The inner cities are bustling with informal enterprises, but the government has cut them off from the larger economy.

Kerry Howley | May 2007 Print Edition
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor, by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 448 pages, $27.95

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana Superdome became a font of myths about the depravity of the urban poor. News reports, widely circulated but never corroborated, described an epidemic of murders, rapes, and other assaults among the thousands stuck waiting in the world’s largest fixed-dome structure. On a widely-quoted episode of the Fox News Channel’s Hannity & Colmes, the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson assailed the moral character of the refugees. “In three days,” he said, “they turned the dome into a ghetto.”

The implicit definition of ghetto reflected a popular conception of the least privileged Americans. Polls consistently show that Americans think the poor are more likely to be African American and unemployed than is actually the case, and the dome fed those misconceptions with a fetid 259,000 square feet of photographed paralysis. Katrina, commentators insisted, was a “wake-up call,” but those stock images of the Superdome reinforced a vision of the ghetto as a sloth-filled dead zone. It was a warehouse, not a community; it was packed with black Americans waiting to be saved.

A new book challenges that stereotype of the idle poor and their supposed quiescence before the market economy. In Off the Books, Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh posits that if a transaction occurs in the ghetto and no one writes it down, it still counts as trade. His sprawling study of Chicago’s seedy South Side unearths a lively world of exchange in a supposed economic graveyard.

Now a sociologist at Columbia University, Venkatesh spent over a decade immersed in a 10-block neighborhood he calls Maquis Park (a pseudonym) before producing Off the Books. At once an outsider and a welcome participant in the ghetto economy, he found that he was suddenly part of “a vast, often invisible web” of economic exchange. That web supports the residents of Maquis Park and adds a strange sort of order to their existence, tempering chaos and adding predictability to the lives of Chicago’s poor. For the most part, the people he meets seem eager to trade. It’s just that much of what they’re trading isn’t going to meet with the approval of a law-and-order Republican or a bleeding-heart Great Society Democrat.

Take Oceana, a mother of six whose last six months of employment are a picture of elbow-greased, bootstrapping entrepreneurialism. “I picked up garbage for a guy who worked in the city and who was fucking some lady in the van and needed some time off one day,” she tells Venkatesh. “I bought some kids some beer. I always have someone who can’t leave work but who needs a bag [of pot or cocaine]. The lady at the library lets me put the books on the shelves. That minister likes me to walk on his back, or sometimes do a little more, but I’m not talking about that. Unless you paying.” Also on Oceana’s résumé: washing cars, painting houses, and minding a local store while a hooker gives the proprietor a blow job. She summarizes, “I do just about anything and everything, baby.”

Within the fluid economy of Maquis Park, Oceana’s flexibility is extreme but not aberrant. Her neighbors are unlicensed hairstylists, ad hoc caterers, tailors, psychics, and accountants, and typically ply more than one trade at a time. They sell clothes, pirated movies, and used kitchen supplies they call “ghettoware.” Others are gypsy cab drivers, janitors, and mechanics. Some make a quick buck taking over abandoned buildings and offering the space for shelter; others make money with promises to keep police patrols away from the same space.

Taxable income isn’t reported, and the requisite licenses are not obtained. For those reasons, among others, residents are often unwilling to turn to law enforcement when crime hits. Listing the challenges of running an off-the-books car repair service, resident James Arleander first cites the people purportedly protecting him: “First, you are doing something illegal, which means police must be involved. You have to deal with them, and you can either hide [from them] or pay [them].” (Arleander does not specify whether he is hiding or paying.)

Maquis Park’s fortune seekers negotiate between the wider city and their largely isolated neighborhood, spanning the legal and underground economies. A store may be formal in that it has the requisite permits, but it will still conduct most of its activity far from city regulators’ prying eyes. Seventy percent of the neighborhood’s shops employ one or more people off the books, paying in cash, food, liquor, or any number of store products. In a ghetto where police presence is always inadequate, business owners can stave off break-ins by renting out their space after hours to street entrepreneurs: prostitutes, gamblers, hair stylists. When owners need a bit of capital, it’s not banks to which they turn but friends and loan sharks with cash on hand.

