Tribes are feudally organized and have a generally warlike nature. When security erodes and tribes are influental, tribalism always connects local conflicts to the bigger conflicg lines and opens up a spiral deeper into chaos.
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Currently writing a paper on some aspects of the Yemen war. What gets clear again is that there is no understanding of the region without acknowledging tribes as an important political player and that state policy on tribes is the main source of de-/stabilization.
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Now this could be seen as a call for more authoritarianism, but it really isn't. In the examples of Syria and South Yemen, Ba'ath and YSP were initially committed to countering the influence of tribes, this soon changed when power structures became more important than ideology.
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North Yemen even got directly into connecting the regime's patronage networks to the tribes. As the societies of MENA are quite decentral, they don't really fit well with a centralized authoritarian state, that's why authoritarians often cooperated with the tribes.
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The tribes offered them an inofficial possibility to secure their power by including traditional powerholders into their patronage. In the end this created a situation, where the autocrat seems to hold much power while in reality, he hasn't much room for maneuver.
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The ruler had to finance the tribal elites and inner power circles in order to stay in power, which consumed much of the tax revenues and led to few actual governance. Other parts of the money had to be spent on security forces for repression.
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I even think that being an inofficial power made tribes more viable and flexible. Institutionalizing (or maybe even democratizing, but that's rather a dream) tribes and eroding their power on that base could be a better way to tackle their influence.
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Either way, the last century shows that officially ignoring their existence while cooperating with them behind closed doors doesn't make them and the conflict potential they hold go away.
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... so yeah these observations are still a bit unsorted, I just had to write the thoughts down to clarify them a bit more to myself. When time's due I may write a more detailed text about the connection of authoritarianism and tribalism in the Middle East.
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Why can't every tribe have a single seat in parliament/congress? With that constitutional clause up for review every 10 years, say. For sure leaders need to rid themselves of being arm-twisted by tribes. Deprive that avenue of corruption of oxygen.
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Europe used to have tribes. How those faded away must have something to say about how the ME could dissipate its tribes, with the right policies. Key is a decent education that breeds more modern minds. For both genders of course. More gender equality from birth may be key.
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