Brutalised capital begins to breathe again

Baghdad: Lika'a Haider is doing something she hasn't done in a long time - hoping. Like many others in Baghdad she is praying that the signs of life she sees returning to her city represent more than just a lull in the killing.

The 21-year-old is a law student at Mustansiriya University, where bombings killed 70 people, mostly students, in January.

"Many things have been changed in Baghdad. I now have hope in the future," she said.

Across the city there are signs of change, from restaurants and shops doing brisk trade and people on the streets late at night, to residents returning to Haifa Street, whose high-rises were a major battleground for Al Qaida and Shiite militias.

But Baghdad residents are still wary.

Theirs is a brutalised city, where roadside bombs turned streets into minefields, death squads roamed with impunity, kidnapping and killing, and suicide bombers sowed carnage.

Like a car crash victim in a coma, the city shut down. Life was put on hold. Baghdad's traumatised residents avoided public places, locking their doors and emptying the streets after dark.

Shorja market, the city's main centre for wholesale goods, was the scene of a multiple car-bombing in February that killed at least 71 people and wounded 165.

A visit to the market this week found people crowding the narrow passageways between stalls selling everything from brightly patterned cloth to fruit and vegetables.

"You can see the change. People feel safe to come here and shop," said cloth-seller Shaker Shnishal.

The Interior Ministry says violence in Baghdad is down 70 per cent since the end of June, while Lieutenant-General Raymond Odierno, the deputy US commander in Iraq, said last week that a drop in attacks in Iraq over the past four months "represents the longest continuous decline in attacks on record".

Haifa Street, a thoroughfare that runs along the west bank of the Tigris River and cuts through the heart of the city, was the scene of fierce fighting in January.

Now, people are returning to apartments that were used as hideouts for militants. Wet clothes can be seen hanging from washlines on balconies of buildings scarred by bullet holes, and at night the street is lit by new solar-powered lights.

Taking bags of vegetables from his car in a parking lot in Haifa Street, Azad Fahmi, 37, a restaurant owner, pauses to reflect on what brought him back to the apartment he had fled.

"I heard about the improved security in Baghdad on TV and I was persuaded by friends to return," he said.

In New Baghdad, a Shiite district in eastern Baghdad, studio photographer Ali Mohsin, 29, is taking wedding pictures of a newly married young couple while their relatives dance on the pavement outside and hoot their car horns.

"The number of weddings has tripled since Eid," he said.