The economy Venkatesh describes is frenetic and buoyant, but it is also deeply insular, a raucous party behind closed doors. Ghetto enterprises must rely on community ties for everything from their labor force to their security to their cash flow. Their economic survival thus depends largely on friendships and community relations, less so on contracts and impartial adjudication. As Samuel Wilson, who runs a day care center, puts it, “It’s a small group of us that are really helping each other.…It’s what you do in the inner city, and you can’t lose that. Who’s going to trust you next?”

If the neighborhood’s “vast, invisible web” holds the poor together, it also ensnares them. Local entrepreneurs simply can’t imagine expanding beyond the immediate community. That storied sphere “where everyone knows your name” isn’t simply a special place; it’s all there is. “For the local black merchants,” Venkatesh explains, “other business climates are really just other examples of informal and highly personalized economic relations—like those in Maquis Park —to which they are not privy.”

As Venkatesh stares into this closed economy, he comes to realize that residents cannot see out. To them, the larger business climate is an amalgam of mysterious institutions and backroom dealing. Residents “believe their white counterparts have clandestine connections.” Says a neighborhood businessperson: “I’ve noticed business all over the city and it’s all about hand-shaking, promises, lots of things going on behind closed doors.” The larger world is just a bigger, whiter ghetto, where people are riding on their reputations and sharing wealth among friends. The discrimination may be real, but the idea that a wider economy connects billions of strangers seems utterly alien to the women and men trying to make it on the street.

This lack of perspective isn’t enough to explain the isolation of Maquis Park, and Venkatesh fails to put forward a cogent theory of why the ghetto is an economic island. The fact that the formal economy remains impenetrable to enthusiastic entrepreneurs suggests that something is seriously wrong in Chicago; the city has played a role in walling off the formal economy. Legitimate enterprises adhere to regulations that their ghetto counterparts have no chance of heeding. Businesses in Maquis Park are wont to pay below minimum wage; they are not overseen by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration; they frequently lack licenses. Permits, whatever their virtues, make little sense in so mutable a business climate. A shop owner might be selling car parts one day, cutting hair the next. City regulations simply bear no relation to the realities of Maquis Park markets, and every layer of red tape widens the space between marginalized and mainstream entrepreneurs.

There is, of course, another way to make a buck in Maquis Park, one that does connect the neighborhood to the larger city—and its suburbs too. Drugs were the life spring of the community’s economy in the 1960s and ’70s, and the Black Kings, a notorious Chicago gang, financed itself through the illicit trade. But as heroin and crack became less lucrative in the ’90s, the gang’s business interests diversified and matured. Slackening demand for narcotics forced the Kings to find alternate sources of income, from pimping to extortion. If the gang’s cash flow has waned since the crack heyday of the ’80s, its entanglement with the local economy runs deeper than ever. “Back then, there were gangs; today it’s a business,” Venkatesh hears residents comment, with a whiff of nostalgia.

“As Chicago’s working poor entered the year 2000,” Venkatesh explains, “the gang’s advances were making very blurry the lines that divided shady traders from one another.” It becomes even more difficult to separate funds made off the books from those made on them. Local businesses launder their money, and local ministers accept their donations. Gang money feeds the dealers, hairstylists, and hookers alike.

Maquis Park residents, cut off from police protection at least partly because many of them are outlaws themselves, are also vulnerable to the Black Kings’ growing demands. In 2000 the gang’s leader, short on cash due to lagging drug sales, began exacting payment from local businesses in exchange for a bit of security. The payments were not voluntary, and stores were charged monthly fees ranging from $50 to several hundred dollars. In effect, they were being taxed by a shadow government.

Venkatesh does not note the obvious parallels between government coercion and organized crime, and he never probes residents’ feelings toward the police force that has left them to parry the Black Kings on their own. That’s a shame, because the enforcement of drug laws is largely responsible for the neighborhood’s fragile ecosystem. Prohibition pushes up the price of narcotics, feeding the community while leaving most of the attendant economic activity without police protection and vulnerable to plunder. Prohibition also helps fund the Black Kings’ reign, a lawless and often cruel alternative to the city of Chicago.

