American commanders, determined to turn the security situation around, are building a series of bases and checkpoints throughout Mosul to give US and Iraqi forces a 24-hour presence. They are also erecting a wall of mud and earth around the perimeter in an attempt to prevent extremists from driving weapons in.
Residents, tired of living in fear, just want both sides to stop the shooting and the bombing so that they can live in peace.
Colonel Michael Bills, the US commander in Mosul, is optimistic that he can clear the city of insurgents by July, particularly after an initial 90-day deployment of 900 extra soldiers to his battle space in January was extended indefinitely.
The extension was “because of the importance of clearing and holding the east side”, said Colonel Bills, referring to the more upmarket portion of Mosul. A 1,000-strong squadron from his 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment covers the squalid west side on the opposite bank of the Tigris river, which divides the city.
Despite the extra American manpower, the campaign for Mosul differs from past stands against al-Qaeda in Iraq because Iraqi rather than US soldiers are leading the fight. Iraqi officers say that their ability to operate is being compromised by a lack of trucks, weapons and ammunition. Inexperience is also a problem. ...
Brigadier-General Nourdeen Hussein Tatar, who led the mission to arrest three low-level al-Qaeda suspects, said afterwards that he has only 53 combat vehicles for a brigade of 3,000 men and that 11 of them were damaged.
“If I had all the equipment I needed I could control Mosul within four months,” he said.
Colonel Bills said that transporting parts up north to fix broken and damaged vehicles was the key to improving the equipment situation. He also emphasised that it took years for an army to build a good logistics system to supply its forces.
Unfortunately, time is in short supply. With only 1,900 American soldiers in Mosul, which competes with Basra for the title of Iraq's second-largest city and has a population of about 1.7 million, the US military is relying on 12,000 Iraqi troops and about 9,000 police to win the fight.
Despite inadequacies in the Iraqi army, they'll do well enough. And I imagine they will get additional equipment pushed forward given the need to nail the jihadis in Mosul. The confidence of the American commander, given the general reluctance to provide too optmistic assessments, seems telling. Although maybe it tells me that the colonel is overly optimistic.
Still, with the example of Ramadi in isolating a city and extending outposts throughout the city, perhaps the pace of success can be hammered out a little more precisely than I would have assumed.
We need the Iraqi security forces to demonstrate their ability to lead an extended operation to take down al Qaeda in Iraq in Mosul. This is the last major urban area that they operate in.
These jihadis are also die hards, having decided to run and fight rather than give up in the face of their hammering in Anbar and the Baghdad region as so many of their less hardy colleagues did over the summer. Will these dedicated killers die in place or run again when faced with destruction?
And if they run, where do they go? They're running out of space inside Iraq.
UPDATE: Major General John Kelly, commander of the I Marine Expeditionary Force in ANbar, thinks they'll try to return to their familiar haunts:
Kelly said he recently spoke to two Al-Qaeda fighters who were captured wearing suicide vests. They had returned to the province after being driven from the northern city of Mosul, he said.
"Certainly if they are driven out of other parts of the country, which I think the folks up north are doing a pretty good job of keeping them on the run, our sense is they'll go back to where they know best.
"There is a fair number that come out of the Al-Anbar province, and fought us pretty hard here. So if they are on the run, our expectation will be they'll move back here," he said.
However, he said locals have been quick to report them to the police.
Running to areas with fresh troops and hostile local populations doesn't strike me as the smartest thing to do, but it will at least (from the enemy's point of view) result in some stories about a "resurgent" al Qaeda in Anbar.
But then we'll just kill them.
