'Re-Liberators': a progress report from Iraq.

Hamada, Iraq

THIS small, rural village in Diyala Province north of Baghdad experienced a revolution a month ago. Hamada had been controlled by al-Qaeda and its band of teenage killers, who terrorized the place. Qaeda imams took over the mosques and people stopped going. The mayor of the nearby city of Muqdadiya lived here--until al-Qaeda blew up his house and he fled. The village became a ghost town.

Then, for the first time in five years of war, U.S. troops showed up. They captured key Qaeda leaders, and the rest ran away. Local citizens formed a makeshift security force, and people returned to the streets. Suddenly it was a new day.

Hassen Nssaif Jasim, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi army who leads the local security volunteers, hosts us, his American visitors, in his dirt front yard. He looks rugged in a brown knit cap, with a mustache and a day's worth of stubble on his face. His handful of security volunteers stand by along the road, holding rifles, with a strap of reflective material thrown over their shoulders to denote their quasi-official status. "I told everyone this is a golden opportunity," he says of his message to fellow villagers. "Don't lose it."

Isolated towns like this one, with a population of 750 and a dirt road off a small canal as the main thoroughfare, are highly vulnerable to al-Qaeda. "It's easy to intimidate them," explains an American officer. "They get up in the morning and there are a bunch of heads in the soccer field." At the village level, the War on Terror is less a grand ideological struggle than an elemental fight to replace men with guns who want to prey on the local population (al-Qaeda) with men with guns who want to help it (us). No romanticism about human nature is required to see that most people will prefer the latter.

Gen. Mark Hertling, who commands American forces in the north of Iraq, recalls being introduced in the nearby village of Himbus to a twelve-year-old girl who had pointed out where the Qaeda thugs were hiding. "I asked her why she had done that," General Hertling explains, "and she said, 'They were riding up and down the roads on mopeds shooting in the air. They killed my two brothers, my father couldn't farm, and I couldn't go to school.'"

It would still be that way without U.S. forces. Iraq is a mind-bogglingly complex country that defies generalizations, except this one: Where U.S. troops have a substantial presence, there is more security, more grassroots political activity, and more economic progress. Hence the success of the surge, and the imperative not to draw down from it too quickly. Before he lets his American visitors leave, Hassen Nssaif Jasim insists--fixing us with a glare and twice asking if he can rely on us--that we take home a message: "We are very serious, and we are going to go all the way to the end of the path. We don't want you to leave."

A year after the surge, this is not an uncommon sentiment. South of Baghdad, Sheik Mahir Hawr Ragab tells us, "You can't compare working with the U.S. with [working with] the government of Iraq." Asked what will happen if the Americans pull out, he says, "I'm the first one--I take my passport and leave."

WE'RE GOING TO GET IRAQRACY'

A top U.S. general puts it aptly when he says, "In some ways, our soldiers have come to be seen as re-liberators." In 2006, we watched Iraq descend into a sectarian hell that killed thousands and chased millions from the country. We stayed in our large bases and stuck by our plan of handing over control to Iraqi security forces, even though they manifestly weren't ready for it.

Iraq's year of torment, and our year of shame, began to change with the surge. Chronically undermanned, we added more than 30,000 troops to our contingent of 140,000. As important as the increased numbers was what we did with them. American troops got out into the neighborhoods, establishing joint security stations and combat outposts. Americans now live among the population. "We don't commute to work," says Gen. Rick Lynch of the Third Infantry Division in Baghdad.

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Almost every indicator of violence is headed in the right direction. Last year's indispensable abbreviation, EJK, or extra-judicial killings--meaning sectarian murders--is barely heard now. The sectarian civil war has dissipated in Baghdad. Nationwide, enemy actions are down about 60 percent since June. In December, American casualties were at early-2004 levels.

More than 60 percent of improvised explosive devices (IEDs)--the enemy's most deadly weapon--are now found and cleared, a direct result of more tips from the civilian population. And the effectiveness of IEDs that aren't found has declined. The bomb-making networks have been disrupted, and the top tier of personnel have been killed or captured. "We're now on the second and third string," says a U.S. general.

Gen. David Petraeus has emphasized the distinction between reconcilable and irreconcilable enemies. The former can be won over with various forms of persuasion; the latter must be captured or killed. This principle is dramatically illustrated by the security volunteers around the country known as "concerned local citizens" (CLCs), or, more recently, "sons of Iraq." There are now about 80,000 of them, 75 percent Sunni.

