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This is the BBC World Service. My name is Hugh Sykes and this is part one of After Saddam.

I've been visiting Iraq several times a year since the invasion in 2003 and I've just

been back to Baghdad. The programme contains one graphic scene.

This is a park by the River Tigris, there are palm trees, there are grassy open spaces,

benches to sit on in the shade and on one side of the park there's a massive fun fair

with I'm told the second highest ferris wheel in the entire Middle East.

This candy floss on sale and popcorn there's distorting mirrors that these boys are having

the time of their lives. In this happy park are you happy? The life is not good, the life

is very bad. Which parts of life are very bad? People get killed because of the explosions

because of the violence. But it's better now there are fewer explosions now aren't they?

But you still have the fear? Yes. Do you still think about those days? Of course children,

dead, blood, on the road, mothers crying. But here in Zakhra Park hundreds of people,

lots of children, happy mood. I was saying that the people look happy but they're not feeling

happy inside. In Iraq it's become normal to be afraid. In Baghdad there are constant reminders

of the bad years, traffic bottlenecked by checkpoints and many streets are still bleak

canyons of concrete blast walls. But it's hard to feel happy inside in a country where

a thousand, two thousand, sometimes three thousand people were killed every month for years.

For example in this sickening scene from election day in January 2005.

Suddenly the atmosphere has completely changed. Oh Christ. The suicide bomb. American helicopters

circling overhead remains of human beings lying in the street. There's a dead body over

...