Published: September 14, 2005
Terrorist Forces Routed in Mosul Region of Iraq, Colonel Says
Civilian population now overwhelmingly opposes terrorists
A U.S. Army brigade commander in Mosul, Iraq, says al-Qaida is reeling from a combination of effective military operations and a local population that actively helps to root them out.
Colonel Robert Brown commands the 1st Brigade of the 25th Infantry Division, operating in Mosul and the surrounding region in the northwest part of Iraq. He told journalists at a Pentagon briefing September 14 that 80 percent of the al-Qaida network in northern Iraq "has been devastated. And those are not our figures, those came from the last six leaders in Mosul -- al-Qaida leaders -- that we captured; they informed us of that," he said.
Brown said that in the year he has been in the Mosul region, there have been two dramatic changes, and the dividing line was the January 30 national elections:
Before the elections, the enemy consisted of "very well-trained foreign fighters," he said. Now the foreign fighters are fewer in number, increasingly young (15-to-17 years old) and poorly trained.
Prior to the election, civilians in Mosul were neutral but have since come to realize "that their government, their Iraqi security forces support them, and the terrorists offer no hope for the future," he said.
The people of Mosul, Brown said, are "absolutely sick and tired of the terrorists, the brutal acts against innocent civilians, and they want a brighter future for their children." A telephone "hotline" for civilians to pass information about the terrorists to the coalition forces and/or Iraqi police received an average of just 40 calls per month before the elections but for the past six months has averaged 400 calls a month.
"Every day the citizens are stopping us on the street, telling us where a potential suspicious individual is who may be a terrorist, and telling us where they tried to plant IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and those types of devices. So the population is clearly very confident," Brown said.
Furthermore, Brown said, Iraqi police and soldiers, with more training, are now performing well. The Iraqi police "recently found one of the largest [weapons and materiel] caches -- certainly in the north -- and maybe all of Iraq. And they're doing a very good job," he said.
Source: U.S. Department of State
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