BAQUBAH, IRAQ -- Residents of New Baqubah woke up Wednesday to a scene they had never seen before: hundreds of Iraqi national police 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, while the force sent from Baghdad to protect them is overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim.
But the newly arrived police force was all business Wednesday. The battalion commander, a colonel who gave his name only as Ali, summoned community leaders to a meeting at the neighborhood police station.