But how much impact the economic assistance has had toward winning Iraqi hearts and minds is hard to say, according to officers here.
Allen cited a recent intelligence tip as an example of the positive things that have resulted from U.S. troops engaging with the local community. Last week, he said, as soldiers from his battalion kicked around a soccer ball with Iraqi children near the Yassin mosque, two older women approached. They informed the soldiers that people were moving rocket-propelled grenades into the mosque.
A soldier patrols Sadr City. The switch from fighting to friendliness is mentally and emotionally demanding.
(Karim Kadim -- AP)
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Two days later, on Nov. 27, members of the Iraqi National Guard, supported by Allen's battalion, raided the mosque, capturing a large cache of munitions and detaining the local cleric, Allen said.
But such tips have yet to amount to a trend. And in al-Rashid, attacks on U.S. troops, after declining sharply since last spring, have hovered at several a day since June. The number has spiked to more than 10 a day in periods coinciding with stepped-up violence elsewhere in Iraq.
Proud of its assistance efforts, the 5th Brigade Combat Team, which has responsibility for al-Rashid, has assembled a photo album of before and after shots, documenting dramatic improvements: piles of garbage removed, pools of sewage drained, irrigation canals cleared. But brigade members noted that simply building things and turning them over to the Iraqis to run would not be sufficient, a fact that became clear when looking at a few of the showcase projects.
At the new al-Furat medical clinic, where the brigade spent $2.7 million to transform what had been a Republican Guard brigade headquarters, few doctors or patients were in evidence. The nearly deserted facility, completed in September, is now operated by the Health Ministry.
Lt. Col. Bill Salter, who commands the 1st Squadron, 7th Cavalry Regiment, which patrols the neighborhood, acknowledged being puzzled by the eerie absence of activity at the clinic. He speculated that it might have something to do with the clinic charging for medical services that in Iraq are supposed to be free. Indeed, a sign at the reception desk announces that a visit costs the equivalent of about 35 cents.
At another stop -- a women's center established in a renovated villa that U.S. officers said had been used by Saddam Hussein's sons -- computers installed for use in an Internet training course were nowhere to be found. They apparently had disappeared overnight.
Such situations highlighted what several U.S. soldiers said were some of the obstacles they had faced in pressing the economic assistance line of operation. Corruption, poor-quality contract work, a lack of formal local governing structures -- all have posed added challenges.
"The hardest part isn't cleaning it up, it's changing the mind-set of the people," said Maj. Chris Spohn, essential services team chief for the 5th Brigade Combat Team. He had just finished explaining how laying new sewage networks would do little good if Iraqis kept throwing trash into the system instead of having the garbage carted away.
By the end of the year, Chiarelli's division will have spent about $1.5 billion on new projects in Baghdad. But Chiarelli sees significant gaps in the systems being built.
That is because the reconstruction program, designed last year, put too much emphasis on investments in large capital projects such as power plants, sewage facilities and water treatment stations, Chiarelli said. It neglected, in his view, to provide sufficiently for the electrical wiring, sewage lines and water pipes to connect these large facilities to individual Iraqis.
"My own opinion is, that's not the way to do reconstruction," the two-star general said. "We should have done reconstruction from the bottom up."
Chiarelli said he has submitted requests for $267 million to help close gaps in distribution networks for electricity, sewage, water and trash disposal in several of the poorest neighborhoods.
The soldiers in al-Rashid said they expect that U.S. forces will be reconstructing and fighting in Iraq for some time to come.
"We don't see this mission as a sprint or a marathon, we prefer to see it as a relay," said Maj. Robert Menti, operations officer of the 5th Brigade Combat Team. "We just want to be able to hand off the baton."