They represent more or less a direct transfer of forces from the enemy's side to ours. General Lynch estimates that about 60 percent of them had insurgent tendencies. U.S. officers tell stories of men who were targeted by U.S. forces but turned around to lead or join CLC units. Lynch marvels at the change of heart of a former Sunni fighter his troops had been hunting: "Yesterday, he and I were man-kissing."

There are about 30,000 CLCs in Baghdad, and they have been key to securing the city. The CLCs have "thickened" U.S. forces on the ground and helped the U.S. get to roughly the force-to-population ratio recommended in the counterinsurgency manual. They provide crucial intelligence--in one town, they even went out in the morning and put out orange traffic cones to warn where the IEDs had been placed. "They have been absolutely decisive," says Lynch.

Al-Qaeda is on the defensive. It has been basically run out of Anbar Province in the west, and also, increasingly, out of Baghdad, where it has trouble mounting spectacular vehicle bombings and instead must resort to bombers in suicide vests. The fight has been migrating to the north, which now sees 53 percent of all attacks in the country.

American commanders compare what they have done to al-Qaeda to squeezing toothpaste. Every time al-Qaeda is squeezed out of one area, it goes into another, but with fewer and worse-organized fighters. It is making a stand in the city of Mosul in Ninewa Province, where a battle looms. But a historic victory over al-Qaeda in the Arab heartland is now entirely conceivable.

Another ingredient in the improved security situation is the ongoing ceasefire declared last year by Moqtada al-Sadr and his Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) militia. It isn't being honored by the splinter JAM "special groups." They are armed and trained by the Qods Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and are proficient killers of American troops. An increasingly dangerous threat, they are a means for Iran to prevent the emergence of a stable, democratizing neighbor.

For all the security gains over the last year, American commanders believe they have hit a plateau. "Security is such that it's not going to get much better than it is. This isn't going to be a utopian society," says Lynch. As another general puts it, "The low-hanging fruit is gone." Further reductions depend on improvements in services and jobs.

U.S. commanders aim to "fill the gap" between the people and the government; it's in that gap--where the government is not providing security, services, or jobs--that insurgents thrive. We have been filling it as best we can, but ultimately the Iraqi government has to do it. Here, we have been constantly prodding and encouraging, and there is at least marginal movement. Ultimately, we'll have to be realistic about Iraqi politics. As the head of an American provincial reconstruction team says, "We're not going to get democracy, we're going to get Iraqracy. If it works--that's a good system."

'WHAT RIGHT LOOKS LIKE'

A Sunni neighborhood in the Dora section of Baghdad, off Airplane Road, is a showcase for our counterinsurgency successes. Once, for Americans to come here was a "deliberate combat operation," in the words of Col. Ricky Gibbs. Then, in late September, the neighborhood turned. Now, it is "what right looks like."

When on a crisp, cool Saturday evening American soldiers show up on 35th Street--once dubbed "Ambush Alley"--they are mobbed by clamoring children as soon as they leave their vehicles. Stores are open on a street that was deserted just months ago. The median strip, once regularly implanted with improvised explosives, is spruced up with fresh brickwork. An American captain--"the mayor" of the neighborhood--is greeted by name by an Iraqi boy who runs up to shake his hand. He is petitioned by two women--one of whom says her husband was killed by al-Qaeda--who want to be hired by the Iraqi government as teachers.

"Once we sent a signal to the people that we weren't leaving, they came out in droves to help us out; once we sent a signal to al-Qaeda, they left in droves because they couldn't stand and fight," says Colonel Gibbs. The Americans put their faith in "mass and time," believing that a substantial combat presence, applied over time, would make the difference. Seventy troops are devoted to the neighborhood, a relatively high number that we don't have the forces to duplicate everywhere.

Now, American troops live among the people throughout Dora. "How did we get there?" Gibbs asks. "We moved to the sound of the guns." It took months of costly urban warfare--89 Americans were killed--for his troops to rout alQaeda and establish outposts in the city.

What makes the Airplane Road neighborhood so special is not the reduction in violence, which is typical in Baghdad, but the restoration of some services through a makeshift arrangement between U.S. troops and a local doctor-turned-contractor. "It's been all U.S. dollars," Gibbs says of the effort. He has used dollars available from the Commanders' Emergency Response Program (CERP), a bureaucracy-free source of funds that American commanders say is as good as ammunition. "I can't spend it fast enough," Gibbs says, expressing a sentiment that is nearly universal among U.S. officers.

