Hawai'i's Stryker brigade operates in a region of Iraq that employs more than 9,000 "Sons of Iraq," or armed militiamen, to help keep the peace, a commander said.

That translates to U.S. payments of at least $2.7 million a month.

More than five of the brigade's 19-ton Stryker vehicles have been damaged or destroyed by roadside bombs over the past four months that the fast-strike unit has been in Iraq.

Six Stryker soldiers have been killed. Officials say about 20 with serious injuries have been flown out of the country for treatment.

As the top-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, prepares to give Congress a progress report this week, Lt. Col. David S. Davidson, the deputy commander of the Stryker brigade, offered his own assessment of the Hawai'i unit's first few months just north of Baghdad.

Hawai'i soldiers say they have been successful in helping rebuild essential services — in part because the Sons of Iraq have improved security — and Davidson says that gives him reason to be optimistic.

"I will tell you that this place gets better every day," Davidson said. "Something changes for the good every day — some of that through our actions, some of that through the actions of the Iraqi government, some of that through the actions of the police or the Iraqi army or some other entity."

The brigade and its 325 Stryker vehicles are based in and around a 200-square-mile area that includes the "qadas," or counties, of mostly rural Taji and Tarmiya, Davidson said.

Camp Taji is one of the United States' sprawling megabases in Iraq, and is home to about 20,000 troops, a big post exchange, multiple dining facilities and a swimming pool and cinema.

But Davidson estimates that at least 2,500 of the Stryker brigade's 4,000 soldiers have been deployed to about 15 much smaller combat outposts — fortress-like compounds and "joint security stations" with Iraqi forces.

"That makes an incredible difference," Davidson said by phone. "It provides them the opportunity to live with and understand and see the people every day." He added that "those personal relationships go a long way toward making sure that things stay calm and stable."

Davidson was in Iraq in 2003, and "we just quite frankly weren't doing that."

All of the soldiers rotate through Camp Taji on temporary stays "so they can hit all the comforts of home here," Davidson said.

Taji and Tarmiya lie along insurgent routes into Baghdad, and the three Stryker brigades operating in Iraq are to the west of Baghdad in Abu Ghraib, to the north in the Taji area, and to the northeast in Diyala province, officials said.

Hawai'i Stryker brigade soldiers are working on everything from talking with local councils and trying to help them build representative government to rebuilding power plants and irrigation canals and providing drinkable water.

They also are engaged in occasional firefights.

Some Hawai'i soldiers who are temporarily detailed to other units recently took part in an offensive in Sadr City, a Shiite slum on Baghdad's eastern edge.

The campaign was a response to Iraqi forces taking on Shiite gangs and the Mahdi army militia in the southern city of Basra. That spilled over into Baghdad, where the Mahdi army, led by anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, is influential.

Elements of both the 1st Battalion, 21st Infantry "Gimlets," and 1st Battalion, 27th Infantry "Wolfhounds" from Hawai'i, were operating in Sadr City.

An Associated Press reporter embedded with U.S. troops said Capt. David Uthlaut was sprawled on his back on the roof of Patrol Base Texas last Thursday with seven other soldiers after snipers opened fire from a nearby building on the southern edge of Sadr City.

"Whatever happened to chai time?" Uthlaut had quipped, according to the reporter, referring to the period in the afternoon when many Iraqis take a tea break.

Davidson said the Hawai'i Stryker brigade soldiers were fortunate that there was not a corresponding increase in violence in Taji and Tarmiya.

The New York Times has reported that a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq — an assessment by U.S. spy agencies — cites significant improvements in healing sectarian political rifts, but concludes that security remains fragile.

However, the nonprofit, left-leaning think tank Center for American Progress, in a new report, raises concern over the use of the "Sons of Iraq" forces, almost all of whom are drawn from Sunni tribes.

The report says that while their use has produced gains against al-Qaida, existing sectarian divisions have worsened. More than 90,000 "Sons of Iraq" militiamen are paid by the U.S., but the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has said it will integrate no more than 25 percent of those fighters into Iraqi security forces.

Members of the militia demonstrate little allegiance to Iraq's central government, there has been talk of strikes over nonpayment, and the Center for American Progress report said Petraeus has acknowledged that the lack of integration of Sunni militants into Iraqi security forces, above all else, was what kept him awake at night.

The Stryker brigade's Davidson said the Sons of Iraq "have made a huge difference in the security situation" by manning checkpoints along roadways.

Danger remains ever-present for the Stryker soldiers, though.

The Hawai'i vehicles have logged 392,000 miles. Fewer than 10 have been disabled from attacks, and five were combat losses, Davidson said. Six soldiers have been killed.

The first fatality occurred Jan. 19, when Spc. Jon Michael Schoolcraft III, 26, of Wapakoneta, Ohio, died from wounds suffered when his Stryker vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device.

He died four days after the brigade officially took over responsibility for the Taji area. The Stryker brigade reports to the 4th Infantry Division and Multinational Division-Baghdad.

A Stryker vehicle from Schofield Barracks hit a roadside bomb and was torn apart Feb. 8, killing four soldiers and injuring six. Davidson said several hundred pounds of explosives had been buried in the road and covered by asphalt.

In another instance, an "explosively formed penetrator" — a particularly deadly form of a roadside bomb that directs a high velocity jet of metal — skipped off the roadway and landed a glancing blow on a Stryker vehicle, but did not cause injuries.

The other losses of Stryker vehicles also came from roadside bombs. There were injuries, but no fatalities.

The most recent fatality was that of Spc. Gregory B. Rundell, 21, of Ramsey, Minn., who died March 26. Rundell was manning a guard tower at an outlying joint security station when he was hit by small-arms fire, officials said.