Post-war Iraq prepares for Ramadan

Normally, his cash tills ring incessantly in Ramadan, when customers fill his shop after breaking their fast at sundown and keep coming into the early hours to buy sweetmeats made from pastry, honey and pistachio nuts.

This year, Iraq's US-led occupation forces say they will lift a night-time curfew across Baghdad to allow residents to observe the fasting month, which is expected to start Sunday, or whenever the new moon is sighted.

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Hamid says he plans to keep his shop open late but is not sure whether his customers will throng it as usual in a city where shooting, kidnapping and robbery have soared since the US-led war which toppled Saddam Hussein in April.

"We will try and stay open but we know security will be difficult," said Hamid in the small shop across the road from the Sunni Muslim Abu Hanifa mosque in Baghdad.

"This year Ramadan will be different, we don't know what to expect."

US soldiers in Iraq have been given lessons explaining the traditions of the holy month.

At night, Baghdad's streets are usually busy with people going to pray at the mosque or visiting relatives.

"We are making sure our forces clearly understand what the rhythms are for the people in this period and what the sensitivities are," Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, commander of US ground forces in Iraq, said this week.

Iraqis often accuse American troops of religious and cultural insensitivity.

Tuesday, a huge crowd gathered outside the oil ministry in Baghdad and staged an angry protest after US soldiers detained a woman who refused to let a sniffer dog search her handbag which she said contained a Quran.

Some people said Ramadan could be a trigger for more confrontation if US soldiers failed to keep a low profile.

"During Ramadan they mustn't interfere, they mustn't come near our mosques or smoke and drink in public," said Mahdi Hassan, selling leather belts outside the Imam Musa al-Kadhim mosque, a shrine of Iraq's majority Shi'ites.

"We have our religion and they have theirs. We hope they will show us respect."

Other Baghdadis said they were looking forward to the first Ramadan they could remember free from the grip of Saddam.

"For 35 years Saddam Hussein was here and we could never feel comfortable, we could never breathe," said Iyad al-Obeidi, 39, in his small jewellery shop. "Psychologically this Ramadan should be better for all of us."