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There are also alerts about the growing power of Iranian-backed religious Shiite parties, several of which the United States helped put into power, and rival militias in the south. The authors also point to the Arab-Kurdish fault line in the north as a major concern, with the two ethnicities vying for power in Mosul, where violence is rampant, and Kirkuk, whose oil fields are critical for jump-starting economic growth in Iraq.

The patterns of discord mapped by the report confirm that ethnic and religious schisms have become entrenched across much of the country, even as monthly American fatalities have fallen. Those indications, taken with recent reports of mass migrations from mixed Sunni-Shiite areas, show that Iraq is undergoing a de facto partitioning along ethnic and sectarian lines, with clashes 8212; sometimes political, sometimes violent 8212; taking place in those mixed areas where different groups meet.

The report, the first of its kind, was written over a six-week period by a joint civilian and military group in Baghdad that wanted to provide a baseline assessment for conditions that new reconstruction teams would face as they were deployed to the provinces, said Daniel Speckhard, an American ambassador in Baghdad who oversees reconstruction efforts.

The writers included officials from the American Embassy8217;s political branch, reconstruction agencies and the American military command in Baghdad, Speckhard said. The authors also received information from State Department officers in the provinces, he said.

The report was part of a periodic briefing on Iraq that the State Department provides to Congress, and has been shown to officials on Capitol Hill, including those involved in budgeting for the reconstruction teams.

A copy of the report, which is not classified, was provided to The New York Times by a government official in Washington, who opposes the way the war is being conducted and said the confidential assessment provided a more realistic gauge of stability in Iraq than the recent portrayals by senior military officers. It is dated January. 31, 2006, three weeks before the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in Samarra, which set off reprisals that killed hundreds of Iraqis. Recent updates to the report are minor and leave it virtually unchanged in its conclusions, Speckhard said.

Vice-President Dick Cheney, on the CBS News program Face the Nation, suggested last month that the administration8217;s positive views were a better reflection of the conditions in Iraq than news media reports. In their public pronouncements, the White House and the Pentagon have used daily attack statistics as a measure of stability in the provinces.

In recent interviews and speeches, some administration officials have begun to lay out the deep-rooted problems plaguing the American enterprise here. At the forefront has been Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador, who has said the invasion opened a 8220;Pandora8217;s box8221; and, on Friday, warned that a civil war here could engulf the entire West Asia.

The report8217;s capsule summaries of each province offer some surprisingly gloomy news. The report8217;s formula for rating stability takes into account governing, security and economic issues. The oil-rich Basra Province, where British troops have patrolled in relative calm for most of the last three years, is now rated as 8220;serious8221;.

The report defines 8220;serious8221; as having 8220;a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of

its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment, and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations and extremism8221;.

The city of Basra has widely been reported as devolving into a mini-theocracy, with government and security officials beholden to Shiite religious leaders, enforcing bans on alcohol and mandating headscarves for women. Police cars and checkpoints are often decorated with posters or stickers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the rebellious cleric, or Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, a cleric whose party is very close to Iran. Both men have formidable militias.

In a colour-coded map included in the report, the province of Anbar, the wide swath of western desert that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency, is depicted in red, for 8220;critical8221;. The six categorized as 8220;serious8221; 8212; Basra, Baghdad, Diyala and three others to the north 8212; are orange. Eight provinces deemed 8220;moderate8221; are in yellow, and the three Kurdish provinces are depicted in green, for 8220;stable8221;.

The 8220;critical8221; security designation, the report says, means a province has 8220;a government that is not functioning8221; or that is only 8220;represented by a single strong leader8221;; 8220;an economy that does have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability8221;; and 8220;a security situation marked by high levels of AIF anti-Iraq forces activity, assassinations and extremism8221;.

The most surprising assessments are perhaps those of the nine southern provinces, none of which are rated 8220;stable8221;. The Bush administration often highlights the relative lack of violence in those regions.

For example, the report rates as 8220;moderate8221; the two provinces at the heart of Shiite religious power, Najaf and Karbala, and points to the growing Iranian political presence there. In Najaf, 8220;Iranian influence on provincial government of concern8221;, the report says.

Immediately to the north, Babil Province, an important strategic area abutting Baghdad, also has 8220;strong Iranian influence apparent within council8221;, the report says. Throughout the war, American commanders have repeatedly tried to pacify northern Babil, a farming area with a virulent Sunni Arab insurgency, but they have had little success. In southern Babil, the new threat is Shiite militiamen who are pushing up from Shiite strongholds like Najaf and Karbala and beginning to develop rivalries among themselves.

General Qais Hamza al-Maamony, the commander of Babil8217;s 8,000-member police force, said his officers were not ready yet to intervene between warring militias, should it come to that, as many fear. 8220;They would be too frightened to get into the middle,8221; he said in an interview. If the American troops left Babil, he said, 8220;the next day would be civil war8221;.

ERIC SCHMITT and EDWARD WONG