Chapter 7 focuses on Iran’s tribal communities. Scholars outside of anthropology often misinterpret this category. Many regard tribal affiliations as a relic of Iran’s past and no longer relevant in contemporary Iran. They disparage what they call “tribalism” but do not define the term. They lack personal experience with Iran’s tribally organized peoples. Tribal affiliations and identities continue to be one of many significant connections for Iranians across the landscape (and for some Iranians in the diaspora). Iran’s tribal peoples are usually also part of Iran’s linguistic, religious, ethnic, and/or ethno-national minorities, each affiliation contributing to and sustaining the others. Tribal structures and organizations persist as meaningful strategies in rapidly changing political environments. For affiliates, tribal institutions are alternatives to state structures and organizations. Iran’s ruling elites regard tribally organized people as threats to their own power and privilege, and they try to suppress, relocate, or eliminate them. Iran’s tribal peoples are part of different kinds of political formations. Some form large cohesive confederacies. Some smaller entities are often dispersed across the landscape but still maintain some local autonomy. And some are part of large ethnolinguistic groupings, which have both tribal and nontribal components.

Chapter 5 deals with the provision of security in areas of limited statehood. We contest the notion that areas of limited statehood are mostly violent places where civil war prevails. We analyze peacekeeping missions, military interventions from the outside, as well as externally promoted security sector reform. We find that more limited external governance fostering inclusive post-conflict peace-building and security sector reform is more effective than comprehensive state-building efforts. We then look at the conditions under which violent non-state actors can provide public security in the territory that they control. Warlord governance tends to be rather ineffective. Rebel groups score better, particularly when they face high legitimacy needs and local communities with strong trust-based action capacity to hold them accountable. The chapter also looks at tribal groups and leaders as rather effective peace-keepers. They normally lack military enforcement capacity, but can rely on strong social norms to maintain security in communities. While “security under anarchy” is possible in areas of limited statehood, our findings cast serious doubts on whether public security governance can be sustainable in the long run, if a (state) monopoly of the use of force is not restored at some point.