Bill,

That will teach me to post on a Sunday afternoon after gardening. How could I overlook Baghdad and Basra?

I would disagree with you and this is not the subject of this thread:
I suspect part of the reason their activity is limited in the larger urban areas is due to security concerns. A lot of citizens watching and reporting, so unless they could establish control in an urban area this will likely remain the norm...
Citizens do not always watch, let alone report. I do still wonder if AQ & partners switched to an urban area, let alone a huge metropolis, how external FID would work today. In Iraq AQ was not the main enemy, rather a local coalition.