thedrifter
09-10-07, 12:54 PM
To Understand
Sheiks in Iraq,
Marines Ask 'Mac'
Self-Taught, He Serves
As Corps' Tribal Expert;
A General's Outburst
By GREG JAFFE
September 10, 2007; Page A1
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Earlier this summer, William "Mac" McCallister's Marine Corps bosses asked him for help selecting gifts for tribal sheiks who had teamed up with U.S. forces to fight radical Islamists.
Mr. McCallister, the Marines' resident expert on tribal culture, settled on the perfect gift: a Mameluke sword. The swords, which all Marine officers carry, date back to 1804 when a Marine lieutenant led a group of Arabs in a successful attack on pirates and was awarded a sword by an Ottoman pasha.
There was only one problem: The swords were banned as gifts because their value exceeds the government limit of $305.
So Mr. McCallister launched an impassioned campaign to obtain a waiver. Sheiks, who see themselves as products of a warrior culture, would love the swords, he insisted in an email to his bosses. Every time the sheik carried one, it would remind his constituents of their special "warrior bond" with the Corps, he wrote.
Expertise in 1,000-year-old tribal customs has given Mr. McCallister a position of some importance in the U.S. effort to pacify Iraq. The 46-year-old retired Army major has spent the past four years in Iraq studying the tribes' myths, histories and ancient legal system. Although he's completely self-taught, his ideas have helped shape the Marine Corps' strategy in western Iraq, which calls for forging alliances with tribal sheiks to drive out radical Islamist fighters. The success here in Anbar Province contrasts with more mixed results countrywide and is likely to be a big part of a much anticipated status report by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, due out today.
"Mac has been worth his weight in gold to us," says Marine Brig. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq. "Most of us are no better than observers of tribal society. Mac is one of the few experts."
Tribal Leader's Song
Tribal-affairs expert is a job that until recently didn't exist in the military -- even though Iraq has 150 tribes, and some three-quarters of Iraqis belong to a tribe. Mr. McCallister says he first saw the need in 2003 when, as an active-duty Army major, he was ushered into a meeting with an influential Fallujah sheik. The tribal leader began to warble a song about the different kinds of pain a warrior feels when he is wounded by different weapons, like a sword, a knife or a gun.
"Anyone who sings about that stuff has a different take on the rules of warfare," he says he quickly concluded. "If you don't approach them correctly you can kill 30, 40 or 100 of them and they won't submit." Mr. McCallister began to search the military command in Iraq for someone who was an expert on tribal affairs. There were none. "When I suggested we find one, people looked at me like I had something growing out of my head," he says.
Today, forging alliances with tribal leaders is seen as essential.
"It was so simple, yet it was very hard for us to fully grasp how important the sheiks are out here," says Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, the commander of all forces in western Iraq.
In recent months, the Army has followed the Marine Corps lead and assigned an Army colonel to serve as its tribal-affairs expert in Baghdad. Last year, the Army hired Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist with a doctorate from Yale, to help it draft its new doctrine for battling insurgents.
Dr. McFate, who has helped mentor Mr. McCallister, says, "Mac does exactly what good anthropologists do: He enmeshes himself in foreign societies, and attempts to see the world from their point of view while retaining his own objectivity."
Furious Email
Mr. McCallister is lanky with a scruffy red and white beard, an outward expression of his personality, which is loud, gregarious and quite often profane. His computer screen saver says "Back Off B-!" In July, when he thought commanders in Baghdad were making decisions that failed to take into account subtleties of Iraqi tribal politics, he shot them a furious email. The response he says he received said his behavior "straddled the line of expected professional decorum."
One of Mr. McCallister's chief criticisms of the U.S. military is that the cultural training it offers focuses too much on telling troops what not to do. U.S. troops are told not to show the bottoms of their feet, which is an insult in Arab society; not to eat with their left hand; and not to talk to Arab women. The advice is OK, he says. But the intense focus on not offending Iraqis, who are products of a passionate, volatile and violent tribal culture, makes U.S. troops look passive, Mr. McCallister says.
