There are many on-the-ground reports indicating serious progress in supressing the terror in northwest Iraq. This 14 September DOD briefing is definitely worth a careful read.
The essence of the combined Al Qaeda + ex-Baathist terror campaign is Mafia-style intimidation of the local population. The obvious goal of the intimidation is to prevent the residents from reporting the location and activities of the bad guys. Capturing/killing the bad guys is a very Good Thing - but developing sufficient confidence that locals overcome the intimidation is a necessary condition for success.
Colonel Robert Brown is the Commander of The 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division. From his Mosul briefing:
And then we have the population, I think is the most significant change I’ve seen over the last 11 months, from a population clearly on the fence, not sure — they want freedom, but they weren’t really sure what freedom was, and they were clearly intimidated, to a population that clearly understands they want freedom; they are absolutely sick and tired of the terrorists, the brutal acts against innocent civilians, and they want a brighter future for their children. And we’ve got a lot of statistics to back that up. Like when we first got here in October, there was — no hotline existed. We opened a hotline; we got about 40 calls a month prior to January. The last six months, we’re up to 400 calls a month. Every day the citizens are stopping us on the street telling us where a potential suspicious individual is who may be a terrorist, and telling us where they tried to plant IEDs and those type of devices. So the population is clearly very confident.
There is far too much content here to summarize - read the whole thing.
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