The meeting was held in a concrete room spartan except for some chairs, a desk and a couple of filing cabinets at the police station in town. At least four Humvees with U.S. soldiers and 25 Iraqi soldiers provided a heavy security presence outside.

"Please talk to your people and bring it to the attention of your people — if you do bad things, we'll bring (military) operations here," Nasser said.

It was the classic carrot-and-stick approach, except now, the stick has an Iraqi and not just an American face.

"You must help us to do something," Nasser, 41, a professional soldier for the past 24 years, told the council. "The old Iraqi army is gone. We have a new Iraqi army working with the Americans to destroy the enemy."

Capt. Paul W. Shannon, who is attached to a Wisconsin National Guard unit that has oversight for the area, put it more explicitly.

"We will not tolerate attacks on the coalition," he said. "I have no reservations about bringing my tanks back and causing great discomfort for all your people."

Nasser's 4th Battalion is expected to be the first Iraqi army unit in Salah Ad Din province to take over for U.S. forces — the optimistic outlook is this fall — and Task Force Konohiki, a unit that includes Hawai'i soldiers, is helping them get there.

The task force of 32 soldiers — 17 of whom are from Hawai'i — is building "an Iraqi army that can stand on its own, so we can go home with honor," said Lt. Col. Steve Hawley, Konohiki's commander.

"The insurgents are not really afraid of us. They know we'll leave sooner or later," said Hawley, a regular Army soldier based out of Hawai'i for the past two years. "What they are afraid of is a viable Iraqi army, a viable Iraqi school system. They (insurgents) have nothing to offer."

An important mission

raqi army soldiers move out during a foot patrol in the village of Zuhari. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Drawn from the Hawai'i National Guard, 100th Battalion, 442nd Infantry and other units, the soldiers live in an above-ground concrete Iraqi ammo storage bunker on Forward Operating Base O'Ryan.

The base is just south of Logistical Support Area Anaconda, where the 29th Brigade Combat Team out of Hawai'i has its headquarters. The task force has one of the most important missions in Iraq — training up the Iraqi army, and doing so has become a race with sentiment back home in the United States.

Repeat deployments have taken their toll on recruitment, and with more than 1,700 U.S. troops killed and 13,000 wounded, opinion polls show public support for the war has waned.

U.S. Rep. Ike Skelton, a Missouri Democrat, recently said at a House Armed Services Committee hearing that he was troubled by the fact that only three Iraqi battalions are fully capable of operating independently in a combat environment.

"We need answers to the questions of what is happening on the ground and with Iraqi security forces and though it gives me no pleasure to say it, we need to make more progress and we need to make it soon," Skelton said. "If not, one of two things is going to happen: We're going to lose the American people, or we're going to break the Army."

Iraqi security forces now number about 170,000. A year ago, six Iraqi army battalions were in training.

Proving their mettle

Spc. Shaun Aldason, of Kaunakakai, Moloka'i, keeps watch on a street from the back of a Humvee in Albaichy while nearby a City Council meeting with town leaders and Iraqi and U.S. military officers takes place. Aldason is with the 29th Brigade Combat Team. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

Iraqi army platoons with the 4th Battalion do not yet patrol on their own, but Nissan pick-up trucks, each with several Iraqi soldiers in the back, roll out with just one U.S. Humvee in tow.

A convoy of U.S. soldiers hangs back about a half-mile behind as a contingency. The longer-term goal of the United States is to be there only if a quick-reaction force is needed, for fire support, and to medevac wounded.

"This battalion has come a long way in the time we've been here with them," said Hawley, 44, a West Point graduate and imposing 6-foot-5 figure who favors an M-14 sniper rifle as his weapon.

Nasser says his battalion is 70 percent to 75 percent ready to take over the area; American counterparts say 50 percent to 75 percent.

"When we got here, they were good foot soldiers," said Master Sgt. T. Lanky Morrill, 53, of He'eia Kea, the noncommissioned officer in charge of Task Force Konohiki. "They could do formations, they could march, they followed commands. But in terms of doing command and control — very little command and control."

Children in Albaichy watch as Iraqi soldiers search their neighborhood for a teacher who had threatened one of their soldiers with death for working with the U.S. military. Troops from Hawai'i, who Lt. Col. Steve Hawley says are helping to build "an Iraqi army that can stand on its own, so we can go home with honor," kept watch nearby. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

"They stood there and fought," Hawley said.

More than 15 with the battalion have been killed by insurgents because they work with the Americans. The battalion intelligence officer's head was cut off five to six months ago, and Nasser, the commander, has been shot.

He is not deterred.

"We want to build our country and make it safe for Iraqi citizens," he said. "The American forces, they give us lots of things.

"Also, the soldiers with us, I appreciate the courage they show us when they work with our soldiers," added Nasser, a low-key man with a thick black mustache and easy smile. "The Americans, they build us up, and we build the Iraqi army and continue to do the same thing."

