Word: mosul
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...military officials say violence is dropping around Mosul, where insurgents have for months escalated attacks. In January, U.S. military data show there were more than 500 attacks across Ninewa Province, where Mosul is the largest and most volatile city by far. A senior military official speaking on condition of anonymity said the attacks in the province in February were expected to total roughly...
Even if the projections bear out, Mosul still remains a vicious battleground for Iraq, which has seen overall violence fall dramatically in recent months in the wake of the surge. And the city of 1.8 million people continues to vex U.S. military leaders, who have watched its troubles ebb and flow over the years...
...late 2003, Mosul was largely peaceful by comparison with the rest of Iraq at the time. The burgeoning insurgency, then beginning to spread across other areas of Iraq, was slower to take hold in Mosul for a number of factors. Mosul drew a measure of stability from its history as place of relative wealth and sophistication, whereas early insurgent havens like Fallujah and Ramadi were poor, troubled places even under Saddam Hussein. And some leaders among Mosul's Sunni community for a time held out hope of finding a role in the emerging post-invasion power structures even when Sunnis...
...years afterward, violence in Mosul fluctuated as insurgents kept up a presence in the city. But the situation there seemed much more stable than many parts of Iraq such as Baghdad and Ramadi. Then in 2007, as surge forces began reducing violence across Iraq, the picture in Mosul worsened, leaving it the only place in the country where violence was rising as the year closed. Iraqi and American officials agree that Mosul is now probably the last urban stronghold of the insurgency. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki dispatched additional Iraqi army troopers to the area, promising a "decisive battle...
...military strategy in Mosul for both U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces is much the same approach used elsewhere in Iraq over the years, with mixed results. Absent, however, is one key aspect that shaped progress in other places over the past year: local volunteer security forces who, in many cases, were nationalist insurgents who broke with al-Qaeda in Iraq. U.S. officials say that strategy won't work in Mosul, because standing up bands of irregulars could inflame existing ethnic and sectarian divisions in the city. So many U.S. military officials see provincial elections...