Here's a news story that describes how the US took parts of Sadr City from the Mahdi Army but is unable to deliver the basic services required for legitimacy:
Michael Gordon "In Sadr City, Basic Services are Faltering" NYTimes. April 22, 2008.
The Sadr City situation is yet another example of how, for want of a model for community resilience (there's a long discussion of the philosophy required for this in Brave New War) from tech to process to education, counter-insurgencies in both Afghanistan and Iraq aren't gaining traction despite the enormous cost in lives and treasure already paid. Also, it is a good indication that the new Africa Command will likely fail to establish any meaningful improvement on the continent (in fact, without meaningful alternatives like a package for resilient communities, it will likely default to the opposite by propping up brittle oil-based dictatorships like Equatorial Guinea).
How to correct this? Get smart people involved to define the scope, scale, and proposed response to this hard problem (in a fashion similar, but over longer period of time, than what I am doing for the NIC on another hard problem). Pour DARPA dollars into resilience technologies aimed at communities. Test prototypes to get data and insight. Find out what works.
WIM (what it means) long term? My strong belief is that if the DoD can help crack this problem, it will be as big a contribution to the world as ARPANET.