How about clan and family divisions? Most Americans don't have any idea about how thoroughly divided Iraqi society is. This short piece talks about the clan relationships that underlie everything.
Dumbya and his moron buddies had NO idea what they were getting into.
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Why cousin marriage matters in Iraq
Clan loyalty fixed by cousin marriage was always bound to undermine democracy in Iraq.
By Anne Bobroff-Hajal
All too often, the US carries out foreign policy with little comprehension of the societies it confronts. This can lead to unintended - often destructive - results.
STEVE ANSUL In the Christian Science Monitor Friday, 12/29/06
One central element of the Iraqi social fabric that most Americans know little about is its astonishing rate of cousin marriage. Indeed, half of all marriages in Iraq are between first or second cousins. Among countries with recorded figures, only Pakistan and Nigeria rate as high. For an eye-opening perspective about rates of consanguinity (roughly equivalent to cousin marriage) around the world, click on the "Global Prevalence" map at www.consang.net.
The US can't deal with a problem it doesn't recognize, let alone understand.
Anthropologist Stanley Kurtz has described Middle East clans as "governments in miniature" that provide the services and social aid that Americans routinely receive from their national, state, and local governments. No one in a region without stable, fair government can survive outside a strong, unified, respected clan.
I have been struck since early on in the Iraq war by how little Americans know about the groups the US so vaguely labels "insurgents." US ignorance is now further camouflaged by the label "chaos." I wonder whether, if US citizens took the time to "know thy enemy," they would learn that there are many forms of logic in the layers of Iraq's so-called chaos. I wonder if the almost daily discovery of 40, 50, or even 60 Iraqi bodies, kidnapped and tortured before being murdered, are clans battling one another.
The debacle in Iraq reinforces the idea that to have a positive relationship with any foreign society, America needs to know how its various elements work and interrelate. It must fully understand the social glues that sustain human life within particular geographic, economic, and social constraints - especially the adhesives that seem strangest and least comprehensible to us.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1226/p09s01-coop.html