BAGHDAD — It was a simple surgery to fix a broken nose, doctor Naseer al-Sudani recalled. Although the procedure went well, weeks later the 35-year-old patient died from a blood clot, a condition deemed unrelated. Within hours, the dreaded phone calls began.
“They said, ‘Our brother is dead — we must negotiate,’ ” Sudani said, recounting the family’s initial demand of $40,000. If he refused, he knew he could be killed.
So he did what Iraqis do these days: He got himself a good sheik, who led a delegation to meet the family’s sheik, and weeks of distressing discussions began.
Eight years after the American invasion put Iraq on a path to a more modern, democratic society, people here are increasingly resorting to the ancient process of tribal negotiations — called fasels, and conducted by tribal leaders or sheiks — to demand compensation for alleged injustices.
While Iraqis have long joked about frivolous fasels, people say an especially degenerate version is now running amok, in which powerful sheiks are essentially extorting huge sums of money from professionals, especially doctors.
The problem is partly a result of Iraq’s weak legal system and the lack of official grievance processes, non-issues during Saddam Hussein’s autocratic rule, when a tyrannical order prevailed and malpractice complaints were handled through the courts. But many also blame a relic of the U.S. occupation: so-called “fake sheiks’’ — including “Condoleeza Rice sheiks,” named for the former secretary of state — who were paid by the United States to fight insurgents, a practice Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has continued.
While sheiks are generally respected in Iraqi society, many say that some of the newly-minted ones — often distinguished by flashy clothes and fancy sport-utility vehicles — are turning into a kind of fledgling Iraqi mafia.
“They are opportunists, like bullies,” said Ali Abbas Anbori, a Baghdad doctor who advocates for health care and legal reform. “It’s all about what kind of force does this person have — it has nothing to do with malpractice. If the doctor doesn’t pay, they may threaten his life, his family, kidnap his children.”
Officials at several Baghdad hospitals said tribal threats are so pervasive that many doctors are leaving the country as they did during the war.
“I don’t even know who my sheik is,” said an ophthalmologist who recently returned from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, to work in Baghdad and is considering leaving again. “My wife is an anesthesiologist and she wants to work [in Iraq,] but I’m telling her don’t. It’s too risky.”
Bargaining process
Of the many layers of identity in Iraq, tribe is among the most fundamental, although Iraqis embrace it to varying degrees. Many do not commit themselves to sheiks, a semi-formal process that brings economic and personal security but also obligations.
Though tribal law was officially banned in 1958 and mostly stifled during Hussein’s rule, it has begun to flourish again for a variety of reasons.
“After the ugly occupation, Iraq spent years with no authority, no government,” said Mohammad Ismaeel Almsuody, a respected sheik in Baghdad. “We’ve handled these matters responsibly.”
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