The British forces have finally handed over control to the locals in Iraq's Basra and some British papers are cautiously optimistic. But their legacy after four and a half years in this southern province is less than impressive to the new police commander, Jalil Khalaf.

"They left me militia, they left me gangsters, and they left me all the troubles in the world," Khalif complains in a film by Britain's Guardian Films and ITV News, which can be viewed on the Observer website.

While British foreign minister David Miliband admits that Basra is not "a land of milk and honey", he still insists it was the right time for the handover. Meanwhile, Khalaf lists some of problems the province is now facing. One of them is getting the control back from the Shia militia, unintentionally armed and trained by the British, who apparently didn't realise the recruits could be loyal to their parties and groups, rather than the state authorities.

Another is the increasing number of women being killed for being 'immoral'. And this problem is not confined to Basra, according to the report by Guardian's Mark Lattimer.

Bush's promise in 2004 to end "the systematic use of rape by Saddam's former regime to dishonour families" has come to nothing. The irony is that the situation is now much worse than in Saddam's era, when Iraqi women were considered the most liberated in the Middle East, says Lattimer.

Nowadays, most women in Iraq only move around with a male escort. Rape is commonly committed by all armed groups, even those with connections to the government, and women are being killed in increasing numbers.

"It is getting worse, especially the burnings (of women)," Lattimer quotes Khanim Rahim Latif, the manager of Asuda, an Iraqi organisation that works to combat violence against women, as saying.

Khanim cites the case of a man who accused his sister of adultery: "When we asked him why he wanted to kill his sister, he said, 'Because it is now a democracy in Iraq'. He thought that democracy meant he could do whatever he wanted."

Nevertheless, recently the country has seen less violence, with the lowest numbers of military and civilian deaths and attacks on foreign troops recorded for some time. It's not just Baghdad. Germany's Der Spiegel gives an account of an improved situation in Rawah, the town in the Anbar province, while Britain's Economist reports on the previously "most dangerous and xenophobic city in Iraq" - Falluja and its "tentative peace".

James Forsyth in Britain's Guardian criticises the British press for not carrying enough coverage of these, as well as more negative developments in Iraq, but the U.S. at least has done a somewhat better job, he says.

Stories of Baghdad's small businesses, which have until now profited from the high death tolls, switching to more pleasant sources of income make encouraging reading. Ibrahim Khalaf Abbas, who had been furniture and equipment for mourning ceremonies, is now catering for wedding parties, writes LA Times.

Washington Post reports on security improvements in Baghdad area, which are probably due to the city's separation into Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods. This has prompted the Iraqi government to invite Iraqi refugees in Syria back home, with some dubious results.

Some of them heeded the call, only to find their homes looted, destroyed or other occupants living there.

"It's very easy to say, 'Come home.' But come home where, and how? It's much more complex than that," says Guy Siri, U.N. deputy humanitarian coordinator in Iraq, in the article. The reason for returning may be improved security, but the government is mainly doing it to show it's "doing something" and to look good, according to Herve Richard-Thomas from the U.S. relief agency International Medical Corps.

Omar Qasim is one of the Iraqi refugees in Syria who decided to stay put for now. He wants to go back to his country one day but, as he tells the Post, "the current calm in Baghdad is the calm before the storm."

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