IRAQ: A year on, Iraqis are struggling to answer this question: Are they better off? Despite the chaos, most Iraqis are still offering a guarded Yes. Jack Fairweather, in Baghdad, reports.
Few have been untouched by the violence in the country ushered in with the arrival of the coalition.
Bomb blasts continue to rock Baghdad, and travelling after dark is still considered too dangerous despite the lifting of a night curfew in December.
But freedom from Saddam Hussein, Iraqis say, is worth the troubles, as I discovered on a tour of the capital yesterday.
Mohammed Karim (50) is a former government employee turned used car salesman who lives in the heavily fortified American compound in the centre of Baghdad, otherwise known as the "green zone." It takes him four hours each day to drive a mile to his workplace, one of the reasons, he says, he rarely leaves his home any more.
His location near the headquarters of Iraq's US-led government has also placed his family under the threat of mortar attack. "When I heard the bombs falling on Saddam's palace a year ago I thanked God because I knew the Americans were coming to get rid of him.
"But they did very little when they got here. Now I realise just how long it's going to take for Iraq to recover. I am hopeful for the future."
On the other side of the city in the Shia slums once called "Saddam city" Rhiad Hadi was also upbeat.
He is an unemployed labourer whose brother provides for a household of seven by working at a local bakery for 50p a day.
"The streets are cleaner, the water works and so does the electricity, sometimes, and I can worship freely," he said. "I would be happy for the Americans to stay if they continue to work for improving Iraq."
Saqer Hamid (27), a traffic policeman, has been standing on the same corner of Baghdad's main shopping street for the past 10 years.
His work was punctuated with nine months in prison for trying to arrest one of Saddam's ministers' sons for drunk driving, and during the war when he fled to the country to escape the violence.
"Things are a little different now I've returned," he admitted. "No one listens to me when I try and given them a traffic ticket. We don't have guns to protect ourselves, and the traffic is terrible," he said.
Attitudes towards the Americans, joyous in the first days of liberation, were soon tempered by the slow pace of rebuilding.
Relations are now cordial at best. There are also the traumatic scars of 12 months of terrorist attacks, which Iraqis have taken to blaming on the Americans whom they accuse of creating instability in the country to prolong their stay. Under Saddam there was little crime, Iraqis say.
You don't have to go far in Iraq to hear of experiences of suicide bombings, robberies and kidnappings. At a forum organised by Occupation Watch, a non-governmental organisation that monitors the US military, one man described the night he lost his son.
"I had only one son, and he was killed by the Americans," he said. "He was married six months ago. We were driving past an American tank shortly before curfew when a solder waved for us to stop. My son got out with his hands in the air and was shot three times in the chest."
The daily diet of violence often obscures larger constitutional issues that threaten to further destabilise the country: the rise of Iraq's Shia majority at the expense of its old Sunni ruling elite and Kurdish calls for independence.
Few Iraqis have much faith in the US-appointed Governing Council to guide them towards independence. Most of its members are accused of being thieves and opportunists.
Into the power vacuum has risen Grand Ayatollah Sistani, spiritual head of Iraq's Shia majority. His calls for democratic elections have been warmly welcomed by most Iraqis, but Sunnis fear he wants to create an Iranian-style theocracy.
"When I look at what's happened to Iraq, it's clear it's all a terrible mess," said Abu Ferrar, a retired Iraqi general who arranged the country's air defences a year ago, now turned real estate dealer.
"My family and I live in constant fear of attack from people who hate everything to do with the old regime," he said. "My wife asks me almost every day to leave. I tell her this is our country. We are watching it being born again. We must be patient."
Jack Fairweather reported the war for The Irish Times and the Daily Telegraph of London. On Tuesday the Telegraph's team, of which he was the youngest member, received the Team of the Year award in the annual British Press Awards for its coverage of the war