A string of suicide bombings, targeting civilians cooperating with US forces, suggests the guerrilla strategy of disrupting Iraq's transition to a unified democracy is now in full and deadly swing.

A huge blast in Baghdad Wednesday outside an Iraqi Army recruiting post came one day after a similar car bombing south of Baghdad Tuesday. The two bombings killed more than 100 people, and together with suicide bombings in the Kurdish city of Arbil on Feb. 1, make for the deadliest two-week period for Iraqi civilians since the US occupation began.

The bombings could delay the country's political transition, with a transfer of sovereignty from the US-led coalition to Iraqi authorities supposed to take place June 30. Some experts say that Iraqis will have to take more responsibility for safeguarding their own stability and rely less on the Americans. Others say the US will either have to stay in control of the country longer - or face the prospect of an Iraq plunged into civil war. The suicide attacks are designed to turn Iraqis not just against the American occupiers but also each other.

"It's the 'intimidate and wedge' strategy," says Judith Yaphé, a former CIA analyst and now Iraq expert at the National Defense University in Washington. "The idea is to drive the Iraqis against the US and to make this all fail."

Says Patrick Lang, a former Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East specialist with extensive experience in Iraq: "In a country of major groups that really don't like each other much, the strategy here is to cultivate the mistrusts and prepare the ground for civil war after we leave. What is absolutely unacceptable to the groups doing this is a Shia-dominated government."

The suicide bombings, which follow a pattern also gaining steam in Afghanistan, appear to be working at turning civilians, already chafing at the occupation, against the transition's fledgling institutions.

Ahmad Madloun, for example, spent three months preparing to join the new Iraqi Army. But Wednesday's deadly suicide bombing in Baghdad changed his mind.

"I won't join the Army now, even if they pay me my weight in gold," he says lying in a hospital bed recovering from shrapnel wounds. Mr. Madloun had carefully prepared for his induction into the Army, filling in the forms and passing his medical exam. He turned up at the entrance of the recruiting office early Wednesday morning ready to begin a new career as a soldier.

"We were joking and laughing when there was a big explosion and I saw a huge red flame," he says. Fragments from the blast struck him in the chest and his left arm. "There were two dead people in front of me and two more dead behind me."

Madloun, a farmer, said his cousins had encouraged him to join the Army. "They told me how much respect they were receiving, the good food, and salaries," he says. "But I cannot join the Army now. When I get my health back, I will go back to farming."

Others injured in the Baghdad blast told stories that suggest the wedge between the US and the Iraqi people is growing.

Abbas Adel-Ghafar, his head swathed in bandages, blames the US for its continued occupation of Iraq. "We are grateful to the Americans for getting rid of Saddam," he says, "but they are still occupiers. These attacks would not happen if they left."

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