NORMALCY IS A MATTER OF WHEN, NOT IF:

In town split in two by al-Qaida, a ray of hope for the country: As US digests mixed report on war strategy, one community says it is time to rebuild (Peter Beaumont, July 14, 2007, Guardian)

[I]n a country beset by terrible news, the story of the returnees to Tal Afar is remarkable. For the town, set amid wide prairies of wheatfields to the west of Mosul, was once notorious as one of al-Qaida's strongest bases in Iraq, a transit point for foreign fighters travelling across from the western desert plain.

The place where al-Qaida came to set the sects apart, as these residents put it, is now showing the first signs that despite deep mutual suspicion between the two communities some roots of reconciliation may at last be taking hold.

The town has not yet left war behind. The bombed buildings remain, with their concrete roofs sagging to the floor, or reduced to rubble. So do the heavily armed checkpoints of Iraqi police that control traffic through the town. US and Iraqi Humvees cruise the streets.

But in the Shia market in the centre, where the shutters have been sucked out by the force of multiple explosions, the little shops, closed for so long, are gradually reopening. There is a tarmac road being laid through town, and the open spaces, the narrow flat-bottomed gullies that bisect the town, have been emptied of their vast drifts of rubbish.

Tal Afar is an interesting case history. It is in this town of 200,000 that the US forces first attempted the policy of "clear, hold, build", putting US troops into "outposts" among the population - the same policy being attempted with less success so far in the capital, Baghdad. It is here too - as well as in the neighbouring city of Mosul - that signs of a war-weariness may at last be in evidence, although whether it is strong enough to end the killing is not clear.

For while Tal Afar is not immune from occasional attacks - a suicide bomber with an explosive vest hit a Shia wedding party on Thursday - incidents of violence have declined sharply.

And so Tal Afar, along with the rest of western Nineveh province, has become one of the few stories of success, amid a generally bleak picture.

Those who have returned so far - 20-30 families of up to 10 members a week - have come of their own accord. Now, bolstered by the success, the town's civil and military officials are planning a far more ambitious effort: to persuade some 25,000 Sunnis who fled to Mosul to come back, by offering a "soft amnesty" to any not deeply "embedded in insurgent violence".

To encourage families to return, they are being offered 1m dinars each - around £400 - by the central government (although none of those who have returned so far have yet seen any money). The Iraqi army has offered to contract trucks to help transport the belongings of those who wish to return.

There is a final incentive. Houses empty since the fighting in 2005 will be made available to those coming home.