"The litany of ruin is hard to fathom: 73 schools and many government buildings have been destroyed, and Baquba's health center was bombed. About 65 villages have been completely emptied, Mr. Bachilan said."

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Iraq City Has Brittle Calm and War Scars

BAQUBA, Iraq — Less than an hour east and north of Baghdad sprawls Diyala Province, once the garden of Iraq, known for its date and orange orchards, its rice and its barley farms. More recently it has been known as one of Iraq's worst killing fields.

The religious and ethnic diversity that made it a microcosm of the country also meant that every lethal division played out within its borders. Sunnis and Shiites, Kurds and Arabs live in close quarters here. By 2006, whole villages were burning. There were months last year when kidnappings were daily occurrences and headless bodies routinely showed up in the fields and floated down the rivers. Intermarriage, once a way of life in the province, was forbidden by many families.

The province became the headquarters of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the extremist Sunni insurgent group most associated with suicide bombings and beheadings. The danger was great enough that Western reporters could visit Diyala only while embedded with American troops.

But in late June, a New York Times reporter and photographer traveled to the provincial capital, driving in old Iraqi cars with an interpreter to see how much had changed.

Military operations here over the past 12 months have curbed the worst of the province's violence, but the situation defines the word "fragile" — a description often pressed into service by American generals and diplomats to describe all of Iraq.

Not many people come to Baquba from Baghdad these days unless they have to. Before the war, many Baghdad families had small farms in Diyala; the sales from the annual fruit crop helped them to make ends meet, and they used it as an escape from the unrelenting heat and dirt of summer in the city. Now, to the north, the road is mostly empty, and miles of drought-parched farmland stretch on each side.

A few cargo trucks could be seen carrying supplies. And a handful of cars, packed with the occupants' earthly possessions, appeared to be returning home, tables and chairs strapped to the roofs.

"At least 25,000 families left," said the provincial council chairman, Ibrahim Bachilan, a Kurd. "Some are beginning to come back. But whole villages are empty."

Families are generally counted as six people, so that means at least 150,000 people left Diyala. But foreign diplomats in the province say the number is probably two to three times that.

The litany of ruin is hard to fathom: 73 schools and many government buildings have been destroyed, and Baquba's health center was bombed. About 65 villages have been completely emptied, Mr. Bachilan said.

He spoke in the government center, a heavily fortified building in the middle of the city. Three cordons of police officers search visitors to his office. Inside, a small crowd demanded his attention. An extended family of two widows with their children were asking him for aid; a group of contractors came looking for approval for plans to rebuild a school.

Last year at this time, a major military operation led by the Americans had just got under way to free the city from the grip of insurgents. Before that, people in Baquba had been all but stranded, sometimes unable to get food for days. Shops were closed; residents were unable to leave their homes even to buy food for fear of being caught in a cross-fire. There were fake checkpoints all over the city run by insurgents.

Now the first checkpoint, a few miles south of the city, is run by the Iraqi Army. The soldiers stop every car, inspect the trunk, and question the driver about the destination.

Beyond the checkpoint lies Al Mufraq, a neighborhood where vicious battles between Sunni extremists and American soldiers have taken place over the past two years. On both sides of the road, the houses were so pitted by machine-gun fire that they looked as if someone had taken a giant ice cream scoop and removed gobs of the walls. The windows were shattered, the upper floors vacant. In some cases, bombs or mortar shells had blasted out large chunks, exposing the rooms within.

Yet shops were open again on the ground floors, and children played in the refuse. Shepherds let their flocks graze in the garbage, which smelled as if it had been rotting for months.

Traffic was heavy — a good sign in this city where for months few people had wanted to drive for fear of roadside bombs. The mood was almost heady, as if people were still amazed and excited that they could walk the streets. A little boy smiled broadly as he offered his wares, boxes of tissues, to cars stuck in traffic.

