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Men out of time? Petraeus and Crocker have made unheralded gains in Iraq, but huge challenges remain as the “Washington clock” winds down.

In December 2006, Iraq nearly destroyed itself. The body count peaked at 3,000 a month then as Shiite militias and Sunni insurgents battled in the streets. Many Iraqi victims were found bound, gagged, and shot execution style—the signature method of the insurgents. Many more were killed indiscriminately by powerful bombs. Ethnic cleansing proceeded apace as Shiite militias pushed out Sunnis and the latter retaliated in the few neighborhoods where they still had the advantage. More than two million Iraqis have left the country, and as many as 2.2 million may be displaced internally. In almost every neighborhood of Baghdad, squatters can be found moving into vacant homes with the few belongings they fled with.

But during a three-week trip to Iraq in late August and early September this year, I found that Iraq has pulled back from the brink of all-out civil war. The death toll among Iraqi civilians had fallen to 1,600 in August, according to figures cited by U.S. Gen. David Petraeus. The violence is still far above the levels of 2004 and 2005, but the hoped-for breathing space has been created. Platoons of U.S. and Iraqi soldiers stood guard along the fault lines between Baghdad’s Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods, thwarting the worst sectarian violence. After aggressive U.S. military operations this spring, al Qaeda in Iraq is playing defense, and Shiite extremists have been debilitated. Nuri al-Maliki’s government has grudgingly begun to hire Sunni volunteers into the police force. And, in a barely publicized development, it has decided to rehire 5,000 former officers of Saddam’s military and give 40,000 others civilian jobs or full pensions.

To be sure, the level of violence in Iraq is still unacceptably high, and these real but fragile gains are easily reversible. Most importantly, the so-called surge has yet to enable the Iraqi government to reach a national agreement on sharing power and resources among Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds. That’s no surprise: It was the September reporting deadline that created an unrealistic expectation that reconciliation and all the key legislation would be in place by then. Still, even with most political benchmarks largely unmet, General Petraeus seems to have bought himself more time on what he calls the “Washington clock.”

But something has changed: The debate is now about when and how fast, not whether, the United States will withdraw from Iraq. Starting in December, U.S. forces will begin to transition their forces, at least in outlying areas, toward advisory and support missions. To keep the fragile momentum going, however, it will be essential to continue to secure the population and foster reconciliation at the neighborhood level. There are two dangers now. The first is that impatience in Washington, not conditions on the ground in Iraq, will dictate the pace of transition. The second danger is that Iraqis, seeing that the United States is now embarked on a drawdown, however gradual, will begin to harden their positions and make further political progress even more difficult. U.S. leverage will inevitably wane as the transition continues, so it is essential that all possible political pressure be brought to bear sooner rather than later.

Knowing the “Baghdad clock” is ticking, General Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker are leading a full-court press to get more Sunnis into the government and to push Maliki ahead on reconciliation. They have achieved some success on local initiatives, though not on key legislation and certainly not enough to demonstrate that the Maliki government is even capable of achieving a power-sharing agreement. Stability in Iraq, if it comes, will come not with a big bang but rather through a series of piecemeal steps that at a minimum give the minority Sunnis the ability to secure and govern the areas they inhabit, with funding from the central government. U.S. officials hope to allay Shiite fears as it becomes clear that these local concessions will not enable the return of their oppressors. In the anodyne lingo of peacemakers, these are called “confidence-building measures.” On the ground, it is a grinding, exhausting business, and certainly not one given to headline-making breakthroughs.

The most significant development at the grass roots has been the U.S. recruitment of thousands of Sunnis to serve as U.S.-paid security guards, which the Iraqi Army is now permitted to work alongside. Much has been made of how Sunnis in Anbar province have joined the Army and police. Additional resources have been funneled to the provincial government, and more Sunnis have joined Anbar’s provincial council. But it’s not just an Anbar phenomenon. Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno, the three-star commander of the Multinational Corps-Iraq, told me that some 15,000 Iraqi volunteers have been contracted by U.S. battalions in greater Baghdad (in Ameriya, Ghazaliya, Adhamiya, Taji, Radwaniya, Abu Ghraib, and Yusufiyah) and in provinces to the north. That is as many as have been recruited in Anbar. The volunteers I talked to in southern and western Baghdad see this as their best chance to secure their communities and to become part of the Iraqi security forces. They still distrust the Iraqi government, but they now see the U.S. military as a bulwark against further sectarian attacks.