Baghdad - On December 11 a lone male parked his car outside the Abdullah Restaurant, on the outskirts of the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk.

Inside, among dozens of families celebrating the Eid al-Adha feast, local Arab and Kurdish politicians were reportedly meeting to discuss how the city might acceptably divide up its massive oil wealth.

The man entered the building and blew himself up.

At least 45 people died in the blast, and more than 100 were injured. Local politicians quickly blamed al-Qaeda for the attack.

In the by-now-familiar television pictures of the inside of a bombed-out Iraqi meeting place, the blood and broken glass perhaps reflected as accurately as anything the predicament of the country as 2008 comes to a close: The beginnings of normal political life are still being sickeningly impeded by those bent on sectarian provocation.

Violence in Kirkuk, where ethnic gerrymandering by the Saddam Hussein regime has left a bloody legacy, is added to by a steady stream of casualties in Baghdad, Baquba and Mosul.

The country's Christian population, once 1.3 million strong, has been subjected to widespread and systematic violence in recent months.

But despite the bloodshed, 2008 was a year of positive landmarks pointing the way toward the end of Iraq's five-year-war.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), signed after much parliamentary turmoil in November, formalized how and when US forces will leave the country they invaded in 2003.

The passing of the security deal was no doubt helped by the significant drop in violence in Iraq over the year, as the effects of the US Army's 2007 surge strategy were felt.

Innocent civilians are still dying in Iraq at the tragic rate of around 500 a month - but the situation is a drastic improvement on the violence in the second half of 2006, when some 20,000 Iraqis perished.

The gains brought by the surge are now being cashed in by the Western coalition's armies. If the SOFA deal is passed by a national referendum in mid-2009, US forces will be out by 2011.

The British will be gone by the middle of next year. The Poles, the Spanish, the Australians, and other members of the erstwhile "coalition of the willing" are all long departed.

In their place are the increasingly confident and capable Iraqi Security Forces, now around 600,000 strong, backed by the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who himself is increasingly willing to use them to extend Baghdad's writ where it could not have run before.

In March, the Iraqi army faced down Basra cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's private militia, the Mahdi Army, in its first major operation since the US invasion. The army regained control of the city by April.

The so-called Battle of Basra demonstrated to Iraq and the world that the al-Maliki government meant business - something confirmed by the welcome re-opening of a number of Arab embassies in the capital during the course of the year.

In the midst of the political drama and ongoing violence, Iraqis have developed a kind of pragmatic view of where Iraq goes in 2009 - no doubt mindful of horrors past.

Ghazwan al-Khalidi, 24, a university student, said that fewer sectarian killings and kidnappings mean that Iraqis can now "move from Sunni to Shiite districts without fake ID cards to avoid falling foul of local militias."

"The reduction in the level of violence in Iraq during the year has smoothed the path ahead of the government in pursuing progress in other areas," said Hussein Hafez, a political science professor at Baghdad university.

Hopes that a downturn in attacks can translate into better political cooperation are evident.

"The improvement of peace and security in Iraq promises to give greater credence to the process of cooperation between the government and other political forces," said Amina Sadiq, a civil servant.

But with basic necessities such as electricity still lacking, more prosaic items are likely to remain high up the agenda for 2009. Parts of Baghdad still only receive around 10 hours of electricity a day.

"I'm of the opinion that, after having security, Iraqis will be primarily concerned with improving energy, electricity and health services," said Hafez.

The benefits of the surge, however, may yet prove to be short- lived. As the Abdullah Restaurant attack showed, "security" can hardly be taken for granted.

Provincial elections are due in Iraq on January 31. If Sunni Arabs in places like Kirkuk choose to participate, they could be a significant step forward in the democratic process.

If sectarian provocateurs like al-Qaeda have their way, they could be a bloodbath. It's in the balance. (dpa)