But Baquba's relative calm barely reaches the city's borders. Nearby, outside the town of Jalawla, eight people were killed Sunday when a roadside bomb exploded near a Kurdish official's car, killing him, his family of five and two bodyguards.

Barely 20 miles northeast of Baquba, American troops are still fighting battle-hardened gunmen loyal to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia who are hiding in the palm groves.

Other areas are just as troubled. "In northern Diyala near the Hamrin mountains there are gunmen and militia and Al Qaeda," said Mr. Bachilan, the provincial council chairman. "They have planted the road with improvised explosive devices. The road is closed."

"We have asked the government to support military operations and more police for the province," he said.

"There are many smugglers, and they move weapons through the border and their weapons are more effective than our weapons," he said. "We just have Kalashnikovs. They have rockets, mines, rocket-propelled grenades. But the government has not answered our request."

Across the road, behind concentric rings of concrete barriers, stands the provincial police headquarters, where the police chief, Ghanem al-Khoreishi, has his office. An imposing figure in his uniform, Mr. Khoreishi, who is well over six feet tall, conveyed resolve, but also frustration.

A native of the province, he bounced between boasting about the improvements and worrying about the areas where the militants remain strong. He has little patience for politicians in Baghdad whom he sees as oblivious to the sacrifices being made by people on the ground.

"We lost 1,585 policemen and had 1,650 wounded," he said. "Maybe you wonder how I know these numbers: I know because we pay funeral compensation to the families," he said. "You will not find another police force that has lost so many," he said with bitter pride.

For Mr. Khoreishi the fight is personal. His home was bombed. For four months he could not leave the police headquarters to visit his family. Then the militants went after his relatives.

"They killed my brother last year and my brother-in-law. He was a teacher and he taught in the middle school. He hadn't done anything except he was related to me," he said. "Most of the politicians don't deal with reality. They do not appreciate the price we pay."

The Ameen district on the north side of the city had some of the worst fighting last year and still feels tense, though it has been controlled by the Iraqi government for more than five months. About 100 policemen still fan out there around the clock. They want to be sure Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia does not come back, one police officer said.

Even now, more than six months after the last major military operation, the streets are mostly empty. Many shops are shuttered.

At the heart of the neighborhood, a former school now bombed to rubble was most recently the local headquarters for the insurgents. The square in front of the building was where gunmen carried out executions, following their own version of Shariah law.

An elderly man carrying a straw bag with blocks of ice for refrigeration walked along the desolate street with his two young grandsons. Asked how things were, he shook his head. "I am too tired to talk," he said softly.

Further on, three young men lounged outside a storefront machine shop where two of them repaired motors for electrical appliances. "The situation is very good now," said one, Ammar Khalid. "Before, no one could leave their house; all the shops were closed. Now business is good for us because there are not many shops open, but we open at 6 a.m. and stay open until evening. But there's no electricity, no water."

Is it normal yet? The three young men did not respond. When will it be normal? "I don't know how long it will take," said Muath Abbas, 21, a university student who is studying English, although he is not sure where he will use the language. "It will take time."

This year? Next year? Abu Mohamed, a 21-year-old taxi driver, shook his head. "It is in the hands of God," he said.

Ten minutes after the conversation, a bomb exploded less than 100 feet away. It destroyed the building and checkpoint of a Sunni citizen group paid by the Americans to watch the neighborhood. In an illustration of the convoluted world of Iraq, the police said that the citizen group was not the target. Rather, the group itself set the bomb to destroy its building rather than give it back to returning Shiites who had renewed their claim to it, the police said.

As the afternoon wore on, a dust storm descended on the city, the fine sand coating every brick in the piles of rubble. From the bridge crossing the Diyala River, which cars use as they leave town, dust as thick as fog obscured the city skyline of mosques and low-slung buildings.

	Moises Saman for The New York Times Iraqi police officers in Baquba. Military operations here over the past 12 months have curbed the worst of the violence in Diyala Province, but the destruction from the war is extensive.