Iraqi bulls.(economic conditions)

The brochure is slick, even by American standards, featuring colorful logos and a photograph of a river flowing toward a gorgeous sunset. Other than the mosque on a bluff overlooking the water, the advertisement is indistinguishable from any other commercial flyer hawking consumer debit cards. But this one is being circulated in the southern Iraqi port city of Basra.

"We want to live like Americans, with credit and easy transactions," says Zuhair Ali Akbair, general manager of the Basra branch of Iraq's Central Bank. The cards, along with the roughly 200 machines that read them, could hit the Arab street as early as mid May, he adds. There's just one problem: the Ministry of Finance in Baghdad will not approve the card's release.

"Baghdad wants debit cards before we get them in Basra. It feels it has to be first in everything," notes Abdul Hafiz Al-Atti, director of the Basra Business Council and a member of the city's Board of Trade. "They are jealous of us. They know, unlike them, our security situation is good and we're ready for development."

Atti might be a little premature in his assessment of the investment climate in this city of 1.5 million people. To visit him in the swank, wood-paneled offices of the Basra Business Center, located in the center of town, I had to pass through a gauntlet of British soldiers and flak-jacketed private security guards. Still, his comments reflect a general sense of optimism percolating through the city's financial class: With terrorism less of a concern, Basra is open for business, and yearning for foreign investment.

"This city used to be the trading center of the Middle East, and inshallah we will be again," Atti enthuses. "We must be open to the entire world," says Alaa Turej, a spokesman for the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, one of the many religious parties that now dominate Basra. (Most Islamic political groups reject socialism and embrace free enterprise.)

On the surface, the city hardly seems a promising investment environment. Like most of Iraq, it is afflicted by crumbling buildings, a nonexistent sewage system, and trash that chokes streets and canals. "Saddam Hussein destroyed this city," Akbair relates. "Our economy was consumed by his wars, and then he starved us of funding for essential services." Moreover, notes Atti, "for the last 15 years, the regime isolated us from the outside world, cutting us off from access to international media and the Internet."

Indeed, though numerous Internet cafes (and a plethora of home satellite dishes) have sprung up since the city's liberation two years ago, Basra's population is largely computer ...