US Efforts Often welcomed.

In a bid to control sectarian violence, US and Iraqi forces moved months ago into one of the toughest Sunni insurgent area, Amiriyah. At first, change was palpable. The Americans paid a Sunni contractor to clear streets and pick up trash. Checkpoints targeted insurgents, though few were netted. But "ethnic cleansing" of the few remaining Shi'ites continued. The contractor was murdered, ending that programme.

On Nov. 5, the threat came to Muhammad al-Baghdadi's door when two young men left a note: Move out in two days or die. "What is the benefit of US and Iraqi troops, if the killing continues, and bombs and IEDs, and they are forcing people to leave?" asked Baghdadi, a pseudonym for a Shi'ite pharmacist with a Sunni wife, who secretly serves as a medic for the Iraqi Army. "The American Army does not control Amiriyah".

US forces have enjoyed some tactical successes - for a time in Amiriyah, and in the insurgent stronghold of Dora, where residents have praised US moves. Elsewhere, Iraqis have approvingly noted US soldiers, shovels in hand, clearing blocked sewers. The renewed US military attention to Baghdad has sometimes been welcomed. But it is often not deemed sustainable by Iraqi units when US forces eventually leave. And in other areas, such as the Shi'ite slum of Sadr City, an increased US presence over the past week has deepened anti-occupation sentiment, and threatened renewed conflict.

The US says the success of the step-by-step approach must be measured over time. "A lump of clay can become a sculpture, blobs of paint become paintings which inspire", Maj. Gen. William Caldwell on Nov. 2, adding: "The final test of our efforts will not be the isolated incidents reported daily but the country that the Iraqis build".

US commanders recently termed the results of "Operation Forward Together", launched last June, as "disheartening". A secret Central Command briefing slide from Oct. 18, published on Nov. 1 in The New York Times, assessed the situation as heading towards "chaos". It noted "urban areas experiencing 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns to consolidate control...violence at all-time high, spreading geographically".

The Baghdadi clan knows how that feels, as they succumbed to the threatening letter. A Shi'ite friend had recently been murdered; insurgents even shot at that family the next day, forcing them to seek US and Iraqi military help as they loaded a moving truck. Within hours of receiving the computer-printed threat, Baghdadi drove his two Shi'ite brothers to an uncle's house in a safer area. Early the next morning, with just the clothes on their backs, money, and a few valuables - so they would appear not to be moving - Baghdadi's family ended their 25-year residence in Amiriyah.

The district, on the north side of the road to the airport, and seeded by Saddam with military and intelligence loyalists, was always to be tough for US forces to crack. It is riven with Sunni insurgents, who have easy access to western hotbeds like Falluja and Ramadi. "The population supports the insurgents because they hate the Americans, and the Iraqi Army and police, and everyone who is against their extremist ideas", says Baghdadi. But, he says: "If you catch and kill the terrorists in Amiriyah, it would end it".

That task has not been easy anywhere in Baghdad, home to more than 5m. The city's patchwork of areas, many of them ethnically mixed, are being systematically cleansed by sectarian death squads linked to Shi'ite parties as well as to Sunni groups; both sides claiming revenge. Still US forces have found some success in recent weeks in the unlikely quarter of Dora, where insurgent control hardened sectarian lines and forced an exodus.

Abu Mina owns two large generators, and sells power by the ampere. In the past two months, he has seen his client list shrink from 200 households to below 50. Electric capacity nationwide passed pre-war levels in recent months, according to an Oct. 30 federal audit, but Baghdad still lags behind. Security has improved, with US and Iraqi checkpoints disrupting insurgent movement. They have also snarled traffic, however, and caused anger among those trying to get to work.

"The Americans came to the neighbourhoods, and the situation is quieter", says Abu Mina, a Sunni married to a Shiite, who would only allow use of his nickname. "When the Americans come, the insurgents leave, so the killing is less, and there are checkpoints and fewer IEDs". Dora residents say US forces began paying youths $5 a day to clean up areas during at least the past week, and that insurgents have been unable to stop the programme, which many there welcome. "In general, the Americans do a good thing when they divide [Dora] into blocks and [set checkpoints]", says Abu Mina, as his brother nods. "But they can't be in every house. Insurgents come from outside, do their work, and then leave". Will insurgents return when US troops depart? "Yes", says Abu Mina.

US forces last week handed out phone numbers to call if police cars entered Sunni areas with misbehaving cops, says Abu Mina. But the issue undermines the broader US strategy of eventually pulling out, as Iraqi units take over. And threat letters keep coming, thrown onto the streets. Abu Mina pulls one out of his pocket signed by the Mujahideen Shura Council, the umbrella group of Neo-Salafi insurgents linked to al-Qaeda. The letter calls on fellow Sunnis to "know the identity of their enemy". It says: "The energy and power should focus on support for jihad and the Mujahideen", then calls for avenging "blood that is spilled, and the honour that is raped..." Abu Mina says: "Many people left their homes because of these. After these, [insurgents] start to kill". The ease of such ethnic cleansing, despite months of effort by US commanders who have portrayed pacifying Baghdad as a minimum requirement for success, frightens many Iraqis. "On the ground I expect worse", says Baghdadi. "But I do not want to be pessimistic, so I am keeping this small point in my mind, just to go forward. We will be dead people if we always say everything is bad. But surely, it is dark".