'Great place to live': US troops exit Sadr City

As recently as a year ago, it would have been unimaginable to hear an American soldier voicing sadness on leaving Sadr City, but Captain Christopher Clyde says he enjoyed his time here.

"It was a great place to live," remarks the 35-year-old, as his troops pack up behind him, preparing for the transfer of Joint Security Station (JSS) Commanche as part of Tuesday's US pullout from Iraqi cities.

"My soldiers have loved living here; they've enjoyed it. And so from that aspect, I think it's a little bittersweet for the guys to have to leave," he says of their base in the sprawling Shiite working-class district.

JSS Commanche, situated on the southern edge of Sadr City, is the last such American base in the area to close, with Clyde estimating that his men would move out on Saturday, three days before the deadline.

A JSS is a small urban military base where US and Iraqi soldiers, operating under an Iraqi flag, carry out joint patrols.

Many rooms in Commanche's living quarters house several soldiers. There are no dedicated offices, so bedrooms double as work spaces.

As packing continues inside, soldiers lay their bags outside the MRAPs -- Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles -- that will take them to their new home at JSS Shields, outside the capital.

In the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion, American forces were welcomed in Sadr City, an area of northeastern Baghdad that is home to around 1.3 million people.

Soon afterwards, however, the district became the base of radical anti-US Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose Mahdi Army militia was repeatedly accused of kidnapping and murdering Sunnis and attacking US troops during the sectarian violence that ravaged Iraq in 2006 and 2007.

The group was eventually routed by US-backed Iraqi forces in the spring of 2008 in major operations that left hundreds of people dead.

Along with having enjoyed the base itself, which will be transferred to the Iraqi ministry of agriculture, Clyde says he is happy with security improvements seen on the ground.

"I'm not getting shot as much," Clyde replies with a laugh when asked how he characterises the progress in the area. "I don't know how better to say it than that."

But he adds: "The things I see are families in the market buying stuff, late into the night. I see fathers and sons and mothers and daughters all together out drinking coffee and drinking chai (tea) on the street.

"The security situation here right now is light years ahead of where it was just two years ago when I was here in Iraq, and to see it now is absolutely amazing."

On Wednesday, however, the fragility of Iraq's security situation was underscored by a massive bomb in a Sadr City market that killed at least 62 people and wounded 150.

With the US pullout, stemming from a bilateral agreement signed in November that calls for the withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011, Iraq will take sole responsibility for security in Sadr City, and urban areas nationwide.

"That's not a process that we're afraid of," Clyde says of Iraq's beefed-up security duties.

"My soldiers are not only all for it when they speak, but they actually come back from missions with a very satisfied look on their face from the progress that they see out of their Iraqi Army counterparts."

Sergeant First Class Jason Peck, 33, conceded that Sadr City was "better than I expected" when he arrived in March on his first tour in Iraq.

"I thought it would be much worse than it is," Peck said, standing alongside trucks being loaded with shoulder-height T-walls, the concrete blast barriers that are a common sight throughout Baghdad.

"You can tell that a lot of progress has been made."