Perspective: Baghdad, a city on the brink

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraq may already be in a civil war or just on the brink of one. But whatever it is, the focus is Baghdad, where all aspects of life are ever more disrupted by sectarian violence and its people ever more weary and afraid.

Drive around this city of 7 million in daylight and the signs are clear -- rows of shuttered shops, barricaded roads, empty homes, bustle that is brief and subdued. At night, under curfew, gunmen take command. Talk to the people of Baghdad and one hears the voice of a fractured, terrified community.

"We're afraid, depressed, frustrated," said one woman for whom this month should have been among the happiest of her life.

Lina -- who like most in the city on the banks of the Tigris River is too frightened to use her full name -- is about to be married but the 33-year-old said: "I feel such a burden when I think of what might happen on our wedding day."

This year, weekly death tolls in the capital have risen from the dozens to the hundreds, notably since February's destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in Samarra touched off a wave of reprisals.

Two weeks ago, bombs that killed over 200 people in the capital in the worst attack of the conflict caused another quantum leap in the fear factor, driving the mildest of men to take up Kalashnikovs and roam the streets to defend their homes.

Already 100,000 Iraqis a month were fleeing abroad, many of them part of a "brain drain" of Baghdad's skilled classes. Now, even more of those who remain are moving, seeking safety in numbers among people of their own sect, Sunni or Shi'ite Muslim.

"Mortar wars" have broken out between rival neighborhoods in what used to be known as the "City of Peace."

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