Marie ColvinThe hunt began just after dawn. Iraqi armoured personnel carriers surrounded the turbulent Zanjali district in the northern city of Mosul, blocking off roads as police acting on an urgent tip-off swept in and searched from house to house. They were looking for an Al-Qaeda bomb — a big one. Their intelligence suggested it could be detonated as early as today.
As the search intensified, I accompanied Colonel Tawfeeq Abdullah on a tense drive through Mosul to check on the operation's progress. A gunner loomed out of the open hatch in the roof of our Iraqi army Humvee, swivelling a heavy machinegun and scouring the bullet-pocked streets for enemy.
A soldier in the front passenger seat scanned the roads for improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the roadside bombs that have wreaked havoc on Iraqis and American forces. Only three days earlier a roadside bomb had blown up an Iraqi Humvee, killing a policeman.
Everyone in our vehicle knew it was a prime target for Al-Qaeda in Iraq, formerly an awesome force that struck fear into the hearts of cities across the west and centre of Iraq but now reduced to a rump in the north in one of the most sweeping victories of America's war on terror. "We are going to a very bad neighbourhood," said Abdullah, wiping the sweat from his face. It was 41C outside and far hotter inside the armoured vehicle.
Yet despite Zanjali's reputation as a hotbed of the insurgency, we were able to climb down from the vehicle and walk safely along a road covered in hard-packed dirt from a spate of recent sandstorms. Most of the metal grates on the roadside shops had been pulled down and the acrid smell of burning rubbish filled the air. A few sheep grazed in scrubby wasteland between the houses.
As the police continued their search for weapons, insurgents and, above all, explosives, a few shopkeepers and residents stood idly watching.
Ambulances were positioned every few hundred yards along the road in case of fighting. It never materialised. A search of hundreds of houses met no resistance and yielded no bomb, just 60kg of TNT and some bomb-making equipment.
All that the soldiers found otherwise was a solitary Kalashnikov assault rifle. "We let him keep the gun because every Iraqi family is allowed to have a personal weapon," said Major Awad al-Juburi, 39, standing in the road in full battle gear. "The families have been okay with us so far. They are not objecting. They offered us tea and water."
In Mosul, Al-Qaeda's last redoubt, the group still held sway as recently as Easter. Now it lacks the strength to fight the army face to face and has lost the sympathy of most of the ordinary citizens who once admired its stand against the occupying forces and their allies in the Iraqi army.
Yesterday two off-duty policemen were shot dead in a market in the east of the city. Hit-and-run attacks such as this have replaced more organised resistance as Al-Qaeda's strength has been sapped. "Two days ago the insurgents fired two RPGs [rocket-propelled grenades] on our post," Abdullah said. "Yesterday they attacked us with machinegun fire." To the colonel, these seem small-scale affairs.
Iraqi officials acknowledge that bombs such as the one that had supposedly been made and stored in Zanjali will still claim civilian lives in "spectacular" attacks that are intended to attract publicity, to show that the group is still intact and to inspire supporters. Brigadier-General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: "Al-Qaeda in Mosul is pretty much not able to do the attacks that they could do previously. They are doing small attacks and trying to do big ones but they are mostly not succeeding."
The Iraqis and Americans have got Al-Qaeda on the run. How have they come so far, so fast? On the night of May 9, 87 "target packets" landed on the walnut desk of Abdul, the commander of the Iraqi army's 2nd Division. The details of each named target were specific. One read: "Action: capture. Characteristics: white hair, hazel eyes, sunburnt skin. Alias: Abu Mohamed. Car: drives a station wagon. Residence: a two-storey house painted black (with map attached showing location). Credibility of source: reliable."
By early the next morning — the launch day for Operation Lion's Roar to recapture Mosul — hundreds of police and army checkpoints had been set up across the city.