SUPPORT COUNCILS: WHAT THEY ARE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BAGHDAD 003744 SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/25/2018 TAGS: PGOV PINR SOCI IZ SUBJECT: SUPPORT COUNCILS: WHAT THEY ARE REF: A. BAGHDAD 3723 ¶B. BAGHDAD 3722 ¶C. BAGHDAD 3654 ¶D. BAGHDAD 3639 ¶E. BAGHDAD 3023 ¶F. HILLAH 81 Classified By: Pol Min Couns Robert Ford for reasons 1.4 (b) and (d). ¶1. (U) In recent months, Support Councils (majilis al-isnad) established by Prime Minister Maliki in various regions have become an important and controversial part of Iraq's political landscape. Their implications for the United States range from the strategic (the balance of central and provincial power) to the workaday (how PRTs and coalition forces should interact with them). ¶2. (U) This is the first in a series of messages examining Support Councils. This cable will describe what they are, how they were established, how they are organized and what they do. Future messages will look more deeply into Support Councils region-by-region, and will examine the implications for U.S. policy and make recommendations. The Government Tries to Engage the Tribes -------------- ¶3. (C) The Support Council (SC) concept developed initially as a response to the Anbar Awakening and its later growth outside that province. The SC program began with a series of conferences organized in early 2008 by the Implementation and Follow-Up Committee for National Reconciliation (IFCNR) and the Council of Representatives (CoR). The original intent was to find a mechanism through which tribal leaders could advise and assist provincial governments on policy matters, and the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) on security matters. Initially, several parties were involved in developing the Support Council structure. As Iraqiya member Sa'ad Safuk al-Masoudi, a CoR Tribal Affairs Committee member and a tribal sheikh from Karbala, told Poloff on November 19: "It started out as an idea for all tribes to have input into the Iraqi Government, not just certain Sunni or Shi'a, or certain people in tribes and not others...It was not Maliki's idea." ¶4. (C) But, as Masoudi also noted, IFCNR, which responds directly to the Prime Minister's Office, quickly took over the implementation of Support Councils before the CoR could complete the authorizing legislation it had prepared to draft. IFCNR, led by Muhamad Salman, formed the first SCs in July, mostly in the South-Central provinces, but also in Baghdad and Diyala. Tribal sheikhs dominate the councils' leadership, but most also include professionals and technocrats with limited tribal identification. IFCNR gave each SC a start-up payment of 25 million Iraqi Dinar (21,000 USD) and eight to ten million Dinar per month thereafter (ref A). IFNCR told Poloff in August that it plans to set up 15 to 20 SCs per province, each with roughly 25 members. Thus far, recruitment goals have only been met in the South-Central provinces, but PRTs report that IFCNR has made significant progress toward its goal in most if not all the Shi'a- and Sunni-majority provinces. In November, IFCNR started organizing SCs in Kirkuk in the face of strong Kurdish opposition (septel). Da'wa, Incorporated? -------------- ¶5. (C) In spite of its multi-party origins, the SC program immediately excited concern that it would become a network of paid supporters of PM Maliki and his Da'wa party, helping him to further centralize power at the expense of provincial governments. Problems noted by Iraqi critics include: - SCs report to and are funded by IFCNR, which is controlled by the Prime Minister's Office, rather than a more neutral source within the GOI. - Where existing informal tribal structures were not Q- Where existing informal tribal structures were not inclined to support the PM, weaker sheikhs have been elevated in the SCs at the expense of uncooperative stronger ones. Many view this as a return to Saddam-era techniques of building tribal patronage networks. - The Prime Minister's office began providing funding SCS without any national authorizing legislation for them; many Iraqis have claimed this is unconstitutional. BAGHDAD 00003744 002 OF 004 - The SC advisory role on security matters to the ISF, while active, has not been clarified. - The SC advisory role in Provincial Councils (PC) and ministerial policy has not been clarified. ¶6. (C) Thus far, among provincial governors, only the Da'wa-affiliated governor of Karbala Province views SCs as legitimate and meets with them regularly. In all other provinces with SCs, the provincial government?s attitude toward them ranges from indifference to open hostility. Interestingly, the strongest opposition to SCs has been raised by the Prime Minister's coalition partners in Baghdad, ISCI and the Kurdish parties (ref E). Da'wa Buying the Tribes, or only Renting? -------------- ¶7. (C) The character of Support Councils varies by region and province. In the South, where the program is most developed, Da'wa has been able to mobilize the SC structure for political purposes. Within the past week, SC members have organized fairly large marches in favor of the SOFA in Najaf, Diwaniyah, Dhi Qar, and Wasit Provinces (ref B). Tellingly, the marchers usually also expressed support for the Prime Minister. In other provinces (Karbala, Muthanna), tribal leaders marched in favor of the Support Councils themselves (refs C, D). ¶8. (C) Though they are effectively paid by the Prime Minister's Office, and though many will be voting Da'wa in the upcoming provincial elections, SC members are generally political independents, many of whom will be running on their own lists in January. Besides their participation in peaceful demonstrations, SC members do not appear to have any defined role. The promised advisory role to provincial councils has not yet materialized, and Iraqi Army commanders throughout the region have told the Embassy and PRTs that the SC role in advising the ISF is really no different from that already provided by pre-existing, informally established tribal councils. Most ISF commanders in the South have told us they have no problem with the SC program, but do not see that it contributes anything new. (Note: The added valued provided by cooperation among Coalition Forces (CF),Iraqi security forces and tribal leaders during fighting in Maysan, which led to the creation of SCs there, is both an exception to this and an important part of the story of the development of SCs. We will treat the subject -- and the related case of Basra -- in detail in a later message. End note.) ¶9. (C) ISCI views Da'wa's