For Staff Sgt. Todd Bowers, America's six years in Iraq have been an accomplishment and a tragedy best summed up in the life of a single man – an Iraqi he knew only as Moufid.

It was 2005, and the insurgent stronghold of Fallujah was at war, buildings blasted to rubble and rockets splitting the sky.

Amid the chaos, "this Iraqi walks up to us and says, 'How can I help?' " says Sergeant Bowers, who has served two tours in Iraq.

It was a breakthrough moment for Bowers's unit. "He really represented the kind of relationship you need to establish at the local level to begin to turn the tide," says Bowers.

Six years after America invaded Iraq, Bowers's experience symbolizes what America has learned – and what Iraq has sacrificed. Progress in Iraq has come one relationship at a time – a lesson that could change how the American military fights in Afghanistan and beyond.

But Moufid was killed in front of his family later that year for cooperating with Americans, Bowers learned – a glimpse of the war’s cost to the Iraqi people.

Much of the wanton violence that claimed Moufid as well as thousands of other Iraqi civilians is now waning. US combat deaths, too, are now consistently lower than at any time since the invasion began in 2003.

Although few experts – let alone Iraqis – speak of victory, the Iraqi government is gradually taking greater responsibility for its own affairs. National elections slated for the end of the year offer the promise of another step toward a stability and calm Iraq hasn’t known for decades. This has given President Obama the confidence to plan for the withdrawal of two-thirds of the 145,000 American troops in Iraq by autumn 2010.

The pullout is backloaded to allow for maximum security coverage during the elections.

Yet Iraq is a more nuanced picture when seen through the eyes of three Americans who have come to know the country intimately: soldier Bowers, reconstruction expert Paul Hughes, and peace activist Michele Naar-Obed. On the sixth anniversary of the invasion, their personal perspectives point to accomplishments such as those in Fallujah, but also to the difficulties that lie ahead – from the rise of a more conservative strain of Islam to dormant sectarian rifts that could resurface as the Americans leave.

The soldier

When he got word that he would be deployed to Iraq, Bowers was an intern in the Capitol Hill office of former Arizona Rep. Jim Kolbe in early 2003. A week later, he was on a ship bound for Kuwait and what would be the invasion of Iraq.

In that first deployment, the civil-affairs officer began to have inklings of how important it might be to keep Iraqi civilians safe. But it was not until Bowers was back in the US, studying Arabic and Middle Eastern Affairs at George Washington University in Washington, that he began to grasp just how critical the US relationship with the Iraqi people was going to be to stabilizing the country.

Watching a succession of events, including the April 2004 public mutilating and burning of four American contractors in Fallujah, Bowers found himself wondering, “How is this going so wrong?”

It was about the same time that some US officials, including in the Pentagon, were beginning to discuss the need for a different approach in Iraq – thinking that would eventually lead to the “surge” of US troops and a focus on winning over local populations.

A wiry man with an intense gaze, Bowers got his chance to employ the “civilian first” approach during his Fallujah deployment – a tough test, he says, given that the battle’s objective was to rid the city of the Al Qaeda sympathizers who had come to dominate it. “It’s not easy to establish the rapport you need for long-term success when it looks like all you’re about is blowing the place up,” he says.

He might not have been able to do it without Moufid. He was a critical link to establishing trust, Bowers says, and helped the Americans make contacts with influential Fallujans who wanted to break free of the Al-Qaeda-inspired insurgency.

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