The local contractor is Dr. Moayad. Through him, the Americans have fixed the streets, picked up the trash, built a new electricity generator, and painted with bright murals the concrete barriers protecting the neighborhood. Moayad is creating a strip of park along the barriers--ubiquitous in Baghdad--with a path, benches, and newly planted shrubbery. Each of his projects means jobs in the neighborhood, which are priceless. Colonel Gibbs looks at the nascent park, where once bodies were dumped, and sees jobs in each component of it: the pathway--"bricklayers"; the greenery--"gardeners"; the latticework fencing--"iron-workers."

Dr. Moayad is a kindly, stout man with a brush of dark hair whom American officers describe as a "hero." Over tea and sweets in his middle-class home (his mother has made a delicious Black Forest cake for his American visitors), the doctor talks about the changes in the neighborhood since the surge. "Now if there's any problem, people go straight to the Humvee," he says. The doctor sounds like the top U.S. general when he comments, "This is the second time you have liberated this country."

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It should be the Shiite-dominated Iraqi central government contracting with people like Moayad. But it can't, or won't. A gap still yawns between the government and Sunnis in neighborhoods like these, even with the U.S. striving to close it. Colonel Gibbs needs the interior ministry to hire policemen, the health ministry to open clinics, and the education ministry to hire teachers--and all three are frustratingly slow.

"There's no government. We're living under U.S. forces. Now we're afraid U.S. forces will leave, and then who will take care of the neighborhood?" asks Dr. Moayad. He recalls that when Ahmed Chalabi--the famous Iraqi exile who now coordinates services for the government--visited the neighborhood, people asked, "Why is this man coming here?" Moayad explains: "General Petraeus they accept, but not this Iraqi official." Moayad's brother has been detained by government security services without charge for months, in a kind of de facto kidnapping Americans have worked to have reversed. "We've had an American awakening and a Sunni awakening," Moayad says, referring to the surge and the Sunni turn away from the insurgency. "Now, we need a government awakening."

'ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN'

The Sunni awakening began, of course, in the western province of Anbar. Now it's almost hard to remember that the province was once the molten core of the insurgency. The rapid improvement in security conditions has surprised even the commanders on the ground. (A general elsewhere in Iraq reports that one of his colleagues in Anbar marvels at the rapidity of the change, and quotes him as saying, "I don't know what happened out here.") The initial tribal revolt against al-Qaeda began a virtuous circle that is still playing out; the number of security incidents has declined for 13 months straight.

This tribal awakening provided a rallying point for people who opposed al-Qaeda, which in turn has splintered and been forced to the hinterlands. "AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] is now on the outside looking in," says a military briefer. Without access to the population, and no longer able to claim to be protecting it, al-Qaeda is exposed as merely a bunch of thugs.

The terror group used to have a hierarchical structure capable of moving resources in response to quite specific needs, but that structure has been smashed. Fighters stay off their cellphones now and rely on messengers. Because the Iraqi forces are better able to identify foreigners in their neighborhoods, the traditional routes for foreign fighters are drying up. Security incidents are down to seven per day on a 90-day rolling average. The American military thinks it can get that number down to perhaps five, but not lower until Iraqi security forces further improve.

The tribes came to our side thanks to serendipity, skillful diplomacy, the brutality of alQaeda--and our staying power. We were worth accommodating to only when we made it clear we weren't going to be chased from Iraq. An American general elsewhere in Iraq remembers a sheik's asking him right after the invasion, "Are you going to stay?" The sheik then explained to him, "You survive an occupation by being on the winning side." (The general recalls, "I said, 'You're not being occupied.' He said, 'You're here, aren't you?'")

We promised the sheiks that if they switched sides we'd bring peace and reconstruction. That's on the mind of Sheik Hamid Ahmed al-Hashim al-Alwani and the assembled Sunni businessmen at the Fallujah Business Center, once an abandoned building. Ample, in a red-and-white checkered headdress, the sheik gives his American visitors a flowery welcome that includes several references to Fallujah as "the city of peace." After the long preliminaries, he says, "And now a question: Doesn't that city deserve someone to extend a hand to help that city?"

Shops have returned to Fallujah. Traffic waits to get into the city at a security checkpoint (everyone must have an ID card and undergo a quick biometric scan). Fallujah has new solar-powered street lamps. A hospital is being built with Iraqi funds. But there is a need for more. Though the central government budgeted tens of millions of dollars for the province in 2007, the U.S. has no idea whether any of it was actually spent. There is a "glass ceiling" on development, American officers say, as long as the province struggles with power, fuel, and transportation shortages.

