Return of the sheik: one man, and one tribe, in Iraq

National Review, Oct 8, 2007 by Mario Loyola

The town of Kharma lies several kilometers northeast of Fallujah in the dusty corridor of farmland that skirts the Euphrates River. This is the ancestral seat of the Jumaily tribe. According to its paramount lineal sheik, Mishan al-Jumaily, it numbers more than 100,000, and is present as far south as Basra and as far west as Jordan and Syria. Sheik Mishan describes the tribe's reach with an expansive and proud wave of the hand, as if to indicate all Arabia.

Even in Iraq, one of the most modern countries in the Arab world, the nation-state remains an often-dysfunctional graft onto feudal life. Outside the largest cities, and above all here in Sunni-dominated Anbar Province, the essential political and social structures are the tribes: enormous extended families bound together by unique traditions and deep collective memories. Members of a tribe refer to one another as "cousin."

The political life of a tribe revolves around its sheiks--those who "give the law." It is often the sheik, not the state, who is first to settle disputes, provide for the needy, and lead in times of crisis. A tribe's paramount sheik--its "sheik of sheiks"--normally holds his place by right of primogeniture. The invariable theme of interior decorations at a sheik's house is not religion, but ancestry: Nearly all the pictures are of the sheik's father, grandfather, uncles, and brothers.

All that said, the scene at Sheik Mishan's is about as quaint as life in the Corleone family compound. Young men wielding AK-47s guard the approaches; in the gatehouse, assault rifles are lined up like pool cues; a machine-gun nest is visible on the roof.

Americans here often compare tribal leaders to mafia dons, but there is an important difference. The sheiks are not often at odds with the law. They are the law, and today they are defending the law by force. The young men of the Jumaily tribe have been joining officially sanctioned security forces, from the neighborhood watch to the Iraqi army, by the hundreds--especially in the two months since Sheik Mishan returned from self-imposed exile in Syria to vow alliance with the coalition, fealty to the central government, and enmity toward al-Qaeda.

I meet Sheik Mishan while spending several days with U.S. Marines outside Kharma. He is something of a celebrity to them. It was Brig. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of the Second Marine Expeditionary Force in Anbar, who personally convinced the sheik to return to Iraq.

For Sheik Mishan and his tribe, it has been a voyage to hell and back. The tribe took up arms against the coalition shortly after the March 2003 invasion. It fought fiercely against an awesome military force, even as al-Qaeda rose to dominance through enticement, intimidation, and murder, finally drawing the vicious reprisals of Shiite death squads against Sheik Mishan's fellow Sunnis. The tribe has committed--and suffered--the worst crimes of this atrocious conflict.

If the tribe is fierce, its leader seems a study in gentleness. Both humble and gracious in my interactions with him, Sheik Mishan is beset by visitors at all hours. I accompany two Marine officers on a business call--basic "stability operations" stuff: repairing a water pipe in one sector, mustering a civilian watch for several new area checkpoints, etc.--and am rushed past the sheik's guards and several dozen callers.

Mishan receives us as honored guests. I am so at ease that I soon commit a faux pas: I tell an "Iraqi joke," which, in my defense, seems safe because I have been told it by an Iraqi-army colonel.

This is the joke: In Saddam-era Iraq, an official of the Baath party is informed that he is to be transferred out of Baghdad to become head of one of the provincial party offices. His daughter is very upset because she is studying English and loves the teacher she has in Baghdad. Father promises to find a great new English teacher for her in their new home.

A few weeks after they move, the Baath official calls his men in and tells them, "Go find the man who speaks the best English in this town." They leave right away. Several days later, the official realizes that he has never heard back about the best English-speaker, so he calls his men in and asks if they were able to find him. "Yes sir," say the men. "We beat the confession out of him. He is buried in the back."

My hosts and the other guests laugh and nod politely at the punch line. Then a Marine lieutenant takes me aside and says gravely, "Mario, think. The joke was told to you by an Iraqi-army colonel, which means that he was probably Shiite. And this is Baath country. Basically you just told a Shiite joke making fun of these people."

It could be a disaster, but luckily I am invited to return the next day for a longer interview and lunch. That is when I learn why Mishan didn't have a worse reaction to my joke: He claims never to have been close to the Baath.

AN INDEPENDENT

Of course, not many Iraqis will admit to an American that they once supported Saddam. But Mishan has convincing credentials. His cousin, the pan-Arabist Abdul Salam Arif, was a key player in toppling the Hashemite monarchy in 1958. Though he was named president of Iraq when the Baathists came to power in 1963, later that year he publicly broke with them. Mishan himself says that he was a high-ranking magistrate in the late 1970s, but was forced from his post (like many other Iraqi judges) because of his refusal to do the bidding of the Baath. And he explains that, in 2000, when he ran for a seat in Saddam's rubber-stamp parliament, he took office as an independent. The Baath put pressure on him then to join the party, but Mishan refused. Referring to himself in the third person, he explains: "The people loved Sheik Mishan, so Sheik Mishan could be independent."