FEATURE-Peace dividend in Iraq's Basra faces obstacles

By Ian Simpson

BASRA, Iraq, July 11 (Reuters) - Property prices are creeping higher, shops are staying open later and more schoolchildren are skipping class to help out in their parents' businesses.

Three months after a security crackdown in Iraq's oil capital of Basra, there are signs of economic revival. But investment to help secure the peace faces hurdles from bureaucratic inertia, lack of technical skills and foreign businesses' uncertainty about whether the calm will hold.

"If you get security, you get everything," Mizher Salam, a 32-year-old furniture store owner, said while taking a break from putting together bed frames.

With violence in Iraq at four-year lows, Basra is an example of the obstacles the country faces as it edges toward recovery from the turmoil that followed the U.S.-led invasion in 2003.

But business owners said decrepit infrastructure, including electricity limited to a few hours a day, was the biggest hindrance, especially during summer heat that hit 43 degrees Celsius (110 Fahrenheit) this week.

"We don't want something impossible. Electricity, security and a good job. That's all," said Falah Hassan, the 24-year-old manager of a food store on the bustling Route 6 highway.

Creating jobs and improving power and water supplies would be the best way to build on a government offensive in late March and April that broke the grip Shi'ite militias had held on Iraq's second-biggest city, officials say.

"People are now looking forward to the next phase, the next stage of their lives, when Basra will become more prosperous," provincial governor Mohammed al-Waeli told Reuters.