not a single unit of our army and police stood for their duty in Baghdad, leaving us wondering what to do. Most of the officers who left their posts were members of Badr brigades and the Dawa Party, who should have been most faithful to Maliki’s government.”

The Green Zone of Baghdad where the U.S. embassy and the Iraqi government and parliament buildings are located, was hit by missiles. General Petraeus appeared at a press conference to accuse Iran of being behind the shelling of the zone that is supposed to be the safest area in Iraq. At least one U.S. citizen was killed in the attacks, and two others were injured.

“The Green Zone looked deserted as most U.S. and Iraqi personnel were ordered to take shelter deep underground,” an engineer who works for a foreign company in the zone told IPS. “It seemed that this area too was under curfew. No place in Iraq is safe any more.”

Further complicating matters for the occupiers of Iraq, the U.S.-backed Awakening groups, largely comprised of former resistance fighters, are now going on strike to demand overdue payment from the U.S. military.

Khody Akhavi and Ali al-Fadhily contributed to this report.