It's the Tribes (merged thread)

[marct]

Hello Sam,

Further, I wonder why we didn't have this information 6 years ago, when we needed it the most.

Well, there are a lot of reasons why that material was not part of the available information, although most of them boil down to a simple one: it didn't fit with the main stream institutional paradigm (organizational culture if you will) of most of the US forces. Tom, as an ex-FAO, is one of the outliers .

The tribal system leads to many fruitful paths with respect to targeting in a counterinsurgency, and explains why our western paradigmatic targeting method has a tendency to fall short of out right victory over insurgent forces, as it can't get down to the root of the problems - which are found in small entities called sub tribes.

I assume you are referring to what Anthropologists call a segmented lineage system? We (Anthropologists) have know about and written about that in some detail since the 1930's (cf Evans-Pritchards The Nuer and, latterly, most of the political Anthropology of Africa from the 1950's). There is also an extensive literature on the evolution of tribal organizations and their interactions with and adaptations to the urban environment in archaeology (the late 1980's - early 1990's debates on the "world war" of ~3500 bce come to mind) amongst other places.

From the sounds of it, you have managed to get and translate some really good data - something that is often scarce . Glad to have you here, and i'm looking forward to your input.

Cheers,

Marc

[marct]

Hi Sam,

Please see my question below. If the detail to which you refer assists you in your answer, please answer away!

About noble tribes? Pretty simple concept which, depending on locale, refers to a "sacred" lineage. It shows up around the world in various forms and with different criteria for membership (most often descent, but sometimes via phenotypic characteristic and / or "special" abilities). Sometimes it gets conflated / expanded out into castes or classes (such as the Brahmin / Kshatrya divide in India), other times it is located in specific descent inheritance (sometimes matrilineal, sometimes patrilineal).

Of course, I am familiar with the writings to which you refer- and some are quite good. That was a different time, though.

True, it was a different time, but a lot of the structural models and insights are quite applicable today.

Cheers,

Marc

[tribeguy]

Dr. Tyrell - that is good - but what are the names, specifically of the noble tribes in Iraq, and what role to they play in Iraqi society, specifically?

Another question: what do Abu Umar Al-Baghdad I, II, and III have in common? What can we learn in terms of AQ's recruitment and tribal engagement strategy from this?

Respects,

Sam

Hi Tom:

(I know the answers to these questions - but I ask them to prove the point - which is who cares if I know? The important thing is for "us" to know. Hence this thread.)

I am looking forward to your posts on the noble tribes. There is a good deal of Arabic scholarship on the subject. I promise you that this area will bear fruit, but I caution all that hard and fast rules and inflexible thinking are the enemy.

Iraqi society is incredibly complex, and so are its people. If somebody represents that they are a tribal "expert," or that they "really understand the tribes," think again. That's why I have translated so much arabic scholarship on the tribes, and most particularly their hierarchies. It differs greatly from its western counterpart, and leads to analytical paradigms that are much more incisive, since they are organic to the culture.

Our paradigms and such, whether or not they were part of the institutional culture (I agree, they weren't) still would only bear so much fruit as they filtered through the way that we as outsiders see the Iraqi tribal system.

I am trying to break through that "outsider" barrier. I've had some successes and some failures in that area. Bottom line - I don't have the answers, but I have a lot more questions.

Keep up the good work - stay curious on the subject of tribes. This subject doesn't exist in a vacuum. I have seen that tribalism permeates every aspect of Iraqi society. That's why I started this thread.

I spent 4 years on the ground in Iraq, and will be returning in the near future. I suspect that our paths may have crossed before.


Marc,

I agree that it is a simple concept, until you bring it down to a "what should we do" level of thinking. Just because we think we know a concept doesn't mean that we can apply it.

So, that is the reason that I asked which are the noble tribes of Iraq.

V/r,

Sam

[marct]

Hi Sam,

I agree that it is a simple concept, until you bring it down to a "what should we do" level of thinking. Just because we think we know a concept doesn't mean that we can apply it.

