×

Join our mailing list

Find out more about our programmes
Loading Events

Revisiting State-Tribe Relations in Yemen

Dr. Khaled Fattah

7/03/13

Join us for a discussion on state-tribe relations in Yemen given by Dr. Khaled Fattah.

The demographic size of Yemen’s tribal population is far smaller than that of the non-tribal population in the rest of the country. Yet, Yemen is the strongest remaining bastion of tribal power in today’s Middle East. Throughout its modern history, the central authority in Sana’a has seen its power limited by its military weakness, in comparison to the armed strength of the fiercely independent tribal confederations in the vast northern and eastern parts of the country.

The inability and/or unwillingness of the central authority to monopolise the use of coercion renders the Yemeni state irrelevant in many tribal areas of the country, where the presence of national security forces is perceived as foreign intrusion. To compensate its weakness, the Yemeni state relies on tribal leaders as bridges between state and society.

Yemen’s recent massive uprisings and popular unrest raise urgent questions about state-tribe-military-civil society relations in the country. Drawing from many years of field research in Yemen, Dr. Fattah will shed light on the role of Yemen’s tribal leaders in shaping the context, consequences and possible scenarios of the Arab Spring in Yemen.

Dr Khaled  Fattah is an expert on Yemen and state-tribe relations in the Arab world. Dr Khaled Fattah holds a PhD from the School of International Relations, University of St Andrews. He is a guest lecturer at Lund University in Sweden, and has worked as an international consultant and lead researcher for the EU and the UN, and writes for the Guardian.

FREE rsvp@mosaicrooms.org


We use cookies to make our website work more efficiently, to provide you with more personalised services and to analyse traffic on our website.
For more information on how we use cookies and how to manage cookies, please read here, otherwise select ‘Accept and Close’.