Word: iraqi
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...given day just a few months ago, the northern city of Mosul was a noisy place. Sunni insurgents who'd settled in Mosul were keeping up almost daily attacks against Iraqi and U.S. forces in the area. Car bombs and mortars shook the air most afternoons. And at night gunfire often crackled as American and Iraqi troops conducted raids on suspected insurgent hideouts in the dark...
...Mosul, the capital of Nineveh Province, has been unusually quiet in recent days as Iraqi security forces undertake fresh sweeps of the city in a new offensive dubbed "Lion's Roar" and commanded personally by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. "We have come to Nineveh to restore security," Maliki said to reporters shortly after arriving Wednesday. "Today, law and order is our message. We want to end the suffering in this province...
Perhaps some Iraqi and American commanders hoped for an Alamo scene in Mosul, the guerrilla movement's last urban stronghold in Iraq. But it appears the insurgents have decided to melt away rather than take part in the "decisive battle" Maliki vowed to unleash months ago when Mosul reemerged as an insurgent haven...
Indeed, they have displayed both tactical skill and a knack for survival in their running battles with U.S. and Iraqi forces since late last year. By and large they have avoided freakish displays of violence like public beheadings of civilians, an amateurish, if deeply disturbing, guerrilla tactic. Instead, Mosul's insurgents have remained shadowy, sticking mostly to the kind of lightning strikes against U.S. and Iraqi security forces that mark a professional guerrilla organization aiming to deal blows and survive to do so again in the future...
Ahmad Chalabi is nothing if not indefatigable. The dapper Iraqi multimillionaire who was instrumental in pressing the U.S. to invade Iraq - and viewed by many in Washington as the presumptive leader of a future Iraqi government - failed to win a seat in his country's parliament in 2005, and came under suspicion in Washington of passing secrets to Iran (although no charges were ever filed in this respect). Still, he bounced back, and was tapped last November to run a committee tasked with improving the delivery of basic services such as water and electricity in Baghdad. The post required coordinating...