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Tribalism has played an extraordinary role in the context of the struggle against militant Islamists—from Afghanistan and Pakistan to Yemen, the Horn of Africa and across North Africa. Indeed, tribalism, including in diasporas, constitutes an essential element of the social landscape of militant Islamist movements. However, to date little systematic research has been undertaken to comprehend the role of tribal culture in creating, aiding or destroying militant Islamism in its midst. Understanding the links between tribalism and global Islamist movements—the tribalIslamist nexus—is essential to unlocking the sociological and political dynamics of the broader conflict.

One commentator, alluding in 2010 to the wars involving Western powers in Afghanistan and Iraq—and, less overtly, in Yemen, Somalia, North Africa and elsewhere—suggested the “Global War on Terror” was actually a “Global War on Tribes.”1

This nexus between Islamism and tribalism is the case in ideological struggles from the Middle East to Western Europe. Wherever there are migrant populations that have an ancestry in societies that are highly tribal, an element will, it turns out, be more prone to religiously motivated violence. Islamic identification in isolation, independent of these tribal qualities, is generally not sufficient in explaining this violence. Even societies that are urbanized, and in such diasporas, can maintain qualities of tribalism.

In fact, the role of tribal regions in this conflict with militants is not coincidental, and it is tightly interwoven with the severe tribal patriarchy of these regions.

The challenge has been that no quantitative measure of tribalism—an index or a variable—has been available to systematically examine the linkages of tribalism with militant Islam, religiously motivated violence, or the export of violence. In this article, we indeed put forward such a Tribalism Index, developed for the purposes of investigating these linkages.

We suggest the following: Militant Islamist groups are most likely to develop in tribal patriarchal environments. This presumes that an intersection of tribal patriarchy and Islam is where these militant groups are best nurtured. They may still constitute a relatively small number of the population as a whole. But such militant Islamists are more likely to prosper in such a social environment. And it is Islamist movements that in turn are more likely to export violence internationally.

We thus make the case that high levels of patriarchal tribalism are interwoven with Islamist movements—but that Islam independent of patriarchal tribalism has a much less significant, indeed negative, relationship with religiously motivated violence. That said, the normally kinship based,

1 Zoltan Grossman, “The Global War on Tribes,” Counterpunch, April 13, 2010. Accessed April 7, 2011. http://www.counterpunch.org/grossman04132010.html.

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Jacobson and Deckard: The Tribalism Index



geographically contained character of tribal violence takes on an ideological and globalized form when it occurs within Islam (in its Islamist form).

Tribal conflicts as a whole tend to be fairly insular: If the fight is based on kinship issues, the quarrels are on the level of families and clans. In more extreme cases—witness Rwanda and the Congo—the bloodletting will take on a broader reach. But such conflict rarely spills over beyond one or two countries. In other words, the violence does not become global or transnational. It is not sufficient to simply look at tribes and tribal patriarchy and tribalism per se. It is this linkage of tribalism and Islamism that is so problematic for Western security interests. In order to set the background for the Tribalism Index and its development, we will first briefly describe the social structure of tribes, focusing primarily on the patriarchal model of the greater Middle East and North Africa, and in what ways it can lend itself to different forms of social violence, and the differentiated relationships—symbiotic and combative—that develop with militant Islam. We then turn to the Tribalism Index and its construction. Noting that no quantitative measure of tribalism has been developed, we first create an operational definition of tribalism, use this definition to determine the social and political components of tribes, and then designate quantitative measures that are proxies for these attributes. From there we develop the Tribalism Index.

Having created an Index, we illustrate the scores and rankings of individual nationstates on the Index, and explore its utility for gauging religiously motivated violence, and the export of this violence across national borders. We also compare it to the work on failed states, and the Failed States Index. Indeed, we argue that the Tribalism Index is of greater utility than the Failed States Index for eliciting the dynamics of Islamist militancy in a globalized political arena. UNDERSTANDING TRIBALISM The concept of tribalism is fraught with imperialist and culturally relativist connotations. Any attempt to characterize the quality or, as we do, the quantity of tribalism in a society must acknowledge that background, but although we understand the limitations of the term “tribalism,” we argue that the concept is nonetheless a social and political reality. While the postcolonial world’s borders are drawn and decided by United Nations compliant, Westernstyle states, these borders and the governments that regulate the events within them often lack legitimacy in the eyes of their citizens. Rather than ascribing allegiance to the sovereign nation, national citizens may view themselves as members of other groups, in this case tribes.

