Perhaps the greatest success of the surge has been the way it was unquestioningly accepted as a panacea for the violence in Iraq

Why has Iraq been so absent as an issue from the US presidential election? It seems scarcely believable that the one dominant, inescapable political issue in US politics over the past three years is now barely commented on by the main candidates.

The former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, the former CIA director George Tenet, President Bush's chief strategist Karl Rove and many others all lost their jobs because of Iraq. With such a cast of high-profile casualties, as well as consistent poll results showing that the majority of Americans feel that the war has been handled badly and want their country to withdraw militarily from Iraq, you would expect it to be a huge and divisive issue in such a closely fought contest.

The war has been mentioned, but only in passing. Politicians and the media put this down to the success of the so-called "surge", a euphemism for the US troop increase parroted by everyone. The roughly 30,000 extra troops demanded by General David Petraeus, the overall US forces commander in Iraq, have been deployed in much greater numbers in the areas around Baghdad, which have witnessed the most violence between Iraqi groups as well as attacks on US troops. There is no doubt that clashes, particularly across the sectarian divide of Sunni and Shia, have dropped during the past six months, and this has tentatively encouraged Iraqis in some districts in the heart of the city to venture out into their neighbourhoods in ways that they haven't done for a long time.

I was in Baghdad at the end of last month and, in areas such as Jadriyah and Arasat Hindiya in the south-east, those Iraqis brave enough to talk openly with a western reporter, even briefly, told me that things were indeed better now than they had been for some months. But everyone I spoke to made heavy caveats; after all, nothing is as straightforward in Iraq as some politicians in western countries would have you believe. They all said that while attacks had decreased in many areas, some of the trouble had been displaced to other towns further out, such as Diyala, which had previously been relatively quiet.

British and American politicians have been quick to portray the situation in Iraq as an across-the-board reduction in violence, and link this directly to the surge. This argument has been widely accepted. Yet troop levels in Iraq have been much higher in the past than they are now, with no effect whatsoever on the numbers of attacks, bombings and deaths. So why has it worked this time?

The reality is that the surge is not what has led to the lower levels of violence, and attacks on US troops are still causing considerable casualties. What has had a far greater impact has been the decision by the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to call a ceasefire between his Mahdi army, a force of up to 100,000, and US troops and Iraqi government security units. Although US commanders on the ground ascribe almost every attack on Iraqis and their troops to al-Qaeda-linked groups, this is mainly for political reasons - to support President Bush's notion that Iraq is the central battleground in the fight against the terrorists.

What is undeniable is that the Mahdi army is far more powerful militarily than groups linked to al-Qaeda, and it has been behind far more attacks. Unlike the dozens of Sunni-based insurgency groups, a number of which work with and are allied to al-Qaeda-linked groups, the Mahdi army is a proper standing military force and, as US commanders will tell you off the record, its soldiers in effect control at least half of Baghdad. What's more, the Mahdi army is openly visible around the city. When you visit predominantly Shia districts of Baghdad, such as al-Khadimiya, the Mahdi army's offices, flags, posters and patrols are everywhere to be seen.

Moqtada al-Sadr called the ceasefire because the Mahdi army badly needed to reflect the political force his movement had in the Iraqi parliament (it holds a large number of seats). On the streets of Baghdad, the army had been seen not as a political movement, but as a group of criminal gangs posing as a sectarian militia defending their community against attacks by Sunnis.

But many of Sadr's commanders, a number of whom have been arrested as a result of their decision to call a ceasefire, are urging him not to renew it for another six-month term. The pressure on him to take up arms again is intense. Shia residents of mixed neighbourhoods in Baghdad are now more easily targeted by Sunni groups eager to drive them out. They want local Mahdi army fighters to come to their aid and carry out revenge attacks again. If Sadr succumbs to this pressure from his grass-roots supporters - the huge numbers of working-class and impoverished Shia communities not just in Baghdad, but throughout Iraq - the lull in the violence will end almost overnight. No boosting of troop levels or boosting of the surge will have any effect.

Perhaps the greatest success of the surge has been in the way it was sold politically, and thus has become almost unquestioningly accepted as a panacea for the violence in Iraq. Petraeus's performance in front of the congressional armed services committee last September gave the impression that the surge was a new beginning for US policy in Iraq. The luck was that it coincided with the Mahdi army ceasefire. Without that, however, the "success" will evaporate, and Iraq will come back on to the US presidential election agenda with a vengeance.

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