Improved security sees Iraq open for business again

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2008

BAGHDAD (AFP) — Iraqi businessman Saad al-Sudani is confident that Iraq's commercial climate is edging towards normalcy but the merchant also knows just how quickly it can all go wrong again.

Four months ago the meat and dairy supplier suffered a loss of almost one million dollars when US soldiers stormed and commandeered his warehouse filled with perishables, including cheese which he says they stuffed into sandbags.

American forces were at the time locked in fierce street battles with the Mahdi Army, the 60,000-strong militia of radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, for the control of a shanty slum of two million residents in east Baghdad.

Sudani, 46, had stored much of his produce for distribution in the capital in the tallest building in Sadr City's Jameela...