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MOSUL, Iraq -- American and Iraqi troops
yesterday fought to reclaim police stations from
insurgents who seized control of broad swaths of
this sprawling northern city in what a top Kurdish
official said was a well-organized Ba'athist
resurgence to distract US and Iraqi forces from
Fallujah.
American fighter jets roared overhead all day
yesterday, as US soldiers shut down Mosul's five
bridges and swept both banks of the Tigris River.
According to the senior Kurdish official, Sadi Ahmed
Pire, Kurdish intelligence and captured insurgents
confirm that the Ba'ath Party in Mosul has
reconstituted itself and is coordinating attacks in
Mosul against Iraqi police, government, and the
Kurdish and Christian minorities.
If Pire's assertions are true, they mark an alarming
shift toward more control by Ba'athists of an Iraqi
insurgency that had so far been dominated by
fragmented nationalist groups, local sheiks, and
religious jihadi leaders.
Violence in Mosul also threatens to touch off ethnic
bloodshed, as insurgents have singled out Kurds and
Christians for assassination. In response, Kurdish
officials have sent thousands of Peshmerga fighters
into the city. They are nominally under the command
of the Iraqi National Guard, but in reality answer
to the two major Kurdish political parties.
In yesterday's fighting, American forces moved into
the west bank of the Tigris to recapture three
police stations, and insurgents fled to the east
bank, where they clashed with Kurdish fighters.
Machine gun and mortar fire rang out in front of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan headquarters on the
eastern edge of the city, where Pire commands a
garrison of about 500 Kurdish fighters.
With 1.5 million residents still in the city,
defeating insurgents here will prove far more
complicated than in Fallujah, a city one-fifth the
size of Mosul that was largely emptied of civilians
before last week's invasion.
Captain Angela Bowman, spokeswoman for the US Army
in Mosul, said about 1,000 American soldiers were
involved in yesterday's operations. Iraqi police had
been ordered off the streets, and the military said
it would enforce a 4 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.
"Offensive operations have begun on the western side
of the river to clear out final pockets of insurgent
fighting," Bowman said. "It's a significant
operation to secure police stations in the area and
make sure they can be put to use again."
The United States launched the operation after
rushing US and Iraqi reinforcements to Mosul. A US
Army infantry battalion was recalled from the
fighting in Fallujah, 300 Iraqi National Guard
soldiers came from garrisons along the borders with
Iran and Syria, and a special police battalion was
sent from Baghdad.
Under Saddam Hussein, the city and surrounding
province contributed hundreds of thousands of
officers to elite military units, and the
intelligence and Mukhabarat, or security, services.
By some estimates, 330,000 residents of the province
-- about 10 percent of the population -- were
employed in the Iraqi military or security services.
In an attempt to extend the influence of the Arab
nationalist Ba'ath Party over northern Iraq, Sunni
Arabs loyal to the regime were moved into the
Kurdish neighborhoods on the east bank of the Tigris
in the 1970s and 1980s
After the fall of Hussein, Ba'athists were purged
from their dominant positions in the Iraqi military
and national and local governments over the
objections of some Iraqis who feared that the move
would alienate the Sunni minority and deprive the
post-Hussein regime of the expertise needed to keep
the country functioning.
According to Kurdish intelligence officials with
sources in the insurgency, Ba'ath Party officials
met at the end of September in the Syrian border
town Hasakah, where they elected a new party leader
and appointed officials to run operations in every
city in Iraq.
The Ba'athists also voted to expel all party members
who have worked with American forces, the interim
Iraqi government, or the Kurdish political parties,
the intelligence sources said.
In Mosul, Pire said, the party is trying to broaden
its appeal to traditional Sunni Arab tribes by
recruiting the sons of major sheiks.
"The Ba'ath Party has reorganized. They are very
popular here," Pire said. "There is a new, young
leadership, mostly from the Mukhabarat and the
special military forces."
