Despite their religous dogma and hierachical organisation the iraqi resistance, particularly in Fallujah and Najaf have consistently foiled US/Allawi attempts to silence dissent in iraq in order to freely construct a country that is sympathetic to US economic interests. Poorly armed and outnumbered the resistance continues not only to hinder Mr Bush's election campaign but also to hit the oil markets, making the extraction of oil from iraq a more pricely process than originally forecast by those companies who sort to profit from an assault on the iraqi people.
The imposition of a leader upon the resistance in the form of cleric Al'sadr, has come about as much from 'alliance' propaganda as his rabble rousing rhetoric. The imposition of a leader on the resistance movement gives the US/Allawi coalition a chance to attempt to silence the resistance by assimilating the leader into the new iraqi system or forcing him to surrender and disarm 'his' militia. Without a leader the resistance, due to its scope and amorphous nature, is hard to track down, issue orders to and ultimately neutralise. The US is very much hoping that by capturing, assimilating or killing al' sadr that they will be able to placate the resistance. It is interesting how the media in the last few weeks in particular have been positing the view that the assault is on behalf of al' sadr against some sort of quasi-democratic order in iraq that is hell bent on installing freedom and democracy in the country. When in reality allawi is just a CIA funded mouth peice of the US administration.
Not sure that supporting my enemy's enemy is a good principle in practice - look what happended to the Yanks when they supported the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
As we said in Class War after September 11th the cure (Islamic fundamentalism) turned out to be worse than the disease (Soviet Communism)
I also think there is a danger going down this route of echoing the SWPs "Victory to the Resistance" line - a line which is more about dissing the Yanks and/or sucking up to certain British Muslim groups, than it is about any objective analysis.