Venkatesh is also needlessly moralistic in his discussion of prostitution, his disapproval seeping through the veneer of academic objectivity. (He describes the neighborhood’s hookers as “selling their bodies,” a dated and condescending euphemism for sex work.) He can be repetitive and rambling, pumping out page after page on subjects of limited interest, such as the long, dry business histories of community leaders. But if Off the Books sometimes seems like an inelegant information dump, it’s also a gallimaufry of fascinating tidbits about the odd economics of the ghetto.

The book, then, is a reflection of the cityscape Venkatesh limns: chaotic and inconstant, but not without hidden value. Its strongest contribution is his redefinition of the urban landscape. Maquis Park emerges not as a holding pen for the idle poor but as a hub of spirited exchange. It has never made much sense, after all, to characterize the ghetto as both a seat of sloth and a hotbed of vice. Narcotics and guns don’t sell themselves. The wider world may not approve of sex work, but it’s still work.

At the very least, Off the Books should call into question a world in which fixing cars for cash is a criminal enterprise, one where the will to work clashes so constantly with the limits of the law. If Venkatesh’s picture of the ghetto is accurate, the task is not to change the people within its borders, as conservatives would have it, or to ply them with subsidies, as their liberal counterparts would. Ending the isolation of Maquis Park means allowing its bustling informal economy to join the wider network of formal exchange. While that task is freighted with the historic legacy of discrimination, a city truly interested in encouraging ghetto capitalists would erase the lines between the licensed and unlicensed, the permit-carrying barbers and the outlaw beauticians.

There are no licenses, of course, for Maquis Park’s hookers and drug dealers. But if we don’t want poor Americans to conduct transactions off the books, we might reconsider what kind of activity we allow on the books. The ghetto, writes Venkatesh, is “a product of perpetual negotiations, of collusion and compromise, of the constant struggle to survive—to find a purpose for your life, to fulfill your desires, to feed your family.” It’s not a dome full of people waiting to be saved, he might add, but a force to be unleashed.

Kerry Howley is an associate editor of Reason.

Gold Star Dad Says Anti-War Dems 'Too Busy' to Meet Him
By Nathan Burchfiel
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 12, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Leading Democratic proponents of setting a timetable for pulling troops out of Iraq have refused to meet with the father of a dead soldier who believes a withdrawal would mean his son's life was "wasted."

Army SSG Joshua Hager was wounded near Ramadi when an improvised explosive device blew up under his vehicle on Feb. 22, 2007. He died the next day from his injuries.

Hager's father, Kris Hager, wants opponents of the war to rethink their position because he believes ending U.S. involvement would mean his son's life was wasted there.

"How do I tell my grandson his father's life was wasted by Congress?" Hager said in an email.

Hager told Cybercast News Service that information he's received from his son's commanders led him to believe the bomb that killed Joshua originated in Iran. He believes withdrawing troops from Iraq will weaken the United States' ability to pressure Iran to stop supplying insurgent forces with weapons.

The U.S. military and President Bush have accused Iran of supplying money, weapons and ammunition to Iraqi insurgents, resulting in more sophisticated and deadly bombs. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has denied the allegations.

Hager has tried -- without success -- to schedule meetings or phone calls with some of the leading proponents of a military withdrawal, including Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania.

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, the U.S. House of Representatives on March 23 voted to pass a bill authorizing increased funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan while setting a September 2008 deadline for withdrawing troops.

A similar bill was passed in the Senate on March 29, and the two houses are now conferencing on the bill to iron out differences. Kerry, Murtha and Pelosi were among the bills' supporters.

"Each of their offices said they were too busy to speak with me," Hager said. The Florida resident's own elected officials -- Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat, and Republicans Sen. Mel Martinez and Rep. Vern Buchanan -- all spoke with him over the phone to express their sympathies.

