Word: als
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...Iraqi security forces to rout them. Iraqi security forces most likely cannot successfully stamp out the insurgent networks in Mosul by themselves. But the Iraqi government may not be so keen to ask U.S. forces to stay. "It depends on the situation at the time," said Tahseen al-Shekhli, a spokesman for the Iraqi government. "If there is something out of control, we will ask them to stay...
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki initially promised a "decisive battle" in Mosul a year ago, when some wondered whether insurgent attacks there would renew bloodshed in Baghdad and other cities. That battle never came, of course. But al-Maliki has not seemed overly troubled by the fact that Mosul is effectively not under his control. It's been governance as usual for the Prime Minister, whose tangible political power essentially extends across a rump state that includes Baghdad and the oil-rich southern provinces of Iraq. On most days, al-Maliki appears content with that reality, and may remain...
...forces appear capable of continuing to manage the insurgency in Mosul - even without a foreseeable victory there - then Iraqi and U.S. officials could reasonably calculate that pulling U.S. troops from Mosul in step with the withdrawal timetable would preserve what overall gains the surge has made. In that case, al-Maliki may simply leave Mosul to its current status quo and chalk up the city as a sufferable loss to an insurgent movement that neither his forces nor the U.S. military has so far found a way to eliminate...
Moreover, if al-Maliki's government asks U.S. forces to stay in significant numbers in Mosul, any negotiated extension of the U.S. presence risks stoking political attacks from the Prime Minister's Shi'ite rivals. Any move by al-Maliki to allow U.S. forces to keep up major operations in Mosul may weaken his standing in parliamentary elections, which are expected to happen in December or January of next year...
...Uzbekistan, the welcome he received was less than effusive. "People were terrified of us," says Osmanov, who was part of the first wave of Crimean Tatars to return to the Crimean peninsula on Ukraine's Black Sea coast during perestroika in the late 1980s. "Ten days before Eid al-Adha [the Muslim Festival of the Sacrifice], they closed all the schools because there were stories that we were going to sacrifice children...