Initially designed as a centralizing move, this eventually backfired, as the qaids, once esconsed in their tribal fiefs, proved even more ungovernable than the amghars had ever been.
Army units and rural tribes across the north and east, already basically ungovernable, started raising rebellions which were only crushed with difficulty.
Clearly the point of the protests was to make the country ungovernable -- inhibiting traffic flows, creating artificial shortages and generally intimidating people in the street.
One is the quest for eternal life and eternal youth; another is guilt and the ungovernable power of the unconscious mind to undermine science's utopian discoveries.