A spokesman for Sen. Kerry said he does not have a policy on meeting with families of fallen soldiers. "However, Senator Kerry meets with families when he can and has talked with members from his home state and outside the state as well," the spokesman said.

Spokesmen for Murtha and Pelosi did not respond to calls and e-mails requesting comment Wednesday.

Hagel said he feels entitled to meet with prominent opponents of the war, even if he is not one of their constituents, because "they have taken a national stance."

"They talk all the time about the people -- 70 percent of the Americans want them to get us out. They're not talking in the bounds of their constituency," he said. "People like Murtha and Kerry who have traded on their military records, they owe me a chance to at least talk. I deserve that."

"I've seen them embracing Cindy Sheehan," Hager added, referring to the prominent anti-war activist whose son was killed in Iraq. "They make themselves accessible to people who agree with them. I think it's a small enough club of fathers who have lost sons that I can get that access, at their convenience."

I'm finishing up your book, the PNM, and I have to say that you've made a huge fan out of me. Tremendous book. You've really opened my eyes in a number of areas. It's the only book that I've read on national current events that really is a roadmap to a better future. It's very logical and very defining.
Then the author asks, in short, 'How do you get average Americans to care about integrating the Gap?'
Tom says:
The prototypical person who will care deeply on Gap will be those who see the direct market/sales opportunities. Some found in Old Core, bulk found in New Core.
That bulk cares primarily out of greed, not compassion. I trust that greed, and discount our compassion.

What Europe did to us in 1800s is what we did/do to Asia since WWII and it's what the New Core will end up doing to the Gap (biq question is whom China focuses on, because demographically, they're furthest up curve).

Vision is about connecting the equities, not the empathy.

By Fred Lucas
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
April 12, 2007

(CNSNews.com) - Last month, a federal grand jury indicted the Islamic African Relief Agency and five of its officials for allegedly sending millions of dollars to Iraq while denying known connections to terrorists.

First raided by the FBI in 2004, it is one of a few Muslim organizations to be shut down since 9/11 for alleged terror ties. This included the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and the International Association for Palestine (IAP), both accused of being front groups for the Middle Eastern terror group, Hamas.

But other Muslim organizations with alleged terror ties are still operating throughout the United States, according to Judicial Watch. The Washington-based conservative watchdog group has released a report detailing documented controversial links.

The report examines the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT) and the Muslim American Society (MAS).

The groups were mentioned in a 2001 Judicial Watch report, along with the other groups that have since been shut down.

"While the U.S. government finally has taken action against some of the groups identified by Judicial Watch, others are still functioning," the report said. "The federal government is aware of their presence and the damage they pose to our national security. The question is: Why are they still in operation?"

The North American Islamic Trust owns more than half of the nation's mosques, and the organization has been accused of being a funnel for Saudi and other gulf money to spread an extreme brand of Islam inside the United States "from southern California to South Carolina," the report said.

It also criticized CAIR, the largest Muslim group in North America, which reportedly got seed money from the Holy Land Foundation and is an "outgrowth" of the IAP. Both the Holy Land Foundation and the IAP have been shut down for documented terror links.

Despite CAIR's questionable past, the federal government works closely with the group in sensitivity training and various outreach programs, as Cybercast News Service reported in January.

CAIR, which calls itself a civil rights organization, says it condemns terror and violence and goes out of its way to help federal government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice.

According to Judicial Watch, ISNA promotes extreme Wahhabi ideology in 1,200 mosques across the country. It has helped turn the federal prison system into a recruiting area for al Qaeda, the report alleges.

Nonetheless, in 2005, the White House invited ISNA representatives to participate in the Office of Faith Based and Community Representatives' White House Leadership Conference.

ISNA representative Mohammad Elsanousi on Wednesday denied the charges and said he would have an official spokesman contact Cybercast News Service. No call was received by the end of the day.

Judicial Watch calls the MAS a front organization for the Muslim Brotherhood, an Egyptian-based Islamist network that has called for "achieving Islamic rule in America ... to convert Americans to Islam and elect like-minded Muslims to political office."

