Mosul's Insurgency In Perspective

Fighting a counterinsurgency - whether successful or not - appears to be a lot like punching a blob of pudding. Some of it splatters off the map, other pockets pool up in between your knuckles, and still others just ooze off to the side, where you have to chase them around with a napkin.

The NYT can probably explain the situation in Mosul more elegantly:

"Sunni insurgents pushed out of Baghdad and Anbar Provinces have migrated to this northern Iraqi city and have been trying to turn it into a major hub for their operations, according to American commanders."

The article goes on to explain that the levels of violence in Mosul have been static over the past few months, despite this migration and despite the predominately downward trend elsewhere. Needing more men for the same job sounds like struggling to me. I think a key consideration here is how the article says that insurgents behave toward the population:

"The relatively small concentration of American forces in Nineveh has attracted insurgents, who have long sought to exploit ethnic tensions in the region by portraying themselves as the defenders of Sunni interests against Kurdish expansionism."

Iraqis are increasingly seeing right through attempts like these; they got AQI ejected from al-Anbar in a big way, and JAM is also facing repercussions for their actions now in Karbala. If the influx of insurgents ends up meaning that insurgents start creating more civilian casualties (and it will), the public is going to turn against them, no matter who they say they are - actions will always trump words, where the passive majority is concerned. Hopefully, things in Mosul won't have to get to that point, and the influx of more Iraqi soldiers will help crack the insurgency egg there.

Mosul can also be instructive if Gen. Petraeus' recent opinion is considered. According to this Fox News report:

"Citing a 60 percent decline in violence in Iraq over the last six months, Gen. David Petraeus said Thursday that maintaining security is easier than establishing it and gives him more flexibility in deploying forces."

Fallujah is perhaps the most blatant example of this, but Mosul will have a different population that reacts differently to both American and Iraqi soldiers, and it would be hard to imagine that Mosul (or anyone) could be more sympathetic to the insurgency than Fallujah was. What's hopeful about the situation in Mosul is that American forces haven't been requested, but Iraqi forces have:

"That has prompted American and Iraqi commanders to propose the return of two Iraqi battalions that were sent from western Mosul earlier this year to bolster Iraqi forces in Baghdad. Such a move would increase the Iraqi troop strength here by 1,400 troops or more, according to estimates by American officers, and enable the Iraqis to establish more outposts in some of the more violent areas of the city."

Once again, it's better to have them do it tolerably than have us do it well, and the request indicates that the Americans in charge of security have some confidence that the Iraqi forces can handle the situation as well as is necessary. Mosul is a big city, and big cities are hard fights, but an Iraqi win there may be instrumental in building legitimacy.

This war is referred to as a "patchwork war" for a reason. The situation looks different from province to province, as illustrated by Nineveh and Anbar; from city to city, as shown by Mosul and Baghdad; and from neighborhood to neighborhood as well, as any news report from Baghdad can explain. Similarly, the same solution cannot be applied everywhere to get the same result. Fortunately, the commanders involved are all very intelligent men; where a formula cannot be applied, a little brainpower can go a long way.