Tribal societies can display, in the cumulative, a degree of personal and social violence that is alien to most citizens of functioning modern states. This

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level of violence is and has been present in decentralized societies in which kinship is the organizing principle of social and political life throughout history, however, and should not be associated exclusively with tribalism. Medieval life, for example, was extremely violent on both a social and a personal level. French murder rates in the twelfth century were ten times greater than those in modern day Somalia.2

Why this marked degree of violence in tribal regions without centralized, coercive states? The threat of violence is, paradoxically, an organizing principle of order in tribal society. The fear of reprisal acts as the main deterrent for behavior that harms others. It is what anthropologists call “balanced opposition.”

This historical comparison notwithstanding, today tribal regions can be extraordinary brutal for their inhabitants.

3 It is the very antithesis of the democratic, republican form of the modern state in which the state monopolizes the legitimate use of violence and social relations are conducted on the basis of (sometimes fragile) concepts of selfrestraint, civility and mutual respect.4

The ubiquitous and important need for physical security largely explains another aspect of tribal societies that denizens of modern democracies may find anachronistic: the great value put on male physical prowess. In the tightly interdependent tribal world, a man’s parents, wife or wives and children depend on his ability to physically intimidate those who would victimize them. His larger extended family depends on that same ability to intimidate, as well as fight when the occasion is called for. In this context, overt masculinity, in addition to clear loyalty to the kin group, becomes extraordinarily valuable.

This group loyalty, rather than the rule of law, prevails in the tribal milieu and is carefully accounted for in the tribal hierarchy, with immediate family ranking over extended family, and extended family taking precedence over wide networks of kinship and finally tribe and ethnicity. At each level of loyalty, bonds must be defended against outsiders who threaten the kinship group. The tribal form is decentralized, in that there is no ultimate authority. It is democratic for men, in that every male has a say, and decisionmaking is collective.5

If in these tribal societies women are the promise of reproduction of family and culture, men are the bedrock of security. The honor of virginity and

2 Pieter Spierenburg, A History of Murder: Personal Violence in Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2008). 3 See Philip Carl Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East. (Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2008, p. 11). 4 On civility and restraint in the context of the emerging modern state see Norbert Elias, Eric Dunning, Johan Goudsblom, and Stephen Mennell, The Civilizing Process, Sociogenetic and Psychogenetic Investigations (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000). 5 Ibid. See also Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddima. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 132133); and Ernest Gellner, Plough, Sword, and Book: The Structure of Human History. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988).

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fidelity is matched, in theory, by the honor of the martial courage of men. This is not to suggest there was or is some kind of egalitarian complementarity or equality between men and women, as some have argued. The senior man has authority over everyone else in the family, and the women are subject to distinct forms of subjugation. Indeed, the women are a form of property of the men.6 Indeed, young boys may even have authority over their mothers and older sisters in their fathers’ absence.7

In the tribal society, the blood feud is the ultimate tool of accountability. With this tool, an act of violence or an offense by a single actor against honor of another individual can ripple into a feud between dozens, hundreds or even thousands of people. Blood feuds are often initiated, and they can endure for generations, resulting in the loss of property, injury or death. Because many group members are implicated in such feuds, the group can often pressure its members to act prudently and cautiously and to steer clear of entering into conflict if it can be avoided.

Balanced opposition is not, clearly, always effective. In presentday Albania, for example, thousands of men are under the threat of revenge killings. For any act of murder, victims’ families frequently feel compelled to find and in turn murder a male relative of the murderer to ensure vengeance. This spirals into family and clan blood feuds in which even young boys are at risk. Often those under threat remain home indoors—permanently—so as not to expose themselves to retribution. The women may have to do the farm work, as the men hide.8

Honor is core in these blood feuds, as the original parties to the feud can be people only marginally related in practice to those acting to perpetuate them. Honor connects group members to the feud, and honor demands their participation. Thus, honor acts as an important principle ensuring not only loyalty, but lineage, continuity and martial values.

To explore the effects of tribalism on the international stage, it is not sufficient to simply look at tribes and tribal patriarchy in isolation.

6 See Deniz Kandiyoti, “Bargaining with Patriarchy,” Gender and Society Vol. 2, No. 3, 1988, pp. 274290 and Valentine Moghadam, “Patriarchy in Transition” Women and the Changing Family in the Middle East,” Journal of Comparative Family Studies Vol. 35, No. 2, 2002, pp. 137162. 7 A recent documentary on the BBC told of a British Yemeni boy who goes back to Yemen to visit his family; he is shocked that when the father goes out for extended periods, the youngest male (a boy of about 10 years old) is in charge of the household, including his mother and sisters. See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00yzhzl 8 Mike Donkin, “Eyewitness: Albania’s Blood Feuds,” BBC News. Web: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1964397.stm. Accessed October 23, 2010.