So, that is the reason that I asked which are the noble tribes of Iraq.

Get's us back to Clausewitz doesn't it ? Yeah, I agree that the devil is in the details when it comes to applying the concept. Personally, I don't know who the ones in Iraq are... then again, I've never claimed to have that granular level of knowledge .

The entire issue, though, does raise some interesting points. For example, even without knowing the specifics in an area, and what the actual meaning(s) of those specifics is/are (i.e. what does it actually mean today in terms of operations), if you have the concept, you can get the data either by asking people who know (that's the Socratic in me!) or by looking for structural similarities / analogs. Of course, figuring out what it means is crucial and how it gets transformed is critical to actually using it .

The flip side is getting hung up on concepts and structures that are much less operationally relevant and focusing on them to the detriment of the long term goal. One of the problems that I've noticed with a lot of political / military writing about cultural phenomenon is the implied assumption that culture is static rather than constantly being negotiated (another problem is the naive idea that "We" aren't ruled by it, but "They" are - hah! We should get Rob Thornton in on this one ).

Anyway, I've got to get back to work (sigh).

Cheers,

Marc

[tribeguy]

Hi Sam,



Get's us back to Clausewitz doesn't it ? Yeah, I agree that the devil is in the details when it comes to applying the concept. Personally, I don't know who the ones in Iraq are... then again, I've never claimed to have that granular level of knowledge .

The entire issue, though, does raise some interesting points. For example, even without knowing the specifics in an area, and what the actual meaning(s) of those specifics is/are (i.e. what does it actually mean today in terms of operations), if you have the concept, you can get the data either by asking people who know (that's the Socratic in me!) or by looking for structural similarities / analogs. Of course, figuring out what it means is crucial and how it gets transformed is critical to actually using it .

The flip side is getting hung up on concepts and structures that are much less operationally relevant and focusing on them to the detriment of the long term goal. One of the problems that I've noticed with a lot of political / military writing about cultural phenomenon is the implied assumption that culture is static rather than constantly being negotiated (another problem is the naive idea that "We" aren't ruled by it, but "They" are - hah! We should get Rob Thornton in on this one ).

Anyway, I've got to get back to work (sigh).

Cheers,

Marc

Marc! I can't let you off that easily. Hear me now and believe me in 10 years, the noble tribes are MOST operationally relevant. Hence the question, what do Abu Umar Al-Baghdadi I, II, and III have in common!

The idea of being able to ask those who know invites undisciplined and agenda warped answers, especially in Iraq, which is the land of actual conspiracies - not theories.

Here's what I mean about operational relevance. It's the tribes:

Defeating Al-Qaeda's Tribal Engagement Strategy in Iraq

Creating an insurgency is easier than fighting against one in Iraq, particularly if the grievances used to justify violence remain unaddressed by the Iraqi government.

One such grievance comes from tribal leaders who are ignored by the Iraqi government. Influence, or "wasita," is crucial for tribal leaders to ensure that they receive their share of resources from the government. Tribal leaders who are ignored by the government are shamed, and their legitimacy as sheikhs is threatened. Amongst the sheikh's many responsibilities is to ensure that his tribe is secure, prosperous, and growing. He also must ensure that his tribe is strong and can defend its territories from neighboring tribes who may wish to take resources from his tribe. If the government doesn't recognize a sheikh, what does that say to the sheikh's tribesmen? If the sheikh isn't important, then just how important is the tribesman? What can the tribesmen expect from the government if it doesn't recognize and communicate with his sheikh? Is this the message that the Iraqi government should be sending to its citizens?.....

And finally, (insert deep breath here), our counterinsurgency strategy is linear, and our targeting is essentially a "whack a mole" strategy.

The issue isn't the mole - they are problems, but the problem is actually in parts of the soil that the mole is digging in to screw up the Iraqi lawn.

The soil is the tribal system, and parts of it (some sub tribes) are very sympathetic to AQ and other ACF elements.

Our intel does a great job of who, what, when, and where. That's the essence of whack a mole, but it really applies best to fighting a conventional enemy.

