Death of a sheikh

The first time I met Sheikh Fasal al Gaood, he invited me up to his hotel room in Baghdad.

We were standing in the lobby of the Babylon, where an Iraqi colleague had arranged an interview with the Sunni Muslim tribal leader and former governor of the deadly Anbar province in western Iraq.

There was plenty of space in the hotel’s restaurant and coffee shop, so al Gaood’s request was deeply unsettling. First, extending such an invitation to a woman is unheard of in the Muslim world and, second, there were no guarantees that this Anbar sheikh flanked by armed bodyguards wouldn’t seize the opportunity to take an American hostage and bump off her Iraqi colleague.

I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or terrified, so I shot my friend Mohammed a “What-the-heck-do-we-do-now?” look. Mohammed, himself an Anbar native, shrugged and replied with a “Let’s-go-for-it!” look.

So, with the bodyguards fanning out ahead of us, SWAT style, we trudged upstairs with the chain-smoking sheikh in a dapper suit. Once inside his room, we faced another predicament: an American woman, a group of guys from Anbar and nowhere to sit but the bed.

That scene from May 2005 has been replaying in my head ever since the news flashed across the TV screen yesterday: al Gaood and 11 others were killed in a bombing Monday at a Baghdad hotel where tribal sheikhs were scheduled to discuss national reconciliation. As I write this, no group has claimed responsibility for the blast, but al Gaood had plenty of enemies.

Once the bodyguards had hauled some chairs around a nightstand and our interview began, it quickly became clear why al Gaood wanted to speak in private that day. He confided that he’d reached out to the U.S. military with a novel proposal to incorporate his tribesmen, including some who’d been involved in anti-American attacks, into the fight against al Qaida in the Anbar province.

Al Gaood was bitterly disappointed that his idea had fallen on deaf ears. He’d already shown his loyalty, he said, by serving as the U.S.-appointed governor of the province during two bloody American offensives. Ahead of another campaign, called Operation Matador, his allies had sealed off al Qaida by razing safe houses and erecting checkpoints to prevent militants from fleeing before 1,000 Marines arrived to finish the job.

Instead, al Gaood continued angrily, U.S. troops backed by helicopter gunships had failed to recognize the help from local tribes and killed both friend and foe on the battlefield. Officials in the Iraqi defense ministry confirmed al Gaood’s story.

“The Americans were bombing whole villages and saying they were only after the foreigners,” al Gaood told us. “An AK-47 can’t distinguish between a terrorist and a tribesman, so how could a missile or tank?”

For other Sunni sheikhs, this stinging betrayal might have resulted in stepped-up attacks against U.S. forces and a refusal to ever again help the “occupiers.” Al Gaood, however, was a patient man who knew that one day the Americans would realize that engaging Anbar’s tribes was crucial to fighting al Qaida.

He was right.

Two years later, anti-al Qaida tribal confederations such as the Anbar Salvation Council and Anbar Awakening provide intelligence and foot soldiers in the campaign to restore calm to the restive province. U.S. officers herald them as an example for other tribes, though they’re careful to point out that desert justice shouldn’t replace the focus on building an inclusive Iraqi military.

Just three weeks ago, our Baghdad bureau chief Leila Fadel interviewed al Gaood in the same hotel lobby where he died Monday. She wrote that he appeared pessimistic, worried over intertribal conflicts as well as al Qaida’s gains. Militants had destroyed his home, burned his cars and killed five of his bodyguards.

Al Gaood told Leila that life in Anbar wasn’t much different from before the ouster of Saddam Hussein’s regime, which had imprisoned him and executed two of his brothers. He lived a cloak-and-dagger lifestyle, entered into dubious alliances and was discouraged that the bloodshed continued despite all his efforts to stanch it.

“It’s a slow improvement,” al Gaood told her, “Violence will return to Anbar soon.”