FALLUJAH, IRAQ Captain Steve Eastin threw open the door to the Iraqi Police captain’s office and cancelled a joint American-Iraqi officer’s meeting before it could even begin. "Someone just shot at my Marines, he said. "We can’t do this right now.

I followed him into the hall.

"What happened? I said.

"Someone just shot at my guys at the flour mill, he said. "A bullet struck a wall four feet over a Marine's head. We have to go in there and extract them.

"They don't extract themselves? I said.

"They're on foot, he said, "and we're going in vehicles. They don't extract themselves on foot.

And I was getting comfortable and even bored in post-insurgent Fallujah. Complacency kills, and Fallujah isn't completely free of insurgents just yet.

"They’ve already left in Humvees, he said.

But he did send a patrol to the flour mill less an hour later, and I went with them.

Captain Eastin is the commanding officer of Lima Company, and they operate in the slums of southern Fallujah. The houses down there are smaller than they are in the rest of the city, and much more decrepit. Southern Fallujah isn't nearly as rough as a Latin American, Indian, or Egyptian shantytown, but its residents live a hardscrabble life and largely depend on charity for survival. There isn't much of an economy. Unemployment is well over 50 percent. Many residents worked in the industrial district, but only a few factories have re-opened so far. Business owners are waiting for government compensation which was supposed to have been delivered from Baghdad months ago.

During periods of heavy fighting there were more insurgents in this part of the city than in the north, but they fought more for money than ideology. They needed the survival cash Al Qaeda paid them.

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