In COIN, why is the key. And individuals are not. Groups, and by that I mean sub tribes, are the key.

Here's a snippet from a recent talk that was held between some "old school" iraqis and their "new school" officers.

Old school: There are sub tribes of the X tribe now in Y location - they are going to make trouble there.

New school: what should we do?

Old school: we need to destroy that sub tribe, entirely.

New school: but that is a violation of human rights!

Old school: if you want the government to stay in power, you have to send a message to the rest of the sub tribal shaykhs not to follow in this direction.

Note that we, the Americans, should just let the Iraqi government do what it must to stay in power.

I do not suggest that destroying sub tribes is what US forces should do. Quite the opposite, it runs against what I believe in.

However, if that is what the Iraqi government has to do, I think we need to just turn a blind eye to it.

What are your thoughts, Marc?

[slapout9]

where is the free first chapter?

[marct]

What are your thoughts, Marc?

At the moment, focused on a presentation I have to give on Tuesday and another on a paper for mid-June. As i said, I'm up to my eyebrows in work right now .

[tribeguy]

Work always gets in the way. Thankfully, my work intersects with my interests. I am sure it does for you as well.

I am looking forward to your posts. Right now I am preparing a top down analysis of the Iraqi tribal system by province, region, Qadha', and Nahiya. While the source data is somewhat dated, I am interested in evaluating it to see where it supports events on the ground.

I just finished translating 'Abd 'Aun Al-Rudhan's encyclopedia of iraqi tribes - it has 14193 sub tribes in total - with locational data included. However, this work will be misunderstood and misinterpreted by those who don't understand how Iraqi scholars study and analyze their own tribal system. That's why I wrote the book.

It's not "my method," but rather, is my attempt to describe theirs. I think it is much more intuitive than our western attempts, having studied those extensively.

The Brits, God bless them, produced a lot of tribal data, but they over emphasized the role of "confederations" and super confederations. At the local level, the major tribal entities are almost dead identities. Sub tribal identity is much more cohesive, but those are much more numerous.

A British scholar with great understanding said that it was their most important yet most difficult challenge to understand and interpret Middle Eastern Tribal systems. He didn't have the benefits of database software, unfortunately. Our challenge is to first understand the nature of the tribes themselves, and then somehow incorporate this into an analytical system that allows for some degree of predictive power such that we can at least identify the myriad of most likely short, intermediate, and long term futures with respect to how the tribal system will interact and react with the governments that purport to represent them.

Again, I am looking forward to your input.
Very Resepctfully,

Tribeguy

[Scott Shaw]

I was able to watch Sam pitch his first class yesterday on his theory. 1. Sam is amazingly intelligent. He is a speaker, writer, and reader of Arabic. 2. His presentation is very animated – he’s excited about this topic. 3. He is very well read on his sources having personally translated many of them.

Yeah – he had a shameless plug for his book and I’ll buy a copy if just to read what he translated since my Arabic reading isn’t so good. If you can get over the plug (and you really should), as davidbfpo above pointed out, he brings a level of specialism that is not found elsewhere that I know of.
His basic point – and Sam if I got this wrong, then tell me – is that there are tribes in Iraq (the Noble Tribes) that drive the society (drive may not be the right word, so I’ll go “Where the Noble Tribes go, so goes the country.)

As far as what Tom Odom says above, the “necessary” of what Sam does can be explained in the question, “What motivates Iraqi X to do what he is doing?” I served as a MiTT Chief for a year in addition to commanding a rifle company in Baghdad. The full tribe name of the Iraqis that I worked with can explain some of what they did (in retrospect since I was not aware of the importance of sub-tribe/clan until yesterday). It’s deeper than just “Mr Maliki” or Saddam Hussein al-Tikriti – what about the albu Nasirs that Saddam belongs to? How do you talk to them? How about the fact that there are Malikis all over the country and their power base is much larger than that of any other tribe cross province (there are more of certain tribes in certain provinces, but cross province – the Malikis take it.

Scott