Haifa Street was once home to the Ba'ath Party''s most senior officials, but with liberation it became embroiled in the bitterest of sectarian fighting. ""It was a ghost street. No human life. Only snipers and killing and slaughter and corpses. And wild dogs which had grown used to eating human flesh."" Saad al-Anbaki witnessed much of the fighting in the area. "Iit was the first time I saw human bodies cut up like that."" He blames the Al Qaeda foreigners for radicalizing Sunni against Shia: "you could either follow the orders of the insurgents, or die.""

Things got even worse as the US invaded alongside the Shia dominated National Guard, as bloody sectarian cleansing developed out of the chaos. But by this time, the embattled locals had had enough. They formed an Awakening Council, taking on the Al Qaeda foreigners. "For them," explains Saad, ""it was survive or die."" Today we sit with them sipping tea on a rooftop, watching a game of street football, and it is clear that they have indeed survived. Saad tells us proudly, ""the street has a bloody history but now it's rising up again."