TRIBE VERSUS TRIBE

When elections are held in Iraq at the end of the month, Iraqis will not see any of the 150,000 American troops stationed there guarding the polling places. Instead, voters will pass groups of armed, masked men wearing black balaclavas to hide their faces. The gunmen may look like terrorists, but they'll be Iraqi Army and police, hiding their identities to protect themselves from retaliation by insurgents, who rarely bother to hide their faces anymore. American officials are hopeful the much-beleaguered Iraqi forces will prove their mettle on Election Day, and preside over an election "by Iraqis and for Iraqis," as an American general puts it. Yet Iraq's rebellious Sunni minority is likely to see it differently: an election for Shiites and Kurds, guarded by Shiites and Kurds, to dominate the Sunnis who once ruled the country.

The goal of American military planners has long been to use the new Iraqi military to build national unity. And officially, that hasn't changed. American military officials insist that Iraq's security services are not dominated by non-Sunnis. "Absolutely incorrect," says Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who is in charge of training efforts for the Iraqi forces. "The national forces are national forces, typically Shia, Sunni, Kurds, Yezidi, everything. There is no shortage of recruits from all the difficult areas." That may be true on paper (although no official ethnic breakdown is available). Still, key units and leaders are clearly dominated by Shiites and Kurds, who together represent 75 percent of the population.

Commando 36, for instance, was the first Iraqi National Guard unit into Fallujah when the Marines assaulted the city in November. Shia militia veterans and former Kurdish peshmerga guerrillas dominate the unit. They battled Sunni fighters for the Fallujah hospital, which was being used as an insurgent base. The new Iraqi Army's first full division, the Fourth Infantry, is commanded by a Kurd, Lt. Gen. Abdul Aziz. "The division commander is absolutely committed to an integrated Iraq," says his American counterpart, Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who is based in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit. "The American Army was the first institution to integrate America. The Iraqi Army will do the same for Iraq."

But this ideal has proved harder to implement as the insurgency has grown stronger. Ever since mid-2003, when the occupation authority disqualified many officers from Saddam's Sunni-dominated military from rejoining the force, leading Sunnis have been reluctant to sign up. Later the insurgents focused their attacks on the Iraqi police and national guard, deeming them turncoats. When Sunnis have joined the security forces, they've sometimes acted as double agents. Distrust of Sunnis in official positions is now pervasive. "There is no doubt that we are heavily infested in the government, right at the top," says a leading official who has close ties to the Shia spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

The new Iraqi military's first chief of staff was a Sunni--a former general in Saddam's Army. But Gen. Amar Bakir al-Hashimi was fired last summer after insurgents allegedly got key intelligence from one of his staff and used it to assassinate a high-ranking officer. The new chief of staff is a Kurdish general, and the other two highest Iraqi Defense officials are a Shiite and a Kurd. In Mosul, the Sunni police chief, Brig. Gen. Mohammed Kheiri Barhawi, fled the city after his entire force collapsed in the face of insurgent attacks. Later Kurdish troops arrested him carrying $600,000, and accused him of selling out to the insurgents. He was eventually released without charges. "He at one time was a shining example," says an American officer who has worked with Barhawi. "But he was ground down, too long in that job, shot three times, house badly damaged. In retrospect, he should have been transferred somewhere else."

General Petraeus's training operation is turning out Iraqi battalions at a greater pace than ever before, and getting them better equipment. But all told, the security forces number 127,000--less than half the recommended total of 272,000--and the bulk of those have had little training or experience. Recently, Iraq's new intelligence chief, Gen. Muhammad Shahwani, told Agence France-Presse that the insurgents could count on as many as 200,000 fighters and active supporters. "I think the resistance is bigger than the U.S. military in Iraq," he said. The Pentagon was worried enough about it to send a retired four-star general, Gary E. Luck, to Iraq last week for a sweeping review of policy.