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BAGHDAD - In the five months since Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki became Iraq's leader, the parliament and his ministries have formed hundreds of committees to address problems on everything from disarming militias to whether tainted meat caused a group of policemen to fall ill.

No one knows exactly how many committees have been formed -- one estimate puts the number at 400. Yet only one committee has brought its findings to parliament.

That lack of action is eroding confidence that Al-Maliki's government can address the problems that plague the country.

U.S. strategy in Iraq holds that given enough time and the proper security environment, Al-Maliki's government will take control of the country and calm the sectarian tensions that threaten to dismember it.

Yet since Iraq's first permanent government was elected, security has eroded by nearly every measure, despite the U.S. training of more than 300,000 Iraqi police and soldiers. When the government came to power, 65 bodies on average were appearing on Iraq's streets a day; today, 100 are killed daily.

According to the interior minister, the government is issuing 15,000 passports a week, many to residents who say they're desperate to flee; school populations have dropped; and some Iraqi neighborhoods have become so Balkanized that some areas are divided up street by street. Services, such as electricity, haven't improved.

Now there's a growing chorus that Al-Maliki's government is unlikely to ever come to terms with the country's problems, a complaint reflected in Iraqi web logs, newspaper columns and, U.S. civilian and military officials say, in private conversations.

Top U.S. military and civilian officials in Baghdad have been raising the tenor of their complaints about the government's inaction in the past month, warning that Baghdad has only about two months to make major changes -- though they don't say what might happen if it doesn't.

U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, in an interview this week, also sounded that alarm, saying the government must tackle such broad issues as de-Baathification, needed changes to the constitution, distribution of oil revenues and strengthening the security forces.

When asked how he expects the government to respond, Khalilzad couldn't offer an answer.

The government "has committed themselves to making those decisions. And we will see how much progress they are making. But we will work with them. And if there are adjustments that need to be made to those tactics, we will consider them," Khalilzad said. "We had said the [first] six months are critical. They still have a couple of months."

Reconciliation plan

Al-Maliki took office on May 20 and within days announced a 24-point national reconciliation plan. It was the first of many plans that so far have had little effect on conditions but came with a host of committees, each of which is given $13,333 a month to operate.

Under the reconciliation plan, various committees were appointed to address a number of issues: prevention of human-rights violations, dissemination of a message of reconciliation, the removal of obstacles that hinder Iraqis from wanting to work.

But after a highly celebrated news conference, there were no visible signs of changes in how the government functioned.

Al-Maliki's next initiative was a plan to bring peace to Basra, the Shiite city in southern Iraq that had been racked by growing violence between rival Shiite militias. That plan was to last 30 days and involved the creation of several committees. But at the end of 30 days, there was no lessening of violence.

Basra residents reported that promised checkpoints aimed at curbing violence disappeared within days of the plan's inception. The second phase of the plan began this month, which included promises of more committees to rebuild Basra.

The government's next peace initiative was the Baghdad security plan, or Operation Together Forward, a house-by-house sweep through the capital's most troubled neighborhoods by the Iraqi Army with the help of U.S. forces. Crime dropped when U.S. troops moved into the neighborhoods, but when they began pulling out, criminal elements started moving back in.