Presence of U.S. troops adds calm

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THE WASHINGTON TIMES

BAGHDAD -- Iraqis living in Baghdad's most violent neighborhoods have been able to leave their homes safely for the first time in months, as American foot patrols moved in as part of a beefed-up security plan.

An additional 3,700 U.S. troops deployed in the capital in the past two days to join the roughly 56,000 U.S. and Iraqi troops already in the city.

The deployment is part of a six-week security operation intended to stop sectarian killings.

"Everybody knows that if Americans are there, then it is safe," said one young man who had just brought his pregnant wife home from the hospital.

The militias in his southern Baghdad neighborhood left the moment the Americans arrived on Monday, he said.

"There were no clashes with the militias because of the heavy power the Americans have," he said, asking that his name not be used. "They just come in and stay in place and people start going out and feeling free."

In the Sunni neighborhood of Ghazaliya in western Baghdad where insurgents had threatened residents with death if they defied them, shops that had been shuttered for months started to open and the men began to venture outside.

One former military officer, Hassam Abdul Emir, said his family and others had been surviving on government-supplied food rations that they were able to get two months ago.

He said that there had been almost no electricity or water in that time because government workers were too frightened to enter the area.