TERROR'S NEW FRONTIER
By RALPH PETERS
February 9, 2005 -- MOSUL is the good girl who went bad. Quiet in the early days of the occupation, the violence-ravaged Iraqi city has become a must-win battlefield for our enemies. The terrorists and insurgents will throw all they have left into the fight.
There's no mystery involved: Mosul's the decisive point in northern Iraq. Over the long term, the city's vastly more valuable than Fallujah.
Insurgent attacks, terrorist bombings and assassinations erupted last autumn and continue on a regular basis. They're not going to stop soon. After Baghdad, Mosul will remain the most bitterly contested Iraqi city in the months ahead.
Every blast and tactical ambush has a strategic purpose. The Sunni Arab insurgents need control of Mosul to remain viable. And the international terrorists want to deny it to all but Sunni Arabs.
We failed to see how much we changed Iraq. Mosul is now a frontier town, at the northern edge of the Sunni-Arab world.
With a strong Kurdish tradition, a location astride the Tigris River and control of the key route from Turkey, the city's strategic importance was obvious from the 8th-century caliphate of Harun al-Raschid to the era of Saddam Hussein. Saddam gave his military officers homes in Mosul and encouraged other regime supporters to homestead. He was determined to conquer the city demographically, to make it incontestably Arab, instead of the polyglot mix it long had been.
It was an old trick. The Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders and even the 19th-century Russians used military colonies to augment or substitute for expensive frontier garrisons: Get the soldiers to put down stakes and the land becomes your own.
Mosul became so heavily populated with military and security officials that Saddam's sons, Uday and Qusay, chose it as their hide-out — and died there. The city remained calm in the early months of the occupation because Saddam's loyalists felt confident that the struggle could be won elsewhere — they preferred to ravage the cities of others, rather than risk their own retirement homes.
The Baathists assumed that Mosul would be theirs again after the Americans fled Iraq. But they got an unpleasant surprise: The Americans showed no sign of leaving. Meanwhile, the Kurds grew in strength and confidence.
With elections looming, it was obvious that the country's Shi'a majority would dominate the polls, while the Kurds would vote a united ticket and place second. Our enemies saw what the media could not: They were losing. So they began to execute Plan B.
The insurgents and terrorists alike recognize Mosul as the vital outpost of their blood and faith. If Iraq remains whole, the Sunni Arabs need to dominate Mosul for political leverage. Should Iraq break into three pieces, Mosul would be strategically and economically essential to a Sunni Arab state.
We see Mosul as a set of tactical problems. Our enemies view it as an indispensable fortress-city on the edge of the Sunni Arab world.
Mosul dominates northern Iraq. It threatens the primary border crossing with Turkey at Zakho, which provides the Kurds with an economic lifeline. It was Saddam's military base for repeated attacks on Dohuk and Irbil, two of the three Kurdish provincial capitals, and it dominates the most-direct route from Turkey to Suleimaniye, the third. The Sunni Arabs know they've lost the oil-rich Kurdish city of Kirkuk, at least for now, but possession of Mosul would guarantee them effective control of the pipelines that carry Kirkuk's oil.
The insurgents and terrorists had to make their move. And they can't quit, despite heavy losses. Our enemies will stop at nothing to prevent Iraqi security forces from gaining traction. They have to sustain the myth of a malevolent occupation. They like to kill us, but they need to kill and discourage the Iraqis who stand against them.
Mosul is the single city our enemies can't afford to lose, the key to all of northern Iraq. Without Mosul, the Sunni Triangle is a shrunken, economically impotent territory, dependent on the mercies of the central government.
The Sunni Arabs retain demographic control of cities such as Ramadi, Baquba, Tikrit and Fallujah, and they've given up the Shi'a south for now. But Mosul contains a combustible ethnic mix. The insurgents are determined to keep the matches coming.
For their part, the international terrorists see Mosul as the border fortress of true Islam. Although the Kurds are overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims, they're far too secular and tolerant for the extremists — and, at its heart, the terror campaign spearheaded by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq is a racist, Arab movement. The terrorists are as hostile to the independent-spirited Kurds as Saddam ever was.
Watch Mosul. From the raids on police stations to suicide bombings and mortar attacks on our bases, preventing the pacification of Mosul has become the primary operational goal of both the insurgents and the terrorists.
What will our enemies do now, after the election? Everything they can to create casualties, stir unrest and prevent the normalization of Mosul's economy. The Sunni Arab insurgents will attempt to exacerbate Turkey's fears about Kurdish power and independence, while the terrorists will continue to send in suicide bombers.
In the wake of the widespread displays of courage in Iraq's first free elections, the insurgents and terrorists feel themselves pressed against the wall. In response, they'll lash out madly — to include attacks against moderate Sunni Arabs.
Our enemies fantasize about turning Mosul into another Mogadishu or Beirut. We need to prevent it from turning into another Fallujah. The odds are on our side, not theirs.
But be prepared for more bloodshed in Mosul. If our enemies lose the city, they've lost Iraq.
Ralph Peters is the author of "Beyond Baghdad: Postmodern War and Peace." |
