For Iraq's Shiites, a Dream Deferred Breeds Mistrust of U.S.

Following the U.S. invasion, he was among the first Shiites to take over what was then known as the Grand Saddam Mosque, a majestic shrine with the appearance of a spaceship. They renamed it the Rahman -- or Merciful -- Mosque.

Around them, the Americans demolished the old order of Sunni domination. The occupation administration of L. Paul Bremer purged Sunnis from the army and outlawed Hussein's Baath Party while trying to restore the rights of Shiites and Kurds, the groups most oppressed under Hussein.

Still, educated men such as Lefta felt uneasy as they watched their fellow Shiites embrace the United States. He recalled the U.S. failure to support Shiites in their 1991 rebellion against Hussein. After the Americans toppled Hussein, Lefta said, "We were watching carefully what the new days would bring and what the future was hiding."

Ali Adeeb, a silver-haired, gray-suited Shiite lawmaker, has seen the shift in his community's attitude toward the United States. He pointed to the February 2006 bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra. "Before Samarra, when the Shiites used to be slaughtered they kept silent," Adeeb said. "Afterward, they exploded."

Shiite militias attacked Sunni mosques. Sunni leaders have accused Shiite death squads of hundreds of killings. "The Sunnis started to ask for rescue from the Americans, especially now that they have joined the political process and have become close to the Americans," Adeeb said. "This is when the doubts about the Americans began."

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad declared the Shiite militias the most significant threat to Iraq's stability, replacing the Sunni insurgency and al-Qaeda. Frustrated by the Shiite government's inability to govern and bring security, U.S. officials began pressuring Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to dismantle the militias. They zeroed in on the Mahdi Army of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, upon whom Maliki depends for power.

"They are attacking people at mosques, at stadiums," Lefta said, referring to the Sunni insurgents. "But the Americans overlook that. They concentrate on the militias. The militias are merely a reaction to the violence."

'A Wrong Reading'

Where Bremer alienated the Sunnis, an action now seen as having fueled the insurgency, Khalilzad sought to integrate them into Iraq's political process, a strategy that many U.S. officials hoped could lead to a way out of Iraq.

The ambassador, a Sunni of Afghan descent, has met with Sunni leaders from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan and other states to enlist their support in isolating the Sunni insurgents. In November 2005, after U.S. soldiers found Sunnis being tortured in a secret prison run by the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, Khalilzad rebuked the Iraqi government.

Shiite politicians and analysts say Khalilzad is backing the Sunnis to limit the power of Shiites in the government. They say the United States and its allies, concerned about the growing influence of neighboring Iran's Shiite theocracy, will never allow an independent Shiite government, much less a religious one, to fully blossom in Iraq.

"We know the U.S. is under great pressure from Arabic and Islamic countries, who are Sunni," said Ridha Jawad Taqi, a member of parliament with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party with strong ties to Tehran. "They fear the growing power of the Shia inside Iraq."

"The Americans have a wrong reading of Iraq," said Hasan Suneid, a member of the Shiite Dawa party and a close aide to Maliki. "And who is responsible for this reading? It is the diplomatic channel, that is, Khalilzad."