| Iraq tribes { January 5 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/international/middleeast/05TRIB.htmlhttp://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/05/international/middleeast/05TRIB.html
January 5, 2003 In Iraq's Tribes, U.S. Faces a Wild Card By NEIL MacFARQUHAR
MOSUL, Iraq — Sheik Talal Salim al-Khalidi, the portly chieftain of the Bani Khalid tribe, stomped through a farming hamlet in his fief on the broad, flat Mosul plains, gloating that the mud oozing underfoot heralded an auspicious sign in the face of a possible American attack.
"God is fair," proclaimed the sheik, wearing a headdress, a gray suit and a flowing gray wool cloak edged in gold that sweeps the ground. "Whenever we face some kind of oppression, he compensates us with something else."
Three men armed with Kalashnikovs and one with a machine gun dogged his every footstep. "The same thing happened in December 1998," he said, recalling a season of bountiful harvest. "When the Americans were bombing us, we had heavy rains that year."
Intensely devout, armed and nationalistic, the storied tribes of Iraq have played a pivotal role in controlling the country under the Ottomans, the British, the monarchy and especially Saddam Hussein. They have remained the ultimate swing voters in the brutal politics of the Middle East, where in legendary wars across the Arabian Peninsula and beyond, they were known to switch allegiances in the heat of battle.
Iraq's tribes are under increased scrutiny as the Bush administration casts about for some credible force that can help it oust Mr. Hussein. The country is home to about 150 major tribes, which break down into about 2,000 smaller clans. The largest number more than one million people, the smallest a few thousand. Of the larger groups, roughly 30 to 35 are believed to have a significant role in controlling Iraq.
The tribal formula worked in Afghanistan in 2001. Cash payments persuaded chieftains to abandon the Taliban. There has been talk of similar payments in Iraq, but few expect it to be quite so simple here.
Mr. Hussein has worked diligently in recent years to woo the tribes, dispensing cash, cars, arms, schools and other bounty to assure their loyalty. At the same time, those who failed to kowtow, or worse, plotted rebellions, have been brutally suppressed, their chiefs killed, replaced or driven into exile, their houses destroyed, their crops burned.
Opposition figures in London report that Mr. Hussein summoned the chiefs of the southern tribes to Baghdad three months ago and demanded that they vow not to repeat the 1991 uprisings against him.
The question hanging over the tribes now is how deep their professed loyalty runs. They could become a nightmare for any American force penetrating Iraq, a patriotic guerrilla army spread throughout the country.
Sheik Talal, echoing other tribal chiefs, said he had placed a request with the local Baath Party leader in Mosul for heavier arms, like rocket-propelled grenades, antiaircraft guns and antitank weapons, to help fight the Americans, but he has yet to receive a response.
The tribes could also be waiting for the right moment to rise up against the Baghdad government, though if they are, they are understandably not advertising it. They slice across the society along a different axis than the traditional divisions between Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, with some tribes including Sunni, Shiite and even Christian members.
"You cannot ignore them because they are an important element of the government," said one Western envoy in Baghdad. "But you cannot expect the tribes alone to change the regime in Iraq."
Pride of place naturally goes to Saddam Hussein's tribe, the Tikritis, whose members fill many senior government positions, as well as important posts in security organizations and the presidential guard. All such groups draw heavily on the tribes, although occasional rebellions among major tribes have been put down with tanks and artillery.
Iraqi opposition figures interviewed in London contend that one crucial element delaying American military action is the lack of clearly identified support in Iraq. One said the Americans were working hard to forge some sort of tribal link, meeting with chieftains in neighboring countries to see if they can influence their Iraqi cousins. All major tribes in Iraq have related branches in Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the other gulf states and Turkey, although under Koranic prescriptions loyalty to the national leader trumps relations across borders.
The British experience during World War I is a cautionary history cited often in Iraq these days. Expecting a warm tribal welcome when they marched into Iraq to toss out the Ottomans, the British instead were met with hostility from the tribes, which united to massacre tens of thousands of British soldiers.
"The graveyards of the British are still in Iraq," Sheik Talal said.
The Baath Party, which came to power in 1968 with Mr. Hussein as a vice president, painted the tribes as outdated, with loyalty instead owed to the state and the president. Even the use of tribal names was banned. (Another explanation for the policy was that it was to disguise the predominance of Mr. Hussein's clan in the government.)
Things began changing in the 1980's, when the government needed soldiers for the fight against Iran, and the tribes obliged. But it was after Baghdad lost control of large swaths of the country in the years following the Persian Gulf war in 1991 that Mr. Hussein resurrected the role of the tribes. He reached out to the leaders, allocating them areas to supervise in exchange for more autonomy over tribal affairs.
Sheik Talal, who says his tribe has about 100,000 armed men all over Iraq, is proud of the tribe's various roles in the 1990's. They were assigned a 72-mile section of the highway to protect at night between Al Diwaniya in Nasiriya in southern Iraq, for example. "It became a duty to prove our loyalty to the president," said the sheik, who has been a member of the rubber-stamp Iraqi Parliament for the past three years.
Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University, said: "The tribal leaders were very happy that their old role was to be returned. They were good at protecting roads, delivering water and sorting out the problems the government can't. I don't think they have the strength they did in the early days of Iraq, though, when they outgunned and outnumbered the Iraqi Army."
On the visit to Naharat Nimrud, a tribal hamlet some 12 miles down the road from the famous Assyrian ruins, Sheik Talal listed the benefits accrued from the president. Right off the main road sits the Saddam Mosque, then a new school and an infirmary, all paid for by Mr. Hussein. In those years when the rains do not come and crops fail, the president regularly forgives government loans for seeds and fertilizer.
Various sheiks scoff at the idea that American money might persuade crucial tribes to switch sides.
Sheik Ahmed Mohiedin Zangana, the leader of a small Kurdish tribe opposed to his American-allied brethren in the north, noted that he had already assigned members of his tribe positions to take up around the city of Mosul and elsewhere in event of an attack, although he too, awaits heavier weapons.
"I have my specific plans to distribute members of the tribe if paratroopers land," he said. "Each sniper knows his special assignment."
Sheik Talal described the likely resistance in religious terms. "We protect the nation's land and we would consider killing Americans a jihad in the service of God if they come here as aggressors," he said. "The Koran says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, so when anybody kills us, we will kill them."
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