Iraq elections - Tom Roberts, embedded with US troops for a month, finds their professionalism impressive but sees little hope of democracy emerging from "this bedlam"

What is life in Iraq for the average GI? By that, I do not mean those such as the marines who are used primarily for combat. I mean those engaged in the wider spectrum of military work, which the US army calls "lines of operation". These include economic development, political engagement and general peacekeeping as well as straightforward combat. To find out, I and a camera crew spent a month from the beginning of November embedded with the awkwardly named 5th Brigade Combat Team (5BCT) - a Donald Rumsfeld-inspired amalgamation of diverse outfits from across the US army (it even had navy units assigned to it) that would fight together only during their year in Iraq.

The 5BCT was stationed in south Baghdad, which combines urban and rural landscapes, and has a mixed population of Shias, Sunnis and Christians. One of its jobs was to guard "the crown jewels": Baghdad's only oil refinery, Iraq's main north/south highway, and a big power station, which only ever operated at 60 per cent of capacity while we were there.

The first encounter was perhaps the most unexpected. Colonel Lanza, the brigade commander, and his subordinates spent about three hours explaining to us the subtleties of the Sunni/Shia power struggle, the tension between conducting combat operations while trying to build a rapport with civilians, and the problems of their limited resources and the ruined Iraqi economy. Their grasp of the situation can only be called sophisticated. This, it seemed, was not an army reliant solely on "Texan firepower".

The colonel sent us on a three-day tour of sights in south Baghdad : a power station built by the Russians with all their unique flair for construction; a highway system that lacked signs, traffic lights or any of the normal rules of the road; and the creaking sewage works, whose restoration to provide clean water and sanitation was a high priority. We also saw urban slums that would not be out of place in Jakarta or Lagos. They showed no noticeable bomb damage, probably because the area had nothing worth bombing.

We were then handed over to a battalion of the 8th Cavalry Regiment. A briefing from its Texan commander, Lieutenant Colonel John Allen, was interrupted by two enormous explosions. Within minutes, we were speeding out of the base in armoured Humvees. Two large churches, we found, had been car-bombed and reduced to rubble. Mercifully, the insurgents had shouted a warning as they drove the car up the church steps. The priest and other church officials were walking around in a daze. One shouted over and over again to no one in particular: "They don't want us here."

On the return journey to the base, we were ambushed: the whoosh of a rocket-propelled grenade passing overhead was followed by several bursts of automatic gunfire. The immediate reaction of the American commander was to speed away. Then, at the first roundabout, he turned his six Humvees around and headed back into the ambush zone, guns blazing. Soldiers dismounted from the vehicles and attacked. The ambushers were gone but, if they had stayed to fight, the whole might of the US army would have been brought to bear. I realised then that this was not an army hiding behind its fortifications, waiting for air support. It was willing to fight hard on the streets.

There was one casualty. A taxi had been passing when the shooting started and its passenger had suffered a deadly head wound. It was impossible to tell who'd shot him - the insurgents or the Americans - and it was most likely a ricochet. But however it happened, the insurgents had a victory: the Americans would be blamed.

The following day, the number and severity of the attacks increased, and casualties mounted: more mortars and rockets struck the base, and more car bombs exploded on the roads. By the end of the week there were two dead and almost a dozen wounded. Yet morale didn't falter. After the death of one much-admired soldier, I saw clerks and office-bound soldiers queuing up to get a seat in one of the Humvees heading out of the base.

The 8th Cav was probably facing a group from the Sunni stronghold of Ramadi trying to distract the Americans from Fallujah. It increased its patrols and, in purely military terms, recorded a victory. The bodies of 24 insurgents were recovered. Blood trails and other evidence suggested a much higher body count. Yet for three weeks all economic and political development work came to a standstill. The neighbourhood and district council system that the Americans had forged collapsed almost completely, with members refusing to attend for fear they would be killed.

The soldiers had set up more roadblocks and policed more aggressively. But the idea that the US troops shoot at anything that moves did not tally with our experience, even though our movements were rarely restricted and we were frequently with front-line troops without an officer present. The worst outrage I saw in a month of combat was a dog gratuitously shot by the unit's doctor. Like the medic in Catch-22 who hated flying but wanted to receive his flight pay, this former paediatrician from the Deep South seemed to venture out only on missions where the security level was high and the combat risk low. He carried a shotgun - a weapon of little use in modern combat but one offering excellent opportunities for posing. Most of the soldiers loathed him.

But US troops are very forceful on the roads, and this is the point of greatest friction with the local population. It is also where the soldiers are most often targeted. Driving around in an armoured Humvee is not as safe as it looks. If a suicide bomber gets close (he can kill at a hundred yards) or if you drive directly over one of the 500lb aircraft bombs buried in the road, your time is up. The policy is not to let cars get close and certainly try never to let them get in among a convoy. All the Humvees carry signs warning drivers to keep 50 metres away, but despite forceful driving and warning shots, it is impossible to enforce in the chaos of Iraq's highways.

The tyranny of unintended consequences grinds away mercilessly. One officer told me how, in a poor neighbourhood, the unit had laid a soccer pitch, set up a league and sponsored several teams. The opening day was a big success with a large turnout. Later, the pitch was the setting for an ambush. The Americans won that battle as well, but the officer was sure they had previously entertained some of those whom they killed.

The 5BCT has built new schools and refurbished old ones, and yet a can of spray paint is enough to neuter its efforts. When a message appears on an exterior wall, threatening to kill any teacher who works there, the school empties. Anyone working for the Americans is a target, and not just the police or the newly formed National Guard. Translators, cleaners and contractors are not only subject to threats, they are machine-gunned or beheaded. The violence is not always political. I was told of one contractor, paid by 5BCT to employ several hundred men to clean the roads and hence to provide large-scale employment, who was killed by the contractor who didn't get the job.

In these respects the situation in Iraq is far worse than I had thought from the news I consumed in the UK. It is hard to imagine a democratic society emerging from this bedlam. The best hope is probably some form of pro-western military dictatorship. It will be ugly nevertheless.

The pressure to create a democracy in an untenable situation is a form of US imperialism. After an invasion that defied most of the world, the Americans have imposed an American solution, delivered to an American timetable. I saw absolutely no evidence on the ground that an Iraqi government existed at all. It is anybody's guess how the new "democratic" government will function.

Yet the soldiers we followed were upbeat. They understood "the mission" as it had been defined to us by their officers. The attitude was not star-spangled patriotism, but gritty, professional realism, befitting these soldiers whose average age is in the late twenties. The army is short of men - every officer I spoke to acknowledged that - and its equipment is not always of the highest standard. But discipline is strong and the men on the ground see themselves as being there for the long haul.

"We know they are going to hurt us and we'll lose more men," one sergeant said, "but sooner or later they'll realise we ain't leaving." And as George W Bush, in his simple way, is not one to cut and run, the sergeant is probably right. Expect to see a substantial US force in Iraq on the day Bush leaves office.

Tom Roberts's film, an October Films production made with Edward Jarvis, Petra Graf and Patrick Boland, was commissioned by Frontline, the US public service equivalent of Panorama. The BBC will show it as a Storyville later this year

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