"The Iraqis expect the grand gesture. It's one of their rituals," says Mr. McCallister. "You show them no respect when you don't offend." He compares discussions among tribal sheiks to symphonies. They often begin quietly, he says. Then they grow hotter often elevating into screaming matches before the debate calms down again.
The Marines say they have emulated this in meetings with tribal and government officials. In June, Gen. Allen, who says he prides himself on not losing his cool, was meeting with the governor of Iraq's Anbar Province in a hotel restaurant in Amman, Jordan. With security improving, Gen. Allen told the governor he wanted his help to reopen Anbar's criminal courts, which had been shut down after threats of violence caused many of the judges to quit. The governor was noncommittal.
Gen. Allen says he slammed his fist on the table, causing silverware to clang and heads to turn. "You have got to want these courts to open more than I do!" he says he yelled. "We are going to have the first trials in Anbar by Aug. 1!" Today, thanks to the governor pushing, the trials have started. The Anbar governor regularly refers to the conversation with Gen. Allen as a turning point.
At first, U.S. commanders incorrectly assumed that sheiks ruled as dictators, Mr. McCallister says. But a sheik's power is actually defined by his ability to "attract others to him," he says.
In meetings with tribal leaders, Mr. McCallister frequently "sits in the corners watching the key actors and calculating their true tribal throw weight based on where they sit, when they speak, the energy and forcefulness of their interventions," says Gen. Allen. He says Mr. McCallister can lay out "with uncanny certainty" how a discussion with a group of sheiks will go.
Mr. McCallister was raised in Germany, the son of a native German who married an American soldier. He moved to the U.S. in his teens and enlisted in the Army at 18. Growing up in two cultures "gave me the ability to step outside my own surroundings," he says. When on leave in a foreign country, he likes to sit at an outdoor café, have a couple of beers and watch the traffic. "How people settle traffic disputes tells you a lot about how they settle bigger differences," he says.
In his 20s, the Army paid for him to go to college and eventually he became an officer serving with Special Forces in Egypt, Greece and Africa. In 2003, as an active-duty soldier, he began pushing the U.S. to use the tribes to stabilize Iraq. At the time, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq, saw the tribes as an anachronism.
Mr. McCallister insisted the tribes were essential to stability in Iraq. "Coalition attempts to bypass traditional tribal authorities and deal with the local population will fail," he wrote in a September 2003 memo to his military bosses.
His ideas were ignored, he says, and he retired to be with his family. After three months home in Florida, he felt restless, unsure what to do after the military. So he returned to Iraq in 2004, working for two private contractors. He continued to study the tribes, reading books and, whenever he got the chance, quizzing sheiks about their tribal rituals, songs and laws.
PowerPoint Brief
Like anyone who wants to penetrate the military bureaucracy, he wrote a PowerPoint brief. It summarized how the tribal system worked. In February, Mr. McCallister walked Gen. Allen through his PowerPoint presentation at a Green Zone coffee shop. Gen. Allen offered him a six-month, $144,000 contract to serve as the Marines' tribal-affairs expert in Fallujah.
"Virtually everything Mac said added context to things we had been learning ourselves," says Gen. Allen, who holds a master's degree in government from Georgetown University.
The Marines are still considering Mr. McCallister's recommendation on giving. Earlier this year, he recommended a range of gifts -- including medals, Marine Corps knives and Mameluke swords -- that could be presented to Iraqi allies. Initially, the swords were rejected because, at about $400 each, they exceed the government's $305 limit on gifts. But Gen. Allen has asked his staff to rethink whether it's worth requesting additional funds in special cases.
Mr. McCallister remains hopeful. "It is really going to help the fight out here," he says.
