"When I heard that Saddam's regime had fallen I suddenly had an urge to bring children into the world," said 20-year-old Bushara, who sells tomatoes and onions on the streets of Baghdad.

Clad in black from head to toe as she sat on the roadside, Bushara accused Saddam's Sunni-dominated regime of being behind the poverty endured by her and others who live in the sprawling shantytowns on the capital's outskirts.

"I pray to God he's dead. He drove us into poverty," Bushara said.

After enduring three terrifying weeks of US and British bombings against Saddam's palaces and ministries, Bushara now goes to bed to the sound of shootings around the slums.

She blamed the gunfights on "Wahhabis," or followers of the rigid form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.

"These are Wahhabis. Saddam paid them millions of dinars before the war to destroy our stores and rob our homes if he went away. It was the last nail he could drive into us," she said.

Ibtisam Mohammad, 34, also hopes for a better future without Saddam.

"I've been asking God for days to give us a Shiite president to take care of our community and our children," she said.

Illiterate and married with four children, Ibtisam said she was grateful to the US troops who freeing the Shiites of Saddam, although she regretted that the Americans' arrival has meant chaos.

"If it's going to be like this, it would be better for them to go," she said. "Iraq's poor have suffered so much that we live like dead people."

Ibtisam said she had to pay 30,000 dinars, about nine dollars, for rent -- a not insignificant sum considering she is the only member of the family who works, "selling whatever" in the market of Saddam City, the Shiite slum of two million people on Baghdad's northern outskirts.

Saddam City -- which residents have renamed Al-Sadr City in honor of a slain Shiite leader -- was among the first areas of Baghdad to fall to US troops.

But despite their joy at being rid of Saddam, the women are also pained at seeing Baghdad ransacked, with the universities emptied and the museums looted of ancient treasures.

"What future can our children hope for without any education or culture?" asked Ibtisam.

"We're not thieves; they're sent by Saddam," she said, rejecting reports by Baghdad shopkeepers that most of the looters come from Saddam City.

"Besides, the Americans are opening the doors to the thieves, so they can tell the whole world, 'Look at the Iraqis, they're like animals, we're going to give them a new government.'"

Some women are cautious about talking already of a post-Saddam era.

Harria Rafim, a widow raising six children alone, said Saddam "is too smart to die like this."

"I don't think it's so easy to get rid of him. And if he comes back, everyone here who's celebrated his overthrow will be dead," she said.

SPACE.WIRE