Anatomy of a Tribal Revolt

[Rob Thornton]

I think working with and through the tribal structure is viable and at this point necessary. In 06/07 we were advocating this to our IA counterparts in Mosul – simply that as the most visible and functioning Iraqi government representation, they should be more active in building local social cohesion and assisting fostering emerging national domestic goals as they come forward. Expecting a new central government to suddenly exert control over a fractured state of diverse ethnic demographics and religious beliefs is a bridge too far – the political infrastructure for doing so is only now beginning to build the type of internal relationships required to accomplish this.

Part of our problem is mirror imaging our political processes onto Iraq. As was stated, many of our media and politicians do not understand the importance of tribal loyalty in the social and political process of the societies where this is a feature. When an Iraqi is mentioned with the last of the four names being – Zebari, or Hamdami, or Al Jabori, I automatically associate that person with those tribes. As many know the tribes are like nations without states – this is one of the challenges throughout this region of the world as state boundaries were drawn through the lines of peoples. It took me awhile to understand why a sheik who lived in Syria could exert so much influence on events in Iraq, but there it was. Its almost more akin in some ways to a multi-national corporate executive’s influence on offices across the globe. The sheiks figure very prominently into Iraqi (and many other states) social fabric, Saddam Hussein also understood this, and arranged to work around it. Some of you may have heard about the 1990 sheiks – or the sheiks around Ninewa who Saddam used to replace sheiks that were just too much trouble.

CPT Travis Patriquin understood this well and broke it down in his stick figure .ppt. The tribal bonds are an enduring feature to this society. It is possible to move beyond their importance, you could grow old as Methusla waiting for it too happen, and with technology thwarting isolation, I’d say tribal bonds might just as well increase vs. decrease – the cell phone only gets better. That we have finally started to acknowledge the role tribalism plays in this and future fights, and that perhaps we might even remember the role it plays as we develop our foreign policy and craft strategy to meet it indicates we are learning.

As stated there are some dangers. That we have acknowledged the possibility of undermining the efforts of a central government to me provides the basis for indicators to help the Iraqis adjust course as needed. Whatever the Iraqi government looks like eventually, the mechanics will probably not conform to our western notion. What matters is that security and stability are present at the local and national level. Sheiks & Muktars will probably continue to play at least an equally important role as elected mayors, provincial governors, and possibly even presidents and prime ministers – unless they find a way to merge the two – which also has pros and cons. When you consider it, the situation in Iraq has some similarities with our own political processes where even today special interest groups, lobbyists and persons of influence and wealth have undue and often counterproductive bearing on the outcome of important political issues. Go back a hundred years or two and look at the local political scene in the U.S. Consider the aftermath of the American Civil War, how long did it take to complete political reintegration? It was 1965 before we officially got rid of the Jim Crow laws. Working the grass roots politics that typify Iraq makes sense – to do so means working with sheiks & muktars – because that is a large part what the local culture is built on – in time they will build a national culture, but the sheiks and muktars will be a part of that I think.
Regards, Rob

[tequila]

A quieter Anbar province rebuilds - CSMONITOR, 5 Sep.

When Marine Lt. Col. Bill Mullen showed up at the city council meeting here Tuesday, everyone wanted a piece of him. There was the sheikh who wants to open a school, the judge who wants the colonel to be at the jail when several inmates are freed, and the Iraqi who just wants a burned-out trash bin removed from his neighborhood.

As insurgent violence continues to decrease in Iraq's Sunni-dominated Anbar Province – an improvement that President Bush heralded in his visit to Al Asad Air Base Monday as one sign of progress in the war – the conversation is shifting in Anbar. Where sheikhs and tribal leaders once only asked the US to protect them from Sunni extremists, now they want to know how to get their streets cleaned and where to buy generators.
"Security dominated everything, and we weren't able to get anything done," says Colonel Mullen, battalion commander here.

It's been six months since the so-called Anbar Awakening, when Sunni sheikhs joined US Marines in the fight against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Sunni extremists may still have a presence here, but US military officials say that with the help of the expanding Iraqi security forces, they've driven most of what remains of Al Qaeda from the urban areas.

Violence has stayed down, dropping from 2,000 attacks in March to about 450 last month – as the number of Iraqi security forces has increased, from around 24,000 this spring to nearly 40,000 today.

The changes here have allowed provincial and local governments to get established over the past few months, US officials here say. And now, true to the tribal culture that permeates Iraqi society, Sunni sheikhs here want to create a relationship of true patronage with what they consider to be the biggest and most powerful tribe here: the Marines of Anbar Province ...

[tequila]

Signing up Sunnis with 'Insurgent' on Their Resumes - Washington Post, 4 Sep.

Naiem al-Qaisi was imprisoned for four months, beaten, shocked with electric probes and, he said, forced to witness fellow Sunni male prisoners being raped by Shiite soldiers of the Iraqi army.

Now he wants to be a policeman. The American military recruited Qaisi and thousands like him to fight the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq, but Qaisi's most feared enemies are soldiers in the Iraqi army's Muthanna Brigade, and his allegiance does not lie with the government he is now being trained to serve.

"We don't trust this government. This government belongs to Iran," said the 29-year-old former security guard for a soft-drink company. "The Iraqi government knows we are innocent guys, but they want to kill us."
In the villages around the Abu Ghraib district on the western outskirts of Baghdad, American commanders have achieved their goal of enlisting more than 1,000 of these local Sunni recruits into the Iraqi security forces. For the past few months, the recruits have operated checkpoints, pointed out al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters and located caches of weapons.

On Aug. 20, several hundred of the Sunnis -- given the name "Volunteers" by the Americans -- lingered in a parking lot guarded by U.S. tanks, waiting for Chinook helicopters to fly them to eastern Baghdad for their month-long training course to become policemen. One of their leaders, a bearded, beige-robed fighter who goes by the nickname Abu Zaqaria, looked out over the crowd of young men, some with machine guns, and estimated that 50 percent of them used to be insurgents who battled the Americans.

"We started feeling there was another occupation of Iraq, and it was coming from Iran, not from the U.S.," he said. "That led us to the situation we're in now, where we decided to negotiate with a strong force like the Americans ..."