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com8
Ellie
Sheiks in Iraq,
Marines Ask 'Mac'
Self-Taught, He Serves
As Corps' Tribal Expert;
A General's Outburst
By GREG JAFFE
September 10, 2007; Page A1
FALLUJAH, Iraq -- Earlier this summer, William "Mac" McCallister's Marine Corps bosses asked him for help selecting gifts for tribal sheiks who had teamed up with U.S. forces to fight radical Islamists.
Mr. McCallister, the Marines' resident expert on tribal culture, settled on the perfect gift: a Mameluke sword. The swords, which all Marine officers carry, date back to 1804 when a Marine lieutenant led a group of Arabs in a successful attack on pirates and was awarded a sword by an Ottoman pasha.
There was only one problem: The swords were banned as gifts because their value exceeds the government limit of $305.
So Mr. McCallister launched an impassioned campaign to obtain a waiver. Sheiks, who see themselves as products of a warrior culture, would love the swords, he insisted in an email to his bosses. Every time the sheik carried one, it would remind his constituents of their special "warrior bond" with the Corps, he wrote.
Expertise in 1,000-year-old tribal customs has given Mr. McCallister a position of some importance in the U.S. effort to pacify Iraq. The 46-year-old retired Army major has spent the past four years in Iraq studying the tribes' myths, histories and ancient legal system. Although he's completely self-taught, his ideas have helped shape the Marine Corps' strategy in western Iraq, which calls for forging alliances with tribal sheiks to drive out radical Islamist fighters. The success here in Anbar Province contrasts with more mixed results countrywide and is likely to be a big part of a much anticipated status report by Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, due out today.
"Mac has been worth his weight in gold to us," says Marine Brig. Gen. John Allen, deputy commander of U.S. forces in western Iraq. "Most of us are no better than observers of tribal society. Mac is one of the few experts."
Tribal Leader's Song
Tribal-affairs expert is a job that until recently didn't exist in the military -- even though Iraq has 150 tribes, and some three-quarters of Iraqis belong to a tribe. Mr. McCallister says he first saw the need in 2003 when, as an active-duty Army major, he was ushered into a meeting with an influential Fallujah sheik. The tribal leader began to warble a song about the different kinds of pain a warrior feels when he is wounded by different weapons, like a sword, a knife or a gun.
"Anyone who sings about that stuff has a different take on the rules of warfare," he says he quickly concluded. "If you don't approach them correctly you can kill 30, 40 or 100 of them and they won't submit." Mr. McCallister began to search the military command in Iraq for someone who was an expert on tribal affairs. There were none. "When I suggested we find one, people looked at me like I had something growing out of my head," he says.
Today, forging alliances with tribal leaders is seen as essential.
"It was so simple, yet it was very hard for us to fully grasp how important the sheiks are out here," says Maj. Gen. Walter Gaskin, the commander of all forces in western Iraq.
In recent months, the Army has followed the Marine Corps lead and assigned an Army colonel to serve as its tribal-affairs expert in Baghdad. Last year, the Army hired Montgomery McFate, a cultural anthropologist with a doctorate from Yale, to help it draft its new doctrine for battling insurgents.
Dr. McFate, who has helped mentor Mr. McCallister, says, "Mac does exactly what good anthropologists do: He enmeshes himself in foreign societies, and attempts to see the world from their point of view while retaining his own objectivity."
Furious Email
Mr. McCallister is lanky with a scruffy red and white beard, an outward expression of his personality, which is loud, gregarious and quite often profane. His computer screen saver says "Back Off B-!" In July, when he thought commanders in Baghdad were making decisions that failed to take into account subtleties of Iraqi tribal politics, he shot them a furious email. The response he says he received said his behavior "straddled the line of expected professional decorum."
One of Mr. McCallister's chief criticisms of the U.S. military is that the cultural training it offers focuses too much on telling troops what not to do. U.S. troops are told not to show the bottoms of their feet, which is an insult in Arab society; not to eat with their left hand; and not to talk to Arab women. The advice is OK, he says. But the intense focus on not offending Iraqis, who are products of a passionate, volatile and violent tribal culture, makes U.S. troops look passive, Mr. McCallister says.
