Tribes of Iraq
by Sandra Mackey - August 2004

As the United States turns sovereignty over to the Iraqis, both the Bush administration and the new government of Iraq face the challenge of Iraq 's tribes. They are perhaps the key to the stabilization of Iraq which, in turn, will free the American military from long term occupation duty in the Tigris-Euphrates valley .

The tribes are one of the larger pieces in the complex mosaic of Iraq , a country fashioned from pieces of the fallen Ottoman Empire by British imperial interests at the end of World War I. Unlike the Kurdish tribes that have inhabited what is now northern Iraq for hundred of years, the Arab tribes are the descendents of largely Bedouin groups that migrated from the Arabian Peninsula to the Tigris-Euphrates valley during the 19th and early 20 th centuries. Those who moved north of Baghdad remained Sunni Muslim. Those who stayed in the south were converted to Islam's dissenting sect, Shiism, by the religious leaders of the Shia shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala . Yet in social organization and attitudes, the Arab Shia, like their Sunni brothers, remained Bedouin. As such, they defied the authority of any force outside the tribe including the government of Baghdad .

The monarchy, created by Britain in 1921 to rule over Iraq , could hold the country together only by bringing the tribes under its control. With cajolery and bribes, King Faisal I kept the tribes in check. Within a few years of his death, the tribes of the south rose up against Baghdad to halt conscription under the National Defense Law. Other revolts led the urbanites in control of the government to make tribe leaders their junior partners.

For their part, tribal leaders entered a relationship with Baghdad for the same reason they have always made alliances - to advance their own interests. Thus within the politics of the monarchy and the military governments that followed, the tribal leaders were loyal to whomever was in power, regardless of ideology.

In 1968, the interests of a particular kinship group became the driving force in Iraqi politics when the Baath party executed a coup against the military government. The leadership of the Baath, including Saddam Hussein, represented the interests and attitudes of the Bu Nasir tribe of Sunni Arabs from Tikrit, 100 miles north of Baghdad . Members of the Bu Nasir and their tribal allies soon took control of the army. As important, they provided the manpower for the increasingly pervasive security services. By 1979 when Saddam Hussein became the sole leader of Iraq , the complex dynamics of Iraqi politics had given way to the dominance of one tribe.

After the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the defeated and humiliated Saddam Hussein held onto power by wooing a host of tribal allies. He bestowed money, weapons and favors on Sunni and Shia sheikhs in return for their pledge to police their own people for Hussein. Even the urban populations of Iraq took on tribal characteristics. Labor unions, professional associations, student organizations, and arts alliances became pseudo kinship groups led by neo-tribal leaders appointed by the government. In the process, Saddam Hussein came to preside over a tribal society in which the president ruled at the sufferance of his tribal allies.

During the twilight of his regime, Mr. Hussein held undisputed power only in central Iraq . Most of the north of the country belonged to the Kurds, who have their own tribal structure. The western desert was controlled less by Baghdad than by Sunni tribes that Mr. Hussein allowed to run operations from smuggling to extortion. In the south, the Shia tribes took their favors from Mr. Hussein with one hand and with the other let loose guerrillas to attack the regime. With Saddam Hussein removed from power, it is the United States that must woo the tribes into a stable government for the new Iraq.

Wedded to their tribal identities and the interests of their kinsmen, the tribes are even less likely to pledge themselves to a government of occupation than they have been willing to bow to Baghdad. Thus these fiercely independent clans add their weight to the ethnic and sectarian divisions that are threatening to trap the United States in the quagmire of Iraq.