Dodgems and the right to moan: signs of hope in Iraq, 10 years on

As the head of a tribe whose roots stretch to beyond Iraq's Ottoman times, it is Sheikh Hassan al Nasseri's bad luck to have been in charge during one of the most turbulent periods for his family.

During the three-decade rule of the Nasseri tribe's most infamous son, Saddam Hussein, Sheikh Hassan and the rest of Iraq's extended First Family enjoyed unparalleled luxury in their home town of Tikrit, in the sun-baked Sunni heartlands north of Baghdad.

What was previously a poor provincial backwater became a gaudy, mansion-lined Henley-on-Tigris. And on trips to Baghdad, just mentioning the Nasseri name was enough to get better service in shops, tables at the best restaurants, and well-paid jobs in the police force and army.

Then, 10 years ago this week, it all ended as the operation to unseat Saddam began from the sky. As Cruise missiles rained down on Tikrit's Ba'ath party buildings, his elite Republican Guard melted away and, far from being the centre of his last stand, his home town fell with barely a fight. Nine months later, on farmland a few miles down the Tigris, Saddam gave up in similar fashion, surrendering to the US soldiers who plucked him from his "spider-hole".

Today, all of the Nasseri tribe's blessings have turned to curses. Property in their ancestral village of al-Owja, just outside Tikrit, remains subject to US-imposed asset freeze orders, and in Baghdad, their name slams as many doors as it used to open.

Sheikh Hassan, 62, who boasts that his 7,000 strong tribe killed many US troops between 2003 and 2011, complains that tribe members are routinely harassed by the security forces of the Shia-dominated Iraqi government.

"At any time we usually have around 50 men in jail - I think we have our own special reserved wing," he told The Sunday Telegraph over tea at the Nasseri tribal meeting house in al-Owja, where a tribal family tree adorns one wall. "Right now as we talk, someone from my tribe is probably being tortured."

While he admits that Saddam could be equally cruel and unjust at times, Sheikh Hassan still grieved when the Iraqi leader's body was brought to al-Owja for burial in 2006, from a Baghdad gallows. The body is in a mausoleum just down the road, which the Iraqi government closed last year for fear that it was becoming a Ba'athist pilgrimage site.

"How would you feel if France invaded Britain and executed the Queen?" asked Sheikh Hassan, to nods from fellow tribesmen, some of whom share Saddam's thickset features. "At least he gave us development and security. The British and Americans said they would make things better, but 10 years later it's still a mess."

For all the ease with which Saddam's Iraq fell, building a new one in its place has proved far harder, as the chaos, terrorism and sectarian slaughter of the past decade have proved. And it is not just beneficiaries of the old regime, such as Sheikh Hassan, who yearn for the old days.

During a tour around the country last month - almost a decade from when I first reported here - my question to the Iraqis I met was would they turn the clock back to the Saddam era if they could. Many, despite the horrors of that time, said they would.

Among them was Riyadh al-Obeid, a greengrocer on Tikrit's main street, where the scratched-out murals are all that are left of Saddam's omnipresent personality cult. A former army officer, Obeid deserted during the war, and has found himself on the losing side of every fight that has come his way since. In 2004, he was arrested as a suspected insurgent after US troops found a pistol in his house, and spent 18 months in prison. He then joined the Iraqi police, only to be kidnapped by Sunni extremists in 2006, who threatened to kill him as a traitor, then let him buy his life back for a ransom of $15,000 (pounds 10,000).

After quitting law enforcement for the safety of the fruit and veg business, he was kidnapped again while in Baghdad in 2008, this time by a Shia militia targeting Sunnis during the sectarian conflict. Once more, a ransom payment saved him. He still considers himself among the luckier members of his family. In 2007, militants abducted his cousin along with 13 other men, and beheaded them, demanding $5,000 apiece for the return of their heads in boxes.

"All that has happened since the Americans came is that security has got worse," he said. "I do not long for Saddam particularly, just someone who rules with justice - an American, an Iraqi, whoever."

Obeidi's tale - a snapshot of the mayhem of the past decade - is extreme, but not exceptional. Nearly every Iraqi I met tells of similar ordeals, sometimes at the hands of coalition forces, but more often courtesy of fellow countrymen, be they members of religious militias, criminal gangs, or a mixture of both.

For any country, this would be traumatic. For a country used to police-state security - arguably the one benefit of Saddam's totalitarian regime - it has been doubly so, hence the nostalgia for the dictator.

True, there is less bloodshed now than there was at the height of the sectarian war of 2006, when nearly 3,000 people died a month. However, car bombs and other terrorist acts still regularly claim about 50 lives a week, a level of violence that makes international news when it happens in other countries, but not here.

Such is the continued danger that Britain and most other nations still caution their citizens against visiting Iraq without armed bodyguards, which is robbing the country of much-needed foreign investment and expertise.

