BAGHDAD: The familiar complaints are still to be heard on Baghdad streets. "There's no electricity, no security, no fuel". I haven't been paid in months." Talk is of want, of shortage. Of fear.

Opposition to the US-led war, which only a year ago ended three decades of repressive rule by the Tikrit dictator and his mob, is surprisingly scarce. Opposition to the US-dominated occupation of Iraq by foreign military forces seems to be on everybody's lips.

Citizens of the US-controlled zones particularly lament the gung-ho attitude and the looming military presence of the sometimes very young soldiers manning the ever-present checkpoints.

There are many reasons for the sense of disappointment that seems to have settled on the shoulders of Iraqis. Chief among these is the bitter knowledge that daily life in today's Iraq is marked by violence and by shortage.

"People here are tired," says one foreign observer in the Iraqi capital. "Tired of war, tired of conflict... they've just had enough of the daily fight against fear and the struggle to get even the most basic necessities of life."

A year ago, Iraq was a country where joking about the president carried a death sentence and where a secret police force spread terror. Today, politics can be broached in the open.

Figures who would have opposed Saddam, including Shia Muslims and members of other religious and ethnic groups, can now speak of the future of Iraq without fear of being overheard and punished. So they are prepared to put up with the US occupation. For now, at least.

But for those outside the political spectrum, such as 26-year-old IT instructor Dina from Baghdad, it's a very different story. From her point of view, the Iraq of today is a country that offers no future.

Dina, a Christian, lost her job when looters destroyed the computer laboratory where she worked on the very first day of the US invasion. Now, tired of living in fear of attack from criminal gangs, she and her mother are preparing to flee Iraq in hope of better opportunities in Jordan.

Dina's mother also has little to bind her to her homeland. The former architectural draftswoman has been receiving a monthly stipend from her government job, despite not working.

The boredom is beginning to get to her. "The inactivity is what's driving me mad", she says. Meanwhile, as some like Dina and her mother emigrate, politically active Iraqis who fled the country to Iran or Arab nations under threat of death and torture are returning in their droves.

"Where is the state?" asks an elderly street-trader in Fallujah. "Where is the public order?" Fallujah has been the scene of some of the worst outbreaks of violence since the war 'officially' ended.

Like the angry trader, many in Iraq find it hard to come to terms with the power vacuum that has beset Iraq since the end of three decades of oppression. Being told by US soldiers that they should not make such a fuss, that the crime rate in their cities is no worse than that of Los Angeles or Chicago, only stokes their anger.

Since the beginning of the 1980s Iraq has had no significant period of stability. Years of war, revolution, brutal oppression, economic sanctions and finally, the complete breakdown of the state apparatus, have scored deep marks on the Iraqi psyche.

Such a feeling of constant threat has taught Iraqis to keep politics well apart from the management of their day-to-day lives. Ideologies, such as the hollow and ultimately self-interested propaganda vow of the Saddam clique to send an army to Jerusalem, are frowned upon in today's Iraq.

What is left is religion - already a valuable outlet for daily frustration in the time of the former regime. What is left is awareness of ones own roots - the tribe, the community of faith that can offer solace and protection in times of uncertainty. -dpa