U.S. sees long fight to oust Al Qaeda in Mosul

On Saturday, Iraq's Minister of Planning and Development Ali Baban came to Mosul to survey the province's economic needs. They are staggering and range from chronic power shortages, destroyed highways and roads, overflowing sewers, and insufficient schools. The province does not get its fair share of fuel and food rations from the central government due to chronic inefficiencies and corruption.

Add to this the threat that a major dam in the area is in danger of collapsing and flooding big parts of the province. The cost of repair ranges from $2 billion to $6 billion, according to Mr. Goran.

"There is no question I support the resistance," says Taha Khalaf, a Sunni Arab resident of the violence-ravaged west side.

"I live on 'death road' and my neighborhood looks like it was hit by an earthquake. I do not have a job and the Americans run our provincial government."

The US military is not only having to combat Al Qaeda in what's described as its last urban stronghold, but it's also building residents' trust in their own government and security forces, pressuring Baghdad to spend money on the provision of the most basic services, easing bubbling sectarian and ethnic tensions and preventing the province from bursting at the seams by cracking down on the flow of fighters through the Syrian border and forging alliances with tribes in outlying areas.

All of this takes place in a city where no day goes by without attacks against Iraqi and coalition forces, kidnappings, and assassinations.

On Tuesday nine people including four policemen were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in the city and a prominent academic escaped an assassination attempt. A police station was leveled in a bombing on Friday that killed four, and eight Kurds were assassinated on the city's east side last week.

'Shuttle diplomacy'

The US military has been working on easing political as well as ethnic and sectarian tensions through what it calls "shuttle diplomacy."

It recently flew Goran, who also heads the Nineveh branch of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), and other provincial officials to meet with Sheikh Abdullah al-Yawar, a powerful chieftain from the powerful Shammar tribe at his fiefdom in Rabiah in western Mosul near the Syrian border.

The US needs the sheikh's support to win his people away from Al Qaeda's sway. It also needs to maintain good relations with Kurds. But a bitter disagreement between the two camps illustrates the difficulties that America faces in appeasing all sides in Iraq.

Goran says 90 percent of the residents of the district of Sinjar, nearly 70 miles west of Mosul, are Kurdish-speaking Yazidis who must be given the option to join Kurdistan in a referendum mandated by the Constitution. The Yazidis were victims of devastating bomb attacks in Sinjar that killed nearly 500 people last summer. Tal Afar, halfway between Sinjar and Mosul, has been the scene of bloody sectarian battles between its Sunni and Shiite residents.

The sheikh says the Kurds are "dreaming" if they think they will get Sinjar and he hopes that Sunni Arabs who, in sharp contrast to Kurds, shunned local elections here in January 2005 will have a chance to assert "their rights" in the next round of voting.

Goran, however, is hopeful that the US can help broker some kind of deal. "We must find solutions to these problems and secure everyone's rights. We must not be afraid."

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