Meanwhile, al-Qaeda is decamping northward. The swath of Iraq north of Baghdad has long been an "economy of force" operation for the U.S.--in other words, undermanned. As the biggest city, Mosul, sank into chaos in 2005, the American force wasn't increased. At the beginning of the surge, it even lost troops to the fight to secure Baghdad. One battalion--600 troops--had responsibility for a city of nearly 2 million. Now, Mosul sees twice the number of IEDs as Baghdad, though it is a third the size. Al-Qaeda in Iraq feels as though it can't afford to be seen to lose Mosul, where we have been sending forces in preparation for a major battle.

The north of Iraq is extremely complex, with the Kurdish-Arab competition for land and influence layered atop a varied ethnic landscape that includes Turkmen, Christians, and Yazidis. It has a more fractious tribal structure than Anbar. But Mosul lacks the sectarian strife of Baghdad: Tamping down a civil war is not part of the fight. Instead, the objective is to defeat Qaeda fighters trying to hide among the Sunni population.

"Eventually we will establish security," says an American officer, "but that's half the fight. The rest is follow-through, addressing the grievances of the local population." That means, foremost, absorbing unemployed males into the economy. Everywhere, jobs for young men are a special concern--because al-Qaeda can pay them $200 for every IED they plant, and because they have been socialized over the last five years to terrible violence. "The number-one employment issue," says the American officer, "is getting money from the central government circulating here."

'THE SIXTH SEASON OF THE SOPRANOS'

Which is the mantra across the country. Even shoving money out the door to the provinces has been beyond the capacities of the central government (assuming it has wanted to do it in the first place--which is in doubt when it comes to the Sunni areas). It is not unusual to hear people say flat out that there isn't a government of Iraq.

Prime Minister Maliki has an extraordinarily weak hand. His Dawa party has no popular base; Ayatollah Sistani basically gave it two dozen seats in the legislature during negotiations over the unified Shiite list in the 2005 parliamentary elections. On top of that, Maliki's bloc is split, and he needs 138 votes to pass anything. He is widely considered a failure and there have been numerous attempts to topple him. "Maliki has realized he has survived, but that hasn't made him harder," says a top American general.

Then there is the simple question of ability. "None of these people have done any strategic leadership," says the general. Maliki has no one with any technical expertise in his inner circle, a debilitating weakness when trying to manage a dysfunctional, overly bureaucratic government in an environment of endemic corruption. Even a Maliki adviser concedes, "The Shia for decades were out of power. They don't know how to run a government. Maliki just ran a newspaper in Syria." Then he adds, "Sometimes in a cabinet meeting I just want to cover my eyes." According to a U.S. official, when the Americans suggested to Maliki that he implement a $1 billion employment program, he said, "Great, I'm all for it--how do we do it?"

Maliki has a narrow-minded and paranoid worldview, and is perpetually fearful of a Sunni resurgence. He doesn't have good relations with any Sunnis. This has played into the government's foot-dragging on reaching out to the Sunnis and incorporating the Sunni CLCs into the police. "I understand misgivings, but it's a year and a half later--Sunnis aren't going to take over the country," says an American intelligence expert.

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Trust is in short supply all around. "It is a zero-sum game for these guys because they don't know what tomorrow is," an American officer says of Iraqi officials. Everybody is jockeying for position, and wants to keep his armor-protected cars and his guys to serve tea at meetings and the spots in the Green Zone for his two wives. "This whole place is a struggle for power and influence--that's what it's all about," says an American general. "Watch the sixth season of The Sopranos."

Maliki is hardly the worst of the Shiite politicians. Consider Bayan Jabr. When he was minister of the interior, he presided over some of the worst abuses of the civil war; tortured prisoners were found in his ministry office. He was forced from the ministry of interior, but now heads the ministry of finance. Jabr is from the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the most powerful Shiite party. It is run by the Hakim family, is close to Iran, and holds a dominant position in the south, which it wants to split off into a separate region.

In addition, Sadrists are honeycombed throughout the government. All of this makes treacherous going for non-sectarian actors who want to do the best for the nation. As soon it became widely known that he was hiring Sunnis and Shiites at a 50-50 ratio, the head of the national police got signals that he might not be the right man for the job. Army or police generals who do their job well and in a non-sectarian way can get transferred--or worse. General Qais, the director of police for Babil Province in the south, was a hero to American troops who worked with him--talented, evenhanded, and a dedicated enemy of militias. Baghdad tried to transfer him. When Americans successfully resisted, the problem was dealt with more directly--he was killed by an explosively formed penetrator, or what locals call an "Iranian IED."

