Each of the seven largest groups fighting the 1979-89 Soviet occupation was tribally based.

These are essentially code words meaning that any new party cannot be tribally or regionally based.

The three main opposition parties - which are fractured, disorganized and tribally based - are not seen as posing a viable threat to the governing party.

We understand their concern to avoid tribally based parties.

Since most of the opposition parties are tribally based and each has a youth wing, the result could be bloodshed.

More than 330 blacks have died in the last 13 months in fighting between the United Democratic Front, a multiracial alliance, and Inkatha, a tribally based black group.

Unlike regular militaries, which are built by training diverse recruits to work together, paramilitaries are drawn from politically reliable groups, creating ethnically or tribally based units.

A decade later, when the war-weary Portuguese withdrew in 1975, he became one of the contenders in a three-way tribally based struggle for power.

Laws were passed mandating that political parties could not be ethnically or tribally based; however, it has been hard to make this work in practice.

In 1993 he was deeply rattled by a tribally based military rebellion and assassination attempt that he only narrowly escaped.