The Neo-Salafi Front.

US and Iraqi forces, meanwhile, are concentrating on the pursuit of Neo-Salafi insurgent groups, including al-Qaeda, in Iraq's north-western province of Ninewah and its capital Mosul. This is where the next big battle is to take place, as Neo-Salafi insurgents displaced by US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad and the provinces of Anbar are Diyala, flee to the north-west.

Despite the American military offensives and the injection of additional troops this year, the US "boots on the ground" deemed so necessary to secure other parts of Iraq are sparse in Mosul. Only a single battalion, usually 500-1,000 troops, is deployed in Mosul, and two more in the surrounding province, compared to well over 20 battalions in the Baghdad area. But while US officials say this makes Mosul a target for al-Qaeda attempts to regroup, they are confident the militants could be repelled by the unusually strong contingent of Iraqi Army and police, making the north-west a testing ground for the ability of Iraqi troops to hold their own with comparatively minimal US back-up. Mosul is a city of 2m which straddles the Tigris River 350 km north of Baghdad.

Although the city is predominantly Sunni Arab, the provincial council is dominated by its Kurdish minority - but only because the Sunnis boycotted the last elections. Unlike in Baghdad, where a Shi'ite-Sunni sectarian struggle has extended to battles over municipal offices, however, the Kurds in Mosul seem content to let the Sunnis control most institutions of local government. And the active participation of Sunni leaders in the police force has helped ensure relative stability.

While US commanders admit that Iraqi troops in the area suffer some of the same problems displayed by others in Iraq - including corruption and militant infiltration among the police, and equipment shortages among all troops - they say incidents there show they are capable of defending their province. The FT on Oct. 12 quoted Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of the US army brigade responsible for Ninewah, as saying: "If you go out and see the police force now, some of them will be in helmets, some of them will not. Some of them will be in flak vests, some of them will not. Some of them may [wear] flip-flops, instead of boots or shoes. But they will fight". But will they be enough to prevent Mosul and the surrounding province from falling victim to what US officers dub the "whack-a-mole" syndrome, where American forces hit al-Qaeda strongholds in one region only to see the Neo-Salafis go underground and then pop up elsewhere?

Three years ago, Mosul witnessed one of the most disastrous incarnations of the whack-a-mole problem: US forces were redeployed to Anbar province to support the final assault on the Neo-Salafi stronghold of Falluja. But the militants simply staged an offensive in Mosul. In a single night, the entire police force in Mosul's western half deserted, their stations overrun by insurgents. The province was retaken by US forces many times the strength of those now deployed there, as well as an Iraqi military and police force which eventually grew to 40,000. The initial local force which moved into Mosul in 2004 was largely composed of Kurdish peshmerga, veterans of years of war with Saddam's Sunni/Ba'thist dictatorship, which may help explain the current force's staying power. Today, US commanders say the Ninewah divisions are only about 50% Kurdish, and one of them is commanded by a Sunni Arab.

In previous years, the insurgency in Ninewah comprised multiple groups, including those built around former military men. Beginning in 2004, the well-funded and well-organised al-Qaeda forced aside the rest. Its brutality, however, eventually repulsed former military men who might otherwise have been sympathetic to resisting foreign occupation.

The FT quoted "Col Khaled al-Juburi, now head of a police counter-terrorism unit in Mosul but previously an officer in the disbanded Iraqi army", as saying: "In 2004 [after the Neo-Salafi attacks] we found bodies lying on the road. We were forced to come to this city and defend [it]. We could never allow ignorant men to lead us". Now, say US commanders, the local Neo-Salafi groups resemble criminal gangs, made up of four to five-man cells. Their favourite form of attack is drive-by shooting and they devote most of their time to financing their activities through extortion and kidnapping. Even a comparatively low-level insurgency, however, can cast a pall of terror over Mosul.

While al-Qaeda militants in Ninewah have some qualms about indiscriminate attacks on Sunnis, they have no problem launching strikes against Shi'ites or members of other faiths. In August a car bomb hit a small and weakly defended village in the desert west of Mosul, killing more than 500 members of the Yazidi religion, a small Kurdish faith with pre-Islamic roots.

Despite assassinations in the fasting month of Ramadan which ended on Oct. 12, US military officials in Ninewah say the overall level of violence in the province is not high - seven to 10 attacks a day, compared to 15-19 in December 2006. But the violence causes some Mosul citizens to paint a grim picture of their lives and local officials worry that the US force might not be able to rely as heavily as it thinks on local security forces.

The FT quoted "Ninewah's Kurdish deputy governor Khosra Goran, who is pushing for the US to redeploy troops to the north for a major clean-up operation", as saying: "If we do things the same [as] we're doing right now, we can't solve the security situation. We're just passing time... All we are doing is making sure that the administration is saved, that the [Neo-Salafi] terrorists can't occupy any of the [government] buildings".