Mahdi Bray, executive director of MAS, denied any link.

"We don't have ties to the Muslim Brotherhood," he told Cybercast News Service on Wednesday. "We are an American Muslim organization. We've done work with Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. We don't take our marching orders from Egypt or anywhere else."

Bray also addressed the criticism of the Minnesota chapter of MAS for a short-lived policy by the Minneapolis Transportation Authority that allowed Muslim cab drivers to not transport someone carrying alcohol. Bray said the national organization stepped in to oppose the policy and noted that he suggested: "If that conflicts with your faith, look for another job."

Judicial Watch, Bray stated, is like other critics that tend to lump all Muslims together.

"You have the blogosphere and this group of people who use the same talking points, and they recycle these talking points," he said.

The Judicial Watch report referenced mainstream media sources such as Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor, and relied heavily on information from conservative media sources such as Front Page Magazine and books and articles by critics of the Muslim groups.

"This report carefully documents connections between so-called Muslim charities in the U.S. and the terrorists who murder innocents," said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

He said the report sheds light on why the government should be more aggressive in probing the non-profit groups.

"The federal government should no longer coddle terrorist front groups in the name of political correctness," he said. "Any organization that funds terror should be shut down immediately."

Lots of finesse in this group of warriers...
====================
After the Battle: “Squaddie” from 5 Platoon, 2nd Battalion, “The Rifles” Battle Group.

Basra, Iraq
The explosions from enemy rockets and mortar fire have been constant companions for the small contingent of Coalition forces based at the former Basra Palace, on the banks of Shatt al Arab River. In the past five months, more than a thousand bombs have been fired at this small base, all while these British combat troops, Romanian soldiers and a small contingent of Americans continue their attempts to stabilize Iraq. The nearby US Regional Embassy office also is frequently targeted.

A dramatic surge in IDF attacks (indirect fire: rockets and mortars) began here in September 2006, subsequent an increase in British troops. Locals cite Iranian influence behind the attacks, while British officers say this is the most IDF’d base in Iraq. The dozens of bombs that exploded on the base in the first five days of my embed with a British infantry platoon punctuated those claims.

The building where many British forces live is frequently hit. Recently a rocket slammed into the living quarters, creating a massive gape and much wreckage, while severely wounding one soldier from 5 Platoon. Just this week, a mortar bomb severely damaged a British armored vehicle parked outside, and another bomb explosively pruned a treetop, fragging the building where soldiers live, and leaving ears ringing. A 5 Platoon soldier videotaped the impact as it happened. Amazingly, despite the frequency of the IDF attacks, a combination of force protection measures and sheer luck have prevented the death of any British soldier, though combat forces have been seriously wounded from them. The risk of spending an hour outside the building might be equivalent to smoking a thousand cartons of unfiltered cigarettes. And Crossfit exercise might not help: the old gym was blasted a few days ago.

Earlier this week, when Moqtada al Sadr issued a call to violence against Coalition forces, multiple IDF strikes were launched against this base. Militias based in the al Quibla district of Basra, a notorious haven for Shia “JAM” militias who are loyal to or influenced by al Sadr, were believed responsible. Many of their shots miss the base, landing in civilian populations. According to the British commanders, JAM members will attack local journalists who report these mistakes.

Before al Sadr issued his provocation, the British Army was planning aggressive offensive actions against terrorists and militia members, and allowed this writer to join 5 Platoon, 2nd Battalion, “The Rifles” Battle Group for six days of missions. Those missions included Operation Arezzo, named for the Tuscan city that was the site of famous battles in the 14th century, and of an important victory for British troops in July 1941 as they drove the Axis forces north and out of Italy for good.

Surrounded by JAM: British Forces just before the shootout

Operation Arezzo
Lieutenant Colonel Justin Maciejewski MBE, the Battle Group Operations Commander (equivalent to an American Battalion Commander), allowed this writer unprecedented access to the planning details of Operation Arezzo, part of three simultaneous strike and arrest operations in the al Quibla district of Basra, designed in part to bait the enemy into attacking British forces.

