Dhi Qar - The afternoon of Thursday, April 13, 2023, was hot in the Islah district, east of the city of Nasiriyah in Dhi Qar governorate (400 kilometers south of Baghdad), when an armed conflict broke out between two tribes following long accumulations and disputes over the past three months, according to residents of the district.

The story began when the people of the reform district went out to the streets demanding the provision of water, as the city suffers from a severe water crisis, and demanded the provision of drinking water and services and the dismissal of the "mayor", and as a result the dispute between the demonstrators and the mayor intensified, to turn into riots and clashes between the security forces and the demonstrators, according to what is confirmed to Al Jazeera Net Ali Mohamed, an eyewitness from the reform judiciary.

According to Mohammed, as a result of the clashes, some demonstrators were injured and more than 15 demonstrators were arrested according to Article IV of the Anti-Terrorism Law, so that the protests continued for more than 3 days, and after the release of the detainees, calm returned to the city, and tribal sheikhs and city notables agreed that the mayor would remain in office for a period of 6 months and then submit his resignation.

Exacerbation of the crisis

As for the armed conflict, it was sparked after a young relative of the mayor wrote a post on Facebook praising him, to which one of the commentators responded in a negative way, and then the situation developed so that the young man went to the residence of the commentator and shot him.

According to the eyewitness, the clan of the commentator then shot another person from the clan of the author of the publication, turning the Islah district into a fierce battlefield, where killing became based on identity and according to tribal affiliation.

For his part, says citizen Ali Sami of the people of the Islah district, "The conflict began from ten in the morning until three in the afternoon last Thursday, to turn the atmosphere of the city into a street war, and we were not able to get out of the houses at all, and one of the notables of the city had tried to communicate with the parties to stop the conflict, but he was unable to do so."

During his going to the other clan, his eldest son – an officer of the National Security Agency – had followed his father to participate in stopping the problem, but the other clan had set up an ambush for the officer in the middle of the street, where they rained him with bullets to fall dead in front of the people, prompting the clan of the dead officer to alert and enter into a direct confrontation with the other clan, as Sami confirms to Al Jazeera Net.

Security action

Following the armed clashes, 4 people were killed and more than 10 injured, while security forces arrested more than 12 of those responsible for provoking the conflict without the story ending, according to the security forces.

In the context, a security source from Dhi Qar province told Al Jazeera Net that 5 regiments of federal and local police and the army moved towards the reform judiciary to control the situation, in addition to a force from the Counter-Terrorism Service.

The source confirmed that late Thursday night and dawn on Friday, the warring clans had closed the main and secondary roads within the Islah district, where each clan barricaded itself and developed some trenches, and judicial arrest warrants were issued against 4 sheikhs of the two clans to arrest them in order to end tension between all parties.

Despite all the tribal conflicts that have occurred in Dhi Qar over the past few years, no direct clashes or confrontations have been recorded between the security forces and the tribes, as the security authorities usually intervene at the end of the conflict or seek to stop it through the region's notables and tribal sheikhs, accompanied by security campaigns to control weapons on a limited scale.

Many tribes in southern Iraq have great societal influence and power, in addition to their presence and influence in the political scene, and the influence of armed factions, as this influence represents a wide network of relations, which makes the security forces unable to execute arrest warrants against instigators of tribal conflicts, according to many observers.

Promote sub-identities

For his part, security expert Saif Al-Husseini believes – during his interview with Al Jazeera Net – that the issue of tribal conflicts is one of the obstacles to building a civil state, and that it contributes to strengthening the phenomenon of security instability and the growth of sub-identities at the expense of national identity.

The solution lies in strengthening the state's strength and ability to enforce the law and hold accountable anyone who carries weapons outside the state, al-Husseini said, stressing the need to work on creating a national document among Iraqi tribes in those areas that would criminalize this phenomenon and employ the tribal structure in rebuilding the state.

According to observers, the increase in the phenomenon of tribal conflicts in the south of the country has worsened due to prolonged security laxity, which came after the protests that began in 2019 and the directive of the security services not to carry weapons, as this led to giving way and calling in old tribal revolts.

Tribal and armed conflicts are a frightening concern for the population in Dhi Qar province, as the amount of weapons used in each conflict is enough to declare war, according to what is confirmed to Al Jazeera Net political analyst from Dhi Qar Mohammed Al-Tamimi.

Al-Tamimi believes that there is no solution to this problem except through the enactment of laws that criminalize this phenomenon and force everyone to resort to the law and the judiciary, in addition to the need to implement extensive security campaigns to arrest parties to the conflict and confiscate weapons, and to be satisfied with legally licensed personal weapons, as he put it.

Al-Tamimi added that tribal conflicts cause negative effects on cities in several aspects, including social, security, service and tourism, with negative messages about these cities, which weakens the tourism, investment, construction and reconstruction side, as he put it.

Statistics

The governorate of Dhi Qar has witnessed many tribal conflicts during the current year, in the early hours of the first of last January, the governorate had witnessed an armed tribal conflict that lasted several hours in the district of Al-Jabayesh, east of Nasiriyah, between members of the same tribe, during which they used light and medium weapons, before the police stopped the conflict.

A few days later, another clan dispute broke out between two tribes in Sayyid Dakhil district, southeast of Nasiriyah (the governorate center), but rapid intervention forces arrived at the scene and surrounded the problem and seized light and medium weapons and hand grenades.

In the north of Nasiriyah, specifically in the city of Shatrah, the house of the emir of one of the large tribes in the city was bombed with an RPG launcher in February 2023, following previous tribal disputes, which led to the aggravation of the security situation and the exit of gunmen in a military parade in broad daylight and in front of the security services.

During 2021 and 2022, Dhi Qar governorate recorded nearly 100 tribal conflicts, and these conflicts are part of other raging conflicts occurring in Maysan and Basra governorates (south of the country) and other cities.

In 2021, the Directorate of Tribal Affairs at the Ministry of Interior announced the resolution of 450 clan disputes throughout the country for the period between July 2020 and June 2021, while the ministry announced on the tenth of May 2022 the seizure of more than 7,<> weapons between light and medium, most of which were in the possession of the tribes.