Christmas war in the Horn of Africa continues: What is the way out?

By Mammo Muchie (Ethiopia) & Osman Abdulkadir Farah (Somalia)

Once again the Horn of Africa is on the news radar screen with the usual nauseating projection and imaging of a region embroiled with a seemingly unending litany of violence, invasions, genocide, destruction, chaos, forced migration and a state of general insecurity. The recent socio-political upheavals and developments in the Horn of Africa region require deeper reflection why this state of unwholesome existence that continues to threaten life and well being persists with what appears to be a timeless abandon.

1. Each State in the Horn region is in a State!

Nearly all the states that constitute the wider Horn of Africa have one crisis or another. In Ethiopia we mention the recent setback of an election on May 15, 2005 that nearly got this ancient nation to come into the contemporary history of democracy only to frustrate the manifest will displayed by the people to self-govern by returning the incumbent in violation of what appeared on the whole to be an election result that favoured the opposition parties. It is an irony that those duly elected are in prison whilst some of those who have been de-elected are still in Government. Civil society leaders, journalists, scholars and human rights activists are still in jail even as the country is poised to celebrate its millennium on September 11, 2007! It is a real tragedy that Ethiopia may celebrate its millennium with its incumbent rulers at war with the neighbours of Eritrea and Somalia and forcing opposition leaders in jail to face grave charges of ’treason’ violating the rights of those who have been duly elected in what they believed to be a democratic process and election. Once again the enormous joy that people should have in reaching 2000 years after Christ may be eclipsed by the knowledge that the country is threatened by war that may have no end, starvation that continues to recur every year, and the ominous development more and more into repressive dictatorship. Moments like the millennium could have presented opportunities for the rulers not to be blinkered by failing to rise above the pettiness of politics to occupy the majestic height of historical imagination and presence. But in Africa we have rulers whose manner of ruling over people makes them behave like masters and not public servants, thus always falling fearful doing anything to keep their fear in abeyance by creating even more fear than learning to doing what is just and fair for people by engaging sincerely with democratic experimentation, dialogue, reconciliation, tolerance and empowering politics.

In Somalia the situation remains as chaotic as it has been since Said Barre left in haste in 1991. The breakdown of public authority and its dispersion into clan and warlordism has been the single most alarming development in Somalia. When the Islamic Union Courts (IUCs) appeared to have the upper hand in Mogadishu over the warlords, there seemed to be a sceptical reception of their role in warding off one undesirable and worse warlord groups for their own not as worse IUCs. The latter seemed to have been contaminated by some Jihadists in their midst at loggerheads with the secular Transitional Federal Government backed by Ethiopia and recognised by UN and AU. The invasion by Ethiopia backed by the current US Government against the IUCs opened the floodgate again for the warlords to resurface and embolden themselves in Somalia.

The violent overthrow of the IUCs was justified by the claim that they are ‘Islamist terrorists.’ By some accounts the IUCs were recognised to be near a delivery point of what is sorely lacking in Somalia, namely stability at least in Mogadishu if not in the whole of Somalia. By other accounts, the IUCs were part of the global terror network. However one looks at it, once again like in the Cold War period, the Horn of Africa is sadly incorporated as the African flank in the geo-politics of the so-called global war on extremism and terrorism. For the Horn of Africa to be at the forefront in the war on global terror in Africa, and play in US Government politics in its drastic compression and framing of the complexities of world politics to those who are for terror and those who fight it, means that the region is repeating the role it played during the Cold War. A region that has not learned the lessons from the cost to it of being embroiled in the Cold War is bound to repeat it in this new era of what has been described as the Global War on Terror.

In Sudan there is even more alarming development such as genocide and even modern day slavery in the Darfur area where apparently culturally ’Arabized Africans’ attack other Africans with the connivance if not active support of the militias by the Basher Government in Sudan that have been responsible for murdering and uprooting whole communities. The crises in Darfur continues to go on despite protests by the UN, EU, the Africa Union, USA, Britain and global civil society and human rights organisations. More worrying is the oft-repeated stories that practices and instances of slavery still exist in Sudan and Mauritania. The practice of selling humans in the 21st century is indeed one that Africans must never tolerate, as indeed they must never tolerate dictatorship.

In Eritrea, opposition is severely punished. Eritrea remains in a no-war, no-peace state with Ethiopia since the outbreak of the large scale war in 1998. Being together with Ethiopia or living separately did not seem to make any difference in relation to bringing about a normalised and peaceful relation amongst such geographically contiguous close neighbours. Each side accuses the other of supporting forces trying to destabilize it. It is thus one of the most confounding dilemmas trying to make sense and to searching for what would work to bring about an amicable relationship between the two warring regimes that continue to hurt the people by their inexplicable actions to stay belligerent for the long haul.. It is alarming to read the attitude of Issyas Afeworki and Meles Zenawi. Issays has been quoted to say that they have no resources to build a nation, they have no skill to build a nation, they have no knowledge to build a nation, but they are still determined to build a nation. It seems the only thing Issays seems to have is arrogance to make a nation if these quotes attributed to him are correct. And lo and behold, a nation built driven by arrogance or hubris may not endure unless there are impeccable reasons for its creation, which there may well be, that seems as yet not clear to the person who is the leader though!

