Kurds, states and tribes.
Martin van Bruinessen.
published in:Faleh A. Jabar and Hosham Dawod (eds),Tribes and power: nationalism andethnicity in the Middle East. London: Saqi, 2002, pp. 165-183.

Until two decades ago, it was widely assumed that tribes, which had since time immemorial been the most prominent social formations of Kurdish society, were gradually dissolving. Thelast few nomadic tribes were succumbing to pressure to settle, and the inexorable process ofurbanisation appeared to be breaking up old solidarities and bringing forth new types of socialrelations. The Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) and the guerrilla war between the PKK and the Turkisharmy (1984-99) speeded up both developments, destroying much of traditional Kurdishsociety in the process. The past two decades of great social upheaval have not led to theextinction of the tribes, however. The apparently pre-modern phenomenon of the tribe hasshown remarkable resilience and adaptability, and in several respects tribes and tribalism areeven more pervasive in Kurdish society now than twenty, thirty years ago. Most Kurdishtribes had long been sedentary anyway, so the decrease of space for nomadism did not affectthem much. Moreover, it appeared that tribal organisation had a distinct survival value in periods of insecurity and political strife, and was quite appropriate to various modern types ofenterprise. [1]