In Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city, the 5,000-member police force disintegrated on Nov. 10 when waves of guerrillas assaulted police stations to open a new front away from a U.S. offensive underway in Fallujah. Two months later, the northern city remains without a local police force.
At about the same time, the police force in Ramadi, 30 miles west of Fallujah, also deserted en masse. About a month later, almost half its 1,600 officers were back on the job, officers said.
Iraqi Interior Ministry police commandos monitor a traffic circle in downtown Baghdad. Iraq's security forces, a favorite target of insurgents, now routinely don masks as part of their uniforms to avoid being identified.
(Karl Vick -- The Washington Post)
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"They found the support of the people," said Col. Muhanned Nouri. "Before, when we patrolled, people didn't care about us. Now, people support us, give us tea or water."
As unpopular as the American presence may be, with a large majority of Iraqis saying they want U.S. troops to leave, according to public opinion polls, the insurgents are wearing out their welcome as well.
Residents of Ramadi -- having seen Fallujah almost completely destroyed by a U.S. offensive to retake the city from insurgents -- have voiced a sharpened appetite for order. They said they upbraided guerrillas for using residential neighborhoods to stage attacks against U.S. troops and putting families at risk from crossfire.
"We want security and order back in the city. We are sick of the armed people," said Talib Ashour, who had come to a Ramadi police station to file a complaint about a property dispute. The problem normally would be settled through informal tribal negotiations, but Ashour wanted to make a point.
"We should follow the law, because this is our fate," he said. "Those armed men are not permanent. They will live maybe a month or two, maybe less than that."
For now, however, a good number of them remain alive, as the commander reminded a handful of spirited young officers during a visit by an Iraqi journalist. The recruits had painted over insurgent graffiti on a station wall with defiant slogans of their own, such as "Our life is long, yours is short." But when they offered to pose for a photograph, their commander stepped in.
"Don't put yourself at risk," Nouri advised. "If those photos are published, you will be killed one after the other."
The threat against Iraqi security forces is highest in the Sunni Muslim heartland, where the insurgency has grown as the political fortunes of its residents have diminished since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.
In the northern and western portions of central Iraq, the pressure against voting or taking any action that might lend credibility to the interim government and its American sponsors is intense, though seldom articulated.
When pollsters for the U.S.-funded International Republican Institute, which is helping Iraqis prepare for elections, asked Sunni Muslims why they were not planning to vote, 74 percent gave "no answer."
"My husband received many threats, sometimes by letters, sometimes by armed man who entered the house by force," said Mona Mosa, a resident of Baiji. Last week, police brought the headless body of her husband to their house.
Hasballah Shati, 50, a former fighter pilot, defied the threats and continued working as a translator at an American base. He was smoking a water pipe in front of his house when three armed men took him away. His best friend, Zamil Hussein, remembered that one of the kidnappers wore white training shoes, because they were stained by mascara when Shati's wife threw herself at his feet, begging for her husband's life.
