Baghdad, Iraq ? Leaving Baghdad isn’t easy to do. As the elections near, the road to the airport becomes ever more risky. And the day I choose to leave, the plane I’m waiting for is turned back, and the airport closed after mortars are fired at a nearby Iraqi base.

Also waiting at the airport are eight newly freed Chinese hostages, bewildered young village men with spiky hair and cheap synthetic suits who arrived illegally in search of work, were snatched, and were lucky enough to get released with their heads. Eagerly scarfing up airport food, they seem like martians dropped into an alien landscape.

But I am able to leave, and, fortunately, so are they. Not so lucky are many Iraqi friends, who have been managing in Baghdad these weeks with absolutely no water supply (the pipes were blown up), less electricity than before Saddam, and an overpowering fear of venturing out on the streets.

Is this election worth it for them? Can it lead to a better Iraq for them and their children?

I still don’t think the situation is hopeless, but in order for this vote to lead to something good, Iraqis themselves will have to find a way to reconcile their differences, and the United States will have to get out of the way.

Let me say up front that I think the election had to be held. The majority Shiite community wanted the ballot, and the United States could not afford to offend an Iraqi sector upon whose tolerance the American presence depends.

But the election will not stop the violence. In fact, it may escalate the killing.

That’s because this election means something totally different to different communities here. For Shiites, it represents their ascendancy to power by virtue of their majority numbers. For Sunni Arabs, around 20 percent of the population, it confirms the loss of the special privileges they enjoyed under Saddam. That, plus intimidation by insurgents, is why most Sunnis are boycotting the vote.

Only if the majority of Sunnis are wooed away from hard-core Sunni insurgents can that insurgency be crushed.

Shiite leaders are showing incredible maturity in planning postelection outreach to Sunnis. They want to avoid civil war. The top Shiite cleric, Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, a pious, white-bearded elder who rarely leaves his study, has proved to be an incredibly astute political operator. He has ordered his followers to find ways to include Sunnis in post-election deliberations.

And there are signs that moderate, and even less moderate, Sunni groups are beginning to understand that they must engage with Shiites after the election.

The key meeting ground will be the drafting of the Iraqi constitution, which will be the responsibility of the assembly elected on Sunday. Shiite leaders will urge that Sunni experts be part of the drafting commission, and I think the Sunnis will go along. U.S. officials should encourage such reconciliation in every possible way.

But these hopes for dialogue will shrink if the violence continues.

And I believe the current U.S. efforts to curb the violence miss the mark.

Only Iraqis can end this insurgency. Ten thousand U.S. military trainers can’t make Iraqis fight if they don’t have a government and a country that they want to fight for.

The goal must be to strengthen a new Iraqi government and give power back to Iraqis, in hopes that a new government can also inspire security forces to defend it. A new, elected, Iraqi government must be given much more power over training those security forces. As long as they are branded as “made in America,” they will have little credibility at home and little incentive to fight.

The United States cannot stay on long enough to make Iraq into an American model. The temptation in Washington will be to cling to control, especially since Iraqi leaders are so frightened of the abyss they are likely to tolerate under continued occupation.

But this will create a vicious circle. If U.S. forces stay too long in Iraq, the country will splinter around them. A weak Iraqi government will be unable to hold it together.

Unless the United States relinquishes real power to Iraqis, it will be trapped in Iraq between two communities battling for power. That doesn’t mean leave tomorrow. But it does mean making clear that the United States will be there in force for a limited time only.

Sunday’s election will have meaning, and Iraqis will take it seriously, only if U.S. officials take it seriously as well.