Tribal Sheikh or Mafia Don?

The misuse of the “tribal” label by analysts and policy makers when describing conflict in the Middle East demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of events there and failure to grasp important concepts regarding the changing relationship between identity-based movements and politics.

The United States continues to interpret new phenomena in the Middle East in a dogmatic fashion. Especially in foreign affairs, the terms we choose to use shape our understanding of reality. Failure to properly label and categorize conflicts at their inception leads to a cascade of misunderstandings that grow until eventually, analyses of the event in question are no longer rooted in reality.

“It’s tribal” is a common refrain heard throughout the capital. Yet few Middle East conflicts significant enough to garner the U.S. government’s attention are or have ever been tribal in nature. In particular, conflict in Libya and Yemen, especially post-Arab Spring violence, is usually characterized by policy makers as tribal. This error reveals the government’s failure to grasp the grand narrative of the changing nature of identity in the Middle East.

People have many identities. In the context of the Middle East, these can be individual identity, family, clan, class, tribe, religion (and sect), militia, state, region, and so forth. All of these identity-labels are inherently linked to political currents. With this in mind, the government should consider the following question: When, and why, does one particular aspect of identity become more important than another? The answers lie in the broader context of changing political currents in which tribes or persons are but one component.

A tribe is a local, family-based social unit, formed by groups of people for self-defense and survival against other tribes as well as the natural elements. The violence that has occurred in post-Arab Spring Yemen and Libya, and even the violence occurring in the Central African Republic and South Sudan today, is not being carried out by people on behalf of tribal identity. Rather, there has developed throughout the Middle East and Africa a new phenomenon of mafia-esque, militia-based identity that has been mistaken for tribalism. The failure to distinguish between these two concepts has precluded the United States from reacting properly to these events.

The events in Yemen during the revolution there are particularly illustrative of this new phenomenon. Though tribes have always played an important role in Yemeni politics, mostly by pledging or withholding allegiance to the central government, individual tribal sheikhs emerged to shape national events only during the fighting to overthrow Saleh in 2011.

The Battle of Sana’a, for example, was described as fighting between various tribes, each vying for control of the country. In reality, President Saleh and his forces were fighting almost exclusively Sadiq al-Ahmar, sheikh of the powerful Hashim tribe. But al-Ahmar was not fighting for a tribe as such; he was more Mafia Don than Tribal Sheikh, hiring and paying off men of all different tribes to fight for him.

The purpose of this analysis is not to suggest that policy makers and analysts begin using the ‘mafia’ label in official discourse. Rather, it is to urge those people involved in decision making to rethink the way they are thinking about conflicts in the greater Middle East. Characterizing this fighting as tribal does not pass the test of any serious analysis. Yemenis of all different tribal identities fought for a militia-based identity whose goals were political and transcended tribal affairs. This emerges as the new Mafioso identity, closely linked to politics.

Today, it is too easy to dismiss the emerging civil wars in Central African Republic and South Sudan as tribal. As in Yemen, the groups that are fighting in South Sudan are not tribes as such, but militias that identify by tribe. The misuse of the tribal label and the failure to properly understand the true nature of conflict precludes policy makers from properly addressing them. As President Lincoln once declared before Congress: “The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so we must think anew.”

Indeed, the present is stormy in the Middle East, and the government must recast its approach to the region beginning with considering anew the labels upon which analyses and policies are based.

Mr. Roberts studies Islamic intellectual history and Islamic movements with Dr. John Voll at Georgetown University in the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He recently completed writing Political Islam and the Invention of Tradition, soon to be published, which explores the emergence of Political Islam and the concept of an Islamic state founded upon an indigenously Islamic concept of social contract. He has lived and studied in Tunisia and Yemen. Prior to his appointment at Georgetown, he was Special Assistant to the former Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of State and worked in the private sector.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.