The new U.S. commander for Iraq, in just his first month, is turning Baghdad into a giant neighborhood–watch program. Gone is a strategy of troops sweeping a neighborhood and then returning to a garrison miles away.

Army Gen. David Petraeus, who took command Feb. 10, has dispatched soldiers to critical points around Baghdad known for Sunni-Shiite violence — and kept them there. The command has set up 24 joint security stations to date, with plans for more than 70.

The result: In the early stages of Operation Enforcing the Law, the military is seeing a big drop in insurgent attacks on civilians. The command says murders and executions dropped by 50 percent in the past two weeks. Iraq suffered an average 1,200 attacks on civilians each week in January and February.

“In areas where we have been able to add military forces in Baghdad, the level of violence has gone down dramatically,” said retired Gen. John Keane, former Army vice chief of staff. He just finished a two-week inspection of Iraq at Petraeus’ invitation.

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“The early signs are positive,” he said. “I think they are indisputable. But it is much too early yet to predict.”

The troop surge in Baghdad, however, has not reduced U.S. deaths countrywide. Some Sunni insurgents and al-Qaida terrorists have moved north to attack Americans in Diyala Province. The result, 46 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq this month, meaning March is on track for an above-average death toll.

“I don’t think these things have much chance of success,” said retired Army Col. Douglas A. Macgregor, the author of books on reforming the Army. “I’m just hoping nothing terribly horrible happens. It’s far too late in the game. These are things that might have had some chance of success in early 2003 before we created this rebellion against ourselves with brutality against Arabs.”

A somewhat simplistic explanation of the old strategy goes this way: Build up the 320,000 Iraq Security Force, while keeping U.S. force levels as low as possible.

“Our failure to secure the population, to bring down the level of violence, to focus on the insurgency, which we never did, was a serious strategic mistake,” Keane said. “I think the thing every single one of us who has looked at this closely concludes is that security becomes the precondition for economic, political and social progress. We tried to do this on the cheap and it backfired.”

The replacement strategy: Increase U.S. forces by 30,000, to around 160,000 by May, and secure the Iraqi population.

Retired Maj. Gen. Robert Scales was one of the advisers for the Army’s new counterinsurgency manual, produced by Petraeus last year when he commanded the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

“When you start controlling an area, you begin to gain trust and the population throws itself over to your side and intelligence is not a problem,” said Scales, a former commandant of the Army War College. “The coin of the realm is trust. It’s all about trust.”

rscarborough@dcexaminer.com