Iraqi protesters, Police clash

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AFP) — Iraqi protesters have clashed with police and torched government offices, a premier has resigned and precious blood spilt. As modern institutions collapse, a centuries-old force is making a comeback: Iraq’s tribes.

With their own hierarchies, moral and justice codes, not to mention huge arms caches, tribes have once again become among the most powerful actors in Iraq’s rural and oil-rich south.

They have a history of revolt, turning against the British colonizing forces in a major boost to the 1920 uprising that led to the country’s independence. A century later, revolution has hit Iraq again.

Baghdad and the Shiite-majority region have been rocked by two months of the worst unrest since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

Anti-regime protesters have burned state headquarters and party offices in outrage at corruption, poor public services and Iran’s perceived political interference.

It has been the perfect storm in which Iraq’s tribes could reassert their leadership, said Phillip Smyth of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

In recent years, many Shiites had “become more urbanized and have loosened up their identity when it comes to being tribal,” he said.

Youth, which make up 60 percent of Iraq’s 40 million people, were particularly prone to look outward and shed their tribal identities.

“But the reason the tribes have a lot more strength now is that you have a very weak central government and an outside power — the Iranians — that is viewed as being complicit with this government,” Smyth told AFP.