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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Preventing Another Mosul - What Went Wrong? |
| 2005-01-29 |
| Source: Washington Institute l The limited scope of insurgent activity in Mosul during 2003 can be traced directly to the active counterinsurgency and community policing program undertaken by the 20,000-strong U.S. 101st Airborne Division and its capable local partners. The size of the U.S. force in Nineveh province enabled not only denser civil affairs, patrolling, and rapid reaction coverage, but also greater capacity to mentor Iraqi security forces and dispense Commander's Emergency Reconstruction Program (CERP) funding. This latter and much overlooked aspect of the MNF presence had made the 101st Airborne the largest single employer in northern Iraq and a recognized force for good in the community. Beginning in January 2004, however, the force was drawn down to the 8,700-strong Task Force Olympia (built around a Stryker Brigade Combat Team), with a commensurate loss of security, mentoring, and CERP capacity. Astute insurgent factions such as the Ansar al-Sunnah Army were quick to exploit the situation in Mosul as soon as MNF and Iraqi government focus shifted to crises in Falluja and Najaf. The factors that had made Mosul a success in 2003 were systematically dismantled throughout 2004. Multi-ethnic institutions such as universities were subjected to attack, causing Kurdish and other non-Sunni groups to withdraw in large numbers. On July 14, Usama Yusif Kashmula, the provincial governor, was assassinated near Mosul, eliminating one of the most effective forces driving disbursement of government revenues and job creation in the city. Reduced MNF presence was exploited through an active program of harassment and exploitation of growing ethnic tension to weaken the predominantly Sunni Arab Iraqi security forces in the area, including the eventual corruption of Mosul police chief Brig. Gen. Mohammed Khayri al-Birhawi and the desertion of 3,200 of 4,000 police officers in November 2004. When the newly arrived 1st U.S. Stryker Brigade Combat Team replaced the experienced 3rd Brigade Team and immediately moved south to take part in operations at Falluja, the insurgents took full advantage of the momentary lack of U.S. forces in Mosul to shatter local Iraqi security forces and seize the city center, demonstrating considerable political tact in the process. In addition to posting a communiqué in mosques that warned against future collaboration, the insurgents announced that shopkeepers should keep their businesses open and that state institutions and banks would be protected by the resistance. |
| Posted by:Duke Nukem |
| #2 the Kurds have so much to admire about them...they deserve their own state. |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-01-29 6:14:27 PM |
| #1 a US senior officer who has an intimate knowledge of Mosul said the US forces had long before realised that the local recruits were unreliable but had been unable to replace them with Kurds because of objections by local leaders who were loath to upset the delicate ethnic balance in the town, which is partly Arab and partly Kurdish. The fiasco in November was enough to cancel out the political objections to the Kurdish militia presence, and now Kurds control all the important security positions in Mosul. - Link Hope the Sunnis enjoy their new status as part of the Kurdish autonomous region. |
| Posted by: phil_b 2005-01-29 6:07:46 PM |