Baqubah Iraq

Residents of New Baqubah woke up Wednesday to a sight they had never seen before: hundreds of Iraqi national police officers blanketing the neighborhood in a city that until last year was a center of the Sunni Arab-driven insurgency. For many of them, it was not a comforting sight. Most of the upscale neighborhood's doctors, teachers and retired military officers are Sunni Muslims, and the force sent from Baghdad to protect them is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim.

Lt. Qusai had his doubts last week when he took his men into an insurgent haven in the western part of this city for the first time. "Honestly, I thought this operation would never be successful because I had information that Al Qaeda had big guns and RPGs," rocket-propelled grenades, said the Iraqi army commander who provided only one name. "We thought that all the people here are terrorists and everyone is bad, even the women and children."

baqubah, iraq -- Iraq's deputy prime minister flew here Sunday under heavy guard with promises of food, jobs and cash for a city emerging from the sway of Sunni Arab militants largely driven out by U.S.-led troops. What he got was an earful.