QASSEM MOHAMMED recites the Shahada, the Muslim prayer for those about to die, twice a day: once when he leaves home for his first job at a cooking oil factory, and again after lunch when he leaves for his second job in a barber’s shop.

“I could be killed at any time,” said Mr Mohammed, 37, a father of three with sunken eyes and a prematurely grey beard. His factory job is in New Baghdad, one of the capital’s most violent districts. “No day passes without an explosion or a shoot-out in New Baghdad,” he said. Working as a barber is almost as risky: Islamic extremists have murdered dozens of barbers for cutting clients’ hair in un-Islamic crew cuts, or for shaving their beards.

A year ago, after Paul Bremer, the US proconsul, handed sovereignty to an Iraqi interim government and jumped on the next plane home, Iraq experienced a brief spasm of optimism. Today that optimism has evaporated.

By day Baghdad appears almost normal: cars clog the streets and cafés are crowded. This is a city that has learnt to grind on despite the daily routine of bombings, shootings and kidnappings; but at night people are locked in their homes by fear.

“As women, we’re still afraid for our lives when we leave our houses,” Umm Yahya, 33, a civil servant and mother, said. “When we get home we can’t sleep because of a lack of electricity. The Iraqi Government changed nothing.”

People still spend hours queueing for petrol, even though Iraq has 10 per cent of the world’s oil reserves. There have been severe water shortages since insurgents blew up a pumping station this month. Electricity is on for two hours, then off for four, despite temperatures of more than 40C (105F). Unemployment is still rampant.

All that has changed is that people now blame the Iraqi Government rather than American occupation.

US and Iraqi security forces cannot stem the violence. In June last year 18 car bombs exploded in Iraq; the figure for last month alone was 138. Yesterday Dhari al-Fayadh, an 87-year-old Shia and the oldest Member of Parliament, was killed with his son and two bodyguards in Baghdad by a suicide bomber. Later, in apparent sectarian reprisal, two Sunni councillors were murdered.

In many areas, illegal militias have replaced ineffective police forces. In others, police officers’ first loyalty is to a particular party or militia.

Iraq has a new Prime Minister, but the channels of power run through powerful parties and their armed supporters. Baan Ziad, an 18-year-old Christian woman, forces herself to go out to visit friends. . “I’m afraid of what I see, of massive killing of Iraqis,” she said, “but I like to go out, and often visit friends and relatives with my family . . . otherwise I’ll waste my time in this world.”

Nowhere is safe now. Yesterday a suicide bomber blew himself up in a hospital, killing a policeman and wounding 17 others. In a separate incident yesterday police in the town of Samawa opened fire on demonstrators who were demanding work and an end to corruption. Seven people were wounded.

Mr Mohammed mutters the sacred lines: “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his Prophet” as he shuffles out of his door twice a day. “I’m afraid for my life and for the future of my children. I don’t see any solution to all this.”

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