David Kilcullen at SWJ on the circumstances behind the tribal rising against al Qaeda in Western Iraq. It sounds a little too neat, but worth repeating:
…this alliance of convenience and mutual exploitation broke down when AQI began to apply the standard AQ method of cementing alliances through marriage. In Iraqi tribal society, custom (aadat) is at least as important as religion (deen) and its dictates, often pre-Islamic in origin, frequently differ from those of Islam…One key difference is marriage custom, the tribes only giving their women within the tribe or (on rare occasions to cement a bond or resolve a grievance, as part of a process known as sulha) to other tribes or clans in their confederation (qabila). Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done. AQ, with their hyper-reductionist version of “Islam” stripped of cultural content, discounted the tribes’ view as ignorant, stupid and sinful.This led to violence, as these things do: AQI killed a sheikh over his refusal to give daughters of his tribe to them in marriage, which created a revenge obligation (tha’r) on his people, who attacked AQI. The terrorists retaliated with immense brutality, killing the children of a prominent sheikh in a particularly gruesome manner, witnesses told us. This was the last straw, they said, and the tribes rose up. Neighboring clans joined the fight, which escalated as AQI (who had generally worn out their welcome through high-handedness) tried to crush the revolt through more atrocities. Soon the uprising took off, spreading along kinship lines through Anbar and into neighboring provinces.
The whole thing’s well worth close reading, although a little binary. The assumption is that the locals are with us or with them. There’s no accounting for what seems to me to be the likely possibility that they might have ideas of their own, or how the evolving situation might relate to the attempts of non-AQI insurgent groups and the Sadrists to create a “national opposition.” Anyway, a couple of incidental ironies:
Al Qaeda in Iraq turned out to be the most radical imperialists on the block…and if Kilcullen is right, success against them involves upholding the right of Iraqi tribes to dispose of their women to anyone they please.
We touched on this before…
Comments