A year after battle for Baghdad, boys play ball

By Ahmed Rasheed and Wisam Mohammed

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Naser Abdul-Ameer watched his four sons kick a soccer ball around the popular al-Zahra park in Baghdad's predominantly Sunni Arab western Karkh area. It's a trip they make weekly. A year ago it was unimaginable.

"It would have been like committing suicide," said the 45-year-old Finance Ministry employee from across the Tigris in the sprawling Shi'ite slum district of Sadr City in Baghdad's northeast.

Though far from stable, Baghdad's streets are inching back to normal a year after Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki launched Operation Imposing Law, as Baghdad's death toll from sectarian violence and insurgency was spiraling out of control.

A precursor to U.S. President George W. Bush's "surge" of 30,000 extra troops to Iraq, the operation is slowly changing the city.

Lovers stroll along the banks of the Tigris River, families play in amusement parks and it's standing-room only in some university lecture halls.

Streets are clogged with traffic and even some new car sales rooms report a brisk trade, all unthinkable a year ago.

"Before the security plan, I held my breath every time I left my house, expecting a bomb," said Abdul-Ameer.

The confidence is fragile, easily shattered. Last Friday, 99 people at two popular pet markets were killed by two female bombers.

U.S. military and Iraqi security officials said the women were mentally impaired and had been women duped by al Qaeda.

"A year into the security plan, with billions of dollars of funding, and the result is dozens of innocent people die in a couple of minutes," said a man who gave his name as Basim, and whose brother was badly wounded in one of the attacks.

DON'T GIVE UP

While offering sympathy to victims' families, the U.S. urged Iraqis not to give up hard-won security gains.

"The continued use by al Qaeda of Iraq's most innocent ... shows the broken ideology, the desperation and the depths al Qaeda will go to attempt to destroy the bright future of Iraq," U.S. military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith said.

Operation Imposing Law was the vanguard of a new strategy in Iraq, with five additional U.S. brigades joining thousands of extra Iraqi soldiers and police to retake Baghdad's streets.

With commanders focusing on new counter-insurgency tactics, U.S. and Iraqi soldiers set up "joint security stations" or command outposts, moving American troops out of large bases so they live in the neighborhoods they patrol.