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Normalcy creeps back into baghdad { November 18 2007 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Sunday, November 18, 2007 - Page updated at 12:00 AM
Normalcy creeps back into sections of Baghdad
By Chicago Tribune and McClatchy Newspapers
BAGHDAD — No longer do Baghdad's streets empty at dusk.
Liquor stores and cinemas have reopened. Children play in parks, young women stay out late and old men play backgammon and smoke sheesha pipes at sidewalk cafes. Residents celebrate weddings and birthdays in public places and eat grilled carp along the Tigris River late into the night.
A television station has begun a feature called "Baghdad Nights," showing residents shopping, eating and socializing — a sight unheard of in most neighborhoods before the U.S. military boosted troop levels this year in a last-ditch effort to pacify the capital.
Even security barriers have had a makeover. Artists have painted them with depictions of Iraqi life, ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics and fantasy pictures of peaceful scenes.
But residents are skeptical that their new freedom will last.
"It's in the hands of God now," Umm Fatma, a hairdresser at Tanya's hair salon, said last week. "We don't know the future."
To be sure, Baghdad is still a violent, dangerous place. Pockets of territory remain under the control of al-Qaida in Iraq. Bandits and gangsters roam alleyways. Explosions still rumble, though far less frequently than they did a few months ago. In some mixed-sectarian neighborhoods, such as Saidiyah, in south Baghdad, and Salam, in central Baghdad, Sunnis and Shiites still fight over turf.
Still, for the first time in years, Baghdad's residents are starting to remember what life was like before the U.S. invasion in March 2003.
"I used to close my shop at 6 p.m., but now I stay open till 9 or 9:30. Then I walk home and I feel completely safe," said Jawad al-Sufi, 64, who runs the House of Hijab headscarf shop in the much-bombed district of Karrada. He had to replace his windows five times because of bombings outside his shop, but there has hardly been an attack in Karrada since September.
"It happened very suddenly," he said. "There was a sharp turnaround, right after Eid," the Muslim holiday in late October. "Since then, security has improved 85 percent."
There's even a restoration of civility among some Sunnis and Shiites.
In north Baghdad, in the mixed al-Qahira neighborhood of north Baghdad, Islam Mohammed ran through the streets on a recent night searching for his lost German shepherd. The Sunni man ran into the Shiite sector. Shiite residents offered to help, and Mohammed had scooped up his dog and returned home by 1 a.m.
"Two months ago I would never have even thought of going after the dog there, not even in daylight," Mohammed said.
U.S. and Iraqi officials attribute the improvements to a variety of factors: the addition of 30,000 U.S. troops this year; the increased capabilities of Iraqi security forces; a six-month cease-fire by the Mahdi Army, a Shiite militia blamed for much of the sectarian killing; blast walls that segregate neighborhoods and protect markets; a Sunni movement to rid its neighborhoods of al-Qaida in Iraq; and less opportunity for sectarian cleansing with most neighborhoods divided or already cleansed.
Most significant, some officials say, is the revolt that has taken place within Sunni neighborhoods against al-Qaida in Iraq. Echoing the successful tribal rebellion against extremists in Anbar province, local Sunni insurgents have turned against their former allies, driving al-Qaida in Iraq operatives out of strongholds and ending the reign of terror they had perpetrated.
Iraqi officials even are declaring victory.
"[Al-Qaida] has been defeated completely. And soon they will cease operating completely," Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf said. "We expect them to have some attacks, they will make huge efforts and maybe they will succeed in one or two instances. But now they're shifting their operations outside Iraq. They will not have a safe home here anymore."
U.S. officials are more cautious.
"Al-Qaida, though on the ropes, is not finished by any means," Maj. Gen. Joseph Fil, the U.S. commander in Baghdad, said Nov. 6. "They could come back swinging if they're allowed to."
For others, the Mahdi Army cease-fire has played a more significant role in making the city safer than the dispersal of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Liquor-store manager Hazim Hameed, 27, used to receive one or two threatening visits a day from Mahdi Army representatives, until he gave up and closed nearly a year ago. Sensing the new mood last month, he reopened his shop on the once-desolate Saadoun Street running through the city center.
Not only has he received no threatening visits, but the local representative of the Sadr office summoned him, gave him his phone number and told him to call if he had any trouble.
"He told me the Mahdi Army has no problem with what we are doing anymore, and that if anyone threatens me or asks me for money I should tell him immediately, because those people are not Mahdi Army, they are gangsters," he said.
"I think it's over," Hameed said of the violence. "Soon, I expect even the bars will reopen."
Still, there is no evidence of the national-level reconciliation that U.S. officials say will be required if gains on the ground are to be sustained. Politicians are still squabbling, and key benchmarks required by the Bush administration as indicators of reconciliation — such as a new law that would allow former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath party to hold public office, or a law to distribute oil wealth equitably — have not been passed by parliament.
There also is no indication that significant numbers of those displaced by violence are planning to return anytime soon. Although the Iraqi government has touted the return of 7,000 families to their homes in recent weeks, that's a tiny fraction of the 208,000 families, or 1.4 million people, who have been displaced within the city, according to the Iraqi Red Crescent. The figure excludes the high percentage of Baghdad residents believed to be among the more than 2 million Iraqis who have fled to neighboring countries.
Persuading them that it is safe to go home to areas where their relatives or neighbors were killed because they belonged to the wrong sect could be difficult.
"Realistically, given everything that has happened in the past two years, I suspect that we will have segregated neighborhoods for a time to let civil society build," said a senior U.S. military official who spoke on condition of anonymity. "While we would all prefer an integrated society, a peaceful segregated one is better than a violent integrated one."
Many residents agree.
"Anything could still go wrong," said a Sunni resident of the former al-Qaida stronghold of Dora, where local insurgents turned against al-Qaida just in the past month.
They lifted Islamist rules banning smoking and requiring women to wear head scarves, and encouraged shops on once-shuttered streets to reopen, bringing a semblance of life back to what once was regarded as one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Baghdad.
But the resident didn't want to be named because he is still afraid. He says he recognizes former al-Qaida in Iraq members among the Sunnis now working with the Americans, and he has advised his former Shiite and Christian neighbors not to return yet.
"They defeated al-Qaida because they are al-Qaida," he said. "They are just wearing new masks."
Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company
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