Nasser believes his forces can do a much better job of gathering intelligence on insurgents than the Americans. Iraqi army scouts are being trained to wear civilian clothes and blend in with the local population.

"Right now we need intelligence more than tanks," Nasser said.

It is a dangerous time for both Americans and Iraqi soldiers as insurgents increasingly use vehicle bombs in suicide and multipronged attacks.

There have been more than 484 car bombings since Iraq regained sovereignty from the United States one year ago, and the pace of attacks has escalated since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari's government took over two months ago after January's historic elections, The Associated Press reported.

Trust ... and distrust

Near Albaichy in the so-called Sunni Triangle, where U.S. soldiers get the cold shoulder from passers-by on the street, an unidentified man was recently shot to death, his body dumped on a canal road.

A day before the roadside bomb attack on Task Force Konohiki, a BMW had pulled up to the main gate of nearby FOB O'Ryan and a bomber detonated explosives.

Spc. Robert E. Hall Jr., 30, an Army reservist and married father of a 4-year-old assigned to the 467th Engineer Battalion out of Mississippi, was killed. No Hawai'i soldiers were injured.

Task Force Konohiki soldiers have varying opinions of their Iraqi counterparts, most of them positive.

Spc. Maurice Blackwell, 40, an armorer and Humvee turret gunner from 'Aiea who trains Iraqis on marksmanship, said there was and continues to be a language barrier, but the soldiers want to learn, and relationships are developing.

About a dozen Iraqi interpreters live and work with the Konohiki soldiers.

"They (the soldiers) always ask about your family, which is good," said Blackwell, a tractor operator with the James Campbell National Wildlife Refuge.

"They'll show you that relationship. They'll say, 'You got babies?' They are just like any other people, any other soldiers."

Mumtaz Jassim Mohammed, a 24-year-old medic, said he makes 600,000 Iraqi dinars a month, about $400.

"Life in the army is good despite all the dangerous situations we experience," Mohammed said through an interpreter. "Unless there is an army, Iraq will not be reconstructed again."

Some were paratroopers or helicopter pilots when Saddam Hussein was in power. They do their best to communicate, and the Iraqis sometimes adopt celebrity names. One picked "Van Damme," as in martial-arts expert Jean-Claude Van Damme.

There also is some distrust.

An American lieutenant with the predecessor Task Force Chinook was shot in the head over a year ago, and at least one Iraqi soldier from the battalion was fingered for the killing.

And to be sure, there are plenty of challenges.

Nasser and his soldiers were supposed to link up with Konohiki at 8:30 a.m. at FOB O'Ryan. Nearly an hour later, the Konohiki patrol spotted Nasser's collection of Nissan pickups outside the base.

"They just don't have the sense of Type A army; here's the time, you show up at that time," Hawley said.

'It just takes patience'

On patrol with a platoon of Iraqi soldiers from the 4th Battalion, 1st Lt. Haz Anguay, 33, from 'Ewa Beach, observed that the Iraqis were staggered properly as the two units made their first visit to the village of Zuhari.

About a half-dozen concrete blockhouses were located on acre lots where farmers scratched out a living in sun-baked and dusty fields.

Anguay, a former customer-service representative at Circuit City, moved smoothly through the village, talking on a headset radio and staying alert for possible danger while shadowing an Iraqi platoon leader in gold-framed sunglasses.

"They are pretty good," Anguay said a few minutes later. "I gotta admit, his is not one of the strongest platoons. But he can basically still control his men."

At the Iraqi battalion's headquarters, a base called Mautani about 10 miles south of LSA Anaconda, Morrill was working with a group of about seven noncommissioned officers on the finer points of running a U.S.-style tactical operations center.

Konohiki was supposed to live with the Iraqi soldiers at Mautani to facilitate bonds and progress, but pollution levels at the former fuel storage depot made that impossible.

Now, the Americans go to Mautani for the NCO training, but the plan is to move the Iraqi battalion to FOB O'Ryan.

Traditionally, Iraqis had only officers in their operations centers, and they always did a poor job of coordinating S2, or intelligence, with S3, or operations, Morrill said.

"To get this many NCOs in here is a major paradigm shift, and it's causing some problems," Morrill said.

"Their officers are not comfortable to just sit back and let NCOs do the plotting, tracking, working with radios."

Reading grids on maps has been a big change. Iraqis typically read from the lower right, to the left, and up.

Americans read grids from the top left to the right and down.

"So this is an ongoing issue," Morrill said. "If you have a mistake on artillery, that's a tremendous impact."

Three weeks from now, the battalion will be evaluated in a computer exercise. It's still not clear if the unit will be ready to operate on its own in the fall.

Hawley said patience is needed, but on the homefront in America, patience may be running out.

"If you're not patient, it's never going to work," Hawley said. "On the whole, we are making progress.