MOSUL, Iraq, 4 April 2004 — Fewer US troops patrol the streets of Iraq’s third-largest city, while more Iraqi security forces drive through busy markets or sprawl on median strips in firing positions.
Deadly attacks on local police, translators and government officials also have become more familiar in Mosul, once seen as a success story of the US-led occupation. US military officials say insurgents have shifted from attacking American forces to targeting Iraqi security forces and most recently civilians, including foreigners helping with reconstruction and Iraqis perceived as cooperating with the Americans.
Families and friends swap news of such attacks and threats, and some people stay off the streets at night because of it. The violence appears aimed at scaring Iraqis who are to take over from the Americans on June 30. “I think it’s an indicator of how desperate the enemy forces are at this time,” said Lt. Col. Joseph Piek, a military spokesman here. “They’re not achieving a significant amount of success in attacking the security forces so they seem to be looking for soft targets.”
“The enemy is looking for opportunities to drive wedges between ... the people and the Iraqi security forces and the coalition,” Piek said. The effort was in vain, he said.
In February, Task Force Olympia, which controls Mosul and other parts of the north, took over from 101st Airborne Division troops. Its officials focus on letting Iraqis assume more responsibilities daily.
Under the 101st, US troops and residents in the predominantly Arab Sunni city enjoyed relative calm after the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime until a recent spike in attacks forced the military to carry out more raids and arrests. The city is also home to significant Kurdish and Christian communities.
Brig. Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Task Force Olympia, said attacks by former regime loyalists were more prevalent but less lethal, usually drive-by shootings against symbols of authority, such as police. Terrorists focus on more sophisticated and deadly operations that usually show good intelligence and surveillance, he said.
Some Kurdish officials in the north believe Ansar Al-Islam, a group thought linked to Al-Qaeda and suspected of engineering some attacks in Iraq, operates in Mosul. Jaish Ansar Al-Sunna, believed to be a splinter of Ansar Al-Islam, had claimed responsibility for a Jan. 31 attack on a Mosul police station.
Meanwhile, UN special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was due to arrive in the capital within two days for “vital” talks for a smooth return to Iraqi sovereignty, as US troops vowed to hunt down insurgents who killed four American civilians.
As three people were killed across the country yesterday, a senior aide to firebrand Shiite leader Moqtada Sadr, who has been accused of inciting violence against the US-led coalition, was detained by Spanish forces in the central city of Najaf.
Mustafa Yaakubi, head of Sadr’s office in the Shiite holy city of Najaf, was seized at 3:00 a.m. (2300 GMT), Mohammed Tabatabai, an official of the cleric’s office, told AFP.
The head of the Sadr office in Baghdad, Sheikh Qais Khazaali, told AFP that “if this official is not promptly freed, then our movement, our leadership and our followers will react ... with the available means.” There was no immediate confirmation from the coalition.
A police chief and a civilian were killed yesterday and two wounded in separate incidents in Baghdad, police said. Lt. Col. Usama Hussein, police chief of the Al-Mahmudiya village southwest of Baghdad, was killed in the capital’s western Al-Khadra neighborhood, said a police officer who did not wish to be named.
And a civilian was killed and two others wounded when a missile fell on a residential neighborhood in the south of the capital.
A missile fell near a house in the Ash Shorta neighborhood of the Dora district at 8:00 a.m. (0400 GMT), said a police officer who did not wish to reveal his identity. Mohammed Abed Jawad, a 20-year-old university student. His brother, Qaisar, and neighbor, Abed Muhammad Ali, 50, were injured.
The facade of the house was damaged and a car was destroyed. Dora police chief Col. Abdul Majid Salman said “this is a terrorist act to plant insecurity in this region.”
In another development, thousands of supporters of Iraq’s defiant Shiite cleric, Moqtada Sadr, marched through the streets of Baghdad yesterday, in a show of strength punctuated by anti-occupation rhetoric. Members of Sadr’s militia, known as the Mehdi Army, paraded through Sadr city.
Some of them wore black masks, and many carried banners and pictures of the cleric and of his father who was assassinated in 1999. An American and an Israeli flag were set on fire. “This parade of the Mehdi Army was ordered by his eminence the general commander of the army, Sayyid Moqtada Sadr,” said Sadiq Hashimi, a cleric who was leading a group of marchers.
“We are here to show the world our might, this army can be a striking force at any moment, it’s a time bomb that will go off at a time and place it chooses.”
Sadr, a young and radical Shiite cleric, has often spoken out against the US occupation and against the Iraqi Governing Council which Washington hand-picked, in contrast to many other Shiite groups that have sought to work with occupying forces.
