Description
This paper (PhD thesis chapter) attempts to explain what creates and shapes the diverging trajectories of tribal networks (kinship networks) in wartime and post-wartime phases. Facing imminent threats of attacks from a rivalling tribe or a statal armed actor or a non-state armed groups, tribal networks are forced to make choices to protect themselves. My theory predicts two pathways for communal protection, either self-mobilisation against threats through tribal group’s tapping into resources, state, and non (para)-state support through pre-wartime advantageous access to patrons and allies, or delegating protection in which a tribal group finds itself lacking access to resources, state, and non-state actors and lacking pre-wartime access to allied political networks. Early tribal network access to state institutions or a security actors establishes path-dependence that often has far-reaching implications for a tribe’s ability to self-mobilise itself. Pre-wartime tribal access to powerful political or security actors creates preferential (or selective) mobilisation by the incumbent, which is a policy choice that often leaves other tribal networks disadvantaged, thus fuelling pre-wartime inter-communal cleavages. To test this hypothesis, I gathered qualitative data (interviews) from multiple localities in Salahaldin province in central Iraq during the summer of 2023 and combined them with archival research to explain how different tribal networks in the province reacted differently to the rise and advance of the ‘Islamic State’ group (‘ISIS’) and during the counterinsurgency in 2014-2015.
