In Mosul, a Hopeful Partnership

The distrust among local residents limits the Iraqi soldiers' ability to collect intelligence about the insurgents they are fighting. The thousands of armed Sunnis who aligned with American soldiers and provided so much information about the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in other parts of the country have failed to materialize in Mosul. Dosky said taking control of the city would require at least two new Iraqi army divisions.

"The people, especially inside of Mosul, they don't like the new government," he said. "Very few of them have joined the army or police. They don't help us with information."

Many of the Kurdish soldiers don't speak Arabic, and some denigrate the Sunni Arab population in the city for supporting insurgents. "Kurd good. Arab no good," Sgt. Tayeeb Abdul Rahaman, an Iraqi soldier, said repeatedly in his limited English. "Anybody who doesn't like the army are terrorists," added Sgt. Maj. Mohammed Sharif.

The American soldiers who patrol here alongside the Iraqi soldiers describe their partners as welcome and often courageous allies whose professionalism and conduct have improved dramatically since the beginning of the war but who have a long way to go. The Iraqi soldiers still lack sufficient military discipline, the Americans said, clumping into exposed groups in the middle of dangerous streets, shooting too quickly and slapping around their detainees.

At another new garrison in western Mosul, known as Combat Outpost Rabi, American troops were not amused to find that Iraqi soldiers had stolen 14 cases of U.S. military rations and left the wrappers scattered on the ground. Nor did they appreciate taking machine-gun fire from the confused Iraqi sentry in the guard tower as they drove into the outpost one evening.

The worst transgression occurred Dec. 26, when a group of American soldiers were inside a building they had chosen for an outpost in northwest Mosul. Suddenly an Iraqi soldier raised his gun and shot five of the Americans at point-blank range. Two of them, Sgt. Benjamin Portell, 27, and Capt. Rowdy Inman, 38, were killed. The Iraqi soldier ran out of the room and tried to appear nonchalant by shaving, but he was quickly captured, said Maj. John Oliver, who was shot in the hand in the attack.

"It was a complete surprise. Nobody was expecting it," Oliver said. But he added that the attack "did not change the plan" to continue working with the Iraqi army.

The partnership between the two armies can also pose problems for the Iraqi soldiers, who are being pushed into dangerous missions without the firepower the U.S. military has at its disposal. On one treacherous stretch of road, known as Route Porsche, insurgents plant roadside bombs nearly every night, so the Iraqi soldiers have begun to maintain a checkpoint there.

A pattern of violence has become apparent at the checkpoint: The Iraqis come under attack about 15 minutes after the U.S. soldiers come by to check on them. On Feb. 16, insurgents fired two rocket-propelled grenades at the exposed soldiers after the U.S. patrol left. The next day, gunmen in four cars drove up to attack the checkpoint when the Americans were not in sight. The Iraqi soldiers, who carry AK-47 assault rifles but have no fortifications at the checkpoint, fought them off and shot three people. It got to the point where the Americans were doubling back to the checkpoint after a 15-minute interval to try to catch the insurgents.

"They don't like it when we come here," Lt. John Parlee, 23, a platoon leader, said of the Iraqi soldiers. "What happens is, when the bad guys see our trucks here, afterwards they attack the Iraqis."

But the checkpoint provides a needed service for the American soldiers.

"Until we set this TCP in here, they'd lay IEDs here every night," said Lt. Sion Edwards, another platoon leader, using the military abbreviations for traffic control point and improvised explosive device. "You couldn't really travel on this road."

The American commanders in Mosul said their approach takes into account the lessons of previous U.S. offensives, in which soldiers flooded a violent area only to find that their targets had fled or were indistinguishable from other civilians. The Americans are relying on the Iraqi army to develop intelligence that will lead to specific raids to capture individual insurgents.

"You can't just bring in the whole United States Army and go room to room of the entire city and then leave," said Maj. Thomas Feltey, the executive officer of a U.S. squadron in Mosul. "The bad guys will wait. We don't know who they are."