The NTR, AQI, ISI, SoI, and more awesome acronyms

I'm pretty sure I've discussed the tribal dynamics of NE Diyala several times before but a recent incident motivated me to write about the issue some more. The incident in question was an IED attack targeting a tribal sheikh in the Nidah Tribal Region.

The Nidah Tribal Region is a barren wasteland near the border of Iran. It is dotted with small villages and the sole economy of the area is goat herding and smuggling. The Niddawi tribe make up a majority of the people and this tribe was favored by Saddam who moved them to the border area and put them in charge of defending the border from Iran as well as pushing the Kurds out of the region.

Of course, when the Saddam regime was removed the cash benefits of being a favored tribe dried up as did much of the smuggling opportunities as US forces did their best to disrupt smuggling along the border that was aiding the insurgency.

Al Qaida in Iraq and its offshoot, the Islamic State of Iraq, moved in and used the Niddawi tribe to smuggle weapons from the border as well as the tribesmen to increase the ranks of the organizations. Many suicide bombers in both Diyala and Baghdad came from the Nidah Tribal Region.

Complicating the situation, the paramount sheikh (the guy in charge of the tribe) passed away in 2005 and three sheikhs were in competition for the paramount role. One sheikh, Haithem Hom (the one targeted for assassination in the above link), apparently sided with AQI which led to his detainment. Another sheikh attempted to stop AQI and set up a Sons of Iraq program in the NTR (Sons of Iraq were the "anti AQI" neighborhood watch established in 2007). Unfortunately, US forces wouldn't help pay for the NTR SoI's and the sheikh quickly ran out of money. He turned to the Kurds who assisted financially but turning to the Kurds made this sheikh rather unpopular among many of his Sunni Arab tribesmen. The third sheikh had some support to be paramount, but never enough to be a serious contender.

Hathem Hom was released from prison some time in late 2006 and much of the violence we had in the NTR we attributed to competition for paramount and the lack of leadership in the area, especially after the primary insurgent leader in the NTR was detained in January.

Haithem was named paramount sheikh of the Niddawi a couple of months ago and I suspect this attack was some kind of intimidation or retaliatory attack, likely conducted by those loyal to one of the other two sheikhs. It's also possible that Haithem has been working with the local security forces to remove what remains of AQI/ISI and this attack was meant to intimidate Haithem back into the AQI fold, or it was a potential pre-emptive attack to keep Haithem from working with the security forces.

Somehow I doubt that Haithem Hom has turned over a new leaf so my money is on intimidation by another sheikh.