Lahore, Pakistan - "Traditional" tribal societies in many parts of the third world are often considered backward, discriminatory against women, and politically incorrect. However, states must still treat tribes with patience and political respect.
Tribes can be brought into the modern world through education and job creation in ways that do not totally upset their social structure, such as the present attempts being made in Afghanistan by President Hamid Karzai. Most times such efforts fail and tribal societies dissolve with disastrous results.
Often tribes are struggling against oppressive military or dictatorial rule, such as the present Baloch struggle for greater autonomy against the centralizing attitudes of the Pakistan army. In such cases, tribal societies form part of the wider trend of desire for democracy. In other cases across Africa, tribes fail to see why they should submerge their identity beneath a wider national identity. Ultimately states are responsible for ensuring that tribes become part of the political system. Only democracies can ensure that.
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