BAGHDAD — Two years ago, doctor Riyadh Adhadh cursed the U.S. soldiers who had overrun his homeland, toppled the Sunni-dominated government and tormented prisoners at Abu Ghraib. A member of the city council, he loudly demanded that American troops leave Baghdad.
Last week, his Sunni Arab neighborhood under attack by Shiite militiamen, Adhadh found himself huddled over the telephone in panic, begging the U.S. Embassy to send American soldiers.
The moment of bitter irony for the 52-year-old father of six is emblematic of a sharp shift in Iraqi opinion. Three years after the March 2003 invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein, with the threat of civil war looming, leaders of a nervous Sunni Arab minority have started to drop demands for an immediate U.S. withdrawal.
"We've changed our ideas," Adhadh said. Iraq's current government, dominated by Shiites, has been "abusing people more than the Americans," he said. "Iraqi security is the responsibility of the Americans. They have established this type of government -- this will be written in history. We are living in a jungle."
Meanwhile, Iraq's Shiite majority, which initially cheered the arrival of the Americans, has grown far stronger and is quickly losing enthusiasm for foreign soldiers and diplomats.
"The reality is that the Americans have switched position a little bit. They seem to be siding with the Sunnis, and the Shia are not happy," said Saad Jawad, a moderate Shiite politician. "Certainly in our areas there is no need for American soldiers."
Many Iraqis are dismayed that the violence here increasingly pits Iraqis against each other instead of against foreign invaders. The stakes are high as the two main Muslim sects vie for power in the emerging state.
Shiite groups stand poised to control Iraq's government and economy. They have consolidated their power over key government ministries; organized armed militias to patrol the streets and wrangled bitterly over power sharing in the government.
By contrast, the Sunni Arab minority, which dominated Iraq for most of the 20th century, has spent the last three years grappling with a sense of dispossession. Already stripped of resources and clout, they seem poised to lose much more.
In recent days many Sunni mosques have been burned and scores of men slain, apparently by Shiite death squads retaliating for the bombing of a prominent Shiite shrine in Samarra.
