BAGHDAD, Iraq — Young men armed and paid by the American military took to the streets of the Iraqi capital’s Sadr City area for the first time yesterday to guard their neighborhoods, part of a new strategy designed to recruit former Shiite militiamen to American-created security groups, American officials said.

The program is modeled after a more than year-old initiative, now known as the Awakening movement, to pay men formerly aligned with the Sunni insurgency to turn against it. But the new groups, called “Neighborhood Guards” by the Americans and “Sons of Iraq” by Iraqis, are the first to focus solely on a heavily Shiite area and among the few to acknowledge arming civilians.

Toting AK-47 assault rifles for a $300-a-month salary, the young men are viewed by American officials as the best way to address a dearth of security forces in Sadr City, the site of bitter clashes this spring between American forces and militiamen loyal to the anti-American cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. The officials hope it will lead some of the militia supporters away from violence by paying them to protect the area.

But even officers helping to create the program acknowledge there is risk in supplying weapons to men who may have recently encouraged violence against U.S. troops. “Are these guys all going to be lily-white angels? No,” said Major Byron Sarchet, operations officer for the brigade with responsibility for Sadr City. “We need to tread lightly.”

As the orange fog of a dust storm enveloped the capital yesterday afternoon, 11 young men in the new program stood at the entrance to a street in Jamila, a neighborhood of southwestern Sadr City where they all live. Standing watch between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., they glanced at every car and pedestrian entering the road to make sure they were locals and not strangers who might be up to no good.

“We are here to protect our neighborhood and make sure the militias don’t take control,” a former taxi driver, Qais Ali, said as he waved on a rusty blue car. “These are our homes and it is our responsibility to protect them.”

The young men acknowledged, however, that they were all at their posts to collect a wage in a district where unemployment is rampant. The $300 salaries are distributed by their leader, Bassim Abdullah Qassim, who said he was contracted by the American military to hire and oversee 105 men over three months.

Commander of the American battalion in Sadr City, Lieutenant Colonel Brian Eifler, said there was skepticism initially that Sadr City residents would volunteer to work with Americans. But he said the turnout has been overwhelming.

More than 270 people showed up one day last week looking for jobs in Jamila, he said, suggesting that fear of Mr. Sadr’s militia, the Mahdi Army, is subsiding in at least some parts of Sadr City. All of the applicants are vetted by the American military and must be vouched for by a tribal leader, Colonel Eifler said.

The 11 men on duty yesterday were carrying some of the 48 AK-47s that Mr. Qassim said the American military supplied him on Tuesday. He said that the Americans did not have enough weapons for all of the men at the moment, but that the Iraqi military pledged to provide the rest.

“Neither the American military nor the Iraqi army were supposed to hand us weapons — each volunteer was supposed to bring his own from his house,” Mr. Qassim said. But at an initial meeting of 65 guards, it turned out that only five owned rifles. “So the Americans realized they had to help.”