Whilst Issays is determined to make a nation, Meles seems determined to ‘ethnicise’ an old nation and re- make it by parcelling it into vernacular-ethnic enclaves. Ethiopia has the history to make a nation. It has resources to make a nation, just as it has the arable land and the water to feed itself. It has the skills if not the social capital to make a nation. It has the knowledge to make a nation. Yet the current rulers are not determined to make the nation. They seem determined to parcel it into many ‘ nations, peoples and nationalities’ with ethnic-vernacular laws and grammar.

Djibouti has armies from France, and US anti-terror military contingent operating in its soil. Whilst it is not formally involved in disputes, it faces from the fallout from the region’s generalised instability. There are Afar based liberation movements operating in Eritrea, Djibouti and Ethiopia.

Kenya faces huge pressure from refugees and those who flee from all these numerous conflicts. It has its own ethnic tremor that may erupt into violence unless the democratic institutions outpace the ethnic agitators in the course of time. The democratic transition from KANU-dominated rule to the NRK coalition is a great historical achievement in democratic transition which none of the other states in the Horn of Africa region have attained. Whilst the issue in Kenya is sustaining democratic transition, the issue in the rest of the Horn of Africa is the rudimentary absence of any credible security order to experiment with democracy and development. The others have not yet fully emerged from being trapped in conflict.

Uganda has also faced election problems, involvement in the fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the destabilising armed resistance from the Lord Resistance Army, and its current involvement in the Somalia conflict by placing troops in support of the Ethiopian and American Governments’ pursuit to track Islamists in IUCs and their external allies.

What is common amongst these states is that they are to one degree or another involved in what is called the global war on terror on the side on the main protagonists consciously or unconsciously. They are also involved with each other’s problems. They provide facilities to opposition forces and refugees against each other. Recently we have seen the military intervention in Somalia .The existing pattern of relations need to change by encouraging a radically new perspective for the region’s states to move from a conflict community into a security community.

2. Negative Foreign Interventions Continue

The larger Horn of Africa region (consisting of Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Uganda, Eritrea and Sudan) has experienced greater (internal and external) political, social and economic upheavals since the 1960s. For mainly strategic reasons the region is currently considered (by the US and some European countries in the west) as an integrated part of confrontation against extremism. Here the region’s proximity to the Middle East and global shipping routes is considered vital.

Today it is no exaggeration to state that the Horn of Africa is one of the most volatile regions in the world. The region suffers from numerous political, socio-economic and cultural challenges. These problems affect not only the peoples and the countries in the regions but also the wider world. Issues such as political instability, economic and ecological degradation and cultural tensions contribute not only to the generalised state of underdevelopment but also to the numerous interlocking conflicts that have brought major regional and continental conflicts fuelling the rate of increase of regional and global migration and insecurity..

Perhaps where ‘God may fear to tread’; the Great Powers seemed willing to risk intervention. On the one hand the Great powers are openly involved militarily, on the other the fragility of the region can tempt in attracting jihads to operate wily- nilly in the region. The New World Order is becoming more like the new world and ecological disorder. There is a sigh of relief that the Cold War is not replaced by a Hot War. There is anxiety that the Cold War is not replaced by a peaceful, mature and sane world. We have now the current ruler of the major power drastically and radically reducing world politics to the simplicities of either for terror or against it, in the same way during the war the politics was reduced either for America or the Soviet Union. Once again our local elites have bought in this politics for reasons nothing to do with any grander purpose other than to address their immediate fears and concerns by tagging behind the current US Government’s formulation of the world disposition of forces for the 21st century.

3. Deadly Arms Continue to flow unregulated into the Region

The risk of a power vacuum is huge. The fact that Somalia has no state is a threat not only to the region but Africa and the world. The region continues to be awash with various types of deadly weapons, fuelled through endless conflicts rooted from the period of the European Scramble for Africa (indeed if not earlier!) to the period of de-colonisation in the 60s, and throughout the post-colonial period.

The region has been a victim of the arms race sponsored supplied to varied groups largely but not exclusively by the ex-colonial powers. And during the Cold War, the super powers who did a classic swap between Ethiopia (from USA to USSR) and Somalia( from USSR to USA) during the 1977-78 War dumped huge arms to a region whose poverty requires making arms and armies history to make poverty history!! The region does have the trained armies to use modern deadly weapons that cost millions of lives. In certain occasions rulers in the region received these weapons as an integrated part of the development aid from major powers. Warlords, for instance those in Somalia, used to purchase it from the numerous open markets in and around some Western and Eastern European countries. To the surprise of many, some of the notorious warlords in Mogadishu as late as last year terrorised innocent civilians with new weapons imported from the UK, a western country that officially supports the UN weapons embargo against Somalia. Thus, the flow of weaponry and easy accessibility appears to constitute one of the main challenges to peace and stability in the Horn of Africa.

