Tribe, state relationship crisis [Archives:2003/668/Reportage]

Hassan Al-Zaidi
The recent events that have taken place in Sana’a between Jahm tribe, a main branch of Khowlan of the Bakeel tribes, and the state reflected the extent of the crisis between the tribe as a social entity state authorities as government institutions.
The government measures taken recently against most of the tribes and their sheikhs have represented the political leadership’s present intention to dismantle the two sides’ alliance that lasted throughout the past decades. That alliance had its justification in the past but nowadays the state is no longer in need of it after it has built a new military force guaranteed the Saudi non-interference after the border demarcation agreement. The KSA was used to be an influential party in such conflicts.
Yet the tension between tribes and the state authorities, which sometimes reaches its peak, keeps possibilities of bloody clashes open between the two sides if authorities measures against tribes would not follow laws and regulations.+++++
On the other hand, the acts some tribesmen resort to for getting their legal or illegal demands through practicing kidnappings and other violent acts have formed an embarrassment for the government and Yemen sustained because of that heavy financial losses.
Presently the government authorities have reinforced their military presence and security deployment in areas of tribal tension and they use intensive force sometimes to impose the state standing, using military tanks and helicopter gunships in their fighting with some tribes.
In spite of facilities some tribes have lately offered to state authorities in tracking down some tribesmen perpetrating violent act in the tribal areas, the government in some cases took members of some tribes as hostages and sometimes launched random strikes against them.
After the September 11 events, some parties saw that tribal areas in Yemen could be suitable shelter for elements belonging to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organisations who think that the tribal social environment a suitable place for them. The government authorities launched military campaigns against tribal areas but lost tens of soldiers resulting from the mistakes committed during the campaigns of hunting down terrorist elements. This is what happened in Eida Valley, in Marib in December 2001, and in al-Hazm and al-Shaef districts in al-Jawf in 2002.
Many observers see that tribal regions lack the essential constituents for life despite their living in petroleum regions and areas rich with mineral wealth as well as important historical sites representing Yemen’s civilizations.
The tribes in those areas the state of intentionally keeping them in their deteriorated conditions and depriving them of development projects to ensure changing the concepts of their sons and provide stability for them. Another accusation is that the state keeps on feeding tribal wars between various tribes following a divide and rule strategy so that the tribes are exhausted financially and militarily.
The ironic thing is that even though the Americans confirm their belief that terrorists are hiding in some of the tribal regions and that the authorities are chasing them there, yet the American authorities have realized the true development problems those areas are suffering from, therefore they have recently allocated millions of dollars for development projects to be implemented in the most tense tribal areas.
Many see that if the state instead of buying loyalty of tribes heads and sheikhs through financial gifts, it could have initiated development projects in order to enhance the life in those regions, making development and services as an alternative to the continuous drainage of money spent on army units deployed in those areas for fighting those tribes.
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