Word: tribalisms
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Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha was gloomy when I met him at his compound in Ramadi last December. A few days earlier a friend of his had died, U.S. Army Capt. Travis Patriquin, the military's tribal liaison for the area. Patriquin and Sattar had worked closely together late last year, when Sattar first emerged as the leader of a band of tribes around Ramadi coming together to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq. Sattar, like other tribal leaders of Anbar Province, had fallen out with al-Qaeda in Iraq after years of complacency and cooperation with insurgents targeting U.S. forces...
...Sattar's link to the U.S. military presence in his territory. The two got along quite well by all accounts. Sattar had even made Patriquin an honorary member of his own tribe. But a roadside bomb killed Patriquin and two other Americans, just as U.S. military officials and tribal leaders were seeing the beginnings of gains in their nascent partnership against insurgents...
...notorious showboat and media hound, Sattar waved away TIME's photographer at one point, saying he was too depressed to pose for pictures. The sheik vowed to fight on nonetheless. Indeed, he swore revenge. For a time Sattar seemed to be making good on his pledge as tribal fighters loyal to him killed off and drove out insurgents from Ramadi, where al-Qaeda in Iraq had established a headquarters of sorts in the rubble of a city shattered by years of intermittent fighting. As of the summer of 2007, U.S. officials in Baghdad and Washington were publicly claiming Anbar Province...
President Bush himself went to meet Sattar and his tribal loyalists during his surprise visit to Iraq 10 days ago. Sattar's "Awakening" movement, U.S. leaders hoped, would spread across other parts of Iraq and turn more and more tribes against radical insurgents. Some U.S. officials even suggested that Sattar might lead a political faction in Baghdad as part of a sitting government. Those hopes ended today with news that Sattar was dead. Insurgents killed the sheik the same way they did his American friend, with a roadside bomb near his compound that left two of Sattar's bodyguards dead...
Within hours of his death, tribal figures who surrounded Sattar were promising to continue on as he had with their fight against insurgents in Anbar Province. But anyone who knows the dynamics of Middle East tribalism understands that Sattar's death represents a huge blow to the U.S. strategy in Anbar Province and greatly dims hopes for success elsewhere in Iraq. Wily and charismatic, Sattar in essence embodied the U.S. strategy for Anbar Province and stood as a kind of unlikely poster boy (banditry was part of his tribe's expertise) for the Administration's hopes for a turnaround...