Baghdad, Iraq ? The U.S. military and its Iraq partners in a month-old Baghdad security crackdown have been turning marketplaces – a favorite target of al-Qaida and Sunni insurgent suicide car bombers – into pedestrian-only zones and commerce is reviving dramatically in the capital, the U.S. military said Thursday.

“There’s a sense of suspense in the air. A sense of anticipation and expectation (of decreased violence) with the Iraqi people,” Maj. Gen. Joseph F. Fil Jr. told reporters

“I think it is being met by this operation,” said the general, who is in charge of Baghdad.

But he, like other top military officials, cautioned against expecting quick overall success from the third and perhaps last-chance effort to curb sectarian violence that has shaken Baghdad and its residents.

“The enemy has not quit the battlefield by any means. In some ways he’s fighting back harder than he ever was,” he said at a luncheon meeting.

With Congress pressing to set a date for a U.S. troop withdrawal by next year, Fil said he found it impossible to predict if the mission in Iraq could be completed successfully by that deadline.

“My guess is things are going to be substantially better in 2008. But whether or not we will be finished here, I don’t think we can answer now,” he said. “We weren’t finished in Germany (in five years), we weren’t finished in Japan, we weren’t finished in Korea, we weren’t finished in Bosnia. I don’t know why we would expect to be finished here.”