The Middle East greeted an ambivalent but duty-bound David Diaz with suffocating heat, howling sandstorms and penetrating grit.

On Aug. 5, he and about 200 other Army reservists assigned to the 80th Institutional Training Division arrived in Kuwait, where they learned quickly that protective gear does not defeat windblown sand.

Weeks before, in mid-May, Diaz, 37, executive director of Downtown Roanoke Inc., had left his home, his bride of just six weeks and his job to report for active duty. During an interview before his departure, Diaz had declined to discuss his personal feelings about the war in Iraq. He said he planned to fulfill his obligation as a longtime officer in the Army Reserve and would leave politics to the politicians.

After all, Diaz has served in the military under Republican and Democratic presidents. A reservist for 17 years, the captain is trained in the specialties of tactical intelligence and signals work. He and other reservists assigned to the 80th Institutional Training Division received a call to active duty in Iraq in March.

Last week, while home for a brief leave to attend the funeral of his mother-in-law, Diaz admitted that he initially harbored real doubts about the purpose and outcome of the U.S. military campaign in Iraq. Like many others, he said, he felt then that our real enemy was in Afghanistan.

But after four months in Iraq, most of it spent in Baghdad, Diaz said his optimism has grown. His duties in Iraq have thrust him and others in the training division into the heart of the U.S. exit strategy -- preparing Iraqis to take over the tasks of securing and building a new Iraq. Diaz worries, though, that public opinion at home is shifting and that pressure will build for withdrawing troops before such action is prudent.

And he said his experiences in Iraq have stirred feelings and provided perspective about challenges, urgency and courage that should influence his work for DRI when his deployment ends in the summer ahead.

Downtown Roanoke Inc. is a private sector, tax-supported, not-for-profit development organization whose focus is the ongoing revitalization of downtown.

On Aug. 18, Diaz and companion soldiers flew into Baghdad International Airport and rode in heavily armored buses to the city's International Zone. Shortly thereafter, he tackled his duties as an intelligence officer for U.S. teams that are training Iraqi police and security forces, including paramilitary public order battalions as well as commandos of the notorious Wolf Brigade. He said he works seven days a week and has only a few hours off each Friday morning.

"I develop an intelligence summary for the Americans who are mentoring the Iraqi police forces," Diaz said.

He said the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment and Iraqi army and police forces coordinated well during a September campaign in Tal Afar, a campaign he views as a turning point.

"They did it right," said Diaz. "They provided a model of how to go into a city, surround it, eliminate the insurgents or terrorists, allow the civilians to leave and then come back."

The model provides also for the return of government officials, with the protection of public order battalions, to both preserve civil order and discourage the insurgents' return.

"We've learned as a military how to do this better," he said. "My worry is that we have the right military strategy and political strategies now but the patience of the American public is wearing thin."

To withdraw American forces abruptly would be "a critical mistake," said Diaz. "If we leave now, and take all our forces out, [terrorist leader Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi will undoubtedly set up a permanent base of operations and launch attacks against people in Iraq and outside Iraq."

On Tuesday, Zalmay Khalilzad, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, said in a news release that 2006 will be the "year of the police" in Iraq.

"We will work with Iraqis to increase the size, capability and credibility of Iraqi forces," he said.

But will an increased emphasis on training Iraqi security forces and their subsequent deployment pave a smooth road for the gradual exit of American and coalition forces, especially considering long-standing differences between the Shia Arab majority and the Sunni Arabs?

Abdulaziz Sachedina, a University of Virginia professor of religious studies and an expert on Shiite Islam, does not think so. He corresponded via e-mail from Iran, where he is on sabbatical.

"From all the news on Arabic channels and in Iran itself, that optimism needs to be classified as 'cautious,' since the Sunni Arab world would rather see an instable Iraq than the one dominated by the Shia," he wrote. "Hence, indirectly they would continue to support insurgents until some kind of broader recognition of Sunni Arab Iraqi demands are met. At this time, all promises to this group have produced very little intrafaith confidence building in Iraq. Training the Iraqi security forces will not suffice."

Diaz, too, said that "the situation in Iraq is incredibly complex."

"We have multiple insurgent groups, multiple terrorist groups," he said.

But he said he believes some leaders of insurgent groups have come to recognize they've "made a deal with the devil" by aligning with terrorist groups simply because Americans were seen as a common enemy.

"I think the insurgents, some of the leading clerics, realize they made a mistake by partnering with al-Qaida. They realize the groups have separate goals."

Diaz said the United States will continue to encourage insurgents to pursue their goals politically, a process that could help isolate the terrorist groups -- both al-Qaida and Ansar al Islam.

But Lou Cantori, a former Marine, an Islamic scholar and a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, believes Iraqis will exile al-Zarqawi when his attacks against Americans are no longer needed. And, like Sachedina, he does not believe the training of Iraqi security forces will provide real stability without compromise and cooperation among the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds.

"The reason is that factually the Shiites have co-opted the police forces and are using them for their own sectarian purposes," Cantori wrote in an e-mail. "For example, [there has been] case after case of designated killings and torture of Sunnis by persons in police uniforms and utilizing police vehicles."

This violence will continue, he wrote, until there is a date certain for the American withdrawal.

"When that happens, they will be compelled to deal with one another and Zarqawi will be shown the door as no longer necessary to assist in the resistance to the Americans," he wrote.

Did Diaz return to the U.S. on emergency leave with an agenda -- to offer a positive spin that could help counter growing concerns among Americans about the U.S. exit strategy? How do we know that's not his strategy, especially after he discloses that superior officers encouraged him to talk about his experiences in Iraq?

"You don't," he said. "But intelligence officers are not public affairs officers. We're analysts. I can tell you that the direction we've gotten from on high is that there is a concern about public opinion out there and they want to set the record straight.

"Have I been coached about what to say? No. Nobody said, 'Diaz, you've got to go out there and say this.' "

Diaz said he has been impressed by the American military and its commitment to building a successful Iraqi government.

"The American military is incredible," he said. "We've got great leaders over there who are trying to do the right thing every day."