Iraqi province to be turned over in August

Speaking about Iraq’s Nineva province, the general said the provincial government and security forces there continue to grow and improve. Mixon said he has observed the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Division and Iraqi police providing security to provincial residents requiring scant coalition assistance. "Based on this assessment, I have recommended that Nineva province go to provincial Iraqi control in August," he said. Though a handover to the provincial government is a sign of progress, Mixon added that it alone won’t usher in a reduction of U.S. troops, who will continue to partner with Iraqi security forces there, he said.http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=46718


This is awesome! Tranferring Nineva province will have the same or more significance then when we transferred Najaf in December. With this coming provincial transferr we will be able to shift some of our forces from Nineva to Diyala and or Salluh Ad Din provinces. And with Anbar province getting better we might even see a shift of troops from there to Baghdad and or Qaidisiyah province. I just love this troop surge! Its going to give us capabilities we've never had.














– Insurgent attacks in Iraq’s Ninewah province have dropped significantly, and if the trend continues, fewer U.S. troops will be needed in the region, an Army commander in the area said today.
A sign of the improved security situation in the province is the fact that the province -- which includes Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city -- will transfer to Iraqi provincial control sometime next month, said Army Col. Stephen Twitty, commander of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 4th Brigade, during a briefing with Pentagon reporters via telephone. On the security side, the two Iraqi divisions in the province are already under the command of Iraqi Ground Forces Command. “We still continue to see a need for the (provincial reconstruction team) to be here and will probably see a need for some type of coalition forces up here,” Twitty said. “That may or may not be a robust force like I have, and it's going to be based on the security situation here.” He said the security situation is showing great promise. When his brigade moved into the area in December, there were between 15 and 18 attacks per day. Today, that number is down to between seven and nine. “But we must not call victory yet, and we must continue to look at the situation up here,” he said. He said he will look at the possibility of reducing coalition forces in the province. About 19,000 Iraqi police and 20,000 Iraqi army soldiers are in Nineveh and are taking on the job of fighting and defeating terrorism, Twitty said. He described an example of Iraqis shouldering the burden that occurred May 16, when terrorists launched a car-bomb offensive. “The Iraqi security forces stood their ground and destroyed the majority of the (car bombs) … so they could not reach their final destination, decisively defeating the attack,” he said Iraqi government plans call for another 3,000 policemen and standing up three new Iraqi army battalions to augment the current forces, Twitty said. “These additional forces will solidify the current effort in the province,” he said. The terrorists have reacted to the success with confusion. “The insurgents have been plagued with infighting amongst several groups of the Islamic State of Iraq, and it continues to attempt to influence operations here in Nineveh,” Twitty said. “This infighting caused decreased effectiveness of insurgent attacks in June. This month, insurgent forces received little to no financial and logistics support due to the strong Iraqi police, Iraqi army and coalition force presence and operations. These operations have resulted in the seizure of 11 caches and the capture of several insurgent leaders.”

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=46856






Wow this is sweet, its basically confirmation of what I said would happen. My prediction is once they get it to a 1 or 2 attacks a day level then we will withdraw a significant portion of our forces from Nineveh. Its amazing to me how much Iraqi security forces they have trained and equiped in that province. 39,000! And they want 3,000 more police, and the same amount of Iraqi Army Soldiers. All in all thats 45,000! For one province! The next think they should start doing is creating regional Iraqi Special Forces battalions.