Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

by Joby Warrick

“We went to them and we said, ‘We are tribes, and we can have a tribal solution: you pay diyya—blood money,’ ” Zaydan recalled. “ ‘These [victims] had families, some had kids. Pay the families money to guarantee their future, so their kids won’t be part of the resistance.’ ” The reply came days later. Yes, the United States was willing to compensate the victims’ families. The rate was set at three thousand dollars for each dead Iraqi. Zaydan was furious. “Three thousand dollars? That’s what you pay to replace one of your police dogs!” he fumed. “After that, we realized that the Americans had no good intentions,” he said. It was the first of a series of unhappy encounters for Zaydan, a man who might have seemed a likely ally to any army that toppled Saddam Hussein. He had been barely thirty years old when members of his tribal family decided to back a coup attempt, organized by an Iraqi air force general from a prominent Anbar clan, against the dictator. When the plot was discovered, Saddam rounded up and executed more than 150 army officers and detained more than a thousand other Iraqi Sunnis, including Zaydan and one of his brothers. Zaydan, condemned to die with the others, was granted clemency at the last minute, in a general pardon intended to repair relations with the powerful Sunni tribes that had long helped Saddam stay in power.