A month after Iraqi troops poured into Basra to confront the militia fighters battling for control of the oil smuggling routes, the Iraqi Government claims that it has restored law and order to the streets, driven out the extremists attempting to enforce their rule on Basra's 1.6 million people and demonstrated to all Iraqis that it will not brook challenges to its authority. This upbeat assessment, while evidence of Iraq's steady recovery, must, nevertheless, be taken with several caveats. The militias, which melted away after hundreds of fighters were killed in the confrontation, may yet regroup and reappear. The jubilant population still faces considerable hardship in rebuilding the rundown city and re-establishing the rule of law. And the lingering tensions that beset the confused operations by Iraqi and American troops, as well as the apparent sidelining of the British Forces at the start of the crackdown, underline the difficulty in formulating an effective response to the challenge by the militias.

Nevertheless, as our correspondent reports, the mood in Basra has been transformed. Basic services have been resumed, markets and schools have reopened, people are coming out on to the streets and the Taleban-style intimidation that forced music shops and liquor stores to close has been routed. Although the Government's assault on the militia of Moqtada al-Sadr was ill-prepared and patchily executed, the readiness of a Shia prime minister to confront a Shia militia enhances his status and shows that he is ready, at last, to rise above sectarian loyalties to assert national interests. Nouri al-Maliki may have benefited from a benign alignment of interests. Iran, which appears able to stir up trouble at will, has, for the moment, seen the need to rein in the more ambitious Iraqi challengers. The US forces, invigorated by the relative success of the surge, are showing a new maturity. And Iraq's political parties are acting in concert, passing essential legislation, curbing their endemic bickering and welcoming into government factions that had boycotted Mr al-Maliki's administration.

This gives the Iraqi Prime Minister a rare and welcome breathing space. He must use the opportunity. Already he has demonstrated some welcome political muscle, telling David Miliband on his impromptu visit that the Government was planning similar moves to pacify Mosul and Baghdad and would be “going after the outlaws”. Now he also needs to accelerate economic reconstruction, continue building up Iraq's Army and cleaning up a corrupt and discredited police force, and engage others more closely in Iraq's revival. This means convincing Washington and London to maintain troop strengths and military commitments; it means also challenging Iraq's Arab neighbours to drop their pusillanimous and self-serving aloofness and forge overdue links, political and economic, with their eastern neighbour. It is a disgrace that so far no Arab country has reopened an embassy in Baghdad, nor any Arab leader paid a visit. It is hypocritical of them to cite the lack of safety and stability while doing little to curb the flow of militants and extremists into Iraq. And it is self-defeating to bemoan Iran's growing influence while not doing more to help Iraq to regain its standing and prosperity. Mr al-Maliki has made a good start with Basra. The response from the West to this fragile good news should not be withdrawal, but perseverance.