Word: qaeda
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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...
...Bucca's detainee population. The Tawafuk Front, the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc with 44 of the legislature's 275 seats, says it doesn't trust the Shi'ite-led government and wants all of the detainees immediately released, even "the minority" they acknowledge might be al-Qaeda members. "Even if you released an al-Qaeda emir [leader], he won't be able to wreak havoc in the same way he did three years ago," says Omar Almashhadani, a spokesman for the Front, citing improvements in the Iraqi security forces and their intelligence gathering capabilities. "The problem," he adds, "is that...
...kind of sheer poverty, and what is most needed is to give a stable life to the majority of people living in Afghanistan. That means that guns should be replaced with ploughshares. By doing so, those people will be able to rebuild their lives. And in this situation, al-Qaeda and the Taliban will naturally not be able to thrive...