Rockhold was the first soldier to die in combat in Iraq after US President George W. Bush declared combat over in Iraq on May 1. By the end of that month, four more had died in what would become the long line of more than 260 Americans killed by a dangerous insurgency.

The summer in Iraq saw stealthy guerrillas pick off US forces first with rocket-propelled grenades, sniper fire and then with homemade bombs hidden in everything from old soldier's food bags to dead animal carcasses.

The resistance first was described as localised, with no regional or national command.

By October, the top US commander in Iraq, Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, conceded there were indications of a regional structure and that former dictator Saddam Hussein might be involved in attacks.

In November, at least 79 US soldiers were killed in the deadliest month for American soldiers since the end of the war.

Although the US death rate diminished, as Saddam was captured and US forces retreated from the cities and developed better tactics to scan for roadside bombs, more Iraqis were being killed than ever before.

At least 250 were killed in attacks last month.

Insurgents started by July to kill those Iraqis suspected of working with the US-led coalition. They targeted policemen and others suspected of working with the Americans.

That policy reached a zenith with the killing of more than 25 Iraqis in a car bombing outside the gate of the Coalition Provisional Authority on January

A memo seized in January attributed by US forces to suspected al-Qaeda operative Abu Mussab Zarqawi claimed an agenda of stoking a civil war in Iraq between the country's Shiite majority and the Sunnis, who ruled Iraq until Saddam's collapse last April.

US-led occupation troops are racing against time to raise an Iraqi army and police force to curb the continued wave of violence that threatens the country's political and economical future, with sovereignty looming on June 30.

But the US-led coalition is proud of its efforts.

"A growing feeling in the population as a whole is that law and order are being established by the Iraqi police and civil defense corps. Yes, of course there are pockets of violence, yes of course there are horrific incidents, but the graph of the norm is also rising," British special representative to Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, told AFP.

The coalition hopes to have a 100,000-strong police force and a 40,000-person army by the end of the year.

Even so policemen complain they are lacking in equipment, weapons and vehicles. The interior ministry failed to meet ammunition requests for police ahead of the Shiite holiday of Ashura as more than 170 people died in Karbala and Baghdad.

And when the explosions shook the two cities, many blamed US forces even though such charges were blatantly false.

"I think most Iraqi people understand they are under attack externally," Brigadier General Martin Dempsey, the Baghdad commander, said recently, but "it is disappointing that they think the worst of us even after nine months."

The goal is nothing less by the Americans than to impose a stable democracy on Iraq, but they believe Saddam loyalists and foreign militants are trying to thwart them.

"The motiviation for attacking the process is coming from the Saddamists, the rump Baathists," Greenstock said.

He described the other facet of the conflict as part of the "global terrorism war ... not against the Iraqi state but against the American presence here."

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