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IRBIL,
Iraq -- For three tense days last month, it
seemed as if the northern city of Mosul would fall
into the hands of insurgents.
A majority of the city's 5,000 U.S.-trained police
officers deserted or joined the insurgents, helping
them take over eight of the 10 police stations in
Mosul. The local government headquarters was nearly
overrun. The uprising, from Nov. 9 to 11, received
little attention at the time because most of the
world's media was focused on the U.S. offensive to
retake the western city of Fallujah.
This rebellion six weeks ago foreshadowed some of
the same questions facing the U.S. military after
insurgents attacked a dining area at a U.S. base in
Mosul on Tuesday, killing 22 people. How has the
insurgency become so well entrenched in Mosul, and
how has it infiltrated the police and nearly all
other branches of the Iraqi government? And, how was
it able to penetrate U.S. security on Tuesday?
Kurdish leaders were so concerned that insurgents
would overrun Mosul last month that they were ready
to send 8,000 militia fighters to the city,
according to a senior Kurdish official. The Kurds
were worried that guerrillas would be able to launch
an attack from Mosul against Irbil, capital of the
autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq.
At the height of the rebellion on Nov. 10, Nechirvan
Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdistan Democratic
Party, called Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, the top U.S.
military commander in northern Iraq. "Barzani urged
the Americans to close all the bridges and roads
leading into the city," said the official, who asked
not to be named. "Otherwise, Barzani told General
Ham that 8,000 fighters would be dispatched to Mosul."
Within an hour of that call, the official said, U.S.
forces had closed the city's five bridges and main
roads. The military also rushed in reinforcements: A
U.S. Army infantry battalion was recalled from
Fallujah, an Iraqi police battalion was dispatched
from Baghdad and 300 Iraqi National Guard soldiers
were summoned from other cities to protect the Mosul
government headquarters.
By Nov. 12, the insurgents had retreated, but not
before blowing up three police stations and
ransacking five others. The intensity of the
fighting, and the speed with which rebels were able
to take over key government installations,
highlighted how well organized the insurgency had
become in Iraq's third-largest city.
"Many police commanders and the director of police
in Mosul were cooperating with the terrorists," said
Sadi Ahmed Pire, head of security operations in
Mosul for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the
other major Kurdish party in Iraq. "In one day,
November 9, they gave them control of two-thirds of
the police stations in the city."
For months, Kurdish security officials such as Pire
warned the U.S. military that Mosul had become a
center of coordination linking the different strains
of the Iraqi insurgency. The city was a stronghold
of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and also has a
tradition of Islamic militancy dating to the 1940s
when the Muslim Brotherhood founded its first Iraqi
branch in Mosul. Naturally, the city of 1.5 million
has become a meeting place for Baathists and Islamic
militants.
"Even under Saddam's regime, militant Islamic
networks were entrenched in Mosul," said Dana Ahmad
Majid, head of security for the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan. "And because Mosul is a very large city,
it's easier for militants and Baathists to work
inside it."
During the U.S. invasion of Iraq last year, the
Iraqi military in Mosul surrendered without
fighting. As a result, the Baathist security
structure in the city and surrounding province was
preserved intact.
Mosul province was the headquarters of the Iraqi
Army's 5th Corps, and the region provided more than
a third of Hussein's entire military and security
apparatus. According to Iraqi government payroll
lists obtained by Kurdish officials, Mosul province
was home to 260,000 soldiers, 33,000 military
officers and 50,000 members of Hussein's
intelligence and security services.
As the Iraqi insurgency gained momentum, Mosul
became a natural base of operations for Baathists.
"The insurgents are using the infrastructure of the
old Iraqi army," Pire said. "They are using the
forests for training and hiding themselves. ... They
have a good base of support inside Mosul."
Kurdish officials say the city also has become a
center for the Kurdish Islamist group Ansar al-Islam
("Partisans of Islam"), which once had about 700
members and has provided scores of recruits for
suicide bombings since the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
Ansar moved many of its operations to Mosul after it
was driven out of a remote, mountainous part of
northern Iraq by the U.S. bombardment during the
war.
Some Ansar members splintered into small cells and
were absorbed by two groups led by Jordanian
militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: Tawhid wa Jihad
("Unity and Holy War") and Ansar al-Sunnah
("Partisans of the Guided Path"). Ansar al-Sunnah
claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack at the
U.S. base.
Once a key trading post on the fabled Silk Road,
Mosul linked Persia to the Syrian capital of
Damascus and to ports along the Mediterranean. Like
many great cities, Mosul straddles a river. It is a
cosmopolitan city made up of Sunni Arabs, Kurds,
Turkomen, Assyrian Christians and Yazidis.
The old city of Mosul is on the west bank of the
Tigris River. It is a maze of narrow alleyways
filled with mud-brick homes and drab mosques. The
majority of the city's Arab residents live on the
west bank, and U.S. forces rarely enter the area
because their armored vehicles cannot fit. Kurdish
officials say that has made the western quarter a
haven for Baathists and Islamic militants, who
launched last month's rebellion from the old city.
Mosul's eastern bank is dominated by Kurds, and the
two major Kurdish political parties have several
offices there. The offices are guarded by hundreds
of Kurdish militia members, known as pesh mergas --
or "those who face death." During last month's
fighting, the Kurdish parties dispatched an
additional 2,000 fighters to protect their offices
and the area's sizable Kurdish minority in Mosul.
The presence of pesh mergas in Mosul has rankled
some Arab residents. But Kurdish officials say they
will keep their fighters in the city as long as
insurgents are active there. "How can the terrorists
be able to operate throughout Iraq," Majid asked,
"and we, as Iraqi Kurds, not have the right to
defend all of Iraq?"
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