This is day two for us inside the Sadr City Joint Security Station, writes Fox News correspondent David Mac Dougall in Sadr City.
This morning cameraman Michael Pohl and I went on patrol with troopers from the 82nd Airborne. It was a dismounted patrol - which means we drove into the streets, got out, and walked around.
It's been more than two years since I was last in Sadr City - yet it's been in the news so much. People were curious about the soldiers - Iraqi and US - coming out of their homes and shops to see what was going on in the street.
Sadr City is home to around 2.5 million people - most living in what we consider poverty. The good roads have concrete, the bad roads are just dirt.
We dismounted in the middle of a market - people selling produce like lettuce and cucumber - small herds of goats wandering around, people shopping. We saw a flour mill, workers outside loading up bags of flour for delivery.
This was a busy industrious part of the city which could have been a market in any Arab city like Jerusalem Cairo or Damascus. I was expecting something worse after so much violence and so much misery in the last few years.
Apart from being curious, residents in the neighbourhood we visited were fairly friendly. They called out greetings to us or waved as we went past their homes. The Iraqi security forces conducted a "soft knock and search" operation - talking to homeowners, going inside to look for banned weapons and ammunition.
There was no kicking in doors, no shouting or shooting, no screams or crying which can sometimes accompany more "kinetic" raids (as the military calls them!)
But the soldiers we're with weren't lulled into a false sense of security. They still kept up a very vigilant stance. The signs of Moqtada al-Sadr's militia were all around us - flags flying from most homes, and banners featuring Moqtada scowling down on the Sadr City residents.
The patrol lasted five hours, and now we're back in the JSS building. Conditions haven't really improved. Everybody's still sleeping wherever they can. There's still not much water (we started the day getting clean with baby-wipes) and there's still no proper toilets. But there is one sign that things are getting better - a street vendor showed up selling us "real" Rolex watches. Just £15.
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