No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 September 2021
Literature on tribes in Iraq is scant and often falls prey to simplistic binary approaches to state-society relations. Scholars of legal pluralism provide tools to conceptualize interrelations between adjacent normative fields. Several legal specialists have talked about “a thin form of cooperation” between tribal “private orders” and the Iraqi state. By the same token, many scholars presuppose that the capacity of the tribes and the state to mediate and settle feuds covary in opposite directions and are correlated with the strength of state institutions (tribes step in to fill a vacuum during times of state weakness). However, careful examination of Iraqi penal legislation and its implementation in tribal areas invalidates this stereotypical paradigm. Already in her seminal 1973 article, Sally Moore drew the attention of scholars of legal pluralism to the idea that legal orders should be approached as partially discrete, overlapping social fields. The various arenas intersect and create meaning for each other.
1 Hamoudi, Haider Ala, al-Sharaa, Wasfi H., and al-Dahhan, Aqeel, “The Resolution of Disputes in State and Tribal Law in the South of Iraq: Toward a Cooperative Model of Pluralism,” in Negotiating State and Non-State Law: The Challenge of Global and Local Legal Pluralism, ed. Helfand, Michael A. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 215–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Moore, Sally Falk, “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” Law & Society Review 7, no. 61 (1973): 719–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 This article draws on extensive doctoral field research conducted in Iraq between 2016 and 2021.
4 Qanun Ta'dil Qanun al-ʻUqubat al-Baghdadi (Raqm 9) 1961, http://iraqld.hjc.iq/LoadLawBook.aspx?SC=071120051557621.
5 The author has consulted Iraqi archives of the TCCDR. They consist of over eight thousand files from a private archive, the owner of which wishes to remain anonymous.
6 Majid Khadduri, “Sulh,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_SIM_7175.
7 Iraqi Penal Code (Law No. 111 of 1969), unofficial English translation, http://www.ilo.org/dyn/natlex/natlex4.detail?p_lang=en&p_isn=57206&p_country=IRQ&p_count=232&p_classification=01.04&p_classcount=5.
8 Fares, Samer, Milhem, Feras, and Khalidi, Dima, “The Sulha System in Palestine: Between Justice and Social Order,” Practicing Anthropology 28, no. 1 (2006): 21–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Furr, Ann and al-Serhan, Muwafaq, “Tribal Customary Law in Jordan,” South Carolina Journal of International Law and Business 4, no. 2 (2008): 17–34Google Scholar.
9 Author interviews, 2016–21.
10 Rautenbach, Christa and Matthee, Jacques, “Common Law Crimes and Indigenous Customs: Dealing with the Issues in South African Law,” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 42, no. 61 (2010): 109–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 Author interviews, 2016–21.
12 The current director, Colonel Nasir al-Nuri (ʻaqīd) served ten years in the Iraqi intelligence services (istikhbārāt). The directorate was formerly headed by Major General Mutʻab al-Shammari (liwā').
13 Author interviews conducted in Tel ʻAfar, 2018–21.
14 Doctoral field research, 2020–21.
15 Larcom, Shaun, “Problematic Legal Pluralism: Causes and Some Potential Cures,” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 46, no. 2 (2014): 193–217CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
16 Author interview with Nasir al-Nuri in Baghdad, 30 November 2020.
17 2005 Iraqi Constitution, paragraph 19.8, English translation, http://gjpi.org/library/primary/iraqi-constitution.
18 Dakka was never permitted by Iraqi law. It previously fell under article 431 of the 1969 Iraqi Penal Code, but article 2 provides for harsher sentences, ranging from life terms to death sentences.
19 Benda-Beckmann, Franz von, “Who's Afraid of Legal Pluralism?” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 34, no. 47 (2002): 63–64Google Scholar.
20 Moore, Sally Falk, “Law and Social Change: The Semi-Autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study,” Law & Society Review 7, no. 4 (1973): 720CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
21 Al-Qur'an, Surah Fatir 35:18.
22 During the war against the Islamic State (2014–17), Shi‘a tribesmen joined the Popular Mobilization Forces (al-Hashd al-Shaʻbi) en masse.