The Political Economy of Kurdish Tribalism

Abstract

Great changes were occurring in the social and economic life of Iranian Kurdistan at the beginning of the century. These were perhaps inevitable due to demographic and other changes arising within Kurdish society. However, government policies destroying the nomadic/tribal lifestyle contributed to the speed of change. The result of these changes was the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes. The forced settlement and sedentarization process meant that eventually all the Kurdish tribes settled and permanently inhabited villages. However, it did not mean the total disappearance of tribal relationships among large segments of Kurdish society. It is the main focus of this chapter to examine the factors which brought fundamental changes to the tribal structure of Kurdish society, factors which weakened tribal ‘face-to-face’ relationships, and factors which contributed to the continuity of some of those tribal relationships. I will argue that elements of this continuity are evident in the relative equality existing in Kurdish tribal life which, in turn, is due, primarily, to the main economic activity of the tribes, namely herding, which in turn is largely based on the mountainous features of the region. The hypothesis of this chapter is that the very features which forced the settlement of the Kurdish tribes helped to preserve some of the tribal characteristics of Kurdish society too.