IMPEACH BUSH

BAGHDAD, Iraq | Meshajjar Street once was known as the street of trees. The trees are only memories now.

Just like the practice of Sunni and Shiite Muslims mixing and intermarrying. That practice, too, is gone, along with any sense of safety for much of a city that once had nearly 6 million residents.

Today, Shiite bus drivers stop at the beginning of Meshajjar Street, where a Sunni mosque marks an invisible but deadly border of the Sunni district of Ghazaliyah. For the rest of their journey, passengers get off and then board a bus driven by a Sunni.

As the fourth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion arrives Tuesday, once-pleasant neighborhoods like Ghazaliyah have become a civil war's battle-weary front lines. Despite a significant drop in violence since a new Baghdad security plan began Feb. 15, many Iraqis express nostalgia for prewar days — even when Saddam Hussein steered the state.

"Ghazaliyah is now a cemetery," said Adil al-Qaisi, 28. "The streets are empty, and we live in our house like dead people."

U.S. troops have moved into Ghazaliyah as part of the new security plan, but residents said it has not yet helped. Sunnis such as al-Qaisi fear the deadly creep of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that continues to push into neighborhoods on the west side of the Tigris River, where Sunnis long have dominated.

American officers have praised the militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who was said to have initially ordered his Mahdi Army not to confront U.S. military patrols in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood, al-Sadr's stronghold east of the river. On Friday, however, al-Sadr decried U.S. forces as occupiers.

The presence of those forces is part of a plan that calls for 17,500 more U.S. troops in the capital. The number of unidentified bodies found in Baghdad has dropped dramatically, from an average of nearly 32 a day in December and early January to about 14 now, according to statistics that McClatchy Newspapers gathered from police.

Despite such progress, in interviews across Baghdad, Iraqis express a collective fatigue. They are tired of waiting for better days when each morning brings new terrorism. They are trapped in their homes, afraid that death will knock.

"Dead bodies are found in the streets every morning," said Samir Saeed, 26, who has stopped attending college in central Baghdad because of the dangerous commute. "Many families, both Sunni and Shiite, have fled for their lives."

‘Untainted' joy

Layla Mohammed, a Sunni mother of three, remembers the heady day nearly four years ago when a noose tightened around the neck of a statue of Hussein.

"I felt that I was at the highest point of a roller coaster, just about to plunge into what I hoped would be an exhilarating experience," Mohammed said. "I thought, ‘Oh, my God, it's happening. I live to see my sons set free.'"

The pharmacist said she has voted in all three elections since Hussein was toppled: first for an interim government, then for a new constitution, then for a permanent government. She remembers dipping her finger in purple ink — to indicate that she'd voted — with her two sons and her daughter. Together they held up their fingers and took a family photo to commemorate their future democracy.

"At that moment I felt that I was, at last, a sated human being. I had an opinion and it carried weight! I shall treasure that moment all my life," she said. "If only I could have that moment back; its joy was untainted. Now I know better."

Now, her sons want to flee the country. She cannot afford to heat her house and no longer goes to work in Hurriyah, a once mixed-sect neighborhood that in December was emptied of most Sunnis.

When Hussein was executed, Mohammed told herself, "There goes the one man who could stop this bloodbath. I thought we would have to pay oil for freedom and democracy, but not our life's blood. It's too much."

She put her hand to her head. "It's too much."

Millions are displaced

Sunnis once controlled Baghdad. Its generally poorer Shiite population lived in the vast Sadr City and in smaller, isolated neighborhoods.

The wealthiest districts were largely Sunni. Those areas now are under siege or already routed.

Garbage litters the sidewalks in Yarmouk, an upper-class Sunni neighborhood that once was known for its wealth and beauty. A playground that U.S. troops built was dismantled about four months ago. The slide and swings now are used as roadblocks.

Nuhad Abbas, a university professor who directs the Organization for the Care of the Displaced and Immigrant Affairs, says more than 40,000 Sunni families have left Baghdad for Sunni-dominated provinces outside the capital. In all, as many as 2 million Iraqis have fled their homeland since the war began, according to the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Up to 1.7 million Iraqis have been displaced internally.

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki says more than 1,000 families have returned to their homes throughout Baghdad as part of the new security plan. But Abdul Karim Ahmed, a Sunni, scoffs at the idea of returning.

"They want me to go back to my house?" he said. "How can I? It's been burned, and even if I go back I go to a neighborhood where the killers are still free."

‘Thank God' for gift

Hussein was caught nearly nine months after the invasion, hidden in an underground hole with a pistol. That night, Bilal Ali, 40, a Shiite, pulled out an AK-47 rifle and fired in the air in celebration then handed the weapon to his mother, then to his 7-year-old son.

"I shot five full magazines," he said. "Thank God, who blessed even the hearts of the martyrs in their grave, for this gift."

But it didn't bring the peace that Bilal Ali, a shopkeeper in the Shiite area of Karada, had imagined. Car bombs became prevalent in Shiite areas. Shiites were afraid to pray in their mosques, and Iraqis were afraid to shop in outdoor markets, which were targets of the Sunni insurgency.

Shiite militias struck back. Men, mostly Sunnis, turned up in the morgue, shot in the head, hands tied behind their back, holes drilled in their bodies. The killers eventually were linked to the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police.

Electricity grew scarcer to few as three hours a day. Salaries rose, but so did the cost of living. A tank of cooking gas soared to $60 on the black market. A lower price costs a day's wait in line. The use of a generator costs $100 a month. At $300 a month, wages hardly kept pace.

Still, Bilal Ali is happy that Hussein was hanged.

"I had hope at that time that life would be much better after his regime's collapse," he said. "But I'm very happy with his end even if the security situation is bad."

‘You never know ...'

In Baghdad, religious extremists on both sides target stores that sell liquor or music. Even barbers are assassinated.

Gunmen and kidnappers plague Mansour, central Baghdad's main shopping district. While some stores remain open, shoppers prefer shops on side streets away from traffic that may contain a car bomb.

"You never know if it's good or bad, but by the afternoon everything is on fire," said Mustafa Mohammed, 27. "The main fear is assassins. Gunmen drive by killing us, and you never know who is killing who."

Mona Ali, a single Shiite mother of three, expected more bloodshed after the bombing of the gold-domed Shiite shrine in Samarra more than a year ago. She knew the attack was different from all the others.

"I felt bitterness in my heart that day," she said. "I knew that things would not rest. I knew that we shall have torment for a long time, and it was true."

Shiite revenge killings soared. Sunnis feared Shiite militias and their dreaded checkpoints. Shiites feared the Sunni insurgency and its bloody bombings. Families were torn apart.

Mona Ali said she wept the morning Hussein was hanged. Not for the dictator, but for the death of her hope and the loss of confidence in the new government.

"I want safety," she said.

Dulaimy is a McClatchy Newspapers special correspondent. Special correspondents Laith Hammoudi, Zaineb Obeid and Sahar Issa contributed to this report. To reach Leila Fadel, send e-mail to lfadel@mcclatchydc.com.