The Ba'ath Party's role in Mosul contrasts starkly
with the insurgency in Fallujah, where locals said
that tribal militia commanders and jihadi cells were
at the forefront of a loose-knit coalition of
militant groups.
In Mosul, said Pire, "the Ba'ath Party has played
the main role in these attacks."
The party has two armed wings in Mosul, the Umm al-Rimah
branch, which means mother of all spears, and the
Hadbah branch, named for Mosul's old city.
Police defected en masse when insurgents attacked
last week. The Iraqi government immediately fired
the city's police chief.
According to Kurdish officials, assassins have
killed eight Kurds and driven out 30 families from
the Arab dominated west bank of the city. The
officials believe the Ba'athist leaders and
extremists in Mosul want to drive the city's Kurdish
minority, about 20 percent of the city's population,
into the neighboring provinces of Iraqi Kurdistan.
This week's flash deployment of Peshmerga fighters
underscores the Kurds' willingness to fight to
protect themselves, even in cities outside the safe
zone of the three provinces of Kurdistan.
As soon as the attack on Fallujah started last week,
insurgents seized the University of Mosul, once a
top Iraqi institution, which has fallen under the
sway of Islamic extremists over the last year.
Last Wednesday, the insurgents took over eight
police stations. They abandoned three stations after
blowing them up. US forces were trying to recapture
three more yesterday.
"The insurgents had the full cooperation of the
police," Pire said.
When widespread fighting broke out, the two main
political parties in the Kurdish provinces just east
of Mosul deployed nearly 2,000 of their Peshmerga
militia fighters into the city. Pire estimates there
are another 6,000 Kurdish "reserve" fighters in the
city.
"The Ba'ath Party is working to create an ethnic
civil war," Pire said, as mortar rounds thudded next
to his office and his bodyguards rushed to the front
gate to return machine gunfire. "Their plan was
first to eliminate police stations, then the Kurdish
forces, then finally the Kurdish community."
Some of the Kurdish fighters are operating as Iraqi
National Guard, technically under the authority of
the Iraqi government, while others wearing the
traditional Kurdish dress are fighting as Peshmerga.
After one firefight, Kurdish fighters found in a car
used by the insurgents a bloodied knife and a video
of militants using it to behead an Iraqi who had
worked as an interpreter for Americans.
On Friday and again yesterday Pire's PUK
headquarters in Tamim neighborhood was attacked.
Insurgents used abandoned houses as firing
positions, and in some neighborhoods went door to
door asking families for permission to use their
roofs to attack Kurdish party offices, said a
46-year-old resident of a mixed Kurdish and
Christian neighborhood in eastern Mosul who feared
reprisals if his name was published.
Insurgents also sent a messenger to the local
priest, threatening to kill him if he didn't demand
the withdrawal of Kurdish fighters from the city, he
said.
"These days, the terrorists are busy in Mosul," the
man said.
Yesterday at 1 p.m., just a few miles from the PUK
headquarters, four insurgents attacked a satellite
Kurdish party office in the Jazair neighborhood.
One man jumped out of the car and opened fire,
wounding two Kurdish guards.
In the ensuing firefight, the car exploded, and the
gunman was shot in the leg.
He was brought to the PUK headquarters, bleeding
from his right thigh, buttocks, and left arm. His
blue jeans were soaked with blood, and his beige
plaid shirt was torn to reveal a scorpion tattooed
on his left shoulder.
Two interrogators stood over him, as he lay on the
floor of a narrow concrete room with a bed and desk.
He wheezed and shifted on the floor, smearing the
puddle of blood beneath him, as he denied any
involvement in the attack.
He identified himself as a Mosul local named
Mohammed Jassim Al Ta'i, 23, and claimed he was just
walking by when he got caught in the crossfire.
One of his interrogators laughed.
"He was the first to shoot at us," the man said.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this
report. Thanassis Cambanis can be reached at
tcambanis@globe.com.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
http://www.boston.com
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