BABIL, Iraq — It is common to see Iraqi men, even the young, these days wearing the traditional Iraqi tribal headdress. Instead of Western clothes, many men opt to wear traditional garb that includes a keffiyeh (cloth headdress) and “agal” (cord wrapped around a keffiyeh). Sheikh Majid al-Kalabi, an elder of the Banu Kalb tribe, told Al-Monitor that this trend has emerged due to “the dominant role of tribes in Iraqi society, which has grown to rival that of the state in resolving disputes, organizing social events and influencing local government decisions.”

Kalabi said, “Wearing the headdress no longer is confined to those in the countryside and to desert tribes as it was in the 1950s and 1960s. It has become a trend that has widely spread to the cities, where in the past only a small proportion of people wore it. Iraqi tribes have distinctive headdress styles, and the leader of a tribe often wears a special agal whenever he appears in public.”

Because of the increasing demand of the traditional headdress, the manufacturing business is flourishing in Iraqi cities. Hamza Kitab, a Babil-based producer and merchant of this popular headdress — who has been practicing his trade for many decades — told Al-Monitor, “The agal is handmade from woven goat wool blended with cotton and silk using traditional spindles that spin the dark black thread into a cohesive cord with a desired thickness of 5 centimeters [2 inches]. A machine is then used to shape the agal into a 110-centimeter [43-inch] band with a wooden hammer that fixes any imperfections in the roundness of the cord. At the end of the process, the woven and packed band is placed in a mold that gives the agal its desired shape, followed by a thorough cleaning with a special brush and the reorientation of the flow of the fibers with a comb.”

But like other traditional folkloric industries, this trade faces competition from agals imported from abroad, particularly from China. Kitab said, “Though Iraqis prefer the handmade agal, imported products compete due to their attractive pricing. In cities, imported bands are preferred to quality authentic agals due to the high cost of the latter that tops the $50 range, as opposed to only $5 for the imported ones that are usually made from synthetic and not natural fibers.”