'AN IRANIAN CITY'

But the most intense arena of intra-Shiite competition is the oil-rich southern port city of Basra. There, the British have executed a kind of anti-surge. They cut a deal with Sadr, who gave them a ceasefire in exchange for stopping their patrols and vacating their base in a city palace. The deal has held-sort of. The British are subjected to fewer rocket attacks than before, but they are still rocketed at their airbase--probably by JAM's "special groups"--and the deal has come at the price of sacrificing nearly all influence in Basra.

One American general compares Basra to an Italian city-state. The Fadila party, which splintered from the Sadrists, controls the governorship and the oil; the Sadrists control the ports; SIIC has the rest of the south and wants Basra--the oil-rich gem--as well. Corruption is rife and every party has its private army, making for a toxic stew.

The British deal has delivered Basra to Iranian influence. Iran funds the political parties, and the businesses. One intelligence expert says, "For all intents and purposes, it's an Iranian city." Iran has myriad interests in play. In southern Iraq, it wants a proxy province that will be easy to control. In general, it wants to keep Iraq chaotic, so that a Westernizing, nascent democracy does not solidify on its border. Its ideal would be to create a Lebanese-style Hezbollah party, and for this a charismatic leader is needed. But Iran hasn't found him yet.

Moqtada al-Sadr is in Iran, where he is believed to be having a breakdown, trying to reconsolidate his organization, or both. There is a split in his movement over, among other things, whether to accept the political process or continue armed resistance. After a popular reaction against him following an armed confrontation in Karbala last year, Sadr declared his nationwide ceasefire. But JAM has now split into a faction that has abided by the ceasefire, various criminal elements, and the deadly "special groups."

It is in our interests to check the Iranians and keep the region from living under the boot of one of the Shiite religious parties. But the need to exert American influence in the south without sending large numbers of troops there--an impossibility--will remain a nettlesome diplomatic and political problem going forward. As for the British, they have all but checked out.

At their airbase outside the city, British officials tell our visiting delegation that they want to convince us they haven't "lost." The unpersuasive presentation ends fittingly--with a siren. Everyone falls to the floor in the small conference room until a rocket attack is over. The British have chosen to take the attacks and not hit back, a humiliating expedient. After a handful of explosions, we all get up and the British general opens the door to see his staff and his next group of visitors all still prone on the ground. "Our next meeting," he comments wryly.

'GETTING ON WITH IT'

For all the treachery and disappointments of Iraqi politics, several large factors are encouraging.

Legislation is finally moving in the parliament. "There is a degree of dynamism in the Council of Representatives that hasn't been seen in the past," says the top American general. "They realize that they have to get on with it. They're stuck with each other." The council had been debating whether or not to meet; now it has been debating--and occasionally passing--substantial legislation. It has passed an imperfect de-Baathification law (whose effect depends on its implementation), as well as a new budget, an amnesty law, and a provincial-powers act.

Iraqi security forces continue to grow. A year ago, there were worries that the Iraqi army would be wholly taken over by sectarian Shiite actors. That threat seems to have passed, and the army expands apace, as does the police force. The army will add another 40 battalions this year alone. As the military steadily gets bigger and more proficient--a part of the rumbling, uneven progress in Iraq that General Petraeus calls the "Mesopotamian stampede"--it gives the Iraqi state a firmer foundation and the Iraqi government more confidence.

Then there is the grassroots ferment represented by the turn of the Sunni sheiks toward the U.S. and the rise of CLCs. In western Iraq and in Baghdad, they represent a potentially more practical Sunni leadership, one that is willing to accept the new political dispensation and take a deal. Similar if less developed stirrings are heard in the south. There they are a reaction against the Shiite religious parties and the influence of Iran, and the government is trying to squash them exactly because they represent a political threat. It is crucial to begin to capture this grassroots energy and give it formal political expression through provincial elections this year (which, according to the provincial-powers law, must be held by October 1).

