Lead in: MAP needed, showing Haifa Street and streets coming off it, with names of districts. Explain that it's two miles long, running northwest, parallel to the Tigris River, from Assassin's Gate -- the main entrance to the Americans' Green Zone in west Baghdad. It was Saddam Hussein who gave it its name, in honour of the Israeli port city, which Arabs consider part of Palestine. In the 1980s, big Soviet-style apartment blocks were built along it, to house Baath Party officials. The old British Embassy was at number xx-- a mixed area of Shia and Sunni Muslims --

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Five years ago as US forces were entering Baghdad, the Chairman of Iraq's Revolutionary Command Council went walkabout in his capital for the last time.

Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti would not be seen again until he was dragged from his spiderhole-hideout nine months later.

These scenes were filmed by his official cameraman, filmed from inside Saddam's car as it headed down Haifa Street.

It was in the warren of alleyways behind the apartment blocks that line Haifa Street that Saddam set up his first hideout. It is where the Sunni insurgency was born.

Since then, Haifa Street has seen it all; kidnaps, car bombs, death squads, destrucution and acute deprivation.

It's become a barometer of the insurgency and a measure of the disaster unfolding for the people of Iraq.

SYNC

Saad Ibrahim al-Anbaki

Haifa Street Awakening Council

"Many bloody acts took place here. Acts which I hope we never see again. Rahmaniya is behind me. It's mostly Shia. Well, it's a mixed area, but mostly Shia. And on my left is Shaikh Ali, which is mostly Sunni. And behind you are Mashahda and Fahhama and the rest of Haifa Street. // This area is the beating heart of Baghdad.

(UNDERLAID)

052705 "It was a tragedy what happened in this street. It was miserable. The only inhabitants were wild dogs, feeding on decaying corpses. You couldn't walk there. You'd be attacked by the wild dogs which had grown used to eating human flesh. It was a ghost street. No human life. Only snipers and killing and slaughter and corpses."

On 12th September 2004, the insurgents of Haifa Street ambushed a US Bradley Fighting Vehicle. With the fighting long over, a jubilant crowd gathered.

Mazen Tomeizi, a reporter with the al-Arabiya satellite network was reporting to camera.

Suddenly, American helicopters unleashed a barrage of rockets and machine-gun fire.

UPSOT ATTACK

Mazen Tomeizi among the 13 killed here. Haifa Street was becoming one of the most dangerous parts of the most dangerous city on earth.

Two days later, a huge car bomb went off just down the road. It was the most deadly attack in six months.

Al Qaeda was blamed. By this stage, the foreign jihadis had taken up residence in Haifa Street too.

Another journalist, this time, a Haifa Street resident, was on the spot. What he filmed had a devastating affect on him.

SYNC SAAD (watching computer screen)

2242 "The explosion happend at the al-Karkh police station. It took the lives of 50 martyrs. It was the first time I saw human bodies cut up like that. I wouldn't normally have been strong enough to look. I began to think of my camera as my weapon."

SYNC Saad (in vision)

3219 It was a state of fear. We lived under a reign of terror. You could either follow the orders of the insurgents, leave the area or die."

January 2007 and America invades Haifa Street; a thousand troops with attack helicopters and F-18s in support.

UPSOT "Right there, right there..."

The battle raged round the clock for four days. They fought from the rooftops and in the back alleys.

US soldiers bark orders at Iraqi troops. The mission: kill Sunni insurgents and al Qaeda fighters, retake Haifa Street.

They weren't to know it then, but by bringing the largely Shia Muslim Iraqi National Guard into Haifa Street the Americans were being unwittingly drawn into its next nightmare: sectarian cleansing. The National Guard turned out to be a sectarian death squad in uniform.

Saad was also wielding his camera throughout Haifa Street's social implosion.

SYNC SAAD top underlaid

"There was nothing but chaos, killing and stealing, the foreign jihadis, the Americans -- and snipers from the National Guard lived in the building behind me. Their sole aim was to kill any civilian they could find. This area was totally cut off from all sides, for a long time; it witnessed a bloody history but now it's rising up again with the efforts of local people."

There's someone Saad wants us to meet.

This is Umm Hamed. At the height of the sectarian cleansing, her family home had been visited by the National Guard during one of their rampages through Haifa Street.

Saad filmed the aftermath. The local Awakening Council has since rebuilt the hosue.

UPSOT

She's crying: "They killed my son! They killed my son!"

SYNC

Umm Hamed

"They said to him: 'You're a Sunni dog.' He was holding his daughters, one on each side. As he lay dying they were saying to him 'Daddy, don't be scared.' He bled to death and we couldn't take him anywhere, there was so much shooting outside."

Louqaa, the youngest of the two girls, tells our cameraman: "They hit him here in his tummy. Blood came out of him. I still look for him," she says. "I say 'where's Daddy?'"

SYNC SAAD

"Now, as you can see, we are fixing the house for Umm Hamed. Through our own personal efforts and funds -- and with no help from the government or the Americans. The house was completely destroyed. Now it's half way to being a proper home again."

6'53"

Today there are traffic jams in Haifa Street again. It's a good sign. The snipers are gone. So are the insurgents and death squads and the flesh-eating wild dogs; even the Americans stay out of the way. People are just getting on with it, planting trees, relaying kerbstones, rebuilding homes.

SYNC SAAD (Rooftop) 0528 t904

"After the US military operations in January last year, and the wave of killing and destruction that hit the area, a bunch of local men -- and I was one of them -- decided to take action. It was survive or die, to be or not to be."

But there was no question. A local Sahwa, or Awakening Council was formed. For four months last year, fierce battles raged in Haifa Street's backalleyways as Saad's bunch of local men took on al Qaeda -- and won.

Today, they sit victorious and sip tea together as Haifa Street comes back from the dead.


The alleys and sidestreets do not echo to the sound of gunfire any more, but to the sound of goals being scored.

ends///