Jordan Times
Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Mosul – northern link to insurgency

MOSUL, Iraq (AFP) – Mosul, scene of a major US-led offensive on Tuesday
against Iraqi rebels after a spate of deadly clashes, is an ancient and
ethnically diverse city that has become a new front in the insurgency.
Car bombings and fighting have become all too frequent in Mosul and
surrounding areas, which have gradually fallen into the sway of hardline
Islamic groups since Saddam Hussein’s regime was toppled in April 2003.

US troops were swarming into restive pockets on Tuesday to secure police
stations and restore order, with bridges straddling the Tigris River closed
and a night-time curfew in place.

Rebels overran a number of police stations last week, triggering clashes
that left several dozen people dead, mostly insurgents.

US military commanders say the events in predominantly Sunni Muslim Mosul
and other parts of the country may be a spillover from the massive assault
launched last week on the rebel hub of Fallujah. But they insist they are
still in control of the capital of Nineveh province, 370 kilometres north of
Baghdad, at the tip of the so-called Sunni Triangle and scene of the worst
violence since Saddam fell.

Mosul, whose name in Arabic means the link, is one of the most ethnically
diverse cities in Iraq with Arabs, Syriac people, Armenians, Kurds, Turkmen,
Jews, Christians, Muslims and Yazedis all calling the city home.

The area has been inhabited since 6000BC and was chosen by the ancient
Assyrians to build their glorious capitals of Ashur, Nimrud and Nineveh,
whose ruins still dot the city and surrounding areas.

The city fell into the hands of the Persians, Romans and the Arabs and then
Ottomans for almost seven centuries.

Its Nabi Yunis Mosque is said to be the burial place of the reluctant
prophet Jonah, who according to the Bible fled to sea after turning down
God’s request to preach in Nineveh and was swallowed by a whale.

The area had been one of the most loyal pro-Saddam strongholds and it was a
local tribal leader who sheltered his two feared sons Uday and Qusay in his
Mosul mansion when they fled Baghdad. But the same man, Nawaf Mohammad Al
Zaidan, is believed to have tipped off the Americans on the whereabouts of
the brothers, pocketing a $30 million US bounty that had been placed on both
of their heads.

The two were killed in a fierce battle with US troops in July last year – an
incident which left a strong impact on the local Sunni population – once
Iraq’s elite and now feeling increasingly marginalised since Saddam’s fall.

Widespread looting and intercommunal fighting and killing swept through the
city in April 2003 after thousands of Kurdish peshmerga fighters and special
US forces seized the city during the US-led invasion of Iraq.

In recent months it seen a rash of suicide car bombings and ambushes against
US and Iraqi military convoys, Kurds, judges, government officials including
the Nineveh provincial governor – anyone regarded by the insurgents as
collaborating with US forces or the US-backed government.

Several Turkish truck drivers supplying goods to US military bases have been
attacked or kidnapped in the area. The north-south roads running through
Mosul have become so treacherous that many truckers have stopped coming to
Iraq altogether or travel only in US protected convoys. Iraq’s Defence
Minister Hazem Shaalan has charged that Mosul and surrounding areas are safe
havens for militants from Syria, which is about 180 kilometres to the west.
Sunni Muslims in Mosul, together with the minority Turkmen community, fear
Kurdish calls for an expanded autonomous region in districts immediately
bordering the northern metropolis, a city of about 1.5 million people.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004