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The following article is one of many recently that attempts to analyze the progress, and setbacks, in Iraq quantitatively. Mosul is mentioned, which is why I wanted to share it.
If you're interested in this kind of information you should also read Belmont Club's detailed examination of recent attacks against civilian and military targets in Iraq. Is the security situation improving or worsening? He explains how very different outlooks can be supported by the facts presented.
Finally, this seems like a good place to mention a new website, the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base, described as, "a comprehensive database of global terrorist incidents and organizations." You can drill down to individual incidents, or generate a list for a geographic area, such as Mosul.
[Link to Full Article]
By Peter Grier & Faye Bowers, The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – Iraq has less than 30 percent of the trained police it needs. Radios for the Iraqi police service are in short supply - as is body armor, with the sets on hand constituting only about one-third of the number required.
Meanwhile, insurgent attacks are widely spread throughout the country. While a majority occur in Baghdad and the hotbed of the Sunni triangle, few parts of Iraq seem immune. In August and September almost 16 percent of incidents involving coalition or Iraqi forces took place in the northern city of Mosul.
These figures come from the US government's official weekly status reports of the situation in Iraq. While unclassified, and widely disseminated within the government, these reports have generally not been made public.
They don't sugarcoat the situation, as the figures on police shortfalls show. But neither do they depict a country overwhelmed by chaos. Some aspects of reconstruction appear to have made progress: Iraq has more telephone subscribers now than it did before the war, according to status reports. And trend lines for some important security-force measurements are shown going up.
"We are involved in a low-intensity conflict. That should not be minimized.... But that doesn't mean you can't win this campaign, or more important that Iraqis can't win it," says Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington who has kept careful track of Iraqi statistics. [...]
Take the status numbers on Iraqi security forces. The US has recently raised its estimate of the number of police Iraq will need by about 30 percent, to 135,000. About 85,000 are now on duty, but that figure has actually been declining of late, due to desertions and resignations.
Only about 33,000 on-duty police have been through adequate training, according to US figures. That trend line is going up, however, and may increase quickly under the direction of Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who has taken charge of all Iraqi security training. [...]
Figures for attacks vary widely, depending on what kind of attack is being measured and the definition of "attack." According to a report in Wednesday's New York Times, there were more than 2,300 attacks against all targets in Iraq in September.
The US State Department's Daily Updates, however, track a more narrow measure of major incidents involving coalition or Iraqi troops. By its count, there were 172 attacks in August and September.
Of these, 54 were in Baghdad, and 67 more occurred in other areas of the restive Sunni triangle. The next-most dangerous area was Mosul, with 27 attacks. Remaining incidents were spread across all areas of Iraq. [...]
Meanwhile, some measurements of civilian progress are going up. There are now more than 1.5 million telephone subscribers in Iraq, including some 738,000 cellphone subscribers, according to the US Agency for International Development. That's 85 percent more than existed before the war.
Crude-oil production inched up in September, although the energy sector remains a favorite insurgent target. Some 2,000 schools nationwide have been rehabbed. In northern Iraq, the Kurdistan regional government has opened an Internet cafe and training center that will allow 2,000 people access to the Web.