"The Iraqis expect the grand gesture. It's one of their rituals," says Mr. McCallister. "You show them no respect when you don't offend." He compares discussions among tribal sheiks to symphonies. They often begin quietly, he says. Then they grow hotter often elevating into screaming matches before the debate calms down again.
The Marines say they have emulated this in meetings with tribal and government officials. In June, Gen. Allen, who says he prides himself on not losing his cool, was meeting with the governor of Iraq's Anbar Province in a hotel restaurant in Amman, Jordan. With security improving, Gen. Allen told the governor he wanted his help to reopen Anbar's criminal courts, which had been shut down after threats of violence caused many of the judges to quit. The governor was noncommittal.
Gen. Allen says he slammed his fist on the table, causing silverware to clang and heads to turn. "You have got to want these courts to open more than I do!" he says he yelled. "We are going to have the first trials in Anbar by Aug. 1!" Today, thanks to the governor pushing, the trials have started. The Anbar governor regularly refers to the conversation with Gen. Allen as a turning point.
At first, U.S. commanders incorrectly assumed that sheiks ruled as dictators, Mr. McCallister says. But a sheik's power is actually defined by his ability to "attract others to him," he says.
In meetings with tribal leaders, Mr. McCallister frequently "sits in the corners watching the key actors and calculating their true tribal throw weight based on where they sit, when they speak, the energy and forcefulness of their interventions," says Gen. Allen. He says Mr. McCallister can lay out "with uncanny certainty" how a discussion with a group of sheiks will go.
Mr. McCallister was raised in Germany, the son of a native German who married an American soldier. He moved to the U.S. in his teens and enlisted in the Army at 18. Growing up in two cultures "gave me the ability to step outside my own surroundings," he says. When on leave in a foreign country, he likes to sit at an outdoor café, have a couple of beers and watch the traffic. "How people settle traffic disputes tells you a lot about how they settle bigger differences," he says.
In his 20s, the Army paid for him to go to college and eventually he became an officer serving with Special Forces in Egypt, Greece and Africa. In 2003, as an active-duty soldier, he began pushing the U.S. to use the tribes to stabilize Iraq. At the time, the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, which ruled Iraq, saw the tribes as an anachronism.
Mr. McCallister insisted the tribes were essential to stability in Iraq. "Coalition attempts to bypass traditional tribal authorities and deal with the local population will fail," he wrote in a September 2003 memo to his military bosses.
His ideas were ignored, he says, and he retired to be with his family. After three months home in Florida, he felt restless, unsure what to do after the military. So he returned to Iraq in 2004, working for two private contractors. He continued to study the tribes, reading books and, whenever he got the chance, quizzing sheiks about their tribal rituals, songs and laws.
PowerPoint Brief
Like anyone who wants to penetrate the military bureaucracy, he wrote a PowerPoint brief. It summarized how the tribal system worked. In February, Mr. McCallister walked Gen. Allen through his PowerPoint presentation at a Green Zone coffee shop. Gen. Allen offered him a six-month, $144,000 contract to serve as the Marines' tribal-affairs expert in Fallujah.
"Virtually everything Mac said added context to things we had been learning ourselves," says Gen. Allen, who holds a master's degree in government from Georgetown University.
The Marines are still considering Mr. McCallister's recommendation on giving. Earlier this year, he recommended a range of gifts -- including medals, Marine Corps knives and Mameluke swords -- that could be presented to Iraqi allies. Initially, the swords were rejected because, at about $400 each, they exceed the government's $305 limit on gifts. But Gen. Allen has asked his staff to rethink whether it's worth requesting additional funds in special cases.
Mr. McCallister remains hopeful. "It is really going to help the fight out here," he says.
Write to Greg Jaffe at greg.jaffe@wsj.com8
Ellie