Sunni Militants Drive Iraqi Army Out of Mosul

Sunni militants spilling over the border from Syria seized control Tuesday of the northern city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, in the most stunning success yet in a rapidly widening insurgency that threatens to drag the country and the region into war.

Having consolidated control over Sunni-dominated Nineveh Province, armed gunmen were heading on the main road to Baghdad, Iraqi officials said, and had already taken over parts of Salahuddin Province. Thousands of civilians were fleeing south toward Baghdad and east toward the autonomous region of Kurdistan, where security is maintained by a fiercely loyal army, the peshmerga.

The Iraqi army apparently crumbled in the face of the militant assault, as soldiers dropped their weapons, shed their uniforms for civilian clothes and blended in with the fleeing masses. The militants freed thousands of prisoners and took over military bases, police stations, banks and provincial headquarters, before raising the black flag of the jihadi group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria over public buildings. The bodies of soldiers, police officers and civilians lay scattered in the streets.

“They took control of everything, and they are everywhere,” said one soldier who fled the city, and gave only his first name, Haidar.

The swift capture of large areas of the city by militants aligned with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria represented a climactic moment on a long trajectory of Iraq’s unraveling since the withdrawal of American forces at the end of 2011.

The rising insurgency in Iraq seemed likely to add to the foreign policy woes of the Obama administration, which has faced sharp criticism.

Critics have long warned that America’s withdrawal of troops from Iraq, without leaving even a token force, invited an insurgent revival, while the apparent role of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in Tuesday’s attack helps vindicate those who have called for arming more moderate groups in the Syrian conflict, among them the former ambassador to Syria, Robert Ford.

Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki ordered a state of emergency for the entire country and called on friendly governments for help, without mentioning the United States specifically.

Mosul was the last major urban area to be pacified by American troops and, when they left, the United States contended that Iraq was on the path to peace and democracy.
Continue reading the main story

Even as insurgents consolidated control of Mosul and surrounding Nineveh Province on Tuesday, they also looked to other targets. They cut off a portion of the main highway that links the city with Baghdad, the capital, and secured villages near Kirkuk, a major city that is in dispute between Arabs and Kurds, according to security officials.

More From The New York Times: