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Paper short abstract:

Independent tribes are polities based upon collective responsibility and self help, with the means of coercion distributed throughout the population. Tribes effectively encapsulated by states become identity and interest groups, mobilizing their members for defense, influence, and patronage.

Paper long abstract:

In Iranian Baluchistan, the Sarhadi tribes were politically independent during the later Qajar period, but were effectively encapsulated by Reza Shah in 1935 after a military campaign. Following the fall of the Pahlavi dynasty in the late 1979 during the Islamic Revolution, the Baluch tribes rose and fought Persian Sistanis for control of Zahedan, the provincial capital, but were eventually suppressed by the forces of the Islamic Revolution. Encapsulated once again, the tribes have been submerged in a flood of Shia Persians from outside the province, who have rapidly increased urbanization, commerce, and education. A resistence movement, the Jundallah, based in the Rigi tribe, has attacked state security forces on behalf of the interests of the Baluchi Sunni population.

The Kirgiz tribes were incorporated into the Russian Empire in the 19th century, and launched a costly and losing rebellion in the early 20th century. Under the Russian Empire, and its successor the Soviet Union, tribes as independent polities were suppressed. But the tribes continued as identity and interest groups, capable of mobilizing members, and sought and won patronage on their behalf. With the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1992, some Kirgiz turned to a revivification and formalization of tribes (just as others turned to Islam or Western development) in response to the vacuum of organization and purpose.