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By any standard, Diwaniya is fraught with problems, many left over from the war. Deprived of electricity and bottled oxygen, the ward for premature babies at the children's and maternity hospital here has all but collapsed, and doctors say that babies are dying at a higher rate than before. The shortage of electricity has led to the closing of the local textile mill and tire factory, which employed hundreds.



Recent outbreaks of rioting here have shown that Diwaniya residents are impatient with the pace of progress and suspicious of the occupiers. Two recent demonstrations, one involving a failure to pay Iraqi laborers working on an American project, and the other a protest against the local governor, turned momentarily violent. The demonstrations, each involving a couple of hundred people, were dispersed.

"Are they going to pay us or not?" asked Asad Joda, who said he had worked for two weeks without being paid. "Every day I come here, and they tell me, come back tomorrow, come back tomorrow."

But for a city emerging from three decades of neglect and dictatorship, Diwaniya in many ways seems remarkably stable. For instance, there is none of the virulent anti-American graffiti that marks walls and alleyways across Baghdad.

So far, most of the anger shown here has not been directed at Americans. With hundreds of thousands of dollars pouring into the area, the city and its surrounding areas are rapidly being restored and in some cases improved.

Since April, groups of marines have been fanning out across Qadisiya Province to oversee an array of projects intended to revive the local economy, its government and education systems, while putting Iraqis back to work.

In interviews, Marine commanders rattled off a list of local projects: 86 schools renovated; the police station, courthouse and jail reopened. Some 2,500 police officers, many of them graduates of a one-week human rights course, patrol the streets. Hundreds of local men earn $15 a week clearing weeds from local irrigation canals.

The marines are even able to go beyond immediate postwar needs and move toward strengthening the civil society. They are supervising construction of a women's shelter here, and they make regular deliveries to a local nursing home. They have even set up a Rotary Club.

"We are in lock-sync with the Iraqis," Colonel Malay said. "We want what they want."

It is difficult to judge the lasting impact of the reconstruction projects. The new coat of paint on the Dar Al Salam primary school makes the place look brand new. While the electricity flows erratically, some residents said they were getting more now than before the war.

Anecdotally, the efforts of the marines sometimes appear to be succeeding exactly as the policy makers in Washington intended.

"Every morning, I come to work with a passion to serve my country," said Aladeen Muhammad Abdul Hamza, who took a job in the new Iraqi police force. Mr. Hamza, a former officer in the Iraqi Army, is being paid $60 a month.

One day last week, Mr. Hamza scurried about the grounds outside the old textile mill, where hundreds of Iraqis employed in the weed-clearing had come to get paid. He did his best to keep order. "I know all about human rights," he said.

Even when things do not go especially well in Diwaniya, there seems to be a reservoir of good will. Much of it apparently stems from the historical predations suffered by the Shiite people at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Many in Diwaniya lost relatives and friends to agents of Mr. Hussein, and they have not forgotten.

Hassan Naji, a records clerk at the Diwaniya children's hospital, is critical of recent changes but only up to a point. Like many at the hospital, he is convinced that newborns are dying needlessly because the hospital lacks the electricity to run its sterile ward for premature babies. Before the war, an emergency line kept the e