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| Iraq |
| Sunni Tribes Made It Personal Against Al-Qaeda |
| 2007-09-26 |
| An opinion written by Nibras Kazimi, Visiting Scholar at the Hudson Institute Last week’s murder of Sheikh Sattar Abu Risha was tragic, but not catastrophic. His death does not change the vastly improved situation in Anbar Province, since his role in its pacification was exaggerated from the beginning. Anbar stabilized for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with Abu Risha or America’s counterinsurgency efforts there—something that the U.S. military command has yet to figure out. Abu Risha found himself in the limelight at the right time and place, and the Americans fighting the terrorists in Anbar seized upon him as the poster-boy of a new strategy—empowering Iraq’s defunct tribal structure—that they had hoped would make belated sense of the positive transition and would allow them to claim credit, and medals, for it. …. I believe the insurgency failed because it had bad ideas and unrealistic expectations. When the price paid by the local population for these ideas and expectations—fighting the Shiites and re-establishing Sunni hegemony—became too steep, Sunnis turned against the insurgents and tried to find shelter, yet again, under the central government. This latter trend is the one that should be reinforced: Sunnis should be encouraged to throw in their lot with the New Iraq, rather than falling back into the tribal identities of Iraq’s past. “Tribes are now part of Iraqi folklore; they don’t matter anymore. We found out the hard way,” said Abu Seif, a man who once sold me on his own importance as a tribal leader from Anbar. This was said to me recently at an office in Amman, where Abu Seif now manages his business affairs. A long time ago and in a career far, far away, I had turned myself into a tribal expert, focusing specifically on the tribes of Anbar, and the ones that surround Baghdad. Consequently, I had to often deal with tribal leaders, or sheikhs. …. The U.S. should work with tribal leaders but shouldn’t exaggerate their importance. …. It is one thing to be proud of one’s tribe — I take pride in being a Nakha’I — but it’s a whole different matter to take orders from one’s nominal tribal sheikh. These social structures have been fraying under the myriad forces of sedentarization, urbanization, nation states, sectarianism, land reform and dictatorship to the point where tribal sheikhs are now rendered a quaint, “savage” aristocracy that the men in power—now wearing Western suits—would tolerate and do small favors for. Tribal leaders held on to some lingering prestige accorded to them by their ancestry; their dress and mannerism harked back to romanticized notions of Arabian chivalry. The tribes turned into job placement agencies; the sheikhs would petition the powerful over low-grade government jobs for the desperate young men who still came to them for help. That’s how the sheikhs held on to their social relevance, by becoming a 'civil society' lever between a small segment of the population and the all powerful, all benevolent welfare state, much like the neighborhood mukhtar does. They are useless for mass mobilization, and could never rival a civil society institution such as the religious hawza in Najaf; something that was clarified by the failure of tribal chiefs, and the politicians who relied on them, at the polls. … Abu Risha’s story was the stuff of powerful narrative: a pro-American tribal sheikh who had courageously confronted Al-Qaeda’s menace and eventually evicted them from his province, but was then killed by a treacherous bomb planted by the terrorists—Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State of Iraq took credit for it. In war, icons are invented and Abu Risha was such an icon: he looked ‘authentic’ and trim in his flowing Arabian robes, said the right things, and was always available for media comment. But he was creature for an American audience rather than an Iraqi one, and his American minders fell into the trap of believing their own propaganda. Interestingly, Abu Risha’s tribe is numerically insignificant by Dulaim standards, and only number in the hundreds. …. There had been many sheikhs in Anbar who wanted to be part of the new Iraq from the very beginning, men like Abu Seif or the CIA’s guy, Sheikh Majid. Later, others confronted Al-Qaeda head-on: credible leaders like Sheikh Nasr Abdel-Karim al-Mikhlif (of the Albu-Fahed tribe in Anbar, held a PhD in Agriculture, one of the few tribal sheikhs in Iraq who could claim a level of authority over his tribe) and opportunists such as Sheikh Usama al-Jeryan (of the Karabilah tribe in Qaim), only to be killed off by Al-Qaeda. …. None of these men achieved Abu Risha’s fame, simply for the fact that he had better timing, and an American audience willing to be charmed. …. As one Iraq observer put it to me, “tribes are a barometer of power; they swarm around whoever has the upper hand.” The danger now is that the Americans are trying to resuscitate a clannish social system that had withered away in Iraq, and turning it into a power in of itself. …. Maybe what’s important here are tribal tactics in warfare, rather than the institution of a the tribe itself: the insurgency had imposed its terror (and control) on Iraqi society by being very up-close and personal: they knew the name, address and genealogies of those who stood against them among their own kind, and would strike out at them from the shadows, in a way similar to how Saddam's totalitarian regime worked, which isn't surprising since many insurgents worked in Saddam's security organs. The U.S. military had been trained to target regimental colors rather than individuals—it’s a depersonalized method of war, seemingly in place to make the act of murder more palatable to Western sensibilities. But an insurgent’s willingness to kill was made easier by knowing who he was going to kill; punishing the alleged individual “guilt” of the victim. What succeeded against Al-Qaeda’s methods was the tactic of turning cousins on cousins: all of a sudden America had allies on the ground who fought in the same way Al-Qaeda was fighting—they made it personal. |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #1 Interesting. Those of you who've been to that part if the world, what say you? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2007-09-26 14:52 |