MARIB, Yemen — When a German engineer was taken hostage in Yemen last November, it made headlines around the world, reinforcing this nation's image as the Wild West of the Middle East, a place where gangs of armed tribesmen prey on foreigners. It took days of intense negotiations to free him.
But 43 Yemeni hostages held here for months haven't been so lucky: no international outrage, no local angst, not even a whimper of protest over their captivity. One reason, it seems, for the muted response: The government took its own citizens captive.
That Yemen's elected leaders resorted to hostage-taking tells much about the obstacles to transforming this battered, fractured and largely tribal society of 18 million people into a modern nation. Taking the law into one's own hands--even if it's the government that is doing the taking--has long been a prominent element in Yemen's tribal-dominated culture.
Tribes thrive in a vast network that spreads north and east of Sana, the capital, and into the barren mountains and golden deserts of the Arabian Peninsula. Much of this region is governed by centuries-old traditions in which tribal sheiks divine justice and routinely take "collateral"--cars, weapons or family members--during negotiations to settle disputes or to force the government to address their needs.
The tribes have become a significant concern for the U.S. government in the wake of an October 2000 attack in Yemen on a U.S. Navy destroyer and the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults. Al Qaeda network operatives have found refuge and support among some Yemeni tribes, offering gifts of cash and cars and playing on tribal codes of honor and vengeance. In some cases, Yemenis became eager recruits to the cause of Islamic fundamentalism, bringing to it their deeply rooted tribalism.
"It is very important to understand the tribal culture," U.S. Ambassador Edmund Hull said. "We will not succeed unless we do."
For Westerners, the word tribe conjures up images of a savage and backward people. But the reality is far more complex and subtle.
Tribes here are part of an elaborate social structure that has endured through generations, a system with precise codes of conduct and its own caste-like hierarchy. Tribes flourish where the government is barely a presence and there is often no electricity, no running water, no hospitals and no schools. It is in these desolate rural communities that people learned the tribe is Yemen and Yemen is the tribe.
