Tribalism and socialism in Iraq

As a civil affairs soldier I interact with the local leaders in the Iraqi towns and villages in my area of operations (AO). While we have identified many leaders of various kinds, the dual parallel lines of authority, tribal and governmental, are sometimes confusing.  We don't always know the tribal leaders or the extend of rivalry between different tribes.  We also have difficulty getting local leaders to cooperate on many projects and initiatives because they defer so much to central authorities.  While central control of the government and the decentralized control of the tribe seem contratictory (and they are sometimes), they each have their own spheres and the challenge is to ascertain where those spheres beging and end.

The most common response a village tribal leader will give us when we propose a new idea (say, digging a well for the village to use) is for him to say, "Well that's a good idea, you should talk to the other tribes about it.  I can't make them do anything."  When we go looking for the leaders of the other tribes, oftentimes they are not there.  In small villages, a tribal leader doesn't actually live there, they live in a town or city nearby, sometimes outside of the range of my unit's AO.  This makes it difficult to meet with them and if we do they are often interested in doing projects in their hometown, not the rural village.

In government, the same sort of dance occurs.  We bring up the idea of recruiting more police or improving the health clinics in the district.  The district council will then say, "We think its a great idea, you should talk to the provincial government or Baghdad."  Again, these institutions are outside of our AO and our higher units are busy with a lot of other things.  They may not give our requests a big priority, and if they do it is a crap shoot if the higher Iraqi authority will sign off on the initiative.  I think my team does well at getting things moving through the various levels of army and Iraqi bureaucracy, but there seems to be a lot of passing the buck, especially on the Iraqi side.  It is also strange to have a local area not in charge of their own police or schools.  Most of the goals we set for ourselves can get accomplished, but it takes a lot longer than it should and we then can't move on to bigger and better things.

So where do tribes and government intersect?  Its hard for me, an outsider, to really know.  I know there's little here as far as criminal courts and policing right now in my AO, but crime does not seem to be a problem (I mean thievery and common assault, the insurgency type crime is beyond the control of the tribes, or is it?).  When we ask people about this, they say the tribes handle crime and punishment.  I have not heard directly, but from events that have transpired here tribes must maintain some sort of militias or at least have access to arms when they need them.  Tribes also play a role in conflict mediation, marriage, patronage, and finding a place to live.  Government handles records (deeds for example), builds maintains and staffs water, health, fire, education, recreation, and agriculture infrastructure and is in control of the army and police.  Government also oversees construction and the buying and selling of property and the distrabution of certain building materials as well as benzene and propane.  So tribes seem to handle a lot of the social aspects of society while government is in control of bureaucracy and large infrastructure.  Beyond that, in economics, politics, and securtiy there is overlap, an overlap that we (and honestly I think a lot of Iraqis) struggle to understand.

Tribalism and socialism are not in and of themselves the biggest obstacles for us in Iraq, but they are pervasive influences that are foreign to Americans and frustrate us from time to time.  A big part of our mission on the ground level is the make heads and tails of it all, hopefully something I can accomplish before I leave here, both for professional reasons as well as personal curiosity.  The problem, especially with the tribes, is the size and complexity on the national level.  I would like to think there's a lieutenant colonel or full bird somewhere putting all the pieces together in the Green Zone, but I really have no idea if there is or not.  In a perfect world we would already know all of this information (it has been over three years now with many years before that studying the country you would think), but if it was a perfect world we wouldn't be here to begin with.