Serious soul-searching needs to precede the looming battle for Mosul because it is an environment like no other in Iraq. Mosul is distant from Baghdad — both physically and culturally. It is a 200-mile drive from the capital and 100 miles north of the nearest Iraqi military bases at Baiji, the Iraqi Army’s tentative foothold in the north. Mosul is Iraq’s second-largest city, boasting a population of just over 1 million people, with half the surface area of Baghdad but more than twice that of Basra, the third of Arab Iraq’s traditional regional centers.
Mosul also includes a mosaic of religions and ethnicities. Its population was as much as 65 percent Sunni Arab prior to the June 2014 takeover by the Islamic State, according to election results, and is probably even more strongly Sunni now after an exodus of non-Sunni minorities in the early days of the Islamic State’s control. Kurds, Turkmen, Assyrians, and a host of other minority ethnic and religious groups have long called Mosul home, but probably compose well under a quarter of Mosul’s population today.
Iraqi forces will also be attacking a city where most of the civilian population remains in place. Unlike the Islamic State-held cities of Fallujah and Tikrit, the Islamic State has actively worked to ensure that most Mosul residents remain trapped within the city. The jihadi group has enforced a “guarantee system” requiring those leaving the city to
designate three hostages who will be punished if they fail to return.
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Originally Posted by Mr. Right
