in the Green Zone or, in some cases, inside the walls of the
Pentagon. Integral to the insurgencys success was the failure
by the Americans to engage with arguably the most important
demographic in Sunni Iraq the tribes. They had suffered
enormously from de-Baathification. Saddam had understood
the importance of these ancient confederations of families and
clans and had thus made them a large part of his state
patronage system: the tribes ran smuggling rings, gray-market
merchant businesses, all under the auspices of al-Douri.
If they perceive failure, they may take other actions, to
include creating alternate governing and security institutions,
working with anti- Coalition forces, or engaging in criminal
activity to ensure the prosperity and security of their tribes.
Nothing came of the memo.
Al-Zarqawi again proved more adept at navigating Iraqi
culture than the CPA or US militaryat least at first.
Zarqawi, or the Iraqis he had working for him, understood
who was who in the tribes and he worked them, Derek
Harvey told us. Thats how he controlled territory in Anbar
and the Euphrates River Valley.
Another city where this proved to be so was Qaim, which alZarqawi had made the capital of his Western Euphrates
emirate for obvious geostrategic reasons. The Sunni and
Bedouin town abuts the Syrian border town of Albu Kamal and
is also situated along a main road connecting Iraq to Jordan. It
also contains the largest phosphate mines in the Middle East,
with an enormous subterranean cave system, which became a
guerrilla network for moving men and materil through
undetected.