MOSUL, Iraq -- I first went to Mosul, the capital of Nineveh province, in the summer of 1996, when I was 15 years old.

MOSUL, Iraq - I remember how excited I was to be visiting what was then Iraq's third-largest city. It seemed big and fabulous, and felt a world apart from my hometown of Erbil, 45 miles away.

At the time, there was a fuel crisis in Iraqi Kurdistan, which was isolated from the rest of the country. My father used to drive to Mosul daily to fill up the tank of his 1988 Volkswagen and then drive back to Erbil and sell the fuel.

Now, 12 years later, I was returning to report on conditions in the city. A member of one of the two main Kurdish political parties accompanied me.

Our driver explained he preferred to drive older vehicles on such trips.

"We use old cars so that we won't attract insurgents and kidnappers," he said.

My first impression upon revisiting the city was that I was entering an area that was out of control. The scene at the Iraqi army checkpoint on the outskirts of the city was chaotic, with soldiers firing their weapons into the air to clear the road.

Once inside, the city that once seemed so fabulous looked dusty and bedraggled. The people on the streets appeared haggard. Almost everyone who could afford to had fled the city in 2004. All of the hotels had shut down.

The sound of gunfire could be heard sporadically throughout the day, something local residents took as normal. Even though the curfew didn't officially begin until 10 p.m., the city's streets were largely empty by dusk.

On my second day in the city, an Iraqi police officer agreed to drive me around. He noted that residents referred to some thoroughfares in the city as "Death Street" because of the large number of insurgent attacks or "Burnt Intersection" because of the high number of car bombs set off at a particular crossroads.

Some areas of the city are now referred to as "assassination neighborhoods" because insurgents felt free to operate there in broad daylight.

Despite the high level of unemployment in the city, teens can still earn a quick $45 by planting a roadside bomb for the insurgents, he said.

Duraid Mohammed Kashmula, the governor of Nineveh, told me that his was the most dangerous province in Iraq. Because it shares a long, unprotected border with Syria, it had become a magnet for insurgents from all over the country, he said.

Kashmula said unemployment was a major reason for the continued unrest in city. Reconstruction efforts had been hampered, he said, because many contractors refused to work in Mosul.

Nineveh's deputy governor, Khasro Goran, acknowledged that there had been a lack of trust between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds living in the province, making it almost impossible to provide security.

In recent months, however, an increasing number of Sunni Arabs are joining units of the Iraqi army in the region. Some even serve side by side with Iraqi Kurds, something that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago "Former officers are returning to the army because they are tired of insurgents and they are tired of being jobless," said Lt. Col. Fuad Muhammad Ali, a Sunni Arab and former military officer who now heads the Iraq Army's 5th brigade operations in Mosul.

Goran, himself a Kurd, is hopeful Sunni Arabs will participate in local elections scheduled for early next year after largely boycotting the provincial council vote in 2005. Their increased involvement would allow the local government to present a more united face against the remaining insurgents in the area, he believes.

I'm not sure I share his optimism. After two days in Mosul, I'm ready to head home for Erbil.

"Let's leave this ghost town and go back to Erbil to have some life," our driver says as we depart what was once a fabulous city.

By Qassim Khidhir
The Institute for War & Peace