The State and the Tribe in Yemen "Reciprocal Relationships and Their Societal Impact"

Abstract

This study attempts to understand and explain the existing relationship between the state and the tribe in Yemen during the year 2010 AD - for its end, i.e. the year 2010 AD, from a relationship that is explained before and furnished for what follows it - by tracking and compiling a number of material and symbolic expressive acts and the mechanisms used to manage the conflict on each side, and the extent of consistency Its outputs with the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence, and the building of the national state, as well as the requirements of managing the democratic system by the rational development and modernization processes that gradually fuse all the brigades, kinship, kinship and regional identities and dissolve them in the crucible of their collective identity and their essence that emerges from the bowels of those processes that reformulate the relationship between them among the societal components. On the basis of equal citizenship without discrimination.
Taking the relationship between the state and the tribe as a field for work in its civilized, spatio-temporal context: the local - after nearly half a century of the establishment of the modern Yemeni state. Twenty years since the announcement of the democratic transition in conjunction with the Yemeni unity - and the universality of a transient space for citizenship and state sovereignty is a periodic procedure within the framework of the communicative rationality strategy ( ) that tests and measures the outputs of modernization processes with the aim of deleting and modifying everything that is negative and continuing the positive, given that tribalism is no longer a group of mutual relations It is a general mentality that fertilizes the collective memory and is not confined to a specific historical period or to a form of society (Bedouin, urban) the tribe adapts to all environments and changing realities: the demands of democracy and the modern consumer society at the beginning of the twenty-first century ( ). From this perspective, interest came in the concept of the "political unconscious", which governs the political phenomenon from within in thinking and practice, specifically by the Arab thinker Muhammad Abed Al-Jabri in his book The Arab Political Mind, based on the same question put by Maurice Duverger when studying the mind of the Western politician: What are the contents of the unconscious The founding politician of the Western political mind? Al-Jabri answered that after making an amendment in the meaning of the concept: “Dauverger was writing while thinking about the industrialized European society in which social relations of the kind of clan and sectarianism occupied a place that actually falls behind the position occupied by the developed economic relations and production relations, while in our Arab society In the past and in modern times, the matter is almost exactly the opposite. Social relations of a clan and sectarian nature still occupy a basic and explicit position in our political life.
As for the Yemeni context, tribal behavior - which is governed by the group's variable: tribal, regional, sectarian, and the degree of political culture - expresses its aims materially and symbolically clearly, as it hides behind political, social and religious action and modern institutions. Material and symbolic expressive actions and how to deal with them by the ruling authority, and we tracked that through what was published of news, reports and statements in Al-Masdar and Al-Wasat newspapers in 2010 AD, which are two "civilian" weekly newspapers that pay constant and remarkable attention to the tribal issue and its relations.
The mechanism used by the authority in its management of relations with the tribe, its outputs do not lead to undermining the tribe and tribalism, on the contrary, it consciously contributes to its reproduction as outputs of the political and social management process, which leads to the generalization and substitution of tribal norms and rulings on all joints of the societal space (rural). and Al-Hadari), and strengthening the conviction of individuals and groups of the efficacy of their actions to achieve their demands: kidnapping, bombing public property, etc.
The dominance of the tribe, and the success of its consequential mechanisms in achieving its demand, prepared the psychological readiness of other regional groups that transcended tribalism and its relationships for decades, to recall its primary identity and gather around its unifying symbols (the sheikhs of the regions).
We are aware of the weight of tribal heritage and the depth of its distant roots, but we consider theoretically and methodically that the stage of the establishment of the modern Yemeni state - following the establishment of the September 26 revolution in the north, and independence in the south - is a founding moment that breaks with all the heritages of the past according to the concept of the state, its functions and its relationship to the components of society, and to achieve this, its operations must lead Retrofitting in the political sphere to ( )
• Strengthening the authority of the central state while weakening the influence of the sources of traditional authority - tribal and family, and the authority of religious jurists.
• Supporting specialized authorities in political institutions to facilitate the definition of tasks and roles clearly.
• Increasing the scope of popular participation in political processes within the framework of coordination, understanding and communication between citizens and the political system.
The tasks that are supposed to be achieved by the ruling political elites, and their modernization processes, have not been achieved, whether in the stage of the divided or unified national state, to which the requirements of democratic transition have been added.
Tribalism as an organizing principle defines the general frameworks for membership in the group according to an organizational hierarchy based on alliance as much as it is based on lineage and kinship. The dhikr applies to the Yemeni societal space, whether in the previous or subsequent stages of the emergence of the modern Yemeni state. As for its relationship with the state (the center), whether in its partial or unified phase, the tribe did not know prosperity and expansion in the degree of independence, and the dominance of its culture, customs and rulings over the whole Societal space, except in the last decade of the twenty-first century, as a result of the gathering of a number of elements, most notably: 'consciously reproduced by the ruling political elite by taking it as an element of the inputs of political and social conflict management or as a result For official personalities to submit, voluntarily or forcibly, to their customs and provisions in order to settle and resolve disputes between them and the state, or between them and the components of society.
This mechanism followed by the state in its management of community affairs has led to a redistribution of power between it and the tribal sheikhs and senior military and security leaders. An important position in the political and social field, not only enabled it to deal with the central authority as an equal, but it surpassed it objectively.

The State and the Tribe in Yemen "Reciprocal Relationships and Their Societal Impact"