Lying Low in Mosul

[phk]

Lying Low in Mosul

Here’s the western media’s brand-new dodge when trying to explain why the Iraqi Army is winning across the country: the insurgents, whether Sunni or Shia, are lying low.

Never mind that hundreds of insurgents are being killed and captured. No, according to the likes of TIME’s Mark Kukis (...who claims to be reporting from Iraq but could be up to something else in NYC), it’s “all a ploy, and any day now the real Iraq, which we refuse to report on, will unravel to fit to our imagined Iraq.”

But it seems that journalists too are adopting these alleged insurgent tactics: the Iraqi Army’s operation in Mosul is basically being ignored. In a sense, reporters are also lying low for fear that their false narratives would unravel.

They can’t even get its name right; they’re still calling it ‘Operation Lion’s Roar’. That’s so last week, for now we’re in the midst of ‘Operation Umm al-Rabi’ayn’. Considering that this operation is led and orchestrated by Iraqis, I think it’s high time that we keep the Arabic name for it. ‘Umm al-Rabi’ayn’ is one of the sobriquets by which Mosul is known meaning ‘Mother of the Two Springs’ since the city experiences a second spring-like season in the fall.

Maliki has been in Mosul supervising the operation together with his war cabinet just as he did in Basra, and by all accounts things are going very well. I was told by a source there that a new breed of jihadist was captured in the operation: a female ‘emira’ [commander] who heads a terrorist unit comprised of her sons!