Tribes and the Rule of Law in Yemen

A cursory inspection of news reports from the last several years suggests that tribes are important political actors in a number of developing societies, several of which are venues within which the war on terror is being, or may soon be, fought. Stories focus on not only the tribal Anbar Awakening in Iraq, but also tribal councils and militias in the remote regions of both Afghanistan and Pakistan, two decades of tribal anarchy and clan fighting in Somalia, tribal violence over Kenya’s disputed 2007 elections, the kidnapping of tourists in the Egyptian desert allegedly perpetrated by tribesmen or bandits, and an off-and-on insurgency in the mountains of northern Yemen centered on religious leaders fighting with (and against) the local tribes. Are tribes bad for development? Is tribal law an impediment to, or a substitute for, the rule of law? Are tribes barriers to, or promoters of, eco-nomic and political development? Conventional wisdom suggests that tribes hinders development by resisting the state’s efforts to impose uniform state law over all its territory, impeding attempts to rationalize politics in society, and obstructing development planning. In effect, such accounts claim that tribes cause underdevelopment. This paper digresses and makes the invers