Irag military getting control in Mosul

NY Times:

The recent successes in quieting violence in Basra and Sadr City appear to be stretching to the long-rebellious Sunni Arab district here in Mosul, raising hopes that the Iraqi Army may soon have tenuous control over all three of Iraq’s major cities.

In this city, never subdued by the increase of American troops in Iraq last year, weekly figures on attacks are down by half since May 10, when the Iraqi military began intensified operations here with the backing of the American military. Iraqi soldiers searching house to house, within American tank cordons, have arrested more than 1,000 people suspected of insurgent activity.

The Iraqi soldiers “are heady from the Basra experience,” Brig. Gen. Raymond A. Thomas III, the commander of American forces in Mosul, said in an interview. “They have learned the right lessons.”

The crucial lesson, in fact, over the past month appears to be that all sides — the Iraqi military as well as various insurgent groups — prefer, at the moment, not to fight. Rather, as in Basra and Sadr City, the huge Shiite enclave in Baghdad, the Iraqi military appears to have allowed many insurgents to slip out of Mosul, after scores of negotiations with militias and their leaders.

This approach could make any gains temporary: The insurgents, here as elsewhere, are alive to fight another day. And little progress has been made on political reconciliation among rival sects and ethnic groups that could help reduce violence in the long term.

But the negotiations have allowed the military to expand both its area of control and the government’s zone of sovereignty, burnishing the once-poor reputations of the Iraqi military and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. While the American military was never far away — it offered air support and additional firepower — the operation here was largely led by Iraqis.

And that paid dividends here in Mosul. More than two dozen insurgent leaders who might not have surrendered to the Americans turned themselves in to the Iraqi generals.

Out in the dusty streets, for example, Gen. Nooraldeen Hussein, the commander of the Iraqi Eighth Brigade, hunted one insurgent leader until the day he sat down and had tea with the man. The insurgent, whom General Hussein identified as Muhammad Saffo, living in the Rashadia neighborhood, was suspected of killing five Iraqi soldiers with a roadside bomb.

At a meeting with his American advisers two weeks ago, the general said he arrested 14 members of Mr. Saffo’s tribe and killed three others, before Mr. Saffo came forward to negotiate along with six other tribal members.

“I have all his numbers right here,” General Hussein said, tapping his cellphone. He would call, he said, and negotiate the amnesty in the presence of a tribal sheik.

The American advisers glanced at one another, not quite sure what to make of this new twist to the American effort to tamp down the Sunni insurgents in the city.

“If the Iraqis are comfortable, we are comfortable, too,” General Thomas said of the negotiated surrenders of insurgent leaders sometimes described as members of Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the homegrown Sunni insurgent group that American officials say is led by foreigners.

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The recent operation was necessary after northern Iraq, an area about the size of Georgia, with seven provinces and bordering three countries, became what the American military called an “economy of force” region as troops were diverted to Baghdad during the surge. Conditions were dismal. By last fall, only 700 or so American soldiers were stationed in Mosul, the multiethnic fulcrum of the region. American commanders conceded that that was not enough.

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American tanks have formed cordons while Iraqi soldiers have searched house to house. Forts built and operated by Americans in western Mosul also greatly helped to stem the car bombings that had plagued this city. The Iraqis, though, drew up the arrest lists and conducted the parleys. To soothe ethnic tensions, a Sunni Arab general oversaw the operation.

In all, 83 percent of the military actions had a majority of Iraqi troops participating.

American military statistics show that significant acts of violence, including roadside bombings, sniper shootings, and mortar and rocket grenade attacks, fell from 195 in the week before the operation to 93 in the week after it, according to Lt. Col. Eric R. Price, the chief American adviser to General Hussein.

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Letting the Iraqis take the lead is a sign of success for the counterinsurgency operation. That they can get the enemy to stop fighting with out having to kill everyone is also a good thing. It has to be somewhat ironic that the NY Times is concerned that the operation that pacified Mosul was not bloody enough. The Iraqis have denied the area to the enemy. Sometimes the war really is about real estate.