The Social Order of War in Pre-Colonial Baidhani Society: A Historical Anthropological Reading

Abstract

This study examines the social nature of war and the interrelated structures underpinning the phenomenon of war. Three gateways are used by the author: (a) wartime, (b) the mechanisms generating military leadership, and (c) the notion of the “Ghazi” (warrior-raider) in Baidhani (Sahrawi) lore. The author points to an overlap of war with the essence of tribal function, revealing different elements in the features of war in the emirate and the tribe. War, explains the author, is sometimes determined by the semi-centralized political nature of the emirate, which allows for the emanation of war from the central figure of the Emir and the tribes falling under his emirate, as distinct from war in tribal society, inclusive of the coastlands and lands of the interior basin, in which a social-political war footing is maintained without becoming embodied by a central political formula. An anthropological reading of historical references (critical readings and classifications of local resources) distinguishes war from other related phenomena such as looting, banditry and highway robbery, between which an essential boundary is determined by a set of elements expressed in a certain pattern, or social style, and via looting practices that are not regulated, institutionalized, or arbitrated in the way that war is, with the convening of a council of tribal elders issuing decisions and appointing a “warrior leader”.