NAJAF, IRAQ, AUG. 27, 2004 - A lone man walks through a devastated business and residential street west of the Imam Ali shrine. The street was a front-line fighting position for the American Army and Mahdi Army fighters during a nearly three-week battle that left much of the old city and surrounding neighborhoods in ruins. A peace deal, brokered by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani with the militant cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, allowed residents to emerge from refuge outside the city or hiding within it to survey their homes and businesses in the battleground.