"It's the brotherhood. If your brothers are going into the fight you want to be there," said Sergeant Deven Hawkins, standing next to a machine-gun position on the roof of an abandoned school that serves as a marine base in the town of Yusufiyah.

Hawkins employs 46 people in the entertainment multimedia company he runs back home in Chicago in the Midwest, from where most of the marines are from in this reservist unit -- the 2nd battalion of the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit.

The battalion serves in a region just south of Baghdad dubbed the "triangle of death" because of frequent kidnappings and deadly bomb attacks on civilian and military targets.

The skills acquired in the cut and thrust of business life can be applied here, said 33-year-old Hawkins, who is a Muslim.

"You've got to be able to multi-task to achieve your goal. It's the same on active duty (in the marines) and in the private sector," he said.

A foot patrol heading out from his heavily-fortified base comprised a firefighter, a wildlife biology student, a cargo pilot, a trade union worker, a kindergarten teacher, an office manager, a welder, a home security technician, and a diary foods distribution worker.

The commanding officer of the base, Major Morgan Mann, 34, who sells Internet telephone systems for Cisco back home in the United States, said being reservists gave his men an edge over regular marines.

"We're older, more mature, more experienced," he told AFP as he sat in his sandbagged, spartan room in the base. On his table lay "Small Wars", a book on the military lessons to be learnt from Britain's colonial adventures.

"What we're doing here is law enforcement and politics as well as counter-insurgency," added Mann.

Jim Roussell is another marine who applies skills learnt back home here in Iraq.

During the 28 years he spent as a policeman on Chicago's West Side in an anti-gang unit he had to deal with young, disenfranchised and angry men who went out and picked up weapons.

That's how he sees the many of the insurgents he's fighting in the "triangle of death."

And the best way to combat both American inner city gang members and Iraqi rebels is by using informants, said Chief Warrant Officer Roussell, who is now a marine intelligence officer based in Mahmudiyah.

"It's dirty, murky work, but that's how you get the clearest picture," said the 53-year-old.

Captain Brian Murphy, 32, is another reservist who is a law enforcement officer back in the States. He is an FBI agent who'd been working on counter-terrorism in New York since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Murphy, now based in the town of Latifiyah, was also doing a masters degree in Islamic studies and learning Arabic before he shipped out to Iraq with his unit, most of which arrived here in September and is set to stay until February.

"I wanted to know the causes of this (anti-Americanism in the Muslim world)," he said.

Murphy is unhappy because he may have to return to New York to testify in a 9-11 related case in January. He said he felt he was more useful to his country here in Iraq.

Corporal Larry Branch, based in Mahmudiyah, where the tough-talking, tobacco-chewing commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Mark Smith, is an Indiana state trooper in civilian life, summed up the fierce pride in being a marine that drove these men to swap the comforts of civilian life for the rigours of war.

"Some people get a degree, others make their first million," said the phone company technician as he sat in the base's mail room. "If I never make any other accomplishments, this (being a marine) will be it."

Another thing that unites the marines here is their belief that they will crush the insurgents.

"Maybe doubt creeps in once in a while," said mechanic Lance Corporal Brian Kollias, as he contemplated a seven-tonne truck whose front wheel had been blown off by a roadside bomb.

"But look back at the past -- Germany didn't become a democracy in a year" after World War II, he said. "The guys laying IEDs (improvised explosive devices) will eventually get frustrated, the economy will get better. It's going to take time."

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