The elegant arch entitled 'The Unknown Soldier' was a Baghdad landmark for more than 20 years. Now its designer, Rifat Chadirji, has returned to rebuild it in the hope of resurrecting some of his beloved citys former glory.

He has been commissioned by the government to reconstruct the statue, a modernist brick monument modeled on the ancient arch of Ctesiphon south of Baghdad, and is working on the preliminary blueprints.

'I am very happy about this commission and the interest in rebuilding the Unknown Soldier, which was so rudely removed,' the 82-year-old architect told reporters in Baghdad earlier this month.

'I want to rebuild it quickly so I can live to see every moment of this important event. This is just as important to me now as it was when I built it the first time.' The statues journey follows the same tragic trajectory as Iraq, from the countrys first military coup in the 1950s to the nightmarish decades of war and sanctions under Saddam.

The statue was commissioned by nationalist leader Abdelkarim Qassim in 1958 and officially inaugurated in Firdos Square the following year to glorify the first anniversary of the military coup that overthrew the monarchy.

Over the next 20 years Chadirji, who comes from a well-known centuries-old Baghdad family and was educated in England, built several of the citys landmarks in a modern style inspired by ancient Iraqi motifs.

'His goal was not to repeat the past but to translate the spirit of the past into a modern context,' says Caecilia Pieri, a Paris-based scholar who has written a book on modern Baghdad architecture.

As an example she points to a telecommunications building in central Baghdad, a tower with arches inspired by the centuries-old citadels found in Iraqs oldest cities.

But as Chadirji built newer and more innovative buildings the countrys politics grew more and more volatile, with one coup giving way to another in the 1960s and the rise and radicalisation of the Baath Party in the 1970s.

Chadirji was jailed in Iraqs infamous Abu Ghraib prison shortly before Saddam came to power in 1978. He remained there for 20 months and wrote about the experience in a book called 'The Wall Between Two Darknesses.' Everything has been almost completely destroyed.

In it he relates the story of his release shortly after taking power Saddam told his lieutenants he wanted to hire Iraqs greatest builder to prepare the capital for an international conference.

When they told him Chadirji was in Abu Ghraib the dictator had him brought to the presidential palace in his prison fatigues.

Chadirji moved to Beirut a few years later and lived abroad during most of the devastating 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, the 1990 Gulf War, the decade of international sanctions, and the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam.

Bulldozers destroyed the statue soon after Chadirjis departure, when Saddam built a new Unknown Soldier monument a massive, garish, clam-shaped building near where the dictator would hold mass rallies and military marches.

Chadirjis monument was replaced by a statue of Saddam, one of thousands erected across the city, the same statue that was torn down on April 9, 2003 in what became an iconic image of the fall of Baghdad.

When Chadirji returned to Baghdad earlier this year the violence unleashed by the invasion had mostly been brought to heel by US and Iraqi forces, but the scars of the past run deep across the capital.

The telecommunications building today stands derelict over the Tigris river with jagged, gaping holes left from the US bombing of Baghdad in 2003.

The elegant traffic circles in central Baghdad that were once symbols of a new, forward-looking Iraq are today clogged with traffic, guarded by police and army checkpoints and decked with snarls of barbed wire.

'I cannot believe what has happened to the buildings in Baghdad, everything has been almost completely destroyed,' Chadirji said.

'The proper rebuilding is only half of the project, the other half, which is most important, is to keep it and take care of it, because it is part of the memory of the people and the society.' 'A people that cannot take care of its creations is a people without a memory. Chadirji studiously avoids any talk of politics, past or present, and he remains optimistic that Baghdads former beauty may one day return.

'In 1950 I went to Germany and I found areas that had been completely flattened, but in the 1960s I found the same places had beautiful buildings and well-ordered streets,' he said.

'The reason was that there was a developed society with the freedom to create.'