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TRIBALISM AND ISLAMISM Certain tribal entities have played an extraordinary role visàvis the struggle against militant Islamists. But there needs to be a nuanced understanding. Among tribes themselves, relationships to violent ideological groups are varied. Although the Tuareg tribal confederation in the Sahel has had limited ties to AlQaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM), for example, some Tuareg are involved or cooperate with the AQIM, while others have engaged in firefights targeting AQIM units.9

There are Muslim societies—Indonesia for examplewhose roots are not tribal. And indeed Indonesia has generated little in the way of endogenous, or homegrown, extremism. Conversely, tribes outside the Islamic ambit can display great violence—such as the cases of Rwanda and Burundi—and this violence is often clearly based in tribal or clan affiliation. In such cases we are seeing humanitarian catastrophes to which the world has turned a largely blind eye. Why? These conflicts remain contained within the domain of one or two states. The bloodshed may pain the international community morally—but does not affect the security of nations who have the means to intervene.

The Tuareg may be contrasted with the Pashtuns of Afghanistan and Pakistan who have, in many cases, had an ideologically symbiotic relationship with the Taliban and even AlQaeda.

From the national security perspective of Western states, the most severe problem arises when tribalism intersects with Islamism. This intersection cuts across North Africa and the Middle East, and carves an arc up to Pakistan and Afghanistan. What the Islamist groups do is turn tribalpatriarchal concepts—such as honor, gender and grievance—into ideological rather than kinshipbased concerns. They then project these issues transnationally.

It is telling that Islamist political parties have won great support in elections in the traditionally highly tribal Arab countries. Following the Arab Spring in 2011, these parties garnered as much as 75% of the popular vote. Conversely, in lowertribalism Indonesia, Islamist parties have been unable to exceed the midteens at the polls.

The anthropologist Philip Carl Salzman suggests this dynamic is an extension of the tribal understanding of nested kinship groups.10

9 On the Tuareg and on AQIM, see Andrew Black, “AQIM’s Expanding Internationalist Agenda.” CTC Sentinel (April 2008); Andre Bourgeot, Les Sociétés Touarègues, Nomadisme, Identité, Résistances(1995); Anthony Celso, “Al Qaeda in the Maghreb: the ‘Newest’ Front in the War on Terror.”Mediterranean Quarterly (19:1: 2008); Dario Cristiani and Riccardo Fabiani, “AQIM Funds Terrorist Operations with Thriving SahelBased Kidnapping Industry,” Terrorism Monitor (January 2010); and Jonathan GithensMazer, “The Blowback of Repression and the Dynamics of North African Radicalization,” International Affairs (September 2009).

Salzman argues that, within the framework of Islam, the us/other binary extends to the creation of

10 Salzman, Culture and Conflict in the Middle East, 11 and 32.

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an “us” that encompasses the entire Islamic Ummah and a construction of the entire nonMuslim world as “other,” as infidels offending the honor of the group. In this worldview, the tribal understanding of balanced opposition must lead all Muslims to engage in active retribution against slights by nonMuslims against fellow Muslims. But, we argue, this perspective is representative of the portion of Muslim societies from “high tribalism” contexts. How can we go about examining arguments regarding ties between tribalism and militant Islamist movements, and illustrating its import? We have to be able to parse out the impact of tribalism per se, and then determine its interplay with Islamism. This involves two steps. The first is illustrating the linkage of tribal patriarchy with religiously motivated violence. The second step involves demonstrating the connections among tribal patriarchy, Islamism and the export of violence. APPLYING THE TRIBALISM INDEX No quantitative measure of tribalism exists. The development of such a measure requires the determination of the social and political realities that make up the tribal society, the designation of measures that proxy these realities and the creation of measures when they do not exist, and finally the weighting these measures based on an consideration of their relative importance in determining the level of overall tribal patriarchy.

Over the course of index development, we treated the topic of gender with the greatest consideration. Gender inequality is the hinge of tribal patriarchy, but tribal patriarchies are a bundle of interconnected factors: hostility to centralized states (unless the tribe in question controls the state), corruption, nested grievances and feuds, and pervasive fractionalization.

Extensive research has been undertaken on “failed states.” The premise has been that failed states obstruct development, breed poverty and resentment, and provide havens for terrorist groups.11

Tribes resent the impingement of the state on their autonomy and resist it, unless a particular tribe can seize the powers of the state for its own benefit. If this is the case, we see an autocratic or oligarchic regime, not unlike that of Iraq under

We concur that this understanding is at least partly correct. But we argue that the failed states paradigm obscures analysis as well, in that failed states are a symptom of a more critical cause – tribalism.

