Last week Tom Friedman did a column called “Tribes With Flags” that is built around that aphorism to describe the politics of the majority of Arab states.
there are two kinds of states in the Middle East: “real countries” with long histories in their territory and strong national identities (Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Iran); and those that might be called “tribes with flags,” or more artificial states with boundaries drawn in sharp straight lines by pens of colonial powers that have trapped inside their borders myriad tribes and sects who not only never volunteered to live together but have never fully melded into a unified family of citizens.
You would think that he came up with this witty expression all by himself since this is his stock in trade. But you would be wrong. Charles Glass published a book with that title a decade ago. There is no reference to it in Friedman’s op-ed. I realize that journalism eschews footnotes for the most part and for good reason, but this seems completely dishonest to me.
Issandr El Amrani pointed out to me that Charles Glass was not the first. From Neil MacFarquhar’s Times obit for Egyptian diplomat Tahseen Bashir, 77, in 2002:
Courtly and well read, Mr. Bashir coined scores of memorable political phrases that were widely quoted over the years but not always attributed to him. Two of the more noteworthy — which he delivered in an inimitably thin, raspy voice — included ”The mummification of the Egyptian cabinet” and ”Egypt is the only nation-state in the Arab world; the rest are just tribes with flags.”
