| Scott Thomas now writing for France24? |
Ask anyone and they will tell you there is complete security in their corner of central Baghdad -- no militias, no insurgents, no worries. But no one calls this a victory for the five-month-old Baghdad security plan, and the US soldiers who police Al-Hurriya are convinced that most of its people are in the grip, or on the payroll, of a shadowy militia.
"The reason they say it's safe is that all the Sunnis they worry about -- neighbours they lived with for generations -- are dead," Lieutenant William Cone of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne said. "The Mahdi Army will come and beat the hell out of them if they talk."