More from Sir Terence. Our mutual friend John Burchard, who has apppeared here, asked what had happened to Fallujah, which once apparently was a hotbed of salukis and falcons rather than 'insurgents". He replied:
"I suppose there were two main causes [of the change]: the first which goes back to the '60s was the deliberate breakup of the traditional tribal feudal system by the Socialist Ba'ath. The shaikhs lost their land rights and with it their power of patronage. The tribes were forcibly settled and living in cramped little villages was not conducive to the old way of life with hawk and hound. Then came the war with Iran in 1980 which took away all the able-bodied males to fight and apart from the few greybeards of the kind that I knew people simply didn't have the opportunity to hunt any more. As you know, they do not keep unproductive animals and people stopped having Salukis. I searched that area fairly thoroughly but though I had an excellent entree through one of the shaikhs who still kept falcons and had once had Salukis I did not find a single hound. Even the shaikhs of the 'Anizah had none, though they remembered the good old days. The exception was Rutbah on the border with Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia where there were lots of Salukis and falcons. The old 'uns could still hunt - even gazelle - in the largely empty deserts all around there and importantly could sell their hounds and falcons to the wealthy Saudis."
When I wrote him for permission to quote this he added:
"...the war was rather specific to Iraq. In other more peaceful countries the decline is more due to the absence of game, often through shooting or disturbance of habitat, and the greater interest of the young men in computer games and the good life!"
Good life indeed! O tempora!
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