BAGHDAD—Rarely does the hulking commander of U.S. forces in Iraq meet with Iraqis or go to a news conference without a slight, dark-haired woman standing just a little to one side—as if to give him space—but almost always in his line of sight and within earshot.

The woman is Emma Sky, and she is an unlikely figure in the milieu of the generally straight-laced U.S. military. She is British, 41, a civilian and a one-time opponent of the war, but nevertheless a political adviser, as well as confidante on many policy matters to the U.S. commander, Gen. Ray Odierno.

She is often compared to Gertrude Bell, the legendary early-20th-century British adventurer who was an architect of modern Iraq. That may be an overstatement, but Sky is nevertheless, like Bell, a woman to be reckoned with.

She has provoked her share of controversy, both because of her outspoken criticism of some military policies and because of her influential position in Odierno's inner circle.

Conversant in Arabic and Hebrew, Sky has worked in conflict zones from Israel to Afghanistan, spent more time on the ground in Iraq than most soldiers and knows tribal leaders from the northern city of Kirkuk to the southern city of Basra.

“;Emma was able to give me a completely different perspective: It was from an Iraqi viewpoint,”; Odierno said. “;We didn't have a lot of experience in doing these things, so someone with her background and knowledge was able to assist us as to how we could best help civilians.”;

One senior foreign diplomat said that the very presence of a civilian political adviser at the right hand of a senior U.S. military commander was a sign of the extent to which military strategy now strives to take into account the political and cultural landscape of conflict.

Outsiders' points of view on Iraq began to be aggressively sought about three years ago, when counterinsurgency strategy began to permeate every aspect of military thinking. According to the new doctrine, operating successfully in hostile places required understanding how local people saw the situation and whom they viewed as friends or enemies.

Sky sees herself as part aid worker, part political operator, part cultural translator.

“;I'm experienced in working in different cultures. The most alien culture I've ever worked in is the U.S. military,”; she said with characteristic candor. “;I was used to working in the humanitarian space, the diplomatic space. I came to Iraq and that space, the military, is all over it.”;

Rather than remaining an outsider, however, she decided to try to effect change from within. Initially she worked as a British Foreign Ministry employee detailed to the U.S. command; more recently, she has become a U.S. contractor.

Despite her insider's post, Sky said she prides herself on retaining an outsider's view of the military, saying things to top brass that others will not. During the troop buildup in 2007 known as the surge, she said that attacks on insurgents that also resulted in civilian casualties were tantamount to “;mass murder.”;

“;When you drop a bomb from the air and it lands on a village and kills all those people and you turn around and say, 'Oh we didn't mean to kill the civilians,' well, who did you think was living in the village?”;' she said.

That is now conventional wisdom. The first thing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal did when he took over the command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan was to prohibit attacks that might harm civilians.

Just as Sky has tried to help the military pay more attention to civilian points of view, the commanders have given her a new appreciation for the role of force. She came to believe that increasing troop numbers in 2007 and 2008 was the best way to bring Iraqi civilians the security they needed so badly. She then tried to find ways to persuade insurgents to give up violence, promoting early efforts by scattered military commanders to give jobs to Sunni rebels and to find a way to work with anti-American Shiite militias.

Like Odierno, Sky sees the period between now and parliamentary elections tentatively scheduled for January as central to Iraq's future stability, but she has no illusions that the job will be done when the elections are over.

“;There is going to be a certain level of violence in Iraq for years to come; it remains to be seen how much the society can continue to absorb,”; she said.

Odierno said he turned to Sky because he was seeking a broad range of views in his inner circle. “;Her views are controversial; they are different from many of the people around me, but that's OK,”; he said. “;My inner circle team accepted her into the process.”;

An only child who was raised in England, Sky attended a boys boarding school from the age of 7 to 13, where her stepfather was a teacher and her mother was a house mother. After high school, she entered Oxford's Somerville College, one of two formerly all women's colleges and the alma mater of such strong-minded characters as Margaret Thatcher and Indira Gandhi. Sky earned a degree in oriental studies with the idea of working for peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. “;When I still believed I could change the world,”; she says dryly.

After school Sky went to work for nongovernmental organizations, spending almost 10 years mostly in Israel and the West Bank. As there was little progress on the Middle East peace process, she moved back to England and was working for the British Council, an arm of the Foreign Office, when the war in Iraq began.

While a staunch opponent of it, she volunteered to work in Iraq after the invasion. Within a week she was in Kirkuk serving as the civilian representative of the Coalition Provisional Authority, which governed the country. She lived in a house in the city until a mortar shell came through her bedroom wall; then she moved to the army base in Kirkuk.

Odierno was then the commanding general of the area that included Kirkuk, and Sky said she liked him immediately because he asked probing questions. He liked that she had a ground-level grasp of the complex politics in the province among its Arab, Kurdish and Turkmen factions. She finished her first tour in Iraq in mid-2004.

When he was promoted to Corps commander, the No.2 job in the country, in late 2006, Odierno asked her to come back. The situation had worsened, with sectarian fighting raging in Baghdad and Diyala. She agreed to come, but minced few words when she spoke to her new boss. “;I said 'Everything is not fine in Iraq. This is the greatest strategic failure since the foundation of the United States.”;'

“;And he was like, 'What are we going to do about it?”;'

His realistic approach helped cement her loyalty. “;There was no denial,”; she said.

Some military officers expressed frustration privately that Sky seemed to discount the drive of Shiite insurgents to oust Sunnis from Baghdad—a dangerous aspect of the insurgency. Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corp. who held a job similar to Sky's for Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, Odierno's predecessor as the Corps commander in Iraq in 2006, believes that in general such critiques largely reflect the unease with having a civilian exercise influence with a commanding general.

“;Everybody wants access”; to the top generals, and those who have it are generally high-ranking officers, Ward said. “;Then, you come in and insert yourself and some of them resent it.”;

Hardest for Sky, however, has been facing the ways that the military has changed her anti-war views.

“;It's a moral compromise I've had to make, and I think of that all the time,”; she said. “;I'm always wondering how much this has changed me because in order to influence them, I had to be willing to be influenced myself.”;