11 For information and details regarding failed states, see: JeanGermain Gros, “Towards a Taxonomy of Failed States in the New World Order: Decaying Somalia, Liberia, Rwanda and Haiti” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 455471 or Gerald Helman and Steven Ratner, “Saving Failed States” Foreign Policy No. 89 (Winter, 19921993), pp. 320. More recently, the concept has come under more critical review, per James Traub, “Think Again: Failed States “ Foreign Policy (July/August 2011).

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Hussein and his Takriti clan, Saudi Arabia under the Sauds, or even PreColumbian Mexico under the Aztecs. While a single tribe can maintain nearexclusive power over a region without the bonds of kinship and obligations of honor in any way diminishing, a more common scenario is one in which multiple tribes coexist under a single national flag. When this is the case, the demands of nationhood come second to those of the tribe and the national government will lack legitimacy as citizens fulfill their obligations to extended kinship groups rather than fellow citizens from other tribes. For this reason, tribal societies will often exist somewhere on the continuum of anarchy or failed statehood.

Modern examples of tribal societies with weak centers include Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen. These countries are ranked numbers 6, 1, and 15, respectively, on the Failed States Index of 177 countries. These same countries, as we shall see, also rank at 3, 2, and 7, respectively, on the Tribalism Index. All three countries have experienced problems with violence and the exportation of that violence, as have other highly tribal societies. But countries such as Haiti rank just as highly as Failed States. Yet although Haitians struggle with crushing poverty and instability, the ranking of 113 on the Tribalism Index predicts far less religiously motivated or exported violence.

Conversely, in a number of cases of tribal societies with strong governments we see the festering of extremism from within. This has, notably, been the case for the radical Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, who include in their number perpetrators of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Occasionally, these centralized, tribally affiliated governments sponsor extremist groups themselves. This was true in the cases of, for instance, the fatherandson Assad regimes in Syria or Gaddafi’s Libya. These nations did not, historically, register highly on the Failed State Index, yet are extremely prone to tribal violence and often export that violence abroad – tendencies that are reflected in their high placements on the Tribalism Index. The Libyan case became notable from the 2011 uprising, need it be said, for both its tribal fractionalization and the diminishing control of Gaddafi’s state.

The Failed States paradigm, in other words, reveals a relatively limited amount of information regarding the danger that a particular country may pose to the international community. Indeed, the existence of the index and its subsequent questionable application to issues of international security may have discouraged the creation of more pertinent analyses. CONSTRUCTING THE TRIBALISM INDEX The Tribalism Index brings together the critical factors that correspond to tribal societies, including gender inequalities, perceptions of corruption, grievance measures, ethnic and linguistic fractionalization and population demographics.

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These measures came from a consolidated database of over twodozen databases, which include, inter alia, the databases from the World Bank, World Economic Forum, Transparency International, Freedom House, Central Intelligence Agency and the Fund for Peace. We measure tribalism on the level of the nationstate, but the applications of the Index can include measurements at larger or more granular levels — by region, for example, or by province.

The most important, and therefore the most heavily weighted, component of the Tribalism Index is a measure of gender inequality. We chose the Gender Gap Index (GGI), published annually by the World Economic Forum, to represent this dynamic in the Tribalism Index.12

Disparities between nations in the categories of education and health are relatively small, but large variances in labor force participation and earnings, as well as in the political sphere, contribute to widely divergent GGI values around the world. Especially attractive about the Global Gender Gap Index was the fact that it is an outcomebased measure. This means that the index does not take into account the efforts that state agencies or NGOs make to further the position of women, but rather the place that women actually hold in a given society.

Although the Gender Development Index (GDI) is cited far more often than the GGI in literature treating gender inequality, the GDI is a revision of the Human Development Index that takes gender inequality into account. GDI is certainly a useful and versatile index for many purposes. Given the nature of our mandate, however, the use of GDI would serve to conflate poverty and gender inequality. For the purposes of assessing solely the relationship between men the genders at any given level of Human Development, the Gender Gap Index examines the gap between men and women in four fundamental categories: economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health and survival and political empowerment.

In order to capture the existence of powerful tribal entities beneath the state apparatus further, we sought to measure state corruption. A state in which the meritocracy of modern bureaucracies is subverted to nepotism and other types of favoritism would be viewed as endemically corrupt. In a nation in which tribal allegiances supersede those to the central government, perceptions of government corruption will be high as individuals within the government, whether politicians or civil servants, seek to enrich themselves, their families, kin networks, villages and tribesmen before the central government agency for which they work.

