Iraq's hopes split along class divide

By Barbara Plett BBC correspondent in Baghdad

A lack of jobs is one of the most immediate problems in Iraq

After an opinion poll finds most Iraqis say their life has improved since the war last year, the BBC's Barbara Plett takes her own soundings on the streets of Baghdad.

You see them all over Baghdad: men with furrowed brows and tired eyes, standing in lines, sitting in groups on the pavement, waiting for jobs.

Always some are huddled outside the blast walls at the edge of the palace complex from where the old regime used to rule, and where the new one has its main headquarters.

Their view of the past year is coloured by where they stand.

Iraqi opinion poll:
Key results of the survey

More details

"We can express ourselves the way we like now, we couldn't do that before," says one man.

"But it's for nothing. Because millions of people need jobs. We've been waiting to be employed for a year. It's worse now than before."

To understand how Baghdad feels one year after the fall of Saddam Hussein you need only climb its class ladder. The higher you go, the better it looks.

Take the slums of Sadr City, home to two million Iraqis. They are mostly poor, mostly Shia Muslims, savagely repressed by the old regime.

Now sheikhs from the militant Islamist movement headed by Moqtada Sadr have installed themselves in a suite of low, whitewashed offices, once a detention centre for the Baath Party.

Real power

Just down the road is a town hall caged in barbed wire and protected by two US tanks, but it is clear where the real political power lies.

Young men in turbans hand out charity and reflect on whether things have changed since American tanks deposed their oppressor.

There is nobody to protect us. There's no law, nobody respects the police Intisar al-Joubori

Not really, is the assessment of the office director, Sheikh Amer Husseini.

"After the fall of Saddam the Infidel, we hoped Iraqis would get some of their rights and resources," he says.

"But the Americans came and controlled our riches. I don't think anything good will happen unless Iraqis themselves can take things into their hands. Otherwise, the current situation is worse than before."

Another world

Just a short distance up the road are the leafy suburbs of another world.

Intisar al-Joubori has just hosted a birthday party for her two daughters. She is holding only one this year - rising crime rates make it difficult to organise social events.

IRAQI OPINION POLL Read the full results of the poll

As the girls play with their new dolls Intisar looks through photo albums of past birthdays, remembering better times.

It is true that she and her husband Zohair Radwan are making more money now and they did not like Saddam Hussein.

But they were not persecuted by him, and they are strong Iraqi nationalists. The talk here is about the loss of a national authority, and the moral codes by which people lived.

"I don't feel secure in my home," says Intisar. "Because there is nobody to protect us. There's no law, nobody respects the police.

"We expect anything. Any time, any minute, you are sitting in your home, somebody could come and kill you, nobody cares."

"Life for me is going better," Zohair admits.

"But for Iraqi society it's getting worse. Now I get better jobs, I'm better off financially, I can express my thoughts easily and freely, but generally speaking the society collapsed."

Back to business

The business cycle, though, is slowly turning again. The money counters keep pace at the Credit Bank of Iraq.

Its chairman Hikmat Kubba, is one of the wealthiest men in Iraq, although his assistant feels compelled to tell us he has lived only to "serve his country", and "was never involved with any Iraqi regime".

Mr Kubba admits the Americans invaded Iraq to serve "their own international strategic interests" and complains that reconstruction contracts are sidelining Iraqi companies.

A stable country, where everyone can work with the least fear of being detained or expressing his opinions. Ihsan Charchatchi

But still, he says, "the future vision is good".

"The old regime was a closed and socialist system," he says.

"The new regime will be open and democratic. In fact, it's already open, living standards are up by 25%. The only problem we have is the lack of security which is deterring investors at the moment."

So the fall of Saddam Hussein has brought freedom for capital and expression.

But one year on, a gritty realism has replaced high expectations for most people in Baghdad.

Ihsan Charchatchi is one of the city's sages, a bookseller on al-Mutanabi Street. He's carried on his trade under dictatorship, war, sanctions and now, occupation.

With such a past his hopes for the future are suitably modest.

"I hope we will get a kind of..." He pauses to find the right word, "pseudo democracy."

"A coalition between the different groups here in Iraq, a stable country, where everyone can work without fear or..." Again he stops to choose his words carefully, "with the least fear of being detained or expressing his opinions."

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