Pakistanis angry over detentions in Times Sq. case Monday, May 24, 2010
ISLAMABAD – Relatives of three men detained by Pakistan for alleged links to the suspect in the attempted Times Square bombing say the men are innocent.
They
AFP - Thursday, August 6TAIPEI (AFP) - - Taiwan's Beijing-friendly government on Wednesday denied boycotting an Australian film festival amid a row over the e
BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel suffered a double blow on Thursday as a senior party ally in east German
Minister seeks closure of anti-Berlusconi websites Wednesday, December 16, 2009
ROME (AFP) - – The Italian government moved Tuesday to close down Internet sites encouraging further violence against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who
By ELAINE KURTENBACH,AP Business Writer AP - Wednesday, March 18SHANGHAI - Asia's stock market rally seemed to be running out of steam Wednesday, despite an
My Profile
Top News
Reuters top ten news stories delivered to your inbox each day.
Subscribe
You are here:
Home
>
News
>
International
>
Article
Home
Business & Finance
News
U.S.
Politics
International
Technology
Entertainment
Sports
Lifestyle
Oddly Enough
Health
Science
Special Coverage
Video
Pictures
Your View
The Great Debate
Blogs
Weather
Reader Feedback
Do More With Reuters
RSS
Widgets
Mobile
Podcasts
Newsletters
Your View
Make Reuters My Homepage
Partner Services
CareerBuilder
Affiliate Network
Professional Products
Support (Customer Zone)
Reuters Media
Financial Products
About Thomson Reuters
Iraq's Mosul hopes for end to stubborn insurgency
Fri Oct 2, 2009 8:00am EDT
Email | Print |
Share
| Reprints | Single Page
[-]
Text
[+]
By Tim Cocks
MOSUL, Iraq (Reuters) - For a city under constant attack at the hands of a violent Sunni Arab insurgency, northern Iraq's Mosul looks in better shape than it has for many years.
Streets littered with bombed out rubble have been cleared and collapsed buildings resurrected, trash has been swept and trees planted along newly paved boulevards. A sports pitch built with American money brightens one run-down neighborhood.
But a return to normalcy in Mosul, once known across the Middle East as a center of learning and culture, remains a distant prospect as long as al Qaeda and other Sunni Arab insurgents continue their fight against the Iraqi government.
"We were terrified. We heard bombs every day," said Mohammed Anwar, 42, peering nervously from his small shop's fortified door at a U.S. and Iraqi army patrol outside.
"But I haven't heard an explosion for a while. God willing, it's getting better."
The blasts that shook Iraq's third biggest city almost hourly are in decline, but it remains violent, pot-holed and with miserably high unemployment, a shadow of its former self.
Services are woefully inadequate for a city of nearly 2 million, with scant electricity, water or rubbish collection and tons of sewage pumped raw into the Tigris river every day.
Insurgents became concentrated in Mosul after being driven out of former strongholds in Baghdad and western Anbar province by Sunni tribal sheikhs allied to U.S. forces in 2007.
That success has been hard to reproduce in northern Iraq, where a society bitterly divided between Kurds, Arabs and other ethnicities have made it harder to consolidate security gains.
Mosul and surrounding Nineveh province remain a conduit for Sunni militants with supply lines to Syria, through which Iraq says more than three quarters of foreign fighters pass.
"Nineveh's border with Syria is difficult to seal because of the long tradition of cross-border trade, much of it illicit," the International Crisis Group said in a paper this week, adding that this helped "explain the insurgency's relative success."
Tensions between Nineveh's Arab-led governorate and Kurdish leaders have meanwhile created a security vacuum in some areas -- where neither Iraqi soldiers nor the Kurds' own Peshmerga force are present in force -- exploited by insurgents.
HARD TASK
As U.S. troops prepare to end their combat mission in Iraq by September 2010, they are racing to pacify Mosul before then.
The task is made harder by the fact that the city lies in the faultline of a power struggle over territory and oil between Baghdad the leaders of semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan, seen by the United States as the greatest threat to Iraq's stability. Continued...
View article on single page
Share:
Del.icio.us
Digg
Mixx
Yahoo!
Facebook
LinkedIn
Next Article:
Iran nuclear talks with U.S. and allies eases tension
Also On Reuters
Slideshow
Slideshow: Pictures of the month: September
Support for abortion rights falls in U.S.
Analysis: In Iran, concerns of another Iraq
More International News
Video shows Israeli soldier well; prisoners freed
Aid trickles in as Indonesia quake toll hits 1,100
| Video
"Super typhoon" bears down on flood-ravaged Philippines
Fresh quake near Tonga, tsunami toll nears 200
| Video
Fledging Afghan army grapples with high expectations
More International News...
Editor's Choice
Slideshow
A selection of our best photos from the past 24 hours. Slideshow
Most Popular on Reuters
Articles
Video
No special treatment for Polanski: Schwarzenegger
Half of babies born in rich world will live to 100
"Super typhoon" bears down on flood-ravaged Philippines
Kanye West and Lady Gaga's North American tour cancelled
David Letterman victim of $2 million extortion over affairs
President and First Lady back Chicago 2016 bid | Video
Court to hear gay divorce in Texas, despite gay marriage ban
Olympics-Rio makes impassioned pitch for first S.American Games
Q+A: What's behind Geneva agreement on Iran's enriched uranium?
Super typhoon bears down on flood-ravaged Philippines
Most Popular Articles RSS Feed
Video
Lobbying for the 2016 Olympics
Bernanke: oversight should be shared
Toyota president regrets U.S. deaths
Cities plead the 2016 Olympics case
China parade marks anniversary
Water dogs make a big splash in UK
Iran's Mottaki says ready to engage
Frantic search as toll hits 1000
Samoa survivor recalls tsunami
Amateur video captures Samoa flood
Most Popular Videos RSS Feed
Special Coverage: China Turns 60
Can we foresee China's future?
While China's rise may seem inevitable as it marks 60 years of Communist rule, in retrospect the path it has taken was anything but predictable. Full Article | Full Coverage
Scenarios: Key forces shaping long-term future
Reuters.com:
Help and Contact Us |
Advertise With Us |
Mobile |
Newsletters |
RSS |
Labs |
Journalism Handbook |
Archive |
Site Index |
Video Index
Thomson Reuters Corporate:
Copyright |
Disclaimer |
Privacy |
Professional Products |
Professional Products Support |
About Thomson Reuters |
Careers
International Editions:
Africa |
Arabic |
Argentina |
Brazil |
Canada |
China |
France |
Germany |
India |
Italy |
Japan |
Latin America |
Mexico |
Russia |
Spain |
United Kingdom |
United States
Thomson Reuters is the world's largest international multimedia news agency, providing investing news, world news, business news, technology news, headline news, small business news, news alerts, personal finance, stock market, and mutual funds information available on Reuters.com, video, mobile, and interactive television platforms. Thomson Reuters journalists are subject to an Editorial Handbook which requires fair presentation and disclosure of relevant interests.
NYSE and AMEX quotes delayed by at least 20 minutes. Nasdaq delayed by at least 15 minutes. For a complete list of exchanges and delays, please click here.