Confusion and contradiction as Iraqi forces push into west Mosul

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Iraqi government troops are gearing up to attack the Islamic State group in west Mosul.

The battle to reclaim the east of the city has already killed and injured thousands.

It's a crucial part of the wider war against IS, which morphed from an Iraqi insurgency into a mini-state, ruling huge swathes of Syria and Iraq and directing or inspiring terrorism as far afield as Australia and France.

Our Middle East correspondent, Matt Brown, has just filed a front-line report on the war report for Four Corners, which goes to air on Monday night at 8:30pm.

I asked him for this look behind the scenes of a chilling and extraordinary journey:

MATT BROWN: The legacy of violence saturates Mosul and even as government forces regained control of all of the east of the city, it still felt as if it was at risk of spinning out of control.

At a base a few kilometres back from the front line, some soldiers wearing kangaroo patches on their sleeves arrived with two suspected IS fighters.

They pushed and shoved the bound men off to a holding room and, after telling us to delete the footage, they joyfully recounted how they were trained by Australian soldiers.

They were on a high. They whooped and hollered and fired their guns in the air. And we had to move on.

We drove up to the front line in a military vehicle that was almost impossible to see out of. Almost every window had been shattered by sniper fire.

When we arrived, an Iraqi Army soldier was on the radio to a colleague. Confusion reigned: one didn't know where the other was, didn't know whether their platoons were in front of or behind each other, or what suburb each was in.

At an outpost overlooking the combat zone, an area still occupied by Islamic State group fighters, the soldiers kept warning us of snipers; to stay away from the large open space where sliding doors might have gone. But they would walk around in that space and stand there, talking on their radios in full view of the streets below.

And then they'd tell us again to duck or stay to one side. There was simply no rhyme nor reason.

We saw them laying down heavy fire with machine guns and helicopter gunships. Watch our story on Four Corners on Monday night and see them spraying automatic weapons fire over a broad residential area. It wasn't just dangerous: it was a staggering waste of ammunition as well.

And when I saw red tracer fire ripping through the air in our direction, it was clear IS was still a threat.

In some places the soldiers ate hot food, cooked at a central kitchen and distributed in foam trays on the back of a truck.

At others, there was no support.

After we walked three kilometres over a foggy and muddy rubbish dump and farmland, we entered a hamlet IS had abandoned less than a day before.

We ate rations I'd carried in. But food for the soldiers came from neighbours: some nervous, some welcoming and glad IS had been forced out. There was no clean water.

We slept in the homes of civilians, some with families sheltering in a lounge-room, some abandoned. At least one had been used by IS as a base.

As I looked over an IS propaganda newspaper, which forecast that they would prevail, I marvelled at the arrogance and the hubris of a group that couldn't win consent, only obedience, during its two-and-a-half-year reign of terror.

Then, on a rooftop with a local public servant who was showing me where an IS rocket had slammed into his house, I was reminded they will already be planning their comeback. A sniper round whizzed past my head and thwacked into a building a block away.

As we interviewed a soldier down at the main staging area, just as he was declaring complete victory, a rocket slammed into the roadside a few hundred metres away. No-one was injured - but no-one seemed to appreciate the irony, either.

It was dangerous and hard. With the temperatures just above zero, we slept on the floor. A bed of wire mesh or plywood was a luxury.

On a couple of occasions I was sure IS could have just wandered up at night and lobbed in a grenade, or worse. But, unlike some of the other conflicts I've covered, we were at least on the winning side.

One house, with a bathroom floor covered in grit and filth, had blisteringly hot hot water at night. And after Middle East cameraman Aaron Hollett schooled me in the "boots beside the shower spout" technique, it was a true joy to get clean.

East Mosul has now been reclaimed. Thousands of police, trained by Western advisers, are being sent in to hold the ground and the troops are gearing up to take on IS in the western side of the city.

The core of the west is an ancient old town with narrow, winding streets. The soldiers I spoke to have mixed feelings about going there. Some displayed the sort of bragging confidence only a fool or a fatalist would believe. Others were more circumspect.

The use of airstrikes and artillery in such a densely populated area will be constrained or controversial.

But the fewer civilians killed, the fewer will be left with fresh grievance. The troops won't be able to fit their armoured vehicles down many of the narrow streets, so they'll be exposed.

But they realized early on that the vehicles, even in wider streets, also make them sitting ducks in a shooting gallery. It will be house-by-house fighting at its most gruelling.

And it won't be the end.

A few weeks before we arrived, a car bombed ripped through the first suburb that had been liberated.

A few weeks after we left, twin suicide bombers targeted a restaurant popular with soldiers and journalists.

This battle, being fought at great expense and great cost to the soldiers and the civilians of Mosul, is just a phase in a much broader and longer struggle.

ELIZABETH JACKSON: Matt Brown.