In all, 13 platoons would partake, and I’d accompany 5 Platoon. LTC Maciejewski further permitted me to record both video and still camera images during the operation, and to get as close to the combat as I dare. 5 Platoon has seen a lot of fighting in recent months, and had already taken me on several minor missions. For Operation Arezzo, they adopted me as one of their own.

The plan for Operation Arezzo was cleverly contrived. While Americans count on helicopter support for deliberate high-intensity combat here, the Brits were going into extremely hostile terrain, outnumbered, without helicopter support, relying instead upon timing, terrain, maneuverability, firepower, and sheer audacity.

In combat, luck can be a decisive factor, but Murphy’s Law remains in effect. For Operation Arezzo, the risks of something going catastrophically wrong were apparent at the outset. The soldiers in 5 Platoon had never conducted such an audacious operation—in broad daylight—but LTC Maciejewski intended to show the enemy that even in their strongest bastion, outnumbered British forces could strike into their heart and inflict heavy losses.

Shortly before the mission, as soldiers from 5 Platoon disassembled their weapons for cleaning (again), performed functions checks, the tone of the music coming out of their speakers changed. As with American combat forces, before embarking on a deliberate fight, the music became more rousing and to the bone. For Operation Arezzo, the pre-battle tune was Gimme Shelter, by the Rolling Stones:

War, Children, it’s just a shot away

It’s just a shot away

War, Children, it’s just a shot away

It’s just a shot away

With all the emphasis on timing, 5 Platoon and others (including me) conducted rehearsals just hours before the strike yesterday. Getting to the al Quibla district in one piece was far from certain as we loaded into vehicles and rumbled out into JAM country. Some IEDs (bombs) buried in roads here are so large they would completely destroy the Bulldog tracked vehicle in which we were riding. Just last week a formidable Challenger tank was destroyed by an explosion that also cost the driver his legs. Days before, four British soldiers and their Iraqi interpreter had been killed at the same place when a similar bomb detonated.

As we rumbled through the dry, desert heat, the smells of Iraq—nearly all of them bad—wafted down from the top hatch. Suddenly, the Bulldog was filled with a stench so awful that soldiers nearly gagged, as if everything that could rot in Iraq had gone rotten all at once. Where just moments before there was only dusty air in the compartment, in a flash it was filled with that horrendous, fetid stench and a swarm of flies. When, a few minutes later, the stench was suddenly replaced by smoke from outside, dozens of flies remained in the compartment.

British Forces at War: “Squaddies” from 5 Platoon burst into first target house, part of a force of about 400 soldiers on an audacious daylight raid into an enemy stronghold.

The unilateral British operation began in mid-afternoon on 10 April, kicked off with rapid ground assaults on half a dozen target houses in the district, in an attempt to kill or capture key local militia leaders, including known terrorists such as “The Turban,” who local British forces call “The Turbinator.” The soldiers of 5 Platoon were combat proven after five months of fighting. Last week, they were engaged in a sharp firefight. One soldier captured the action with videocam on his helmet as six enemy were killed in the street fighting, including one enemy who suffered a direct hit from a 5 Platoon grenade launcher. There were no friendly casualties.

Now 5 Platoon was leading a key part of Operation Arezzo, their only effective close air support were the British snipers on rooftops. We approached the first target, and the Squaddies rushed out the back of the Bulldog with me in tow, crashing through gates and tossing flashbang grenades into doorways before bursting into houses while I made video of the strike.

Surrounded by enemy forces, men appear on a roof. A British sniper can be seen on the roof in the background. Unfortunately, the primary (“alpha”) targets were not home and escaped death or capture. Nearby, at about the same time, an Iraqi policeman was murdered.

5 Platoon on second entry.

During the third entry, the terrorists were not home, but a woman and two small children were obviously present. 5 Platoon did not throw flashbangs, and their touch was so light that the small children did not cry.

But that light touch was reserved for women and children only, as “The Rifles” would soon demonstrate. With the raids on house targets completed, a new phase of the plan unfolded and the drama really began.

