WHENEVER Zuhair al-Maliky, an Iraqi judge, steps out of his house, half a dozen bodyguards spring into action. Already they have proved their worth by pushing him out of the path of a would-be assassin. Brandishing a variety of weapons, they formed a protective circle around him last week as he welcomed visitors to his home.

Figures such as al-Maliky, chief investigative judge of the central criminal court, form the backbone of the team taking control of Iraq this week from the American-led coalition forces: he is honest, hard-working and committed to the principle that nobody should be above the law.

Whatever his qualms about the difficulties, he is optimistic that his country will one day have a flourishing democracy. “I just hope that I live to see it,” he said.

After a year of US occupation, the country seemed as unstable as ever last week as Islamic suicide bombers and diehard supporters of the old regime bathed the streets of five cities in blood. Their co-ordinated attacks on Thursday killed about 100 people on the eve of the transfer of sovereignty to the government of Ayad Allawi, the prime minister. Last night 17 people were killed and 40 wounded when a car bomb exploded in the southern Iraqi town of Hilla.

The level of violence has fuelled considerable anxieties about the future. Iraqi forces were supposed to take over from the Americans to guarantee security for elections by January 2005. “That now seems a mission impossible,” said Sabah Kamel, an interior ministry official. “Realistically I just can’t see it.”

Yet al-Maliky, a former student of English literature whose thesis at Baghdad University was on John Milton’s Paradise Lost, is not disheartened. Not even the groups that keep threatening to kill him for “collaborating” can dim his enthusiasm for the new Iraq.

“For the first time in 35 years,” said the 38-year-old father of two, “we can be free to express our opinions. Iraq has always had constitutions guaranteeing freedom of expression and basic human rights, but none of it was ever real. Now we have a chance to put words into action.

“We must seize and protect this opportunity, or it will be a return to the dark ages of tyranny and dictators.”

Whether or not it will work, a lot of positive things have happened already in Iraq, even if negative aspects of the occupation have overshadowed the advances. The coalition’s office in Baghdad is happy to trot out the statistics: 2,500 schools have been repaired and 3m children immunised; $5m (about £2.7m) has been distributed in loans to small businesses and 8m textbooks printed.

What is more, local councils have been set up in every city and province and banknotes are circulating that do not feature the once ubiquitous portrait of Saddam Hussein.

Against all that, however, looms the lawlessness that fills even the bravest and most battle-hardened inhabitants with terror. “Living here is like being held in the paws of some ghastly monster,” joked one of al-Maliky’s bodyguards. “You never know when you are going to be ripped limb from limb.”

As he spoke, the lights went out. “Welcome to Baghdad,” said al-Maliky, grinning.

The main power plant in Baghdad generates less electricity now than it did a year ago, and in the height of summer, with temperatures rising above 40C, the lack of power to run air-conditioning or fans is blamed on the American invaders rather than the fanatics who murdered the Russian engineers recruited by the coalition to repair the turbines.

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