Word: tribalization
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...African reality was, as always, blurred by alien notions. The real alignments are tribal or regional, not ideological; Africa remains a continent of warring nationalisms, some of them struggling on behalf of nations that have never existed as separate entities and may never...
...Immediately, the men of his company stopped clowning and began to set up their U.N. flags and tents in the town of Deir Kanour. "That's more like it," said the captain. A crowd of children gathered around, fascinated by the tall black soldiers, their faces scarred with tribal markings. "Not much left to some of these places," the captain observed of the bullet-scarred walls and bombed-out buildings. Then, as the children began to applaud, he told a visitor: "That's why we're here. So the people can come back...
...family dates back to the 18th century, when the head of the tiny emirate of Dariyah (near Riyadh), Mohammed ibn Saud, formed an alliance with Mohammed ibn Abdul Wahhab, the fiery leader of a puritanical Islamic movement; his Wahhabi sect still holds sway in Saudi Arabia. This combination of tribal military skill and religious fanaticism did dominate central Arabia for 75 years, until it was crushed by an invading Egyptian army acting at the behest of the Ottoman rulers in Constantinople...
...desert democracy. That is the majlis (Arabic for a "sitting," although the word can also mean "council," or even "parliament"). According to Arab custom, reinforced by a 1952 decree of King Abdul Aziz, every subject has the right of access to his ruler, whether the ruler is a tribal sheik, a governor or the monarch himself, to present petitions of complaint or pleas for help. Even the poorest Saudi can approach his sovereign to plead a cause; functionaries of the royal court found guilty of improperly turning aside a petitioner face severe punishment...
Brutus, whose son Anthony Brutus is a junior here, was labelled "colored" in South Africa, but he said, "We don't let those labels bother us; they are just another device to divide and rule." Suggestions that South Africa's blacks are so divided tribally that they could not rule their country are also misleading, he added, because over 50 per cent of the black population lives in cities, and the old tribal structures broke down many years...