Everyone agrees that the rules under which the 2005 elections were held, the "closed list" that allowed people to vote only for party slates, were a mistake. No one knew whom he was voting for, and there is no district-by-district representation to give Iraqis a specific legislator to hold accountable. The system empowered the out-of-touch Shiite religious parties that rule Iraq today. Americans hope to move to an "open list," but the Shiite parties will resist it. Fortunately, the U.S. has an ally in the U.N. special envoy to Iraq, Staffan de Mistura, an elegant diplomat who knows Iraq and is committed to leveraging the legitimacy of the U.N. in shrewd and useful ways.

All over Iraq, you hear two sentiments. One is exhaustion with the violence. The other is the sense that the government has failed. You hear it everywhere. In the north and the west and the south and in between. From elected officials, from Iraqi generals, from sheiks, from Sunnis and Shiites. It is a universal belief, uniting all sects, across all of Iraq's divides. The Shiite governor of Karbala in the south says, "People want elections because they want--as they say in the U.S.--change." (Then he jokingly pumps his fist in the air and says, "Obama! Obama!")

This popular feeling is the most hopeful feature of the Iraqi political landscape, holding out the prospect of a bottom-up change that will eventually transform national politics.

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'ONLY AMERICA'

In the meantime, the U.S. military fills the gap. It is more popular than al-Qaeda (obviously), Iran, and the Iraqi government. Locally, there isn't much in the way of anti-occupation sentiment; to the extent it exists, it's higher up in the government, among sectarian Iraqi officials. "The ones that want us out have an agenda they haven't finished," says an American officer.

Everything depends on the U.S. military. First and foremost, security, and then the political and economic activity that flow from it. It's the military setting up local governments, and the military pump-priming the local economies with down-and-dirty aid dollars and micro-loans. A lot of this is in the job description of the State Department, but Secretary Rice hasn't displayed a keen interest in Iraq and clearly wants her legacy to be elsewhere. So inertia and bureaucracy rule. State can't move money with anything like the rapidity the military does with CERP. A frustrated State Department official with a provincial reconstruction team says, "We have to get permission [from the embassy] for anything above $25,000 and it takes eight months. It's a joke."

It's just a fact of life that our troops are our greatest instrument of leverage in Iraq. Already, drawing down from the surge means a drastic 25 percent reduction in U.S. combat power in six months. U.S. commanders think they can avoid backsliding by thinning out their forces on the ground rather than pulling them out of areas entirely. But we are operating within a small margin of error. Fortunately, defense secretary Robert Gates has now come out in favor of a "pause" when we hit the pre-surge level of 15 brigades in the summer, ensuring there won't be a hasty and willy-nilly withdrawal that throws away our gains.

Staying at the 15-brigade level will be a further strain on the military. Nearly every soldier or marine you meet here seems to be on his third tour. They take incredible risks every day, and too many have paid with their lives or have suffered horrific injuries. Their devotion is inspiring. And it is matched by their ingenuity and wit. Officers here all emphasize that there's no real training for the complexities--military, political, economic, and diplomatic--that they face every hour. Yet they all have learned, bringing a can-do pragmatism to every task--and they have performed brilliantly.

In one sense, what the military is spearheading is a crash course in Westernization across Iraq. Everyone is realistic about how much of it will take hold, but you have to be touched by those brave Iraqis committed to building something new. Every Iraqi military or police general that the U.S. military considers impressive is under threat, and not just from open enemies of the Iraqi state. In meetings with Americans, these generals sit side by side with militia-influenced mayors or governors who have an interest in seeing them dead.

It's hard to imagine abandoning them, or the likes of Col. Abbas Fadhil, who heads the Besmaya training facility for the Iraqi army. He is a bluff, irrepressible man who talks like an open fire hydrant. "Iraqis need your help," he tells us. "For 35 years, Saddam treated Iraqis like slaves. No other country in the world kicked out Saddam, only America. If I wanted to talk three hours, it's not long enough about America." And it's not empty verbiage --like so many Iraqis, he has paid a dear price for standing up. He was the spokesman for the recruiting drive for the Iraqi army in 2003-04, and JAM attacked his house, killing his infant daughter.

Listening to him and seeing his Iraqi troops proudly receive new M-16s, it's possible to envision Iraq's emerging as a stable ally of the United States. It would be a historic achievement, although that prospect is still far off, and reaching it isn't entirely within our own power.

"This hand is the peace hand and we are waiting for the answer," Sheik Khaled--a slender, self-possessed Sunni with a neatly trimmed beard--says from his large compound in Baghdad. "The Iraqi government doesn't even exist. It's all between us and the Americans." After a year, that's the story of the surge's success. If we are going to prevail in the long term, though, it eventually has to be between him and the Iraqi government.