Word: mosul
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...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...
American commanders in Mosul agree that insurgents unseated from elsewhere in Iraq have followed a "path of least resistance" to this northern city. "There were 28 U.S. battalions in Baghdad during the surge as well as lots of Iraqi battalions. Up here there was one battalion," says Brigadier General Robert B. Brown, deputy commander of the 25th Infantry Division. "So where are [the insurgents] gonna...
...boots on the ground, coupled with a lack of basic services such as electricity and water, high unemployment and a disenfranchised Sunni population that until recently was governed by members of the minority Kurdish population, made the city kindling for the insurgency. But things are changing. American troops in Mosul have doubled over the past several months, according to Col. Gary Volesky, brigade commander of the 3rd Heavy Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division. January's provincial polls also brought a Sunni party, Al-Hadba, to power, a development that is expected to lessen some elements of the insurgents' support base...