I'm sure I'm misremembering at this late stage, but in Falluja in the early days of the war, weren't 13 civilians killed while protesting/demonstrating outside the gates of a US base? I want to say that it was the 82nd involved, but I can't remember, and wasn't in Falluja then.

I was told by a number of Iraqis and Jordanians with whom I was working in 2004 that much of the Falluja problem could have been made to go away by enacting proper condolence payments to the families of the folks killed in the above incident. The view of my colleagues was that by not properly addressing these payments, the local tribal leadership felt threatened in that they were not able to make something "normal" happen in relation to their constituents, and things began to unravel.

Hearsay, I know, but one of my Jordanian colleagues did have some strong tribal ties there.

Cheers,