Confidence grows as fear ebbs in Iraq

By Hugh Sykes
BBC News, Baghdad

In Abu Nawas park on the banks of the Tigris river in central Baghdad, children play happily on swings and slides, kick footballs and sit on the grass having picnics with their families.

Every now and then, the babble of young voices is drowned out by the happy hooting of car horns as a wedding party drives by.

It is a happy hopeful scene.

Rother, a middle-aged man who owns a sweet shop in nearby Karrada, told me: "It's much better now. I never dreamed it would be like this - more democracy, more freedom."

Not everyone is so happy. I asked a young father - Mohammed, with his three year old son Ali sitting on his shoulders - if he felt safe.

"No," he said.

But I suggested he must feel fairly secure to come to an open park with his little boy.

"We have no choice," he replied. "We stay at home almost every day of the week - our children are forgetting how to play."

Two women wearing headscarves stop to talk.

Iraq Poll 2009

Iraq Poll questions and answers in full [605KB] Most computers will open this document automatically, but you may need Adobe Reader

Iraqis 'more upbeat about future'

"It is better now," says Zeinab.

"Yes, inshallah," says her friend, Zahara.

But then she goes on: "But we're still worried every time our children go to school, and when our husbands go to work."

Zeinab picks up again: "You think it's getting better, but then something happens to change your mind. Like our friend's son - a medical student - who was kidnapped two days ago. His mother is terrified."

My final encounter in Abu Nawas park is with Dr Adnan, a scientist out with his young sons, aged three and two.

He agrees that life in Iraq is better now. "But the terrorists are still there," he says.

He paused, and then - with tears welling up in his eyes - he told me he had just had a very lucky escape.

A neighbour spotted a "sticky bomb" attached to the underside of his car with a magnet. The security forces came and defused it.

Others were less lucky. In the second week of March, nearly 70 people were killed in two suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad.

Iraqis are resourceful, resilient people with a generously optimistic nature - but the confidence they express in an opinion poll can be quickly outdated by events.