With American commanders as matchmakers, the arranged marriage between the Shiite-led Iraqi government and the largely Sunni Awakening movement is one of the country’s most tenuous and important pairings. It will take constant tending. American officers, who had encouraged a similar meeting last fall, lined the back of the hotel ballroom today. The 90,000-strong Awakening militias include many former insurgents who decided to turn and fight against Al Qaeda and with U.S. forces--who paid them salaries. The trick is to find enough of them jobs and a future--without dependence on the departing U.S. forces--to keep them from returning to insurgency. Last year they were put under the command and pay of an Iraqi government they trust little and has given mixed messages.

For starters, the Iraqi government continues to hold in jail about 17 Awakening (also called Sahwa or Sons of Iraq) leaders and arrested another just last night. U.S. Maj. Gen. J.D. Johnson, overseeing the program, says that’s out of a total of about 800 leaders. But each arrest casts a chill over the other leadership. The fear is that government forces are settling scores or view the militia commanders as rivals. The government says some of them have committed crimes, abusing their positions. Some have. But some have also been released after U.S. officers investigated and found the charges to be bogus. “Once we know about [an arrest], we start tracking it very closely,” Johnson said. His answer appeared to acknowledge another complication: Sometimes the Iraqis are making the arrests without U.S. knowledge.

There’s also a multitude of problems with the cumbersome management of the diverse local groups. It’s rarely clear if salaries are delayed by government opposition or simply problems in reconciling the many lists of fighters with payrolls. It almost doesn’t matter in the end. “The slightest bureaucratic error becomes interpreted as something greater than that,” Johnson said.

While Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has repeatedly promised to integrate the fighters into the government, their presence angers members of his own Shiite constituency who worry about coddling former Baathists or insurgents. About 13,000 have been brought into the Iraqi security forces so far, a slow pace endangered anew by a government budget crunch.

Some Awakening leaders see the end of their influence coming as their men fold into the government. Whether they were in it for the money, the power or out of patriotic duty, these tribal leaders and neighborhood elders are the ones who encouraged their followers to switch sides. The decision came with risks. “They should support us. We are targeted by Al Qaeda , by IED’s, by snipers,” pleaded Gen. Abdel Razaq, an avuncular, retired commander who leads a group of fighters in western Baghdad. “We support the government.”

The Pentagon today announced that the soldier, Sgt. John M. Russell is in custody facing a charge of aggravated assault and five counts of murder. After being flagged by commanders for stress problems about a week ago, the military said, Russell was ordered to a combat stress clinic at Camp Liberty (abutting his home base, Camp Victory). His weapon had already been taken from him. According to published reports, he apparently had an altercation with someone there and used another person's gun to kill two officers who were staff members in the clinic and three soldiers who happened to be there at the time. It’s the worst reported case of a soldier attacking his own troops since the war started. In addition to the criminal investigation, the Army has ordered a complete review of its mental health system.

The mental health infrastructure in Iraq has been growing throughout the war. The shooting yesterday took place at one of four “restoration centers” in Iraq, where soldiers can bunk temporarily or get outpatient care along with therapy. There are about 40 other combat stress teams on location with troops around the country. Their phone numbers are posted on bulletin boards, handed out by chaplains and commanders. But commanders acknowledge the system has problems, different doctrines and techniques have been tried.

As an Army psychologist explained to me a few years ago, there are competing interests between mental health and war fighting. One of the biggest is that soldiers and officers still look at therapy as a sign of weakness. Secondly, the goal is “unit cohesion,” that is, keeping the soldier at work rather than sending him or her home. Medicines can be prescribed but, as soldiers are sent back to the field, they don’t have the follow-up they need to monitor their condition--or make sure they don’t hand out the pills to others.

The hope for the troop was that as the violence in Iraq subsided and tours of duty were shortened, stress would decrease. But in some cases, simply being connected through the Internet to family back home has been enough to cause problems--the psychiatrist told me of one case in which a wife back home had posted photos of her and her new boyfriend on the Web to torment her soldier husband. And a recent USA Today story posited that boredom may increase stress.

The psychiatrist told me that it was especially hard to get officers to seek help because they feared it would impede their career or undermine their reputations. He tried to argue that it would help them avoid career-ruining incidents. The words seemed apt today as Maj. Gen. Daniel P. Bolger talked about the military’s efforts to get people to go for help. “It’s particularly challenging for a fellow like Sgt. Russell. He’s a non-commissioned officer,” Bolger said. “He’s in a leadership capacity and to make that trip down there is a tough decision for him or his chain of command to make, but we’re willing to make it.”