Mosul

I initially sent this one out to my family back in early May, and quite a bit has happened in Mosul since this time with the Iraqi Army taking the initiative up there:

Imagine yourself flying across Iraq in the middle of the night in an Army helicopter to join the battle of Mosul for a couple of days. Now that is living.

I returned early Monday morning from a couple of days up in Mosul. There is a lot going on up there right now with Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) trying to make a tough stand. Let me add a few more acronyms to the list here so that I can use them in this email to save me from having to spell everything out. There is now a new acronym to go along with AQI. It is now called AQI/ISI. ISI stands for Islamic Sons of Iraq. AQI was getting upset that people keep accusing them (accurately) of being all foreigners, so they added a little hometown flavor to their name with the ISI piece. When I write “IA,” that stands for Iraqi Army; IP is Iraqi Police. ISF is Iraqi Security Forces. PTT is Police Transition Team.

My trip to Mosul was to spend some time with the PTT team up there. PTTs are US Military Police (MPs) whose purpose it is to teach the Iraqi police how to function as a professional police force. Part of my assessment is to determine how close the IP are to becoming self sustaining. I was actually surprised at what I learned.

Mosul is a city of about 1.2 million people up in Nineveh Province in northern Iraq. It is split down the middle by the Tigris River and it is a typical congested urban area. Up until about 2005, Mosul was actually a fairly stable and peaceful city. In 2005, AQI moved in to try to prevent an orderly election process there, and AQI has not yet willingly left the city. The Iraqi Army has two separate armies in the area, one being to the east of the Tigris, the other being to the west. The army to the east is heavily Kurdish, the one to the west is heavily Sunni. AQI being Sunni, guess which Iraqi army unit is doing a bit better at taking on AQI/ISI? Along with the 2 Iraqi army units, the US has some 3rd Armored Cavalry units to the west, and some 1st Infantry units to the east.

The US 1st Infantry commander has done a tremendous job with his side of the city. Just a few months ago, AQI dominated the streets of eastern Mosul. The 1st Infantry went in and set up Combat Outposts (COPs) right in the heart of the worst neighborhoods. The commander ordered his troops to shoot on sight anyone laying Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). No chasing, no arresting, the orders were to shoot. AQI does not emplace its own IEDs. What they do is walk around and offer people money to “go put this in that hole over there and walk away.” After the 1st Infantry showed up, people became very unwilling to put big metal objects into holes on the east side anymore. In addition to the 1st Infantry tactics, the Iraqi army on that side of town has worked very well with the IPs to locate and attack AQI elements. AQI has sworn never to lose Mosul, so no part of the city is out of the woods yet, but AQI is in a fight and it knows it.

I went out on patrol with the PTT team into Mosul. The IP have check points all around town to try to limit the movement of AQI elements. These check points are frequently targeted by AQI. We were checking up on some of these check points and visiting a couple of IP leaders. We stopped in at the police station of the commander of the southeast district of Mosul. His name is Colonel Hussan. This man is one of the top police commanders in Mosul in that he and his men are pretty effective. COL Hussan is very charismatic, intelligent, and very funny. Since I was the highest ranking US officer present, and since Iraqis are very attentive to rank, I got to play the part of special guest for COL Hussan. We sat and talked and sipped Chai tea for two hours. We covered some pretty weighty topics and some not so weighty topics. COL Hussan had nothing but positive remarks to make about the US Army and his PTT trainers. We discussed his training and equipment needs, we discussed security issues, we discussed politics (his, not ours), we discussed maps and Google Earth (he wanted us to tell the “satellite people” to update it), we discussed the upcoming Iraqi elections, and we discussed accountability of his people (IPs keep “ghost police” on their records. These are police who have been killed but whose families keep getting paid to take care of their needs; it is hard to determine actual police numbers when they do this).

Hussan did not have much positive to say about the Ministry of Interior (MOI), under which the police fall. Hussan said that he gets very little support from the MOI. He runs out of fuel the third week of each month because he says that someone from MOI sells a week’s worth of fuel on the black market for personal gain. While the Iraqi Ministry of Defense is doing a fairly decent job of equipping the IA, the MOI is not doing much for the police.

Another issue for Hussan is his own court system. He complains that many of the people who are arrested are soon released without going to trial. He believes that the judges are corrupt. Here is the problem he faces. There are US attorneys and judges here in Iraq teaching judges how to follow their own law. They are further ahead in their training than are the police. The police are busy dealing with the insurgency. There are very few detectives conducting criminal investigations because everyone is busy fighting AQI. Hussan and his men will make an arrest and turn the prisoner over to the courts. The judges, being newly trained on how to be honest judges, notice that the police brought no evidence with them to use against the defendant. Therefore, following their own law, the judges have to release the prisoners. Hussan doesn’t quite understand this. He says that everyone knows that some of these people are criminals or terrorists, so why would the courts let them go. You can see the dilemma. Hussan is probably correct about many of these prisoners. They probably are criminals, but the new standard is for there to be evidence of a crime. The IPs in Mosul are nowhere near proficient enough in investigative work to collect and retain evidence at this point, so that is the next big task for the PTT teams. For the record, the Iraqi court in the Tikrit area is convicting terrorists right and left. The security situation didn’t get as bad as it did in Mosul, so there was ample opportunity to teach investigators how to investigate.

After we ended our conversation, Hussan wanted to go on patrol with us. It is his district, so that was his choice, and the PTT teams are trying to play a support role rather than a lead role. Hussan chose not to ride in our armored vehicles, so he rode in his Ford pickup truck. There is a particular check point in Mosul that was getting hit by AQI at the same time each night, so we were going to set an ambush there on our way back in to camp, but Hussan, not knowing what our plans were, went there with a whole armada of flashing red and blue police lights to keep AQI away from his men. AQI chose not to show up that night.

It was a very informative trip for me. Hussan feels that he can fully handle the security situation if only he receives support from his own government. Until that happens, he does not want the Americans to leave. I was surprised in that I thought that the police would be in a little more disarray up there, but considering their lack of equipment and supplies, they are holding their own. If the army gets the insurgency in check, that will speed up the training of the IP quite a bit.

A couple more notes as I wrap up. There is plenty of concern about these local citizen groups in Iraq who we are arming to help in the fight against the insurgency. Are they for real or are they just taking our arms to fight us? AQI seems to think that that these groups, (now called Sons of Iraq, or SoI), are for real. AQI is fretting about the lack of volunteers for suicide bombing missions and the lack of support that they are receiving from Sunni Arabs. They are also upset that many of their own have returned to Syria. The fact that they are actively targeting SoIs indicates to me that they feel threatened by them. As for the lack of suicide bombers, now up in Mosul AQI is calling for its members to convince their girlfriends to become suicide bombers. I’d love to hear those conversations. As for the SoI, there are nearly 100,000 in Iraq now, and they are having a very positive impact on their communities. The US commander in Mosul will not allow many SoIs in that town. We will have to wait and see if that turns out to be a good decision or not.

Take care.