IT'S NOT a pretty sight: sagging skeletons of two-and three-story buildings under a threatening grey sky. Abandoned shops with corrugated iron fronts riddled by bullet holes. And amid the rubbish heaps and pools of stagnant rainwater, a roadside bomb set to explode.
Five years after the invasion and following a significant drop in violence nationwide over the past year, the battle for Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, still waxes and wanes.
"This is our hottest area," said Sergeant Ron Corella, a decorated
combat veteran in this war-scarred quarter of the ancient city where moments before his troops spotted – and disarmed – the roadside bomb.
"The enemy knows that if we gain a foothold and they can't push us out, it's another safe haven they have lost. So they have to fight," he added.
Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Molinari, of the 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, says Mosul "looks like Baghdad about 18 months ago" at the height of violence in the Iraqi capital.
It was the generally successful pacification of Baghdad that drew al-Qaeda and other insurgents to this hub of northern Iraq to open a new battleground and safeguard their infiltration and supply routes.
But security clampdowns, a lack of aid money and a power struggle between Kurds and Sunni Arabs are also blamed for Mosul's woes.
In the city's version of the Baghdad surge, 22,000 US forces and Iraqi troops and police have spread out in an operation called "Mother of Two Springs" – taken from an Arab nickname for Mosul – that began in May and went into a new phase on 15 October.
Armoured vehicles snake through mile-long lines of traffic, backed up behind checkpoints. Soldiers man sandbagged positions atop houses and mosques. Iraqi and US troops stage patrols around the clock from some 40 makeshift bases in the city of 1.8 million people.
US and Iraqi commanders cite some progress after months of struggling to root out insurgents in street-by-street battles.
Attacks, they say, are down to fewer than 70 a week, compared to about 130 before May. Insurgents have switched from well co-ordinated attacks to hit-and-run strikes and roadside bombs. "The people feel more secure, so some dare to come forward with tips about the bad guys," said police Lieutenant-Colonel Adel Kader, in the Hadba district, one of the city's most violent.
On the security front alone, Mosul is a complex nut to crack. Not just al-Qaeda, but more than a dozen Sunni Muslim and other insurgent groups are on the loose, together with criminal syndicates and rival tribes.
"Al-Qaeda looks to Mosul as a gateway to Iraq. It's a place that it doesn't want to lose," says Lt-Col Molinari. "It is not as such the last stand of al-Qaeda. It's a last stand to maintain their lines of communication, thus their viability to conduct operations in Iraq."
Roughly equidistant from the borders of Syria, Iran and Turkey, Mosul has been an important junction on trade and smuggling routes for centuries. The route from Syria across the desert and along the Tigris River is the prime conduit for fresh insurgents.
"It's key terrain for the insurgents. They continue to fight there because they badly need to control it," said Captain Justin Davis Harper, commander of the regiment's Killer Troop.
After an attack, he says, the insurgents slip into alleys too narrow for military vehicles. Within this enclave of eight square miles are Mosul's wholesale and retail markets, magnets for extortion, smuggling and businesses serving as cover for insurgents.
Heavy lorries, ideal for hiding weapons, can move in and out to every point in Iraq and beyond.
"You can buy a bus ticket to just about anywhere, including Mecca," said Capt Harper.
"This is not a final, apocalyptic battle with someone walking off the field as the victor," he observes. "It is an achievable goal but it will be months of hard effort and enough Iraqi forces doing the job. It will be messy. It will require time and patience."
And that has been Mosul's problem – a failure to sustain the effort.
Desert war zone where cultures collide
MOSUL, a strategic city where cultures, religions and ethnicities collide, saw an exodus of thousands of Christians last month following a campaign of threats and violence against them, although some have since returned.
Kurds control the provincial governing council after most Sunnis boycotted local polls in 2005, but the balance of power in Mosul could change in elections due by late January.
Christians, who are believed to number around 250,000 to 300,000 in the province, could be a swing vote, wooed by Kurds or Arabs in a fight for power.
Local Iraqi army units in Mosul are mainly made up of Kurds. Arabs in the area scornfully refer to them as "Peshmerga", the name for the former guerrilla fighters who make up the security forces of the autonomous Kurdish region further north.
Bashar Fahdil, a shopkeeper in Mosul, like other Arabs says Kurdish soldiers share blame for ongoing violence.
