Iraqis Await Resurrection of Scarred Mosul
U.S. Army soldiers investigate the site of a car bombing in Mosul, northwest of Baghdad, Iraq. Five years after the U.S.-led invasion and following a significant drop in violence countrywide over the past year, the battle for Iraq’s third-largest city continues. (Photo credit: Maya Alleruzzo / AP)
October 26, 2008
MOSUL, Iraq — Five years of war have reduced much of Mosul to rubble, and U.S. and Iraqi authorities are pledging to deliver on long-time promises to rebuild as they launch a new campaign to rout a stubborn insurgency. …
Near a giant U.S. military base, American humvees rumble down “Baghdad Highway.” The thoroughfare is lined by buildings flattened into heaps of cinderblock or pockmarked by mortar blasts and bullets.
Sewage runs freely and cows graze around mounds of litter. Shops keep their metal gates shut tight, and people stay indoors. At dusk the air is thick with burning trash. …
“When anyone arrives in Mosul today, he would think it is a battleground,” said the minister, Farouq Abdul-Qadir, ticking off a list of problems: an ancient sewage system, a woefully inadequate power supply, high unemployment, and a slowing but still grim drumbeat of assassinations and bomb attacks.
“In the past, the problem for reconstruction was security, and the same problem exists now. We still don’t have full security in Mosul,” he said.
“Abject failure”
Since 2003, the United States has spent millions of dollars in Mosul to improve electricity, overhaul army facilities, rehabilitate schools and on other works. …
U.S. Brigadier General Tony Thomas, commander of U.S. forces in Mosul, said a recent Iraqi initiative to follow military operations with millions of dollars’ worth of reconstruction had been an “abject failure.” …
On October 15, Iraqi and U.S. forces began their third major military operation in Mosul since May. They will go house to house in search of insurgents and weapons caches. …
Violence and decay
Rebuilding a city still marred by violence is not easy.
Earlier this year, U.S. soldiers visited a school in western Mosul they were planning to renovate. Soon afterwards, the headmaster received a call warning him to send the children home early. A car bomb flattened the school that afternoon. …
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Related report on this site
Iraq War Drags On in Mosul (Nov. 12, 2008)
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Following are security developments in Iraq on Oct. 26, 2008, as reported by Reuters.
RAMADI – Gunmen seriously wounded Ahmed Dawoud Marzouq, the Anbar provincial representative of the Iraqi National Dialogue Front, a mainly Sunni Arab political group. The gunmen stormed his house after clashing with his guards in the provincial capital Ramadi, police captain Ghazi Faisel told Reuters.
NEAR KIRKUK – U.S. forces killed three wanted militants and arrested three others during operations just southwest of Kirkuk, the U.S. military said. Kirkuk is 155 miles north of Baghdad.
BAGHDAD – A roadside bomb wounded two policemen when it targeted their patrol in the district of Baladiyat in eastern Baghdad, police said.
MOSUL – Gunmen killed one policeman in a drive-by shooting on his checkpoint in eastern Mosul, 240 miles north of Baghdad, police said.
MOSUL – A roadside bomb wounded two policemen when it targeted their patrol in southern Mosul, police said.
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