Word: mosul
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...weeks leading up to the assault. A Pentagon official says that at most, 10% of the enemy in Iraq has been killed or captured in Fallujah. As the U.S. fights there, violence is rippling across the center and north of Iraq, engulfing the increasingly restive city of Mosul, the third largest in the country. The violence has raised the prospect that the siege of Fallujah could be a prelude to a series of nasty urban street fights--precisely the sort of war the U.S. military had desperately hoped to avoid when the invasion started in the spring...
...back enough rebel-held areas to hold credible elections in January. The U.S. does not have enough soldiers in Iraq to crush a growing insurgency in multiple locations at the same time. But officials believe they won't actually face that challenge. As messy as the Sunni triangle and Mosul now appear, so long as the insurgency doesn't ignite a nationwide conflagration, the Pentagon believes it can contain the threat. "What we're trying to do in the short term, through the elections, is make sure that there are no no-go zones," says a senior Western diplomat...
...whack-a-mole strategy may already be getting its first test in Mosul. The city is home to a heterogenous population of 1 million--Sunni, Kurd and Turkoman--and for months after the invasion was viewed as one of the occupation's few success stories. But locals warn that the city is slipping out of control. Foreign terrorists streaming across the border from Syria have joined forces with a Baathist resistance stocked with unemployed ex-soldiers. Insurgent attacks have grown significantly in number and lethality in recent months, and at least two or three assassination victims arrive each...
...insurgents may be forced to adapt their operating methods in the wake of losing Fallujah, which had functioned as a sanctuary that could provide a center for logistics, training and command for operations throughout northern Iraq and the capital. And the fact that a large-scale offensive in Mosul has followed so hard on the heels of Fallujah suggests U.S. commanders are determined to keep the guerrillas on the back foot and prevent the emergence of any new sanctuaries in which they're allowed to operate unmolested. Battles are likely to rage throughout the mostly Sunni areas for weeks...
...Rather than ending major combat operations against the insurgency, the victory at Fallujah will likely see their focus shift elsewhere - to Mosul, Ramadi and other new flashpoints. And while counterinsurgency operations will likely to continue for months ahead, both before and after January, the election date now makes the political battle for Sunni hearts and minds, rendered ever more challenging by the fact of ongoing combat, a race against the clock...