What constitutes corruption in an individual country depends not only on the laws of that nation, but on the enforcement of those laws, and on whether the

12 For more information regarding the Global Gender Gap Index, as well as copies of its

annual Gender Gap reports, see the World Economic Forum website at

http://www.weforum.org/issues/global‐gender‐gap. The report is cited: Ricardo Hausmann,

Ricardo, Laura Tyson Saadia Zahidi, The Global Gender Gap Report. (Washington DC: World Economic Forum, 2010).

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tribe and kin network of the ruling party coincide (or not) with that of the majority of civil servants. Measuring actual corruption becomes a daunting, perhaps impossible, task. But perceptions of the extent to which government agencies are inherently corrupt should be a good proxy, as it measures the experience of different stakeholders. Acknowledging this, we used the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) published annually by Transparency International to gauge relative perceptions of corruption.13

A tribal society will also experience high levels of group grievance, as defined by the Fund for Peace and used by the organization as one of the ten measures for the compilation of the Failed States Index. The variable captures the history of aggrieved communal groups, public scapegoating of those groups with or without nationalistic political rhetoric, any patterns of atrocity committed with impunity or with support or participation of government groups, and institutionalized political exclusion. We argue that these components essentially tease out tribal conflict in the context of the modern state. From the viewpoint of the citizen of a modern democratic state, tribes are no more than communal groups and the subjugation of one group by another can be viewed as representing infighting amongst fellow citizens. However, within a tribal society, this dynamic is very much to be expected. Thus, high levels of group grievance may be associated with high levels of tribalism, whereas low levels of group grievance are suggestive of low levels of tribalism.

The multiple surveys of NGOs, foreign and domestic businesspersons, and foreign and domestic corruption experts make the CPI the standard when ranking levels of corruption across international borders.

The use of Alberto Alesina et al.’s work of ethnic and linguistic fractionalization presents what is, in conjunction with the use of indigenous populations as a percentage of the national population, one of the most interesting component of the Tribalism Index.14

We also include in the index a measure of the percentage of the population that is indigenous.

As members of different tribal groups identify with different ethnicities and speak different languages or different dialects of the same language, nations with a more active tribal society will have higher levels of measured fractionalization than do more homogenous states.

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13 Transparency International’s work in corruption research is certainly worthy of review. Information specific to the Corruption Perceptions Index can be found on their website at: http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/about.

We argue that it is reasonable to “discount” fractionalization to the proportion of citizens whose ancestry is native to the country. Thus, in a country like the United States, overall ethnic fractionalization is quite high, while

14 Alberto Alesina, Arnaud Devleeschauwer, William Easterly, Sergio Kurlat, and Romain Wacziarg, “Fractionalization”. Journal of Economic Growth 8 (June 2003): 155194. 15 For more information about demographic variables such as ancestry, ethnicity, language and religion, consult the CIA World Factbook. This resource can be found online at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/theworldfactbook/

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the native population is very low – leading to a midlevel score for this component of the index. Mexico has midlevel fractionalization and midlevel indigenous population scores, leading to midlevel scores, while Pakistan has high levels of fractionalization and indigenous populations – leading, predictably, to high scores. NATIONAL TRIBALISM RANKINGS Using a weighted aggregate of the components detailed, we created the Tribalism Index, which goes from a score of 0, the hypothetical lowest score, to a score of 1, the highest. A Tribalism Ranking, used periodically throughout this research, is derived from the Index. A ranking of 1 corresponds to the highest level of tribalism per the Tribalism Index, while a ranking of 160 corresponds to the lowest. Using the formula F1, with the weightings noted below, we created the Tribalism Index, which goes from a score of 0, the hypothetical lowest score, to a score of 1, the highest.

Formula F1: Tribalism Index = Corruption Measure + 0.5(Ethnic Fractionalism) + 0.5(Indigenous Population) + 2(Gender Equality) + Group Grievance A Tribalism Ranking, used periodically throughout this research, is

derived from the Index. A ranking of 1 corresponds to the highest level of tribalism per the Tribalism Index, while a ranking of 160 corresponds to the lowest. 16

Scores on the Tribalism Index have been computed for most countries, and Table 1 shows the Tribalism Index scores of nations with populations over 10,000,000. Afghanistan, shown in the table, measures 0.988. Countries not noted in the Table because of their relatively small populations include Somalia, which measures 0.987 and, on the other end, Iceland, which garners a lowly 0.060. Table 1 also specifies the rankings of those countries included in the table.

