US Bids to Stop Saddam-era Enmities Sparking tribal Clashes in Iraq

[leftchick]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1504&ncid=1504&e=4&u=/afp/20031208/ts_afp/iraq_shiite_tribes_land_031208113905

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The sheikhs arrived at the main US military base here in their traditional robes for the talks aimed at calming disputes between former exiles who charge their lands were confiscated during the ousted Sunni Muslim strongman's brutal rule over the Shiite south and landowners who say they have been dipossessed by the returnees.

US commanders stressed that they had no powers to adjudicate the disputes themselves -- their aim was purely to defuse the threat of violence between the returnees and those who found a way to cohabit with the Saddam regime.

"Until a new government is formed, we can take no decisions about the ownership of land -- our main priority is to prevent any conflicts arising in the meantime," US army civil affairs officer Lieutenant Colonel Jeff Bryant said Monday.

He said the main area of dispute lay west and northwest of the city from where a number of tribal leaders had fled the country during Saddam's rule, charging their lands had been confiscated during their absence.

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The British attempted a similar policy of using the tribes as a counter to the powerful Shiite religious hierachy after they occupied Iraq at the end of World War I, alternately wooing loyal sheikhs with subsidies and striking recalcitrant ones with warplanes.

But in 1920, the majority sided with the clerics in an uprising that cost the lives of well over 400 British troops.


......wasn't this predicted to happen LONG before this illegal invasion?