Insecurity, lack of basic services haunt Iraqis

Anti-war demonstrators dressed as US President George W. Bush (R), Vice President Dick Cheney (C) and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice participate in a "Liars Anonymous" show during an anti-war demonstration in San Francisco Saturday. Thousands took to the streets to mark the third anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq across the world yesterday. PHOTO: AFP

The destruction of a revered Shia shrine in Samarra three weeks ago and the sectarian killings that followed have irrevocably coloured how Iraqis in the mixed areas around the capital assess the three years since a US-led coalition rolled into their country.

"It was a great thing to be saved from Saddam, but we need better living conditions now," said Riad Hamid, a Shia working at a bakery in northern Baghdad's historic Shia neighbourhood of Kadhimiyah.

"The only thing we got from the invasion was the division of Iraq into Sunnis, Shias and Kurds," he said in this densely populated neighbourhood dominated by the golden-domed shrine to Shia Imam Mussa al-Kadhim.

Just across the twisting muddy breadth of the Tigris River lies Kadhimiyah's twin neighbourhood of Adhamiyah, a Sunni area, with its own historic mosque, Abu Hanifa, celebrating the founder of one of the historic Sunni schools of law.

In a bakery there workers take the same lozenge shaped loaves of bread and slide them with a long-handled shovel deep into a white tiled oven.

Owner Hussein Issa has been sleeping in his bakery the past few nights because every day he finishes work after the new 8 pm curfew in Baghdad laid down to minimize the nighttime killing sprees.

"I used to go back to my home elsewhere in Baghdad every day, but now, for the past week, I haven't seen my own house," he said.

Issa's bakery is on Ashreen Street, known for its bakeries serving up special cookies and cakes for festive occasions and weddings that used to attract customers from all over the city.

Few now come, just as people from Adhamiyah no longer flock across the narrow bridge to the famous markets of Kadhimiyah. A bridge that has long been closed adds half an hour's travel between what should be close neighbours.

Issa also relates problems with getting flour, which used to come from the Jamila district to the east, near the predominantly Shia suburb of Sadr City. Drivers refused to go after a number of grocers picking up supplies there were found dead last week.