Sheik Abdullah Humedi Ajeel al-Yawar at the pasture on his estate where he keeps thoroughbreds and Arabians.
Video
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/middle-east/1194811622215/index.html#
April 17, 2009, 6:51 pm
By Campbell Robertson
RABIA–We thought we would go out to visit Sheik Abdullah.
The sheik is an al-Yawar, the leading family of Iraq’s enormous Shammar tribe. He describes them as the Kennedys of Iraq, a understated comparison.
Framed pictures are scattered on tabletops in his home showing himself, his brothers, his father and grandfather with kings, heads of state and, among the more recent, Gen. David Petraeus. When asked a fairly simple question about his family’s current involvement in politics, he begins “Under the Ottoman rule…” and goes on to talk of the British, of revolts in the 50’s, of long periods in exile. So this is the kind of man Sheik Abdullah Humedi Ajeel al-Yawar is.
He has started a new political movement in the north, with national ambitions, so we arranged a visit to his estate not far from the Syrian border. As we were staying in the Kurdish city of Dohuk, he told us he would send drivers to meet near, but not at, the border with Kurdistan. Arabs, even emissaries from a powerful sheik, can expect a cold welcome from the Kurdish security forces.
We set out early, passing through the mountains and hills around Dohuk and into the sea of green fields in western Kurdistan, an area not unlike Texas, where oil pumps bow and rise steadily in the distance.
Soon we cross the bridge separating Kurdistan from the rest of Iraq. The usual edginess returns. So does the sand and the brown. But we quickly come across the sheik’s men waiting by the side of the road in pick-up trucks.
The first indication that you’ve reached the sheik’s estate is a sort of security slalom. Mounds of dirt are closely staggered at the entrance to and at several points along his endless driveway, forcing every car to drive a fairly demanding obstacle course. Future guests would do well to think about power steering.
The route runs for miles, past the sheik’s irrigated fields, past a row of greenhouses, 22 in all, past a series of ever-grimmer looking armed guards wearing long beards, keffiyehs and seriously inhospitable expressions.
The sheik is wealthy and powerful and he lets it show. It shows from the distance, when you see his palace isolated, fortified and flag-topped amid all the flat greenness.
It shows in the pasture on your right, where he keeps the thoroughbreds (Thoroughbred Any of a breed of horses, bred chiefly for racing, originating from a cross between Arabian stallions and English mares.) and Arabians he buys regularly from dealers in Dubai.
In the large semi-circle of lesser sheiks who wait patiently in plastic chairs on his lawn, hoping to get in a word, or at least, an appearance.
In his house, everywhere, in the shiny box of Cohiba cigars, in the gilded mirrors, in the magnificent Persian rug hanging in the anteroom that depicts the women and wine waiting in the afterlife (and which for reasons possibly having to do with the licentiousness of the scene or the Persianness of the make, he refuses to be photographed near).
None of this would be exceptional at a sheik’s house in, say, Dubai. But this isn’t Dubai.
There are questions about the sheik, about how much power he actually has within the family, and whispered stories, about his entertaining American officials in one room of the palace while dealing with bitter foes of the Americans in another. The Americans in the north talk of these rumors with a mixture of amusement and unease.
The tribe, as Sheik Abdullah will remind you often, is the first and basic unit of power. It is the building block of Iraq now and it was when the Assyrians were going around carving winged bulls on everything. The tribe goes back before such novelties as modern capitalism, back before the state, before the big religions.
Before journalists certainly, though he was kind enough to offer lunch. We moved into the dining room, where servants had already laid out a spread fit for a merchant fleet, thinking the interview would continue.
But the sheik didn’t show. Later, on a tour of his pasture, he explained. Diet, see. Doctor’s orders.
Everyone has constraints.
----
http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/world/middle-east/1194811622215/index.html#
No comments:
Post a Comment