It is important to note that all countries will accrue some measure of tribal score, whether deriving from even minimal gender inequalities, ethnic fractionalization or perceptions of corruption. We capture certain social qualities here, not just tribes in the narrow sense, but the extent to which such qualities 16 The Tribalism Index formula can also be noted as follows, where: The Corruption Perceptions Index – X1 EthnoLinguistic Fractionalization Index – X2 Indigenous Population as a Percentage of Total Population Data – X3 Gender Gap Data – X4 Group Grievance Data – X5 Note that as the internal reliability of the scale is high, shifting the weightings of specific variables within the index does not significantly change the rankings of individual nations or meaningfully alter its ability to predict religiously motivated violence.

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vary along a continuum with polar ends that are largely hypothetical. With this having been said, and as Figure 1 demonstrates visually, regions of the world tend to move in tandem to an extent that we had not originally anticipated. TABLE 1: TRIBALISM INDEX SCORES, 2009, NATIONS WITH POPULATIONS OVER 10,000,000 Rank Nation Score Rank Nation Score Rank Nation Score

1 Pakistan 0.995 2 Afghanistan 0.988 4 Iran 0.938

5 Syria 0.913 6 Sudan 0.900 7 Yemen 0.900

9 Chad 0.863 10 Iraq 0.863 11 Morocco 0.863

12 Algeria 0.850 14 Egypt 0.825 17 Turkey 0.825

18 Saudi Arabia 0.800 19 Uzbekistan 0.800 22 Kazakhstan 0.763

24 Kenya 0.738 26 Cameroon 0.725 27 Ethiopia 0.725

28 Niger 0.725 29 Nigeria 0.725 32 Nepal 0.700

33 Uganda 0.700 36 Angola 0.675 37 Mali 0.675

40 Burkina Faso 0.650 44 Zambia 0.638 46 Indonesia 0.625

47 Malawi 0.625 48 Tanzania 0.625 50 Senegal 0.613

52 Thailand 0.600 58 Zimbabwe 0.575 61 Ghana 0.563

63 Bangladesh 0.550 66 Mozambique 0.550 69 Ukraine 0.550

70 Cambodia 0.538 72 Guatemala 0.525 74 Korea, Rep Of 0.500

76 Peru 0.500 77 Russia 0.500 79 China 0.488

80 Ecuador 0.488 82 Madagascar 0.488 86 India 0.475

87 Philippines 0.475 88 Venezuela 0.475 90 Malaysia 0.463

91 Mexico 0.463 92 Romania 0.463 93 South Africa 0.463

94 Viet Nam 0.463 95 Colombia 0.450 98 Sri Lanka 0.450

99 Brazil 0.438 102 Tunisia 0.438 104 Greece 0.413

108 Belgium 0.400 110 Czech Rep 0.400 112 Spain 0.400

117 Cuba 0.375 119 Italy 0.375 123 UK 0.363

128 Hungary 0.338 130 Poland 0.325 133 Argentina 0.300

135 France 0.288 136 Japan 0.288 137 Germany 0.263

138 Portugal 0.263 141 United States 0.250 143 Canada 0.238

145 Chile 0.200 146 Netherlands 0.200 152 Australia 0.088 Latin American countries generally have moderately high scores. Brazil,

for example, scores a 0.44. The dynamic in this area of the world appears to put relatively high perceptions of corruption in balance with low levels of indigenous populations, making for midlevel scores overall. Central European countries, with mean scores of 0.50, score higher as they have higher levels of corruption paired with high levels of indigenous populations, mitigated by relatively little

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gender inequality. Scandinavian countries have the lowest means scores, at 0.08 – mainly because these nations consistently score at the leasttribal levels of gender equality, corruption, fractionalization, grievance and other measures. FIGURE 1: SPATIAL REPRESENTATION OF THE TRIBALISM INDEX

THE TRIBALISM INDEX AS PREDICTIVE TOOL For the purposes of this research, we chose to draw dependent variables from data compiled by the US National CounterTerrorism Center (NCTC). Paring down all incidences of terror to only those using religion as a motivating factor and with perpetrators whose identities were known to a reasonable degree of certainty, we calculated the number of incidences attributable to nationals of all countries in the NCTC database during the period from 2005 to 2010. We then calculated the percentage of incidences committed by nationals within the given country and the percentage committed abroad.

