Renewed attacks by Sunni insurgents of al-Qaida and other groups against rival Shiites have been escalating for weeks, clearly intended to re-ignite sectarian fighting. Some 160 people have been killed in bombings over the last week alone.

The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki appears to be unable to counter the violence, and U.S. military commanders are skeptical that it will be able to maintain order once U.S. forces being their withdrawal from urban areas starting June 30 and hand over security to the Iraqis.

The pullback, with troops redeploying in the countryside, is part of a December security agreement between Maliki's government and the United States that schedules the withdrawal of the bulk of U.S. forces from Iraq by the end of 2011.

Maliki and his associates, including his military commanders, insist that they will be able to cope with anything al-Qaida or other insurgent groups can throw at them and that national elections slated for January 2010 will go ahead.

"We're confident about the abilities of our security forces," Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari declared confidently on June 19.

But the tempo of insurgent attacks, dramatically reduced by U.S. forces in 2007-08, has been stepped up in recent weeks and is likely to become more intense in the days ahead.

Iraq's U.S.-trained armed forces and other paramilitary groups have been steadily taking over combat operations from the Americans for many months. But their military prowess is patchy, with only a few elite battalions showing any real mettle.

Former Sunni insurgents, lured away from the insurgency by the Americans and formed into so-called Awakening Councils, are angry that Maliki's government has not absorbed them into the new Iraqi military.

One of the main reasons is the deep-rooted distrust between the Shiites, the long-suppressed majority, and their former tormentors, the minority Sunnis who dominated the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Despite U.S. efforts to bring the two sides together since the March 2003 invasion, the two communities remain far apart. The Sunnis claim -- with some justification -- that the Shiite-dominated military contains units that are little more than death squads who prey on the minority who once lorded it over them. Shiites claim the Awakening Council fighters cannot be trusted.

Baghdad also faces mounting tension between the government and the minority Kurds, key U.S. allies, who largely due to the Americans have their own semiautonomous enclave in northwestern Iraq. The Kurds claim the oil center of Kirkuk and its oil fields, which produce one-third of Iraq's oil.

They won't admit it, but they clearly want an independent state in their ancestral lands. Baghdad cannot afford to let them achieve their long-held dream, particularly if it includes the Kirkuk oilfields.

The government does not want to relinquish this economic prize, so trouble is brewing there and is likely to explode into sectarian violence once the Americans hand over to the Iraqis.

Kurdish fighters, known as Peshmerga, or "those who face death," are in a tense confrontation with government forces in northern Nineveh province, where the Kurds have steadily extended their control over the last five years.

The provincial capital, Mosul, is, like Kirkuk, a tinderbox that could explode at any moment into Kurdish-Arab fighting. The Kurds refuse to accept the authority of the region's new hard-line Arab governor, Atheel Najafi.

"Both sides have dug in and the only thing preventing open conflict is the Americans," observed Joost Hiltermann of the Brussels-based International Crisis Group.

In the south, the firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose forces were defeated by Maliki's U.S.-supported troops several months ago, remains a wild card and has political ambitions.

The Shiite-dominated south produces two-thirds of Iraq's oil and according to oil industry experts could contain immense new reserves that have never been tapped. Many southern Shiites want a separate state that would strip the central government of its economic mainstay.

In these circumstances, the next few months will be crucial for Iraq and for President Barack Obama's plan to focus U.S. might on the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater of operations.

Key dates in the Iraqi conflict from the US-led invasion of March 2003:

2003

March 20: US-led forces bomb and then invade Iraq, where they allege that president Saddam Hussein is building weapons of mass destruction.

April 9: US forces move into the heart of Baghdad, where they topple a large statue of Saddam signalling the downfall of the regime.

May 1: US President George W. Bush announces the end of major combat operations using a "Mission Accomplished" banner, but the violence continues.

September 3: The first post-Saddam cabinet is sworn in.

October 2: US acknowledges that no weapons of mass destruction were found.

October 16: UN Resolution 1511 legitimises the US-led occupation.

December 13: Saddam captured.

2004

April-August: Clashes between coalition forces and supporters of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

April 28: Publication of photographs of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by American troops in Abu Ghraib prison.

June 28: The US-led administration says it has handed over power to Iraqis.

2005

January 30: Iraqis go to the polls in the first multi-party vote in 50 years despite a spate of deadly attacks, but disenchanted Sunni Arabs largely boycott the vote.

April 6: Jalal Talabani chosen to be president, the first Kurd to hold the office in Iraq's modern history.

October 15: Iraqis vote in force on a draft constitution.

December 15: The conservative Shiite United Iraqi Alliance wins most seats in the parliamentary election for the first permanent post-Saddam government.

2006

February 22: Shiite shrine at Samarra, north of Baghdad, blown up; 450 people die in surge of sectarian violence.

April 22: Talabani re-elected president. Nuri al-Maliki, a Shiite, forms a government in May.

June 7: Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, killed in a US air strike.

July: The United States hands over to Iraqi security control of the first of the country's 18 provinces.

October 11: A law establishing federal provinces is passed.

November 5: Saddam condemned to death for the execution of 148 Shiites in the 1980s.

December 30: Saddam hanged.

2007

January 10: Bush announces the dispatch of 30,000 more American troops in a so-called "surge" strategy.

February 14: Start of security plan for Baghdad.

August 14: More than 400 people killed by suicide truck bombs targeting the ancient Yazidi religious sect in two Kurdish villages in northern Iraq.

2008

March 23: Death toll of US troops reaches 4,000 since May 2003.

September 1: The US military transfers control of western province of Anbar to Iraqi forces, the first Sunni-majority province to be handed over.

August 28: Sadr announces a halt to operations by the Mahdi Army.

November 27: Parliament ratifies an Iraq-US security agreement which gives American troops a legal basis to stay in Iraq and sets an end-2011 deadline for their departure.

2009

January 1: The US formally transfers control of Baghdad's high-security Green Zone and other key installations to Iraqis.

January 20: Incoming President Barack Obama says the United States will "begin to responsibly leave Iraq".

February 27: Obama announces that all US combat operations in Iraq will end by August 31, 2010, and that he intends to fully withdraw all American troops by the end of 2011.

March 8: US says 12,000 more US troops to leave by end-September.

April 30: British forces end Iraq combat operations at Basra ceremony.

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