Apr 23, 2015

ERBIL, Iraq — “You, leaders of the tribes, you are the masters of the people and the crowns on our heads,” proclaimed an Islamic State (IS) leader March 23 while addressing tribal figures in Ninevah province. This sweet talking was delivered a day after Iraqi forces and Popular Mobilization Units liberated Tikrit, with the support of the US-led coalition launching airstrikes against IS targets.

On April 1, on one of its Twitter accounts (recently taken down by Twitter, as the Web page indicates), IS posted a short video, “The Ninevah Tribes Renew Allegiance and Get Ready for the Confrontation,” documenting the meeting of supposed tribal leaders in Mosul. The men are first seen entering the Engineers Trade Union hall in downtown al-Faisaliah. Six IS leaders from Mosul, all locals except for Omar Mahdi Zeidan, are also in attendance. Zeidan hails from Jordan, where he is well known as an IS theorist. It was his first public appearance since leaving Jordan and joining IS last October. The video ends with the attendees pledging allegiance to Caliph Ibrahim, otherwise known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of IS. The video claims that 80 men did so and identifies 30 tribes from Ninevah that have pledged their loyalty.

Sheikh Abdullah al-Yawar, leader of the Shammar tribe and the most prominent tribal leader in Ninevah, told Al-Monitor, “Most of them [who pledged allegiance] are not tribal leaders, but rather heads of small tribal factions who only represent themselves, as the actual tribal leaders are easily identifiable.” Speaking from Dahuk, in Iraqi Kurdistan, Yawar, a harsh opponent of IS, added, “Those [men in the video] were chanting what IS leaders had dictated. Unfortunately, all of the city’s residents are being held hostage.”

Ahmed al-Orchani, leader of the al-Hadidi tribe, made similar comments concerning the appearance of a member of his tribe in a video posted to Facebook. In it, his fellow tribesmen are shown meeting with a Kurdish leader to discuss solutions to problems in Arab villages that the peshmerga liberated from IS. He said, “This person, who [said he] spoke on behalf of his tribe, only represents himself. The same applies to the other people [who pledged allegiance to IS].”

Regarding the Ninevah video, Mohammed Salem, a Ninevah parliamentarian​, told the Iraqi Media Network, “The positions declared by the tribes in the terrorist group-controlled areas are not genuine. They are taking place under the threat of arms, which IS resorted to to show its popularity in Mosul.” He noted the focus on particular figures with an excellent command of Modern Standard Arabic who cited quotes from the hadith and the Quran to incite jihad. According to Salem, such useage would be alien to the tribal leaders, who typically express themselves in colloquial Arabic.