November 15, 2004: American and Iraqi troops entered Mosul to battle some 500 gang members who attacked and destroyed six police stations, and ran wild in Sunni parts of the city. Only armed Kurds resisted the Sunni Arab gunmen. The gangs also killed the head of the organized crime effort in Mosul. | Mohammad al-Capone: "I want this guy dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on his ashes!" |
Seeing what is happening in Fallujah, where gang headquarters have been captured and cleaned out of weapons and other gear, the Mosul groups apparently see themselves threatened and forced to fight. The gangs are better armed, paid and led than the police, and have fewer restrictions on who they can kill, torture or kidnap. | al-Capone: "You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word." |
This is particularly true in the Sunni Arab areas of central and western Iraq. In the Kurdish areas to the north, and the Shia Arab region in the south, where most of the population lives, the police have established and maintained control. The battles in Fallujah, Mosul, Ramadi, Samarra and other Sunni cities is mainly about breaking the power of the gangs. While some of the gangs are political, most are business enterprises, and the government offensive over the last week has been bad for business.
In Fallujah, some 1,200 gunmen have been killed and another 400 captured. About 50 American and Iraqi troops have died. Several hundred gunmen are trapped inside the city, and refuse to surrender, so far. American troops continue to hunt these holdouts, but expect that to be done with in a few days. "You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun tank. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one a hundred of his to the morgue! That's the Chicago Fallujah way, and that's how you get al-Capone!" |
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