While Americans spend their days navel-gazing and checking under their beds for KGB agents, the Battle for Mosul has not gone well.

Islamic State fighters have stepped up counterattacks on Iraqi forces in Mosul amid bad weather as the U.S.-backed offensive to capture their last major city stronghold in Iraq enters its third month....
More than 100,000 Iraqi soldiers, Kurdish fighters and Iranian-backed Shi'ite volunteers are taking part in the offensive. The latter are attacking the militants supply lines in a remote and semi-desert area west of Mosul to avoid fanning sectarian tensions with the city's Sunni population.
The Iraqi military estimate the number of militants in the city at 5,000 to 6,000. They are dug in amid the city's remaining population of about one million, moving through tunnels and using suicide car bombs, sharpshooters and mortar fire to slow the advance of the Iraqi forces.
A mainly western coalition is providing air and ground support to the offensive, led by the U.S. with more than 5,000 troops deployed in Iraq.

ISIS fought an organized retreat in the suburbs and exurbs of Mosul, but are now at their main defense lines.
Despite being heavily outnumbered, ISIS militants are showing no signs of defeat.

Now in the seventh week, current indicators seem to suggest that it may be ISIS, not the coalition, that has the upper hand.
Almost absent from Western reporting, a report from the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq on December 1 revealed that the Iraqi forces had sustained an alarming number of casualties against ISIS for the month of November. The report, authored by UN envoy Jan Kubis, noted that almost two thousand Iraqi troops had been killed, 450 wounded and 926 civilians had lost their lives. “The casualty figures are staggering,” Kubis said.
If this report is correct, it should be a cause of concern for Baghdad. If the ISF has suffered this many casualties already, what is to be expected when the truly hard part of the fighting ensues? How long will the Iraqi public support government efforts if the fighting bogs down? If the ISF proves incapable of pressing the battle to victory, might the pressure to send in Shiite Popular Mobilization Units increase? The implications for the Abadi government are troubling.

The frontline in Mosul hasn't moved significantly in weeks.
This isn't the only place that ISIS is putting up surprisingly strong resistance.

Turkey’s efforts to take the critical town of al-Bab with the help of its rebel proxies is running into difficulties amid reports that Islamic State militants have dug hundreds of ditches and rigged incoming routes with mines and other explosives to halt their advance.
Turkey continues to pound IS positions near the town, but progress is slow. The number of Turkish casualties are mounting, and the fate of two Turkish soldiers recently captured by IS remains a matter of intense concern.
For more than a month now, the Turkish-led campaign aimed at liberating the town from the jihadists — and importantly to prevent Syrian Kurds from getting there first — has been frustrated by a lack of US support, Russian ambivalence and Syrian and Iranian opposition.

Meanwhile, ISIS continues to advance in the Palmyra area.