Iraq's seesaw of progress and peril

The US has cleaned up or refurbished more than 2,300 schools, and undertaken thousands of projects ranging from water and sewage facilities and road repairs to new computers for ministries and cropdusting.

President Bush said Saturday that US spending on reconstruction is accelerating and that within the next "several months" $9 billion - as opposed to just over $1 billion now - would be spent. But some analysts note that a growing share of US reconstruction funds is being eaten up by security, while costs like foreign contracting mean that Iraqis aren't seeing a large part of the huge amounts the US is spending on their behalf.

US officials say that even as more "visible" projects like highway paving and school repairs come on line, the plan is to place a high priority on elections slated for January.

With surveys showing Iraqis more hopeful about elections than about the current appointed government, the idea is to have even imperfect elections demonstrate a nascent democracy - and America's role in it.

A key part of the elections focus is to return a US presence and Iraqi government authority to areas of the country that have resisted the US effort in Iraq. The American military recently reinstated a cooperative local council and resumed infrastructure work in the formerly off-limits town of Samarra. Initial results have been mixed, however, with the new police chief having resigned after repeated death threats.

The US military is also pressing its return to Sadr City, the huge Baghdad slum that over recent months has fallen under tightened control of forces backing the antioccupation Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. US military officials say their plan is to establish a beachhead on the sector's more cooperative south side where infrastructure and cleanup projects can proceed, and serve as an enticement for the rest of the district of 2.5 million people to give up its resistance.

Many Sadr City residents say the US has a strange way of trying to win people's hearts, with night air raids and street skirmishes over recent weeks targeting Mr. Sadr's armed supporters.

"The Americans say a lot, but they never do anything - this is all they know how to do," says Hatem Zuaia Zamel, as he surveys his charred paint store. The shop was destroyed last week when, according to Mr. Zamel and a crowd of angry neighbors, a US tank firing indiscriminately sent ammunition into the store and ignited its combustible products. "They have destroyed me," adds Zamel, kicking blackened paint cans. "Who could ever welcome someone doing this?"

A few streets away, Nasser Aboud points out the crumpled metal of what was his home's front gate and holes in exterior walls - results of US tank fire. "The worst is that five family members were injured, one will probably lose his legs," he says.

Still, Mr. Aboud says the Americans would be welcomed in Sadr City if they came to rebuild a poor district - and weren't wearing uniforms. "We would welcome civilian contractors," says the retired Army officer, "but if they come to us atop tanks and pointing weapons, it will never work."

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