The effort in Mosul and Nineveh in the spring, summer and early fall of 2003 was very successful. Ultimately, however, it was undone by an inability to get Iraqi authorities in Baghdad to approve initiatives we pursued in reconciliation with former Baath Party members cast out of work by the Coalition Provisional Authority's de-Baathification decree and in providing work for the tens of thousands of Iraq soldiers also rendered unemployed by the authority. The other ultimate challenge was the lack of clear direction and resources from Baghdad for their ministries' activities in Nineveh. These failures meant that the Sunni insurgency ultimately intensified in Mosul, as it already had in the other Sunni Arab areas of Iraq. The Sunni Arabs in Nineveh came to see few reasons to support the new Iraq; indeed, they perceived many to actively or tacitly oppose it.