Two months ago, the administration heaped scorn on a European proposal to transfer power more quickly to Iraqis. "They are not ready," administration officials explained, outlining what they said was a more orderly process of transfer. Two months of escalating attacks against American forces, however, and suddenly the administration has discovered that the Iraqis are ready for self-rule after all. This does not bode well for a democratic Iraq; it is not even likely to solve America's most urgent problem -- winning the guerrilla war.

It has become increasingly clear that the resistance in Iraq is not the work of a small band of dead-enders, but is in fact a more widespread movement. We can tell this because still, months after the attacks began, we know very little about them. Gen. John Abizaid says that the enemy is 5,000 strong. A leaked CIA report puts the number at 50,000. One day, an administration official says the attacks are the work of Baathists. The next we are told foreign fighters are the culprits. The reason for this lack of information must be that the guerrillas are able to merge back into the population, and that the locals are not actively informing on them.

A purely military response, while necessary, will not address this problem. In fact, it exacerbates it. The purpose of guerrilla warfare, the Brazilian guerrilla leader Carlos Marighella once explained, is to force the occupying army to militarise its presence, to engage in reprisals and roundups, to show force, to patrol in tanks. These measures alienate the population and generate sympathy among the population for the guerrillas. In recent days, American forces have been dropping bombs, taking prisoners and generally showing more force. In other words, the strategy -- the guerrillas' strategy, that is -- might be working.

The political problem the United States faces is simple: there is a significant element of Iraqi society that fears that it will do badly in the new Iraq. These are the people who are not helping the Army hunt down the guerrillas. What compounds this problem is that these people, the Sunnis, have been Iraq's governing elite for 500 years.

For months before the war, the United States (intentionally or unintentionally) signalled its support for the Shiites and Kurds of Iraq. It made clear it was comfortable with the fact that a democratic Iraq was likely to be a Shiite Iraq (the Shiites make up 60 percent of the country). It cosied up to exiles, almost all of whom are Shiites. It assured the Kurds that they would retain the autonomy that they had developed under the umbrella of American and British air power.

All these are perfectly understandable, honourable and intelligent goals. (One certainly would not want a Shiite problem in Iraq!) But the effect has been to make the Sunnis of Iraq believe that they will be the victims of the new order. When the Sunnis hear the phrase "Iraqi democracy," they probably think "tyranny of the Shiites."

The Sunnis have good reason to be worried. They know a thing or two about tyranny, having ruled Iraq for all of its modern existence. (And before that, they were the favoured sons under two colonial administrations: the British and the Ottomans.) But they are also a key to stability, a powerful and well-connected element in Iraqi society that for centuries has produced the majority of politicians, generals, merchants, professors and doctors. They can help -- and they can certainly spoil -- the chances of building a new Iraq.

Beyond effective counter-insurgency operations, the United States will have to develop a political strategy to bring Sunni leaders -- tribal, religious and political -- into the new order. This might involve political promises, bribes, spending projects in Sunni areas and some symbolic gestures, such as appointing a figurehead Sunni president (to balance the real head of government, a Shiite prime minister). The military historian John Keegan noted last Saturday in The Daily Telegraph that the British have done better in their sector than the Americans because, in part, they have accommodated themselves to Iraqi society rather than trying to reconstruct it along ideological lines. Washington will have to strike a balance because, rightly, it wants to change Iraq, not accommodate itself to it. But first it must end the war. And to do that, it must solve its Sunni problem.

Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International

(c) 2003 Newsweek, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.