U.S. PAYS RAG-TAG FORCE $300 A MONTH TO GUARD SADR CITY

Rag-tag force watches over Iraq militia hotspot

U.S.-funded patrols feature ex-militants, AK-47s, vodka-branded ball caps

The poor, east Baghdad slum of two million people has largely been outside the government's control for years.

U.S. forces are paying local residents $300 a month to guard their area and search vehicles for guns or explosives.

The neighborhood guard in Sadr City is the first attempt to set up such a force in the Baghdad stronghold of al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia.

Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25384295/

BAGHDAD - A rag-tag band of men toting AK-47s at a checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadr City forms part of a plan to strengthen the Iraqi army's hold over a bastion of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

The men, wearing tan uniforms and baseball caps with "Smirnoff" inexplicably blazoned across them, belong to one of the first groups of a new neighborhood guard to take to the streets of the sprawling district under a U.S.-funded program.

U.S.-backed neighborhood patrol units, sometimes called "Sons of Iraq", have spread in mainly Sunni Arab areas of Iraq to beef up security and combat al-Qaida insurgents.
The U.S. military says such groups helped cut violence in Iraq to its lowest level in more than four years in May.