Almost as if on cue, small-arms fire begins.

During planning, British commanders, including Major Quentin Naylor, had briefed that JAM likely would try to lure us into ambush in a certain area. Now, eerily according to plan, sporadic small arms began from the very direction British commanders had anticipated. If 5 Platoon had moved aggressively in that direction, casualties from our side might be severe, but instead, British forces in armored vehicles moved to other pre-planned areas, hoping to draw the enemy out of hiding and into tactical blunders. The enemy answered the challenge with great enthusiasm, and blundered.

They opened on us with massive small-arms fire from many directions, and RPGs. One RPG slammed into a British vehicle and exploded in the slot armor, but the vehicle took the hit, and the men inside continued to fight. The enemy pounded at one of the platoons with at least one large machine gun, possibly a 12.7 mm, which can blow a man in half and easily defeat British or American armor. But soldiers in that platoon responded with blistering fire, and silenced the gun.

The ensuing firefights were vigorous. As more enemy joined and the battle progressed, British elements maneuvered and fired, making adjustments to the plan to mold the fight. With no helicopters above to help develop ground awareness or to help shape the combat by engaging targets, British commanders directed their elements by map and ground-feel. Having no helicopters also left rooftops open to the enemy, adding another dimension to the combat. In addition to small arms, British soldiers used 7.62mm machineguns, grenades, and 30mm guns with deadly focus. As soldiers ran out of ammunition, they dropped back to reload, while other soldiers kept up the aimed shots.

Reloading during one of the firefights.

The enemy was at times on both sides of us firing from many positions, on the ground and on rooftops. 5 Platoon and others continued answering heavy fire with accurate return fire. I saw a soldier fire his 40mm grenade launcher several times, arching explosive rounds into enemy positions. A British sniper fired four bullets. One 7.62 mm bullet struck an armed man on a rooftop in the chest. Another bullet stopped a gunman who was firing from a car.

Bullets popped into the walls of the vehicles. British planners had anticipated that JAM would by now have placed large IEDs on our egress routes, and the commanders’ plan to defeat this threat so far was working. At least one IED was in fact placed to get us, but exploded at the wrong time and missed a Bulldog.

As the firing began to wane, the day’s heat began to fade along with it. Dust wafted thick on the cooling air. The soldiers were still sweating when a light rain began to fall. Iraqi dust polluted the pure rain as it fell, forming mud drops that splattered onto man and machine.
In an operation that lasted over four hours, British forces killed 26-27 enemy and sustained no casualties. 5 Platoon fired more than 4,000 bullets before their guns began to cool, and about 15 of the enemy kills were accredited to 5 Platoon. Another platoon captured two enemy fighters, including one Iraqi policeman who might have been heeding al Sadr’s call for Iraqi Police and Army forces to turn on their Coalition partners.

Members of 5 Platoon after the battle.

“Smoking Kills”
Later that evening, back on base, “squaddies” were outside the converted palace where we sleep, grabbing quick smokes. “Smoking kills” is the common joke. (British soldiers, like their American kin, are quick with dry combat humor.) But with all the IDF attacks, soldiers here truly are taking extreme risks to smoke outside. The palace had just been hit yesterday, and today more rain fell on its fractured façade. Sadr had just called for his militias to attack the Coalition, and “The Rifles” had just killed a couple dozen enemy fighters in JAM country, which was within easy rocket range of the base.

Rifleman Lee Hulbert, wearing his helmet and body armor, was smoking with his friends when Murphy’s Law kicked in. There was no rocket attack, no lightning strike. About 15 meters (about 50 feet) above Lee’s head, three heavy pieces of marble, each weighing perhaps 10 kg (more than 20 lbs), dislodged from the palace, and hurtled toward Lee Hulbert. One piece struck the back of his helmet, crashed off his body armor, and he fell quiet to the ground. Hulbert had fought well throughout his tour in Iraq, only to be felled by a piece of marble. He’s been med-evac’d and is said to be in good condition.

The British are planning future operations. These soldiers are so good that I have requested from British commanders to be allowed to stay longer.