Men sit outside shisha bars and women in hijabs push strollers past Middle Eastern restaurants and pastry shops in Berlin's Sonnenallee, a wide avenue which has become a symbol of how much Germany has changed in the last decade.

Many came during the huge migrant influx of 2015, when a million people arrived in a matter of months -- mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.

For barber Moustafa Mohmmad, 26, who fled the ruins of Syria's Aleppo, it is a home from home, "a kind of Arab street" where he can find sweets from Damascus and Aleppo-style barbecue.

To others it is a byword for integration gone wrong and disorienting change that has divided the country and helped make the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) the second biggest party.

"We can do this," Angela Merkel famously declared on August 31, 2015 as columns of desperate people walked through the Balkans towards Germany.

Civil wars were raging in Syria and Afghanistan, driving the largest wave of refugees since World War II, with the Mediterranean Sea becoming a mass grave.

Four days later the then chancellor took the fateful decision to keep the Austria border open, eventually letting in more than one million asylum seekers.

German volunteers greeted trainloads of new arrivals with water and teddy bears, an outpouring of compassion that was too good to last.

Merkel later wrote that "no phrase has been thrown back at me with quite such virulence" as "wir schaffen das" (We can do this). "No phrase has been so polarising."

- Immigration crackdown -

Ten years on, many bitterly complain that services, from childcare to housing, have been stretched to breaking point.

Others point to the many migrant success stories, the joys of a more cosmopolitan country, and newcomers plugging gaps in the ageing labour market.

But the country's current leader, Friedrich Merz, is not convinced, a view shared by a large majority of Germans, according to a Welt TV poll Friday that found 71 percent felt Merkel was too optimistic.

Merz has lost little time undoing Merkel's legacy since coming to power in May. His coalition government has cracked down hard with stricter border controls, tougher residency and citizenship rules and even deported migrants to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan.

He insists that strong measures are needed to halt the rise of the AfD and soothe fears inflamed by stabbings and car-ramming attacks blamed on migrants.

In one especially horrific incident this year in the southern city of Aschaffenburg, a mentally ill Afghan is accused of attacking nursery school children with a knife, killing a two-year-old boy and a German man who tried to protect the toddlers.

Asked recently about Merkel's declaration, Merz said Germany had "clearly not" managed "to do it". "We must control immigration. And we must ensure that those who come to us are well integrated."

- 'I feel part of community' -

Even to virulent critics of immigration, Syrian restaurateur Malakeh Jazmati, 38, ticks most integration boxes.

She came to Berlin in 2015 and quickly started a catering business with her husband. Two years later she was serving food to Merkel.

In 2018 she opened the Malakeh restaurant, among the most beloved of Berlin's new Syrian eateries.

"The German people are open to trying something new," she said, preparing batata harra, a potato appetiser scattered with pomegranate seeds.

Jazmati said her life in Germany........

© Al Monitor