Iraq battles to return to normality A grey-suited Iraqi security official points a small metal wand away from his midriff and walks along the length of the coach stopped at his central Baghdad checkpoint. He then waves the vehicle on, satisfied that his device has not sensed a car bomb like those that killed dozens of people in the capital and around the country last week. But like other assurances of security in a nation trying to transform from war-torn, foreign-occupied land to regional power, the officer's all-clear is less than convincing. His explosive detector - whose use across Baghdad makes it key for protecting an Arab League summit that ends on Thursday - is of a type derided as ineffective by military observers and scientists. "Ninety per cent of the security is rubbish," sighed a young information technology specialist named Ahmed, when asked about the checkpoints peppering the city for the meeting. We have the numbers but we don't have the expertise. The Arab League summit - the first in Iraq since Saddam Hussein, the former dictator, invaded Kuwait in 1990 - has sharpened the contrast between the country's goals and the difficulties it faces achieving them. Billed as Iraq's ceremonial re-emergence as a functioning nation and geopolitical force after the withdrawal of US troops in December, the months leading up to the summit have instead seen bloodshed and political turmoil. An analyst and journalist, Rami Khouri, wrote, in an article published this week, that Iraq was plagued by problems including "chronic violence, deep internal mistrust ... lingering terrorism, widespread corruption and inefficiency. "Ironically, and sadly, Iraq still reflects all the negative trends that have plagued the entire Arab world for decades, and that finally led to the current wave of populist uprisings," he said. As Arab League foreign ministers met on Wednesday in the sprawling and grandiose Republican palace, once Saddam's main base and then the US civilian administration headquarters after the 2003 invasion, senior Iraqi officials were keen to present the occasion as a clear break with a murderous recent past. Nouri al-Maliki, prime minister, referred to Baghdad by its historic name of "City of Peace," while Hoshyar Zebari, foreign minister spoke of the gathering's "special meaning" after Iraq's "years of being away from the Arab world." Yet for all the manifest improvements in a country that was deep in a sectarian civil war five years ago, much of Iraq's progress remains fragile and nuanced. Money is flowing in from oil exports that topped $6.5bn in the month of February alone - but is also pouring out to satisfy $17bn in reparations still owed to Kuwait for the invasion, as well as to pay other Saddam-era compensation, such as to Egyptian workers owed years of remittances. In another sign of a continued financial precariousness, Rafie al-Esawi, Iraq's finance minister, issued a call this week for fellow Arab states to forgive huge debts run up during the Saddam years, with Saudi Arabia alone owed $30bn as of last year. Iraq's power-sharing government - widely seen as necessary in this religiously and ethnically diverse nation - is still reeling from a political crisis that erupted within days of the last US troops leaving. Tarek al-Hashimi, the vice-president and a Sunni Muslim fled Baghdad, accusing Mr Maliki, a Shia, of orchestrating a warrant to arrest him on fabricated terrorism charges - allegations that the prime minister's side denies. The dispute plays into wider concerns that tensions between and within Shia, Sunni and Kurdish political factions could turn worthy efforts at governmental plurality into a permanent state of dysfunction. Outside the corridors of political power, relief that Iraq is free of both dictatorship and a foreign army is qualified by unease over security and frustration at problems with basic infrastructure. At a shop in Baghdad's Mansour district, warm and unlit from one of the power cuts that typically last hours each day, a 25-year-old driver named Muntassar al-Karadi, said the $500m officially spent on the Arab League summit could have been much better used. "It would have been better if such a large amount were put into bringing electricity to the people," he said. Iraq's situation may in some respects resemble that of other countries enveloped in the Middle Eastern uprisings of the past 15 months - but it has arrived there by another route and so is on a distinctive and unpredictable journey all of its own. As Fadel Hadi, owner of a mobile phone shop, put it: "In Iraq, everything is different."