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28-01-2005 PA News Iraq Scotsman The following is pooled copy from Gethin Chamberlain, of The Scotsman, in Basra, Iraq. It started, the story goes, with an argument over a buffalo belonging to the Garamsha tribe, munching its way through the garden of a member of Basra's Halaf tribe. Before very long, the streets of northern Basra were echoing to the sound of nightly gunbattles, as both sides pounded each other with mortars, rocket propelled grenades and heavy machine guns. The body count began to rise. But the rockets were knocking down the power lines, which in turn led to disturbances in other parts of the city. Matters were getting out of hand. So a squadron of British tanks backed up by 200 Scots Guards in armoured fighting vehicles drove up to the front line between the two tribes and politely suggested that if anyone wanted a fight, they were happy to oblige. The warring parties declined the invitation but agreed to sit down to talks. The violence abated but it was a telling reminder of the importance of the tribal system in Iraq, and the support on which the tribal leaders can call. For all the concerns about the Shia-Sunni rivalry and the threat from insurgents and foreign fighters, it is the tribal and the religious leaders who really call the shots in Iraq and who will ultimately decide the outcome of tomorrow's elections. In the Shia-dominated south, certainly, the clerics will play an important role in guiding the hand of voters in the right direction. But for many, the final influence on which list of candidates they should back will come from the tribal leaders. The commanding officer of the Scots Guards, Lt Col Harry Nickerson, said that the role of the tribes in Basra and the surrounding areas was crucial, both in maintaining security and in the final outcome of the elections. “Local politics are very driven by the tribes,” he said. “I think the tribal leaders tell them whether the elections are good or bad. Both religious and tribal leaders have an influence on the elections but on the whole they seem keen to do this.” The tribal dispute between the Halaf and the Garamsha has been rumbling on for years but it matters now because it threatened not only the lives of a significant number of the city's inhabitants, but with the elections looming, it had the potential to throw polling in the affected areas into chaos. The nature of the dispute demonstrates the complexity of the difficulties faced by the coalition forces in maintaining security in the run up to the elections. With the dispute between the radical young Shia cleric Muqtadr al Sadr and British forces on the backburner thanks to the signing of a ceasefire agreement, Basra had been relatively quiet. The last thing that was needed was for open warfare to break out on the streets of the northern part of the city. “These two idiot groups have been making everyone's lives a misery,” said Scots Guards commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Harry Nickerson. People had been coming up to him to ask if his soldiers would sort out the two tribes and “give them a kicking“, as he put it. The Halaf are a tribe of 30,000 or so educated urban professionals, the Garamsha a somewhat lawless grouping of marsh Arab farmers. Ejected from the marshes by Saddam Hussein, the Garamsha moved on to the outskirts of Basra, and into Halaf territory, with predictable results. When the Scots Guards turned up, both sides blamed each other: “It was like dealing with a very, very lethal bunch of overgrown children,” said Lt Col Nickerson. It was the power cuts that proved the final straw. The daily breaks in supply are one of the main bones of contention among the population of Basra since the end of the war. It is a problem which has dogged the coalition and will dog whichever administration is elected tomorrow. When it comes to disruption to the electricity supply to their fridges, air conditioning, lighting and heating, people have very short fuses. “With elections coming, power cuts were making the local people stroppy,” said Lt Col Nickerson. “Tempers get frayed easily in Basra and people were misbehaving and rioting.” Up to that point coalition forces had stayed out of tribal disputes; this time they decided they had to act. The majority of the 1st Battalion of the Scots Guards was sent up to knock heads together. “Essentially we went up there and said 'Come on if you think you are hard enough,” said Lt Col Nickerson. “We told them 'We are here now and we are the biggest tribe in town and if you want to keep on fighting you can fight us',” he said. “We told them the governor wanted it stopped and if they didn't we would make them. Seventy tons of tank rumbling through a village tends to wake you up and we said there was plenty more where that came from.” A couple of nights ago, the tribes clashed again; nothing too serious, by their previous standards, but a timely reminder before tomorrow's elections that even a stray buffalo can make the difference between success and failure.
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................................................................................................................. Copyright ©2004 Gethin Chamberlain. All rights reserved. |
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