The tribes ascendant (16 January 2004)

Small excerpts of this piece were reprinted in this article published in the Independent on Sunday (18 January 2004).

Faced with a continually precarious security situation and low levels of cooperation throughout much of Iraq, US authorities have turned increasingly to individuals whose positions fit uneasily with claims to be bringing modern democracy to the country: tribal leaders.

Last month, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority established a Tribal Affairs bureau. The job of liaising with the shaikhs, and collecting information and advice from them, falls to Lt. Col. Alan King. Seemingly unaware of the potential criticism that his approach brings back some of the more discredited tactics of British rule in Iraq, King told reporters that he used as his guide to Iraq's tribal network a report produced by the British - in 1918.

Tribes had been declining in significance in Iraq throughout the nineteenth century, due in particular to the high level of migration to the cities, land reforms and the changing economy. But when the British - who occupied Iraq in World War I - found themselves needing native leaders who could bring order in the country, they gave power to a designated group of tribal shaikhs to settle disputes and collect taxes on behalf of the British government. In return, the shaikhs were reimbursed generously in "British gold and British bayonets".

The 1918 report that Col. King, a civil affairs and psychological operations commander, uses itself recounts the difficulties of using an outdated mechanism in order to control the country. An account of the "Arab tribes of the Baghdad wilayat" (district), it explains how difficult it is "to force the sections to pay some heed to their shaikhs". A report produced the following year noted the criticisms of some British officials towards the new powers given to the shaikhs. They saw it as "a retrograde movement", and likened it to reintroducing tribes into Scotland: "so long as Scotland remained tribal, it produced nothing and nationally was a pauper."

Many of the same processes are at work in Iraq. In a country that embraced secular models of society from the 1950s more fully than any other Arab country, American aid is often channelled through tribal shaikhs, who then act as intermediaries between the population and the occupation authorities. As distributors of funds and often the only Iraqis who have an audience at the CPA, the shaikhs have found themselves with more power than they have enjoyed for the past seventy years.

For Col. King, who previously acted as a campaigner for the Republican party candidate Elizabeth Dole, the advantages for the US authorities are clear. He receives reports from the tribal leaders on local affairs, a precious commodity since the Iraqi local administration fell into decline after the first Gulf War and almost disappeared with the second. His bureau, known officially as the Office of Provincial Outreach, was engaged in an award of over $900,000 made last week to establish "Tribal Democracy Centres", which provide resources to the tribal shaikhs.

The coopting of tribal leaders also lends a veneer of respectability to the occupation forces. The timetable for national elections has now been pushed back to the end of 2005, almost three years after the toppling of the regime of Saddam Hussein. With the rise of radical popular movements in Iraq that want to take the country on a very different path from that envisioned by the US administration, the opportunity to strengthen local networks that are aligned with the west and do not form part of a national movement opposed to the West, is too good to be wasted.

The less palatable possibilities would however become clear to Lt. Col. King if he were to read forward in the British account of tribalism beyond 1918. "Tribal organisation is a centrifugal force adverse to the formation of a unified state", recorded the British administrator in 1920, "The policy of backing the shaikh had its drawbacks. He is a petty tyrant whose misdeeds reflect on the Government which supports him. He resented any check imposed on the rapacity which he had given a fair field to exercise, and he and his tribesmen alike resented the attempt to enforce upon them the obligations of citizenship, the preservation of order and the payment of taxes, which in the past they had successfully evaded."

Author: Glen Rangwala

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