[Marxism] Second front opens in Mosul as US claims "occupation" ofFallujah

["Fred Feldman" <ffeldman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This article indicates the loss of control of the US forces in Iraq's
third largest city.  The article has a Basically pro-US line (reflecting
Le Figaro, as distinct from Le Monde, which more reflects those who
differ more sharply from Washington's perspectives in the French ruling
class. At the same time, it also reflects the weakness of Islamism as a
unifying force for the Iraqi masses across religious and other lines,
weakness that does provide openings for the occupying power.

It certainly makes clear that the US military is nowhere near to rolling
over the resistance. Fred Feldman



SECOND FRONT IN MOSUL IN DANGER OF OPENING By Delphine Minoui

** Many commanders of the Sunni guerrilla war, including al-Zarqawi
himself, said to have fallen back on Mosul **

Le Figaro (Paris) November 13-14, 2004 Page 6

ARBIL (northern Iraq) -- After several weeks of sporadic violence in the


streets of Mosul, the guerrilla war awakened in strength in broad
daylight on Wednesday, with one police station taken by storm and a unit
of the National Guard attacked.  The day before, the city's governor had
announced the closing of the bridges leading into the center and had
declared a curfew.

"Mosul constitutes a major threat to stability in northern Iraq.  It's
getting ready to be the second Fallujah.  It even risks being worse and
spilling over into Kurdistan, which has been spared so far," a Kurdish
official who prefers to remain anonymous says nervously.  He know what
he's talking about. Two cars packed with explosives, coming from Mosul,
and intended to kill him, were recently intercepted in time, near his
office, in the quiet little town of Arbil.

"The situation in Mosul is very bad," admits Dana Ahmad Majid, the head
of security services in Sulamaniya, southeast of Arbil.  His units,
which are discreetly operational in Mosul, tell him that a variety of
small terrorist groups have settled in this city of about two million
inhabitants, situated near the Turkish and Syrian borders.

Former Baathist officials, back from an extremely short exile in Syria,
have taken up arms against American forces, alongside the Islamists.
The Kurdish leader in Arbil says he has "proof that high-up mujahideen
commanders from Fallujah took refuge some time ago in Mosul, having
foreseen the American attack on the Sunni bastion."  Kurdish
intelligence services also say they have information according to which
the Jordanian terrorist Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, in person, has taken
refuge in Mosul.

"The terrorists who are operating in Mosul are the same ones we find in
Fallujah," comments Kosrat Rasul Ali, political advisor to the UPK
(Patriotic Union of Kurdistan), based in Sulamaniya, east of Arbil.
Since the March 2003 mopping-up operation in the mountains of Kurdistan
conducted by peshmergas supervised by American special forces, between
100 and 200 members of Ansar al-Islam, presumed to be linked to
al-Qaeda, are thought to have taken refuge in Mosul.  Three weeks ago,
two of them were killed, and their third companion arrested, while
preparing to launch rockets toward Arbil.  Known for their
pro-Americanism, the Kurds are indeed an ideal target for guerrilla
forces. Mosul is a complicated, turbulent place.  Alongside a majority
of nationalist Arabs, the city shelters large Kurdish, Turkmen, and
Christian minorities.  To this must be added Islamist networks that were
already operating clandestinely under Saddam Hussein.

At the fall of the regime, street battles broke out.  Today, control of
Mosul is the responsibility of 8,500 soldiers of the 25th infantry
division, with Iraqi service forces at their side.  But doubts are
multiplying about a possible infiltration of the local police and the
National Guard by the guerrillas.

The inhabitants are living in fear.  Posters pasted on the city's walls
call on local businessmen not to work at the Americans' behest.  In the
entryway to the university, there are tracts that require young
Christian students to wear a head scarf during the Ramadan period.  "My
girl cousins no longer dare go out in the street," says Eva Kasoc, a
Christian student whose family lives in Mosul.

"We have begun to send troops to reinforce Mosul," Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi admitted at the end of last week.  According to the Iraqi daily
*Azaman*, a new secret police is now operational in Mosul to track
members of the guerrilla forces.  In the course of the past three days,
both American and Iraqi forces have conducted raids in certain mosques,
suspected of hiding arms.

But the battle of Mosul, like that of Fallujah, risks exacerbating
nationalist sentiments and desires for vengeance.  "The inhabitants of
Mosul have a very pronounced sense of patriotism.  Armed combat is a
legitimate reaction to the humiliation that Americans have provoked by
arresting our ulemas and invading our mosques," warns Talaat al-Wazaan,
leader of a nationalist parti in Mosul.

--
Translated by Mark K. Jensen Associate Professor of French Department of
Languages and Literatures Pacific Lutheran University Tacoma, Washington
98447-0003 Phone: 253-535-7219 Web page: http://www.plu.edu/~jensenmk/

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