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As shown in Table 2, when using the Tribalism Index to predict this violence, we find that the likelihood of a national with a Tribalism Score of 1 perpetrating a terrorist incident is 6.5 million times higher than a national from a state with a score of 0. The Tribalism Index is able, as the sole predicting variable, to statistically explain a remarkable 68 percent of variance in rates of religiously motivated violence. If we add additional variables of social globalization, Muslim percent of population, and per capita GDP, we can account for 93 percent of the religiously motivated violence.17

TABLE 2: POISSON REGRESSION ON INCIDENCES OF RELIGIOUSLY MOTIVATED VIOLENCE Variable B Odds Ratio

GDP 0.649*** 0.523 Tribalism Index 15.694*** 6,543,701 Muslim Percent 1.926*** 0.145 Globalization 0.046*** 1.047

But what is especially interesting is that if we control for levels of patriarchal tribalism and allow the statistical model to simulate the effects between countries as though they had the same level of patriarchy, a larger Muslim population actually has a negative relationship in explaining religious terrorism. What does this mean? In essence, we are able to isolate tribal patriarchy as a major factor in driving religiously motivated violence, when we seek to predict the patterns shown in NCTC data. We are able to state, with confidence, that a state’s movement from one end of the tribal patriarchy spectrum to the other predicts an extraordinary increase in the production of religious violence on the part of nationals.

Now, when we examine the spread of violence in Table 3, tribal patriarchy had a negative relationship with the export of violence across borders.18

17 These variables were statistically significant, with the probability of chance being less than 0.1%.

This makes sense, as tribal violence tends to be more geographically insular. But the percentage of Muslim population had a positive relationship with the export of violence.

18 In the determination of violence exportation, individual incidences of religious terrorism in the NCTC Worldwide Incidence Tracking System (WITS) database from 20052010 was aggregated first by nationality of perpetrator p by nationality of perpetrator r perpetrating group. An additional subtotal level was added within these groups, aggregating the number of incidences committed outside of national borders. The latter number is then divided by the former – giving a percent of incidences exported.

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TABLE 3: OLS REGRESSION ON PERCENT OF VIOLENCE COMMITTED ABROAD Variable B

Muslim Majority 0.415* Tribalism Index 1.073**

This intriguing finding describes a reality in which high levels of tribalism

can be associated with a good degree of bellicosity. That bellicosity can break down the state’s monopoly of violence and contribute to state failure. However, Islam, in its Islamist form, projects tribal patriarchal qualities onto a global stage—in terms of women’s status, honor, grievances and feuds, among other considerations. Higher scores on the Tribalism Index mean more violence—but greater proportions of Muslims mean higher likelihoods of violence abroad.

This effect carries through to diaspora groups. Take the case of the United Kingdom. Both percent of UK foreignborn and tribalism index are significant as predictors of number of terrorist incidents committed by nationals of a given country on UK soil.19 An increase from 0 to 1 on the Tribalism Index means 4 more incidents of violence from nationals of that country, controlling for percentage of immigrant population to Britain that come from the country. An increase of one percent in immigrant population from a country implies one additional violent incident. These two variables explain 27% of the variance in UK Islamist violence.20 The finding that Islam appears to lend—again, through its Islamist forms—a global framework to the violence characteristic of tribal patriarchies is striking. These findings present a more subtle view of the intersection of patriarchy and Islam than previously understood. Certainly, given that higher percentages of Muslims are associated with lower levels of violence, the view that Islam is ipso facto a cause of violence is untenable. Yet certain threads within Islam are associated with the export of violence. Overall, this gives us a subtler picture of the dynamics involved than the general sense of a civilizational clash, or the claim that religion is irrelevant to the conflicts that confront us.

CONCLUSION: TRIBAL GLOBALISTS What further indicates the tribal roots of many Islamist movements, is the extent to which tribal social structures are duplicated in the organization of Islamist groups, even in nations without a strong tribal tradition. This is true for AlQaeda,

19 The significance is to .000. 20 In other terms, we find an rsquared of .27. Data on terrorism and religious violence in the UK was found in Robin Simcox, Hannah Stuart, and Houriya Ahmed, Islamist Terrorism: The British Connections. (London: The Centre for Social Cohesion, 2011), a comprehensive collection of data on the topic.

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Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiyah, and other Islamist networks like the Muslim Brotherhood.21

There are numerous threads making up the fabric: relations and trust based on kinship and organic systems, the trustbased conduct of financial relations, the way “segments” of the network mirror each other in form and as such can be sacrificed and reproduced, if need be, the stress on male martial honor to the point of suicide, the culture of honor and vengeance, the horizontal organization with only a loose hierarchy among males, the network that unites factions or clans in the name of the Ummah against the common, infidel enemy, the principle of selfhelp, and, of course, the stratified relationship of men and women, a relationship often omitted from discussions about the horizontal nature of these networks.

These groups mirror the tribal patriarchic configuration, and they do so consciously. Tribalism, rather than respect for meritocraticallychosen leadership, is the form of regulation within which the leaders of the different networks all thrive – it is the form in which each was raised.

