Bodies Of 20 More Dead Iraqis Found In Mosul

http://www.albawaba.com/en/news/178353

More bodies, mainly of the Iraqi national guards, have surfaced in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.

Twenty guardsmen were found lying dead on Tuesday in an area northwest of the Iraqi city of Mosul, Aljazeera has learned.

A Reuters correspondent in Iraq's third largest city on Tuesday said he saw the bodies of six young men, all shot in the head as if executed.

They wore civilian clothes and their identities were not clear.

A hospital official said eight similar bodies had been found in a cemetery in the west of the city on Monday.

Dozens of bodies, many from the Iraqi security forces, have turned up in Mosul since fighters routed the US-trained police force in November and briefly took control of the city.

Victims

Other corpses, the victims of attacks and banditry, turn up regularly across Iraq.

Mosul
has witnessed intense clashes in recent days. On Saturday, a US military spokesman said a firefight broke out as fighters attacked a US military patrol that was trying to seize an arms dump.

The fighters set off a car bomb and then opened fire with rifles, grenade launchers and mortars on the unit that moved on to the arms cache. Troops later destroyed the weapons.

Meanwhile, caught in the crossfire, Mosul residents say schools and shops have closed as fighting continues.

"There is no government and people are afraid to leave their homes. We have nothing to do but stay at home," Muhammad Ahmad, 41, a teacher, told Aljazeera.net.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D56837C1-8C78-43C1-B827-E72AF25A3611.htm

A year ago, the northern Iraqi city of Mosul was a model for American commanders of how to do it right. U.S. troops worked closely with Iraqis and gradually gained their trust; they found ways to finance thousands of popular reconstruction projects; they even helped produce offbeat programs for local television, including a Mosul version of "Cops," and a talent show they called "Iraqi Idol."

Today, Mosul illustrates how things have gone wrong in Sunni Muslim areas of Iraq. There are fewer U.S. troops here than a year ago. Meanwhile, a well-organized insurgency has taken root in this city on the banks of the Tigris, intimidating the local population and terrorizing the police. Local security forces are mostly in disarray, and American troops last weekend were fighting running street battles. U.S. commanders say the city's two million residents know little about the election scheduled for Jan. 30, and insurgents have even managed to destroy most of the voter-registration materials.

"Many, many people are afraid," says Brigadier General Carter Ham, who has commanded U.S. forces here since February. The insurgents have infiltrated the city, he says, and their campaign "has had a significant effect on the population."

Ham spoke at his base at the Mosul airport during a quick trip to the city last weekend by General John Abizaid, who commands U.S. forces in the Middle East. Abizaid's visit provided a window on Mosul's importance as a crucial front in the Iraq war. There's no easy optimism about the battle here; U.S. commanders know they face a brutal and determined enemy that combines the ruthlessness of Saddam Hussein's old regime and the passion of radical Islam.

The insurgents' most powerful weapon is raw fear. According to U.S. commanders, they distribute DVDs showing beheadings of their captives. The message: "Here's what we'll do if you try to stop us." After U.S. troops patrolled one Mosul neighborhood recently, insurgents arrived in eight cars. They seized a man and shot him in the head as a warning against cooperation with the Americans.

Mosul's slide into this cauldron accelerated last July when the provincial governor was assassinated. He was by all accounts a charismatic politician who managed to maintain his independence as an Iraqi while also working with the Americans. After he was killed, Mosul lacked effective leadership to dispense the tens of millions of dollars that had been allocated for reconstruction projects. Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi brought a brief moment of optimism when he visited the city carrying $65 million in cash to pay back salaries for government workers. He promised that more financial help was on the way, but it hasn't yet arrived.

Security in the city has been eroding all year, but it collapsed when the insurgents staged a well-coordinated series of attacks that overran the local police on Nov. 10. The simultaneous attacks came from more than a dozen bands of insurgents, according to Ham. Policemen fled their posts, and in the aftermath, Mosul had just 1,000 police left in a force that on paper had numbered 8,000. Of those who stayed, only about 400 were reliable.

Ham says of the November assault that shattered the police: "I did not see that coming." Indeed, Mosul illustrates what may be the biggest problem for America and its allies throughout Iraq, which is the scarcity of good intelligence about the insurgency's command-and-control structure.

The Iraqi National Guard, which was supposed to back up the police with heavier firepower, hasn't been very effective. Again, the problem is intimidation. Insurgents threaten the soldiers' families, and many National Guard soldiers have deserted because of these threats.

With so few police to maintain order in this sprawling city, the insurgents stepped up their campaign of terror and assassination. Since Nov. 10, 136 people have been murdered, according to American figures. Attacks involving coalition forces increased to a peak of about 140 a week during November from the previous level of 30 to 40, says Ham. On Dec. 4, American soldiers from the Stryker Brigade were ambushed in southern Mosul in a coordinated attack from two mosques. The Americans cleaned out the mosques and killed 30 to 40 insurgents.

The battle in Mosul is becoming a classic counterinsurgency, in which U.S. forces fight a shadowy enemy that attacks and then disappears into a maze of city streets or the anonymity of rural villages. The insurgents are waging a war of intimidation, and over the past month in Mosul, they have had disturbing success.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=5&article_id=10927