Black Mail:
Reader S.D. sends this story from the
Washington Post.
These authorities now understand much better the system of rewards and punishments that the Baathist regime used to keep these tribes loyal. For one thing, the tribes were given regular payments if the pipelines in their territories encountered no problems. Sabotage or other security problems in a tribe's area brought an immediate cutoff of those payments from Baghdad.The protection funds ceased with the invasion -- and sabotage suddenly erupted. Now payments to the tribes are being restored by CPA officials, who are silently testing the theory that Sunni sheiks looking for a renewal of their customary meal ticket may have been negligent about, if not responsible for, damage to the national pipeline system. Paid town councils are also being established in Sunni areas and warned that salaries will stop if there are security problems in their jurisdictions.
I envision a critique of this policy among some of my left-wing friends. "But that's paying protection money!"
So it is. Works, though, doesn't it?
"Not in the long term. You can't expect to build a stable democracy while allowing this kind of large-scale criminality. The power of these tribal war-lords will work against both stability and democracy."
Well, as to that, do you know the origin of the word "blackmail"?
There is paid in blackmail or watch-money, openly and privately, �5,000; and there is a yearly loss by understocking the grounds, by reason of theifts, of at least �15,000; which is, altogether, a loss to landlords and farmers in the Highlands of �37,000 sterling a year. . . . The person chosen to command this watch, as it is called, is commonly one deeply concerned in the theifts himself, or at least that have been in correspondence with the thieves, and frequently who have occasioned thefts, in order to make this watch, by which he gains considerably, necessary. The people employed travell through the country armed, night and day, under pretence of enquiring after stolen cattle, and by this means know the situation and circumstances of the whole country. And as the people thus employed are the very rogues that do these mischiefs, so one-half of them are continued in their former bussiness of stealling that the busieness of the other half may be necessary in recovering.
"That kind of analogy to history is improper here. Scotland was,
you yourself have argued, the font of our democracy. The most you can prove with this is that these robberies are not incompatible with the development of democracy, not that they
ought to be allowed."
Fair enough. Let's skip down a bit in the same article:
The chief, even against the laws, is bound to protect his followers, as they are sometimes called, be they never so criminal. He is their leader in clan quarrels, must free the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who, by accidents, are fallen into decay. If, by increase of the tribe, any small farms are wanting, for the support of such addition he splits others into lesser portions, because all must be somehow provided for[.]
So we're looking at a functioning social system that provides for the common welfare, albiet through actions that are not convenient for others in the state. Well, it's not especially convenient for me to pay the extortionist rate of taxes demanded by the IRS; and I am at scarcely less peril, should I try to refuse, than anyone from the day. If I will not pay, will not the IRS attempt to seize my wages? And if I hide my wages, will they not try to take my property? And if I defend my property, will they not send armed men to try to arrest me and throw me in prison? And if I defend myself from this, will they not shoot me in the street?
"It's just not the same thing at all. This is done democratically. What you're talking about is totally undemocratic. There's no legitimacy."
But I remind you that exactly this system was the root of democracy as we know it today. You would like to skip ahead two hundred years at a breath and turn tribesmen into a nation of tax-payers, and chiefs into tax-collectors and redistributionists. It can't be done, any more than Lenin could turn a nation of serfs into a post-Capitalist proletariat.
The reason that it can't be done is that these men have a fully developed understanding of what constitutes a legitimate authority. Your proposed substitute fails on all counts. You are, in other words, in just the position of the soldiers of the crown trying to effect their declarations of forfeiture on Highland chiefs:
Theoretically, in the eye of the law, the tenure and distribution of land in the Highlands was on the same footing as in the rest of the kingdom the chiefs, like the lowland barons, were supposed to hold their lands from the monarch, the nominal proprietor of all landed property, and these again in the same way distributed portions of this territory among their followers, who thus bore the same relation to the chief as the latter did to his superior, the king. In the eye of the law, we say, this was the case, and so those of the chiefs who were engaged in the rebellion of 1715--45 were subjected to forfeiture in the same way as any lowland rebel. But, practically, the great body of the Highlanders knew nothing of such a tenure, and even if it had been possible to make them understand it, they would probably have repudiated it with contempt. The great principle which seems to have ruled all the relations that subsisted between the chief and his clan, including the mode of distributing and holding land, was, previous to 1746, that of the family. The land was regarded not so much as belonging absolutely to the chief, but as the property of the clan of which the chief was head and representative. Not only was the clan bound to render obedience and reverence to their head, to whom each member supposed himself related, and whose name was the common name of all his people; he also was regarded as bound to maintain and protect his people, and distribute among them a fair share of the lands which he held as their representative.
That's just where we are today. We have to respect that this is what people believe, and more to the point, what they want. A system that unmakes the old tribes can not, therefore, be democratic. If the state is to be really democratic, and truly Iraqi, it will have to make room for the tribes--or the tribes will make room for themselves, as did the Highlanders, by sword and fire.
The good news, such as it is, is that the answer to these concerns is organic. As capitalism becomes established in Iraq, the tribal ties will not be able to hold any more than they have held anywhere else in the world. The Highland clans ceased to exist not because they were beaten in battle or subjugated, but because it became more profitable for chiefs to have open land for grazing than large bodies of retainers. The chiefs themselves broke up the clans and drove their people off the lands and into the cities for work.
Many of the Highland proprietors, in their haste to get rich, or at least to get money to spend in the fashionable world, either mercilessly, and without warning, cleared their estates of the tenants, or most unreasonably oppressed them in the matter of rent.
So--patience. Alas, you'll get your way soon enough. In the meanwhile, this is the practical way to see that the pipelines are not disturbed. It serves that practical purpose, and also the humanitarian purpose of seeing that the people of the tribes are provided with their basic needs. It's the system the Iraqi tribesmen recognize as legitimate and proper, and is therefore a true expression of Iraqi democracy to make room for these tribes.
And, finally, it will end quite on its own. Prosperity will unmake it. By then, there will be jobs in the cities for them which do not now exist--it will be the same expansion of the economy that creates those jobs that will make the old social support system unsustainable.
Pay the black mail. It's all to the good, in the end.
