Jawad al-Bashoon, Iraq — On Saturday, as lunch was ending for an important guest in this small Shiite village in Diyala province, 55 kilometers northeast of Baghdad, Iraqi soldiers, watching from a sand berm that protects the village’s eastern perimeter, saw two cars approach from territory controlled by Sunni insurgents. Two American reporters were interviewing the commanding officer, a 27-year-old second lieutenant, who had fought in the November 2004 recapture of Fallujah, when a soldier ran up to report the suspect vehicles.

The officer thought the cars intended to fire mortars at the village. He informed the village’s guest — Ahmad Chalabi, who oversees the “popular committees” that coordinate political support for the American military surge — that he was going to pre-empt them, before ordering his tank and armored personnel carrier each to fire a round.

The suspicious vehicles retreated, only to set up a position farther away, and the first mortar round was not long in coming. The exchange of fire continued, and after a third round fell, some 150 yards away, the visitors were off, as a large convoy of vehicles fell quickly into line, heading back to Baghdad.

There are an estimated 1,500 Al Qaeda fighters in Diyala province, a hotbed of the Sunni insurgency, and their regional commander is said to be a former Iraqi army colonel. This small village is on the front lines. A no-man’s land of abandoned farmland divides it from villages now under Al Qaeda control. It is named after its most prosperous man, Jawad al-Bashoon, who has lost seven sons and grandsons in the fighting.

The village of Jawad al-Bashoon is the last of a cluster of seven largely mixed villages, six of which Al Qaeda has ethnically cleansed and taken over. The Shiites from those villages have found refuge in Jawad al-Bashoon.

Mr. Chalabi’s visit there arose after a member of the tribe that inhabits the village approached him, seeking help to combat Al Qaeda. Mr. Chalabi arranged through the Iraqi Defense Ministry to send the village about 15 soldiers, one tank, an armored personnel carrier, and two humvees. Over the past six weeks, this small Iraqi army contingent, supported by some 75 local men, has succeeded in stabilizing what there is of a front line.

Women and children, who had earlier been sent away to a safer area, have now returned. In fact, the children were much in evidence, the first residents of the village we saw, clapping and waving at Mr. Chalabi’s convoy as it drove in.

Jawad al-Bashoon and the surrounding villages are small — perhaps 500 people each — and the number of fighters in any battle is similarly small. The last significant conflict here occurred on April 20, when the village repulsed an attack by about 150 armed men. The little assistance they were provided made a big difference.

Iraqi television cameras recorded the ceremonies welcoming Mr. Chalabi, as the sheiks of Jawad al-Bashoon and of the villages whose members had taken refuge there thanked him at length for his help and hailed him as the first official from Baghdad to visit them. Mr. Chalabi reciprocated, lauding their courage in defending their land. One important purpose of this visit was to boost their morale.

After we returned to Baghdad, it emerged that this village was actually protecting what has become a strategic bridge.

A prominent element in the insurgents’ strategy is to make Baghdad unlivable, and they are succeeding to a disturbing extent. Electricity is available for only one or two hours a day because insurgents attack the transmission towers that bring power into the city. The water supply is erratic because it depends on electricity. Fuel is in short supply, and lines at gas stations stretch on for kilometers.

Mr. Chalabi’s visit to Jawad al-Bashoon featured prominently on the evening news, after which he received many calls, including from government officials. A senior Oil Ministry official was among them. Mr. Chalabi then explained that the bridge we had crossed to get to Jawad al-Bashoon was the only route by which refined petroleum products could be brought into Baghdad. Insurgents have closed or destroyed all other routes. The most recent attack occurred last week in southeast Baghdad, when they bombed the bridge over the Diyala River, closing it to vehicular traffic.

The refined fuel products that Iraq imports are produced in Turkmenistan and brought to Iraq through Iran. The only safe passage for the trucks into Baghdad is the bridge outside Jawad al-Bashoon, which also crosses the Diyala River.

Yet that bridge is only a rough, improvised platform, consisting of a few pipes, anchored with cement and sand, built either by the local population or the Mahdi Army (accounts conflict). Only one vehicle crosses at a time, and then at a slow crawl. No real road leads to and from this “bridge,” just a rough, dusty track, contributing further to an enormous traffic jam.

Trucks are backed up as far as the eye can see. The Diyala River is not big, perhaps 20 yards wide at that point. An Iraqi who had joined in the visit asked, “Why don’t they put a military bridge there? Any army could do it in less than a day.”

That is a hard question to answer, given the urgency of the situation. Possibly, coalition military authorities do not want to put in a bridge, an American military analyst suggested, because they would prefer to deny the enemy key transportation points.

He noted, “While this strategy is effective in facing large units, when the enemy operates in small units that can easily ford a small river, the costs of hampering the flow of oil products to Baghdad greatly outweigh the benefits of denying the enemy an easy crossing point.”

That nothing has been done to create a secure and functional route for Baghdad’s oil imports may also be due to a more general dysfunction in Iraq’s current administration. Whatever the explanation, Baghdad residents report that the overall energy situation was much better at this time last year than it is now. It appears that the city is headed for a long, hot summer.