Word: mosul
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Mosul remains at war. Although the conflict in most parts of Iraq has largely subsided - the uneasy peace punctured only sporadically by spurts of bloodshed - it isn't over in Mosul. Al-Qaeda and other insurgent groups remain a force in this majority Sunni, ethnically and religiously mixed northern city, Iraq's third largest...
...meandering Tigris River cuts Mosul into a larger, tamer "green" eastern section and a violent and insecure "red" west, the heart of the crisis. Graffiti lauding the Islamic army of Iraq, a hard-line Sunni group loosely affiliated with al-Qaeda, are prevalent in many parts of west Mosul. Iraqi security forces have crossed out some of the writing on the wall, but it's proving harder to erase the insurgents and their support base. "I knew AQ [al-Qaeda] was a problem, but I didn't know to what extent," says Lieut. Colonel Thomas W. Cipolla, battalion commander...
...question is, Why? What is it about Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, that has sustained an insurgency that has largely (with the exception of northeastern Diyala province) died out in most of the country? Why has this city of some 2 million people become the site of al-Qaeda's last stand in Iraq...
Then there is the Syria connection. Saddam Hussein recruited many of his high-ranking Baath Party members and army generals from Mosul's élite Sunni families, many of whom sought refuge in Syria after the 2003 U.S. invasion and the fall of the dictator. According to several Iraqi generals from the national police and the army, some of these die-hard Saddam loyalists have been funneling funds and fighters - both foreign and Iraqi - across the 185-mile Syrian border with Nineveh...
...Iraq," says Colonel Moslet Ahmad Attiyeh, commander of the national police's Salah battalion. "The terrorists pay their way out and are released," he says, whereupon they join other insurgents displaced from al-Qaeda's former stronghold of Anbar and the still volatile Diyala who have found refuge in Mosul...