Perspective: Mosul -- Still on the brink

MOSUL, IRAQ — The date 11/11 is so ingrained in the memory of residents of this ancient citadel that it requires no further explanation than 9/11 would in the United States.

On Nov. 11, 2004, the city that had been heralded as an American success story fell to Sunni Arab insurgents and the local police melted away.

It took U.S.-led troops months of hard fighting to reclaim Mosul, a diverse city of about 2 million people wedged between the Kurdish north and Arab south, about 60 miles from the Syrian border.

More than two years later, U.S. officials are again touting the city as an example of progress in an intensified effort to train Iraqi forces to take over security so American troops can begin heading home.

Thousands of new police officers and soldiers have been recruited here and across northern Iraq. Their U.S. handlers say they are better trained, better equipped and more motivated than their predecessors, allowing American forces to reduce their presence in the six northern provinces by more than a third over the last year, to about 19,500.

The 2nd Iraqi Army Division assumed security control over Mosul on Dec. 22 and is expected to fall under the command of Iraqi ground forces today, completing a hand-over that is a cornerstone of the U.S. exit strategy in Iraq.

Yet the city where former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's feared sons, Uday and Qusai, died in a gunfight with U.S. forces in 2003 is far from subdued.

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