"There were six heads in our street this morning."

Iraq braced for unhappy New Year

By Andrew North Baghdad correspondent, BBC News

There were six heads in our street this morning."

So said one of my Iraqi colleagues as he arrived in the office recently.

Almost anywhere else, it would have been shocking news - a story in its own right.

But here the shock was short-lived. Each atrocity in Baghdad is now quickly superseded by another.

Nearly four years on from the US and British invasion and its mishandled aftermath, Iraq is a place where such violence has become mundane.

The elected government - held up by George W Bush and Tony Blair as evidence the invasion was worth it - is seen by many Iraqis as part of the problem, with some of its own forces actively involved in the sectarian bloodshed now tearing the country apart.

Reporting from here over the past year, the sensation has been of a nightmare closing in - especially in Baghdad and the surrounding region.

Fractured city

It is not just the constant explosions and gunfire. There is evidence the violence is now infecting every aspect of life.

Shopkeepers are limiting their opening hours, for fear they will be kidnapped or bombed.
People stay at home for days at a time, too frightened to leave. Parents stop their children going to school. If they go, they find playgrounds divided by Shia and Sunni gangs.

Each time they go to work, my brave Iraqi colleagues take their life in their hands.

They must pick their way through an ever more fractured city, making complex detours to avoid certain areas, or be ready to deal with checkpoints where the true loyalty of the gunmen running them may not be clear until it is too late.

Prospects of things improving in 2007 look bleak.

There are no obvious answers anymore, in a situation where each new atrocity provokes the next and trust has broken down.

The execution of Saddam Hussein this weekend has done nothing to change that.

For most Iraqis, from government ministers to ordinary people caught in this maelstrom, survival is the priority now.

Iraqi control >>>cont

LinkHere