organizing of Support Councils as a direct threat to its primacy in the region, and has responded by establishing its own "Popular Support Councils," with ad hoc funding and lower monthly payments. (refs A, F) In a September meeting with Poloff, ISCI parliamentarian Majir Khairallah al-Zamili said that friction caused by Maliki's aggressive organization of SCs had sealed the decision (which may have been made anyway) for Da'wa and ISCI to run on competing national tickets in the provincial elections. The existence of rival support councils also reflects the difficulty of imposing a single government-backed tribal council structure on existing informal tribal decision-making, which is often fractured within a given province. Reflecting this and a desire to hedge bets, some members of tribes belong to both the Dawa and ISCI-backed councils in their region (Ref A). In the marshes of Maysan and Basra, the SCs have effectively reached certain tribes (such as the Bani Malik) but not others (smaller tribes south of Amarah) crucial to providing border security. Sunni Provinces: Support Councils vs. the Sahwa? QSunni Provinces: Support Councils vs. the Sahwa? -------------- -------------- ¶10. (C) In the Sunni-dominated provinces of Anbar and Salah-ad-Din, and the Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, most SCs were established in late summer and early fall 2008. While SCs in this region are generally less developed than those in the South, IFCNR established an early model of SCs in Salah ad-Din and Baghdad in February and March 2007, long before the program was initiated in the South. Officials in the Prime Minister's Office have told Poloff that the objective then was to create a GOI-controlled check on the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq) program as it spread out of Anbar. The SCs were intended to oversee cooperation between the SOI and CF but were unable to find a role due to the close relationship between SOI and CF. Full-scale organization of SCs in majority-Sunni (and Baghdad Shi'a) areas did not take off until mid-to-late BAGHDAD 00003744 003 OF 004 2008, after IFCNR had already started to develop a different strategy for transitioning the SOI. SCs in these provinces include a mix of Sunni sheikhs who participated in the SOI program and other Sunni who did not. ¶11. (C) In Diyala, the GOI has made several attempts to create Support Councils, both tribal and non-tribal, in order to wrest control of reconstruction projects from the Shi'a governor there. The GOI's latest version of Support Councils in Diyala is not overtly tribal, and has many urban professionals. Some SCs in Diyala, Baghdad, and North Babil feature cross-sectarian membership. The North: Kurds Alarmed -------------- ¶12. (C) The Maliki government is in the process of forming Support Councils in Kirkuk and Mosul, eliciting protests in the media by Kurdish leaders, including President Jalal Talabani. Kurdish arguments against the SCs, made to PRT Kirkuk in a series of November meetings, mirror those made by ISCI and other critics, but with greater emphasis on the charge that Maliki is organizing Sunnis to form a de facto Maliki militia reminiscent of the Saddam era. Many see Kurds see potential conflict down the road between SCs and both the Peshmerga and the Kurdish parties' secret police, the Assayish. (Septel drafted by PRT Kirkuk will explain in more detail.) Interestingly, PRT sources indicate that IFCNR intends for SCs in the Kirkuk area to be multi-sectarian in nature and to include local Sunnis, Turkomen, and Kurds. (Note: We have seen no evidence to support the charges, made by some Kurds, that Support Councils in Kirkuk or elsewhere have received funding for arms, or that the Maliki government plans to provide funding for such purposes. End note.) Support Councils Not All Negative? -------------- ¶13. (C) While skepticism and anger toward Support Councils are widespread, some Iraqis see potential benefits to them. Sheikh Masoudi noted that all regions, sects and ethnicities will participate in the program, and that the Prime Minister's aggressive courting of tribal leaders creates pressure for him to adopt their more nationalist, cross-sectarian outlook. Masoudi believes that SCs, if properly established under the law, could be a vehicle for IFCNR's objective: national reconcilation. He conceded, however, that the controversy over SCs makes it less likely that authorizing legislation can be passed in COR. Masoudi, like other sheikhs, emphasized that security in Iraq requires some formal method of bringing tribal leaders into the governance process. ¶14. (C) Sheikh Hussein as-Shaa'lan, an Iraqiya COR member from Diwaniyah, told Poloff in late October that he was disappointed that Support Councils -- an idea he had promoted in Washington as part of an International Visitors delegation earlier this year -- had become dominated by Da'wa. He suggested that the U.S. had let Maliki take over the SC program in order to preseve good relations with to protect our interests in other areas, including passage of the SOFA. Shaa'lan agreed with Masoudi, however, that the evolving relationship between Da'wa and the tribes was positive in the sense that it had made Maliki and his party more nationalist and, specifically, more independent of Iran. Given the level of tribal support for Da'wa, Shaa'lan concluded, "They aren't really a religious party anymore." Policy Questions -------------- ¶15. (C) The emergence of Support Councils raises a number of issues for us. On the strategic level, a network of Support Councils controlled from the center is a challenge QSupport Councils controlled from the center is a challenge to the balance of central and provincial powers embodied in the Constitution. Whatever policy we adopt toward the Councils will inevitably affect this delicate and controversial balance. ¶16. (C) Tribal leaders have a crucial role to play in future Iraqi Government efforts to ensure security, especially in the difficult-to-patrol border marsh areas near Basra and Maysan. Likewise, as suggested by Sheikhs Shaa'lan and Masoudi, tribal leaders' nationalist orientation can also help Iraq resist foreign political interference. Their contribution to policy formation and the delivery of services could also be helpful at the provincial level, at least in theory. Yet the controversy surrounding Support Councils and their potential for BAGHDAD 00003744 004 OF 004 increasing tensions between the center and provinces makes it unclear that the tribes' inevitable influence will be best exercised through Maliki's councils. CROCKER