Since the start of the second half of the twentieth century, it has been fashionable among the Arabs intelligentsia to heap abuses on Bedouin tribes, especially by those who are keen to show that they are true intellectuals, avant-garde and au current. All ills of the Arab nation from illiteracy to backwardness to oppression of women to political fragmentation and what have you are all but mere symptoms of the real disease, tribalism.  Tribalism is never viewed in its proper context, as a developmental stage in a long and natural process of social, cultural and political evolution. The vast majority of those who entertain such negative perceptions know nothing about the tribes. They never met, let alone talked to a Bedouin or studied tribal culture closely. They merely repeat rhetoric popularized by national ideologues and political doctrinaires with hidden agendas.

Tribalism is, in a way, a pre-state political organization. There is an inherent structural tension between tribe and state, since state formation arises at the expense of the tribe. The state expects the tribe to surrender to it all its political prerogatives and authority. It also expects the Bedouin to shift to the state their loyalties instead of to their tribes. The state seizes all tribal territory with all its natural resources as its own. Furthermore, it imposes taxes on the Bedouin and drafts them in its own army to fight its own wars. The Bedouin feel that by being incorporated in the state, they lose too much and gain too little, especially since the services of the state, if they do exist, are usually enjoyed mainly by the urban elites with little left for the people on the peripheries. In order to better be able to exercise control over them, the state forces the Bedouin to abandon their nomadic existence to lead settled life in villages. But this puts them at a great disadvantage, since all their skills and knowledge are adapted mainly to leading a pastoral life in the desert. They face the prejudices of urban settled people who have different values and different outlook on life.

The prejudices of the settlers and their negative views of the Bedouin are reinforced by religious attitudes. The nomadic existence of the Bedouin is not very conducive to religious observances. They have no schools to study the quran, no mosques to pray, and no water to perform ablution. They are oblivious to months of the year and days of the weak, which means they do not know when it is Friday to perform the collective Friday prayers or when it is Ramadan, the month of fasting, or the time of pilgrimage. In addition to quranic and prophetic texts, which deride the nomads, there are many blazon populaire pinpointing the religious ignorance of the nomads.

Desert living is tough. To survive in the desert you must be strong and practical. Therefore, Bedouin culture values strength and pragmatism. That is the reason the Bedouin loathe religion of the town people because it breaches humility and submission. On the other hand, tribalism promotes personal liberty and freedom of movement. You can easily load up your tent on the back of your camel and go wherever there is enough grass for your herd, or wherever you please. This becomes a part of your personality and psychological make up. This freedom and mobility are in sharp contrast to the settled fellahin who are tied to the land and subjected to taxation and servility by their lords.

It is no wonder then that the state and the religious apparatus have, for their own reasons, launched throughout the centuries a smear campaign against tribalism and tribal people. This bias is an integral part of the settlers’ discourse. It is intertwined with the traditional hostilities between nomads and settlers, which goes back to the stone age or, as the bible has it, to Cain and Able. Without being conscious of it, the intellectuals and the whole Arab intelligentsia who, from their own urban, elitist, bourgeois position, view tribalism with such contempt, are deeply immersed in this biased discourse. They do not seem to realize that they are expressing the false ideology of their class, as Marx would have it. Their thinking is too clouded and their intellectual vision is too blurred to examine the situation more objectively and see things as they really are.

I should pause for a moment here to point out that I am not advocating that tribes should remain tribes, without ever being incorporated into the larger political entity of the state. The marsh of history and progress says they should and they must. What I am trying to elaborate is the fact that many of the Arab intellectuals seem not to realize that the tribe has its own internal logic, which one must assimilate and understand before dismissing tribes and tribalism out of hand. Tribal resistance of state cooption is not done out of ignorance or backwardness or secessionist thinking or some other bad reason. It is based on pragmatic considerations and shrewd political calculations, no less shrewd than the resistance of the nobility of medieval Europe to be part of the then emerging national states. A tribesman could lose more than he would gain if he were to be a citizen of a state. His tribe gives him security and a real identity of which he could be proud and it is always there when he needs help and support. But in a state he will be lost and turn into a mere demographic data. He will become the butt of the joke of the urban elite and he will be blamed for his misfortunes and no one will be there to stand by his side.

Of course I am not talking about what is happening nowadays. For no one now wants to remain a nomadic tribesman, and this is impossible anyhow. Benefits of statehood and citizenship are becoming obvious to everybody. As I pointed out before, the Bedouin is practical and pragmatic. His moves are calculated and he will always go where he gains the most. I only wanted to go back to the roots and original circumstances, which, in past,  centuries and since ancient times had shaped the prevalent attitudes and prejudices entertained by the intelligentsia towards tribesmen.

Another discrepancy in the thinking of the intelligentsia is that they always call for promoting civil society, which they themselves have not been very successful in bringing about. Yet, at the same time, they denounce the tribes for trying to maintain their own tribal organization in the city in order to defend their interests and promote their causes. Tribes have been most successful in playing the political game, for example in Kuwait and Jordan. This is because tribal life is highly political and tribesmen are clever negotiators and very skilled in political maneuvering. Again, this is the pragmatism and practicality of desert living and fluid tribal organization applied in a new situation. Because they speak out of ideology rather than practice and true understanding, the intelligentsia cannot appreciate such skills, which deserve to be commended rather than condemned.

Secularism and democracy are among the other positive qualities of tribalism, which the intelligentsia would do well to capitalize on. Tribal leadership is based on merits and qualification not coercion. People are free to shift allegiance to the leader they trust the most. Tribal decisions are collective and tribal affairs are discussed publicly in the assembly or majlis of the chief. Furthermore, the three separate institutions of chieftainship, military command and tribal courts are completely independent of each other. As for the judiciary, it is completely secular. Court procedures and judgments are based on tribal customs and established traditions, not on sacred or religious texts. Such standards are much higher than the standards of any existing Arab state.

Again, we should not dismiss tribalism out of hand, but we should take a good look at it and see what we can learn from it. After all, it has proven to be a successful survival mechanism in the harsh desert environment for thousands of years. Over the centuries, states have risen and fallen in the Middle East and only tribes maintained a continued existence. As a matter of fact, part of the political success of the Gulf states is due to the fact that they managed to infuse their rule with a tinge of tribal ideology. While the Arab intellectuals have completely failed in making a difference in the shaping of Arab politics, tribes are a powerful force to reckon with from Oman of Qabus to Libya of Qadhdhafi.