Lt. General Mohan al-Furayji is a general in the

Iraqi Army The Iraqi Ground Forces (Arabic: القوات البرية العراقية), or the Iraqi Army (Arabic: الجيش العراقي), is the ground force component of the Iraqi Armed Forces. It was known as the Royal Iraqi Army up until the coup ...

. From September 2007 to April 2008, he was the commander of the Basra Operations Command, an

formation in control of all Iraqi Army and Interior Ministry forces in southern Iraq. In April 2008, he was assigned back to Baghdad.

Under the Saddam Regime

Mohan was a senior officer in

Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutio ...

's Republican Guard however, in the mid-1990s, he was imprisoned by Saddam in

Abu Ghraib prison Abu Ghraib prison ( ar, سجن أبو غريب, ''Sijn Abū Ghurayb'') was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, located west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison with torture, weekly exe ...

for 11 months, where he was routinely tortured. Following the collapse of the regime in 2003, Mohan was barred from joining the new Iraqi Army under the

laws Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior,Robertson, ''Crimes against humanity'', 90. with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been vari ...

imposed by the

Coalition Provisional Authority ) , capital = Baghdad , largest_city = capital , common_languages = Arabic Kurdish English (''de facto'') , government_type = Transitional government , legislature = Iraqi Governing Council , title_leader = Administrator , leader1 = Ja ...

Iraq War (2003-present)

Baghdad Security Plan

In January 2007, Gen. Mohan was the Iraqi Prime Minister's first choice to lead the

Baghdad Security Plan Operation Imposing Law, also known as Operation Law and Order ( ar, عملية القانون والنظام, translit=amaliat al-qaanoon wa an-nazaam), Operation Fardh al-Qanoon ( ar, فرض القانون) or Baghdad Security Plan (BSP), was a ...

but was reportedly vetoed by US forces. Lt. Gen.

Abboud Qanbar Abboud Qanbar( ar, عبود قنبر), also known as Abu Haidar, is an Iraqi General. On January 13, 2007, he was appointed by Prime Minister Nouri Maliki as the Iraqi commander for the Baghdad Operations Command, which controlled all Iraqi securi ...

, a veteran of the

Iran–Iraq War The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Counci ...

was chosen instead.

Assignment to Basra

In June 2007, he was redeployed from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon ...

Basra Basra ( ar, ٱلْبَصْرَة, al-Baṣrah) is an Iraqi city located on the Shatt al-Arab. It had an estimated population of 1.4 million in 2018. Basra is also Iraq's main port, although it does not have deep water access, which is han ...

to prepare for the takeover of Basra from British forces. Shortly after he was appointed, he advised British forces to withdraw their forces from Basra, as their presence was increasing the violence rather than reducing it.Britain backs "M and J" as southern Iraq security honchos
- Reuters In September, 2007, he attended the transfer of Basra Palace from British forces.UK Basra base exit 'not a defeat'
- BBC News Following the transfer, there was a sharp decrease in the number of attacks on British forces, from 60 a week in August to five a week. The improved security allowed British forces to transfer Basra province to Provincial Iraqi Control at a ceremony at the Basra airbase in December 2007. General Mohan also began preparations for an offensive in Basra to reclaim control of the city from militias and began formation of the 14th Iraqi Army Division in Basra in November 2007, the second of two divisions under General Mohan's command. In an interview with a ''Telegraph'' reporter in March 2008, he described the situation in Basra: "The lawlessness in Basra is an insult to the Iraqi people and an insult to the Iraqi government. It simply cannot be tolerated."Con Coughlin
New Iraq receiving baptism of fire in Basra
- Telegraph The operation was planned for June 2008, but it was launched three months early at the behest of the Iraqi Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, while the new division was still forming. The operation faced heavy resistance from the

Mahdi Army The Peace Companies ( ar, سرايا السلام, or Saraya al Salam) are an Iraqi armed group linked to Iraq's Shia community. They are a 2014 revival of the Mahdi Army ( ''Jaysh al-Mahdī'') that was created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada a ...

and quickly bogged down with the 52nd Iraqi Army Brigade reportedly breaking during the fighting. The 52nd was the Division's second brigade which had only graduated from Besmaya five weeks before the operation. In April 2008, he was reassigned to Baghdad.

External links

*Kim Sengupta
The man left to pick up the pieces in Basra
- The Independent

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Furayji, Mohan Iraqi generals Living people Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region politicians Year of birth missing (living people)