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American
Marines from Falluja and Iraqi National Guard (ING)
battalions from Kurdish autonomous region have
deployed to Mosul to reinforce American and ING
units based in the city, Kurdish and American
military officials said. They said the local
security forces had lost control of much of Mosul,
Iraq's third largest city with an estimated
population of 1.8 million Arabs, Kurds, Turcomen and
Assyrian Christians.
US troops and Iraqi security forces were fighting to
retake a police station overrun by insurgents in the
northern city of Mosul, a US military spokeswoman
said on Sunday. Two US soldiers were also wounded in
sporadic fighting in the nearby town of Tal Afar,
where insurgents had attacked a police academy with
small arms, she said. Last week, insurgents stormed
and looted at least nine police stations in Mosul,
Iraq's third largest city, stealing weapons, flak
jackets and police vehicles.
US Brigadier General Carter Ham, in charge of
security in the north, said on Saturday that all the
city's 33 police stations had been secured and the
city of two million was returning to calm, although
he expected further attacks.
Mosul tipped into chaos on Wednesday and Thursday
when groups of up to 50 militants took over some
neighbourhoods, paraded through the city centre
brandishing their weapons and chased away local
police.
"Mosul was about to be lost," Brigadier Anwar Dolan,
commander of the ING brigade in Suleimania in the
Kurdish-controlled north, said. "So, the Iraqi
Defence Minister asked for forces from Suleimania,
Dihouk and Erbil." Reports from inside Mosul
indicated that insurgents, joined by local
policemen, were patrolling the streets to
demonstrate their power in neighbourhoods of the
city's Arab majority. Meanwhile, outside the city,
the American-ING forces were mobilising for what
some military officials promise would be another
Falluja-type assault.
"We will be moving in the next day or so in Mosul to
restore the rule of law," announced Iraqi interim
prime minister Iyad Allawi. An Iraqi journalist in
Mosul reported that ING troops have retaken two of
the six police stations controlled by the
insurgents. Insurgents and American-ING battalions
were each demonstrating their control of different
parts of Mosul in advance of what most observers
believe will be a major battle for the city.
Brigadier Dolan, a veteran Kurdish fighter, blamed
Iraqi government forces based in Mosul for yielding
to the insurgents. "I am sure the [Mosul ING]
brigade is not professional. Suleimania and Erbil
[Kurdish ING battle groups sent to Mosul] are
veteran Peshmergas." Peshmergas are Kurdish
fighters, some of whom were recently absorbed into
the ING. Technically under the Iraqi defence
ministry in Baghdad, they are based in Peshmerga
encampments and answer to Kurdistan's two political
leaders - Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Iraq's
deputy prime minister, the Kurdish politician Barham
Saleh, said he feared that deploying Kurd-only units
against Arab forces in Mosul could lead to an
all-out Arab-Kurdish war in Iraq.
Most of Mosul's 400,000 Kurds - nearly a quarter of
the population - live on the east bank of the River
Tigris. Insurgents attempted, and failed, to gain a
foothold on the Kurdish side of the river on
Thursday. So far, the Kurds have kept them out of
their areas. However, some Kurds have left Mosul -
fearing further attacks by the mainly Arab
insurgents. The insurgents seized large numbers of
police weapons on Thursday and Friday, and the US
forces responded with aerial bombardment.
"I personally gave clear instructions to my soldiers
to be careful," Brigadier Dolan said, "not to send
the message that this is a fight between Kurds and
Arabs. There is a danger that the terrorists are
trying to create a war between us and the Arabs."
With more than 30,000 men under arms, the Kurdish
autonomous region has the strongest indigenous force
in Iraq. However, deploying them in Arab areas could
increase Arab suspicions of the Kurds and lead to
attacks on the estimated two million Kurds living in
non-Kurdish cities like Baghdad and Mosul. Kurds
have already suffered at the hands of insurgents
this year, with many murdered in Baghdad and
elsewhere.
The US military said that thirty of its soldiers had
died in Fallujah since the battle began there on 8
November, while another twenty were killed elsewhere
in Iraq during the same period - bringing the total
to fifty American dead in one week. Because Mosul is
a much larger city than Falluja and its Arab
populace is showing sympathy for the insurgents, the
fighting there could be more bloody than in Fallujah.
Mosul has a history of ethnic conflict dating back
to 1925, when Britain included Mosul province in the
new state of Iraq in 1925 - over Turkish and Kurdish
objections. About 24,000 officers in Saddam
Hussein's army came from Mosul.
The surge in violence coincided with the US
military's full-scale offensive against an estimated
2,000-3,000 insurgents - foreign fighters, Sunni
Muslim nationalists and loyalists to the former
regime - holed up in Falluja, west of Baghdad.
Military officials say many of the militants there
fled before the attack, and that there has been an
increase in violence across towns and cities
throughout the Sunni Muslim belt of the country
since.
Bowman said Mosul remained "relatively calm" on
Sunday despite the attack on the police station, and
said its governor remained confident the city was
under his control.
Following the attacks last week, the Iraqi
government fired Mosul's police chief and sent
national guard reinforcements to boost the security
force presence on the streets.
A battalion sent to help out in Falluja, was
deployed back to Mosul last week to help reestablish
control in the city.
"We hated the Baath, not the Arabs," said Brigadier
Dolan. "If we deploy, it is to fight terrorists -
not Arabs." Whether the Arabs see their old Kurdish
enemies in those terms is one question the battle
for Mosul will answer.
http://news.independent.co.uk
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