22

This tribal quality of the networks is palpable in a description by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who led the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003 to 2008 and served as commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan in 2009 and 2010:

Even their nomadic quality mirrors, albeit for distinct reasons, that of the tribes. Cells of the network are akin to, and often called, families.

Over time, it became increasingly clear—often from intercepted communications or the accounts of insurgents we had captured—that our enemy was a constellation of fighters organized not by rank but on the basis of relationships and acquaintances, reputation and fame. Who became radicalized in the prisons of Egypt? Who trained together in the pre9/11 camps in Afghanistan? Who is married to whose sister? Who is making a name for himself, and in doing so burnishing the AlQaeda brand?23

21 See Noor Huda Ismail, “The Role of Kinship in Indonesia’s Jemaah Islamiya,” Terrorism Monitor 4:11, June 2, 2006.

http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews[tt_news]=791 22 See Gamal Moursi Badr, “Islamic Law: Its Relation to Other Legal Systems,” The American Journal of Comparative Law, 26:187198, 1978; Nikos Passas, “Demystifying Hawala: A Look into its Social Organization and Mechanics,” Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention, 7: 4662, 2006. 23 Stanley A. Mcchrystal, “It Takes a Network: The New Frontline of Modern Warfare,” Foreign Policy, March/April 2011. Accessed May 6, 2011. http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network?page=full. See also Michael T. Flynn, Matt Pottinger, and Paul D. Batchelor, Fixing Intel: A Blueprint for Making Intelligence Relevant in Afghanistan. (Washington, D.C.: Center for a New American Security, January 2010).

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http://jstor.org/stable/839667

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/02/22/it_takes_a_network?page=full

It is important to remember, however, that while Islamist militants incorporate much that is tribal into their networks, they also seek to transcend the tribes. Islamist ideology focuses on a universal Islam, stripped of local or national culture. Such Islamists aspire to a singular, global Islam that cannot be in any form identified in terms of local or national groups, including tribes. “A Muslim has no nationality except his belief,” wrote Sayyid Qutb, the most prominent of the Islamist thinkers.24

As a consequence, actual relations between groups like AlQaeda and tribes can be symbiotic or they can be conflicting. In Iraq, for example, AlQaeda in Mesopotamia (also known as AlQaeda in Iraq, or AQI) failed to pay due respect to the elders of the Sunni tribes. It was a terrible mistake on their part, as this presaged the “Awakening Councils” that cooperated with U.S. forces in routing the AlQaeda elements.

25

AlQaeda does learn. As the insurgents moved into Yemen, following the Iraq setback, they were more careful to work with tribal elders. One top AlQaeda leader married into a local tribe. Financial assistance was provided to tribesmen in the poorest areas. Messages of global jihad were tailored to fit local grievances. Longerterm AlQaeda ties with tribes—including the fact that Bin Laden’s family was from the area—helped. In exchange, some tribal leaders welcomed AlQaeda members, protecting them from government troops, and permitted their sons to sign up. “As long as alQaeda respects the tribes, some tribes will welcome them,” said Sheikh Abdulqawi Sherif, the head of the progovernment Bani Dhabian tribe.

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One final comment: Much explanation of militant Islam has relied purely on the words of major thinkers of the genre. But Islamist ideologists can only win support if the underlying social and cultural dynamics are promising, if they “make sense” in a given set of circumstances. In this, too, the Tribalism Index can help us elicit the underlying sociological and political conditions of Islamist militancy.

24 See Chapter 9 in Sayyid Qutb, Milestones. (Indianapolis, IN: American Trust, 1990). 25 We are grateful to Didier Chaudet for his observations in this regard, from his research in Afghanistan. 26 Charles Levinson and Margaret Coker, “Al Qaeda's Deep Tribal Ties Make Yemen a Terror Hub,” Wall Street Journal, January 22, 2010, A1. Levinson and Coker note how AQ also included the Yemeni tribes in their propaganda: In an audio tape released on Feb. 22, 2009, Ayman Al Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, asked the Yemeni tribes to protect al Qaeda operatives, just as tribes in Pakistan and Afghanistan had done: “I call on the noble and defiant tribes of the Yemen and tell them: ‘Don't be less than your brothers in the defiant Pashtun and Baluch tribes,’ " Mr. Zawahiri said in the recording. Marriages were highlighted: In August 2009, al Qaeda's online newsletter in Yemen, Sada alMalahim, announced the marriage of one of Al Qaeda's leaders, Mohammed alUmda, to a local tribeswoman.

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Documents

0’,1-.12$3.45+’4$)1-$64’7//’4$’7 …€¦ · Tribalism has played an extraordinary role in the context of the struggle against militant Islamists—from Afghanistan and