Mosul

   Mosul is a city situated on the western bank of the Tigris River in northern Iraq opposite the ruins of Nineveh, the capital of the ancient Assyrian Empire. With a population of around 1.8 million, it is probably the second largest city in Iraq, and now also extends to the eastern side of the river. The University of Mosul is one of the largest educational and research centers in the entire Middle East. Into the early years of the 20th century, most Kurds claimed the city as part of Kurdistan, but due to subsequent population changes, no longer would. Today the city is a mixture of different ethnic and sectarian groups. Although Sunni Arabs make up around 85 percent of the population, many Kurds, Assyrians, and Turkomans live on the eastern bank of the Tigris and to the north. There are also some Yezidis, Armenians, and Shabaks. The surrounding area, however, remains largely Kurdish, and some Kurdish nationalists would like to add it to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

   During the second Gulf War in 2003 that toppled the Saddam Hussein regime, Mosul fell to Kurdish fighters before being taken over by the U.S. military. Things were at first calm, but in November 2004 the Iraqi civil war also spilled over into vicious fighting in Mosul that even temporarily chased the Iraqi police away. In the ensuing conflicts, the city suffered tremendously with unprecedented sectarian violence leading to many deaths. The ancient Christian community, for example, suffered particularly. Some accused Sunni fundamentalists and Kurdish groups for these actions. Mosul's historical, scientific, and intellectual infrastructures were also victimized, as many scientists, professors, medical doctors and other health professionals, engineers, lawyers, journalists, religious personages, and artists were either murdered or forced into exile.

   In the past the term Mosul has also been used to refer to northern or Iraqi Kurdistan, as it constituted a vilayet in the Ottoman Empire. Thus, the Mosul Question involved a dispute between Great Britain and Turkey after World War I over who owned the former Ottoman vilayet of Mosul (northern Iraq). The Council of the League of Nations finally decided in favor of Britain, and thus the former vilayet of Mosul and its Kurdish population became part of Iraq.