_Arabia_
Trusted Member
Everyone has a tribal mentality. Essentially modern day nation states are the manifestations of tribes/nations establishing states. This has always been the case throughout all of recorded human history. I mean if you look at it, all nation states of today were once established by ruling families/dynasties. Monarchies basically. Very few exceptions. Especially the old ones. Can only think of Switzerland as an exception and the likes of San Marino but San Marino was like the Italian Republicans who were also ruled by a Doge/ruler anyway despite the name of "Republic". Just like in old Rome before Augustus.
This is also present everywhere in the Arab world from Morocco to Oman. Even in Egypt. The difference as I explained earlier is that in stable/strong/centralized Arab states this class/tribe division is mostly only seen during marriages, work and gatherings (social interactions). For instance an Egyptian from Sinai will rarely marry a fellah from Luxor (despite being the same ethnicity, having the same religion and the same economic background (social class) just like a cairenes from an upper-class family will rarely marry (it will be frowned upon at least) some villager from the Nile Delta.
Albeit this is much less so than in older times where such marriages were unthinkable mostly.
Anyway tribalism is a very complicated matter in the Arab world and not easy to explain and different from each country in many ways.
Problem is that the Arab world is/was home to the oldest recorded civilizations/kingdoms on the planet and as a result of this there has been literally 10.000's of different empires, caliphates, sultantes, kingdoms, emirates, sheikdoms, imamates, republics, dictatorships, city/village nation states etc. Not long ago in every single Arab country, even within KSA, you had Sheikhs/rulers ruling a village, province, city, region etc.
The smart thing that Ibn Saud did when he unified KSA was to marry into all the powerful ruling and clan families and thus gained legitimacy and a blood kinship to region x or y. Now he/his off-spring was "one of their own".
Frankly speaking tribalism (essentially Arab nobility and kinship model) is not really so much the problem. The main problem is weakness of the central state in places like Iraq/Syria/Yemen/Syria/Sudan (which was not always the case) and the lack of a power-sharing arrangement deal that would make everyone content.
After all everyone that has the opportunity wants to rule/dominate/advance in every field of life whether on the job, in private life, private sector (business) let alone when reaching real power.
All of humanity is basically one big power struggle for relationships, power, resources, legacy, ego etc.
I think the problem in those war-torn Arab nations (of late) is also that each conflict/war creates distrust and it gets harder to reconcile. It requires clever leadership, some overall goals (as a nation state) that everyone can unite under etc.
But at the end of the day those conflicts are mostly flamed by a few locals and outsiders.
The ordinary Arabs in Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon and everywhere else where there are regional/sectarian etc. divisions are living in harmony.
To begin with most people don't care a lot about politics and what we are discussing here.
But anyway while you are here and we are discussing this, what is your view about Lebanon and Syria merging into 1 country in the future (look past leadership/militias in both countries now) as well as your opinion about unity vs division? Because in theory you could create probably another 80 Arab countries (to make the total 100) just like you could divide Greece into 100's of city states once again like back in antiquity.
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