-Caveat Lector- From: Euphorian
-------------------- Iraq's tribal villages a wild card for regime -------------------- Some prepare for battle; others calm By E.A. Torriero Tribune staff reporter October 27, 2002 TARASHA, Iraq -- As chief of this tiny tribal village, Nazar Kareem Hameed settles conflicts among people who travel for miles to seek his wisdom. Brothers come for counsel in disputes about land and water. Grooms seek advice on arguments with prospective brides. Farmers ask for handouts to resolve squabbles over debts. As the Iraqi government steps up its anti-America propaganda efforts, it portrays millions of people in hundreds of scattered tribes as "combat cells," armed to the teeth and ready to battle American soldiers. A visit to this expanse of scorched earth 50 miles from Baghdad paints a starkly different picture, however. Farmers, mostly unarmed, are concerned more about pressing daily quarrels than about a potential war with America. "I don't think about war, and they don't think about war," said Hameed, 44, sitting cross-legged on thin cushions. "I think about my people, and they think about feeding their families." Just last week, Ezzat Ibrahim, the right-hand man to Iraq's President Saddam Hussein, told foreign reporters that tribesmen are gearing up to be loyal guerrillas and militias. "Shepherds are a combat cell. The people working the land are a combat cell," he said. But Hameed, whose forefathers have presided over this region for more than a century, reports no mobilization among the men in his Al-Azza tribe or in any of the neighboring tribes. Few farmers have weapons in their houses, save for rusting shotguns used to shoot predators, he said. While women, children and elderly men in big cities spent some of the summer months training for urban warfare, Hameed said no courses were offered in Tarasha. And while city dwellers stock up on extra food and money, Hameed's people aren't bothering. When it's time to fight, Hameed said, someone will make the hour's drive from the nearest big town, Samarra, and bring him the news. That's because there is just one telephone, at a school in the village, and usually no one is there to answer it. "If our president tells us to fight, we have a plan," Hameed said, adding that people will hop into passing cars and report to a depot in Samarra to get government-issued weapons. "Then we will defend our land and fight." Tribal history rich Dating back thousands of years and fiercely independent, tribes are an important part of Iraqi history. In the early 1900s, tribesmen helped drive back foreign invaders with planks riveted to long-handled shovels. But in the last 80 years, Iraqi tribes have stayed mostly far from the fray, even as Iraq was immersed in war with Iran in the 1980s and later with the U.S.-led coalition in the gulf war. They supplied men to fight in the Iraqi army but mostly remained on their farms in a defensive posture. In 1991, however, when Shiites attempted to rebel against Hussein at the end of the gulf war, tribal militias joined with Hussein's fighters to brutally quell the revolt. And in recent years, Hussein has used bribes to keep the tribes in his fold. In Afghanistan, tribes played a major role as U.S. troops enlisted the help of some warlords in ousting the ruling Taliban. Iraqi tribal fighters, however, would hardly be a match for the American military. They would play a far lesser role in a conflict than the Iraqi army, Hussein's Revolutionary Guard and his Baath Party loyalists. Still, tribes could be a wild card in a post-Hussein Iraq, Western experts said. How long and how deeply the tribes might oppose a new regime would be a good indicator of how the rest of this religiously and socially divided nation might react. "There is more evidence that they would be a nuisance than a potent force," said a Western diplomat who has contacts with some major tribes. "Still, whoever rules Iraq has to make peace with them and get them in the fold." A few miles from this impoverished village, regional tribal leader Riadth Safa Baha looked out over the land where people representing about 400 tribes live for miles around his modern mansion on the high banks of the Tigris River. Baha is the leader of the Al Sheik tribe, which has 20,000 members in five neighboring provinces. While he admires the acumen of neighboring tribal leader Hameed, he disputed his assessment of local battle preparedness. Houses `stocked with weapons' "Houses are stocked with weapons," Baha said. "Let America be aware that tribes all over Iraq are ready to fight them." Hameed, who like his father and grandfather before him greets supplicants day and night at his dusty farm of grapes and apples, said the immediate needs of his tribe must come first. In recent months, Hameed used a gift of 500,000 dinars--roughly $250--from Hussein's government to take care of individuals who earn less than $3 per month. Reed-thin and of modest demeanor, Hameed gladly dispenses the largess. "The gift was not for me, but for my people," he said, handing out Korean cigarettes to his visitors. While he is considered by his people as one of the wisest men around, Hameed is not about to offer his advice on the weapons inspections dispute between Hussein and the Bush administration. "That is beyond me," he said. "In those matters, my president is more wise than me. He will find the perfect solution." Copyright (c) 2002, Chicago Tribune -------------------- Improved archives! Searching Chicagotribune.com archives back to 1985 is cheaper and easier than ever. 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