The few foreigners who do visit Baghdad find a city that looks almost as much a police state as it was in Saddam's time, with troops at nearly every major junction.

Thanks to the parlous security situation, many of the fruits that Iraq's liberators promised 10 years ago are only just beginning to arrive. It was only two weeks ago, for example, that Iraqi Airways flew its first London-Baghdad flight, connecting the Iraqi capital with one of its largest diasporas. Grid electricity in one of the most energy-rich lands in the world is still available for only about 12 hours a day in most areas, because of delays in rebuilding plants and sabotage of power lines.

The much-awaited construction boom that should have turned Baghdad's crumbling, Arab-brutalist architecture into a gleaming Dubai is yet to start. Smart shopping malls and luxury apartment blocks are still mainly at the planning stage, and the nearest thing to a five-star hotel is the gloomy 1980s-style Ishtar Sheraton.

The most notable construction is the miles of 12ft high concrete anti-blast walls that snake across the city. Some are built to keep warring Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods apart, others are defences to the hundreds of suicide bombers who have struck here since summer 2003, when attacks on aid agencies and the United Nations building marked the start of al-Qaeda's campaign to derail reconstruction by any means possible.

Yet despite such murderous nihilism, progress has been made. The Iraqi security forces, who used to roam the city in nervous, balaclava-clad packs, now seem relaxed and in control. Shops that used to shut at 4pm, if they opened at all, do brisk business till midnight. And, down by the Tigris, where restaurants once stopped serving local fish because of the numbers of corpses dumped in the river, new family pleasure parks are setting up.

True, visitors are sometimes frisked for weapons, but the fact that families finally feel safe to bring their children out at night tells its own story. "We opened just four months ago, and security is improving day by day," beamed Amjad al Kuzahi, 40, an investor in the Utafiyya Harbour complex, which has smart restaurants, a fairground complete with dodgem cars and free wifi. "Besides, things couldn't have got any worse than they were."

If that sounds like grudging praise, Balsam al-Hill, a Baghdad businesswoman who has also lived in Britain, points out that many things now taken for granted were forbidden in Saddam's time, such as mobile phones, the internet and, of course, the right to moan.

"Iraqis may still complain about electricity and security, but they are earning far more and can buy what they want," she said. "In the old days, even something like a can of Coke was a luxury. Iraqis do tend to focus on the negative, but the fact is that now they can vent their feelings and complain about the government. This is what democracy is."

Admittedly, democracy's reputation here has been tarnished somewhat by the calibre of legislator that three elections since 2005 have produced. In Saddam's time, most competent politicians were either killed or fled abroad, and the lawless years afterwards have favoured those with guns and money rather than talent. The result has been parliaments made up of sectarian warlords, holymen and corruptibles, many of whom fail to meet their basic briefs as parliamentarians, never mind overcome Iraq's complex divisions of religion and creed.

Today, the Kurdish north is more of a breakaway state than ever, infuriating Baghdad by signing private oil drilling contracts with foreign majors. And in former Ba'athist strongholds such as Tikrit and Fallujah, the Arab Spring has inspired crowds to take to the streets in recent months, claiming that Iraq's Shia-dominated government treats them like second-class citizens. So far they have stuck to peaceful protest, but already there are fears that Sunni militias may use it as an excuse to take up arms again.

As Michael Knights, a fellow with the Washington Institute for Near East policy, puts it: "The toxic political environment is functioning as a life support machine for militant groups that should be on the verge of extinction by now."

While the political class squabbles, however, the country's cultural and intellectual life is blossoming. Baghdad's national theatre, in the manner of Glasgow and Liverpool, is spearheading a "capital of culture" programme this year.

Here, talk of acting as a profession that challenges the status quo is no Thespian affectation: many of the theatre's actors have been threatened by religious conservatives over the years, and it is as fortified as most Baghdad police stations.

Today, though, it is packed with performers of all ages, some sporting patched corduroy jackets and equally threadbare ponytails, others part of the new generation who were just children during the war.

Young and old though, they all talk of a new, secular, liberal Iraq: the one that Tony Blair and George W?Bush promised, and which only now, 10 hard years later, looks finally like it is on its way.

"Iraq went from political extremism under Saddam to religious extremism during the sectarian time," said Emmanuel George Tomi, 52, a film-maker from a Christian opposition family, who fled Iraq for London aged 17 and returned in 2005.

"I wept when I first came back. What I remembered as a civilised, European-style city was just in ruins, and it has been so ever since.

"But I wouldn't go back to the Saddam era. People here are turning away from religious extremism and towards a secular, liberal society: we're on the way now."

With that, he turned back to discussing his new movie project with his companions in the cafe of the theatre, where on the gates outside, a pair of traditional stage masks show two faces - one happy, one sad.

Ten years on, it is an apt symbol of the Iraqi mood.