Small arms proliferation follows protracted conflict. The Horn of Africa can attract weapons of mass destruction. The fact that Somalia has no state with a regulatory power to enforce control on arms means that potentially any hazardous weapons can enter the region via this open border. Weapons that might seriously harm the people of the region and beyond can be shipped into it and may be used. Those evil and dark forces from outside can also use Somalia’s current chaotic situation to experiment with deadly weapons and virus. The longer Somali stays in a state of chaos, the more likely that the whole region and Africa can be a victim of yet untold perfidious evil. And all those who continue to unsettle Somalians to sort their affairs will go down in history for having brought untold suffering on the people of the region. This crime is way beyond anything that humanity can bear. It is this danger that must be stopped by finding a workable and stabilising settlement in Somalia without one internal and external group seeking exclusive control without the consent of the Somali people.

4. The Wars between Somalia and Ethiopia: Addressing the root cause

The X-Mas war is the third major war between Somalia and Ethiopia. Since the independence of Somalia, Ethiopia and Somalia had two major wars. The first took place in 1964 under the emperor four years after Somalia got its independence from Britain and Italy. The first war has been blamed on Somali irredentism due to the claim of the Ogaden region by the then Somali Government. The Ogaden is a semi desert region the British transferred to Ethiopia following the end of World War two.

The Second war was initiated by Said Barre’s Government in 1977. Receiving military aid from the Soviet Union and free oil from some Middle Eastern regimes, the dictatorial Barre regime confidently launched a surprise attack against Ethiopia in 1977. With free oil from Iraq and the Gulf, together with weapons from many countries, the Somali army captured a large portion of the Ogaden. Allies of then left-wing regime in Addis Ababa, Cuba, Yemen and the Soviets that mysteriously changed sides led one year after the start of the war the defeat of the Somali army. Returning to Somalia in disarray and demoralised, senior officers of the Somali army engaged in a failed coup led by, among other officers, president of the current transitional federal Somali government, Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed. Coup leaders that were captured were sentenced to death or sent to long term imprisonment.

Unlike the two earlier wars initiated by the Somalia side, this time the current Government in Ethiopia initiated the armed invasion based on the assumption of an IUC verbal declaration of war and invitation by the Transitional Federal Government. This makes it new. It looks the regime in Ethiopia is too embroiled and is not likely to extricate itself as it sought possible when it declared entry into the fray. The armed resistance is savagely flaring.

If the Ogaden is the reason for the conflict, the main culprit must be British imperialism that arranged to cede one of the ’stars’ to the Ethiopian emperor’s request whilst sections of the British foreign office upheld the ’five stars’ Somali nationalist position. Like Kashmir, the Balfour Declaration, the Skyes-Picot Agreement in dividing the Arab nation, it appears the same imperial trick or formula of setting up the natives to fight it out potentially igniting conflict later was left behind. And predictably the ensuing post- colonial state in Somali cannot have a five stars flag without having a five star territory. The wars ensued to match the stars of the flag to match with the territories making all now victims Somalians, Ethiopians and Africans as a whole, and others who sell the weapons reaped benefits.

How to address without inciting nationalist passion how this imperial formula is behind the reason that left the issue that deflected Somali and Ethiopia to address issues of development rather than settling borders is indeed an important question. If this issue can be confronted with reason and tolerance by demanding those who created the formula to pay for the way they set Ethiopia against Somalia and the vice versa would be the right approach. The Ethiopians and Somalias should not fight but they must unite to demand why this formula was created and what was the reason for this double standard of giving five stars to Somalia whilst giving one of the stars to Ethiopia at the same time?

Of course, the situation in Somalia has gone well out of control to bring back negotiation and dialogue to sort this vexing problem out. But if the true history of how this conflict was formed is known, perhaps the local actors can take note and use it to modify their behaviour with it.

5. Is there a way out?
The future of politics in this region is very difficult to predict. The worst case scenario will be if America and the regime in Addis Ababa continue to insist that the conflict in the Horn of Africa is part of the so-called global war against terrorism. Then prolonged suffering and hardship awaits the people in the region. There will be a war of religion and it will affect all countries in the region and beyond. Religious warlords will emerge. This can become a self- fulling prophecy internationalising the conflict and making it impossible to see a way out. This option is the worst one and unfortunately the logic of the conflict judging by recent events seem to go in this direction.

The preferred approach would be if the warlord led government in Mogadishu can engage with the principle of broad- based civic inclusion where they invite all relevant political and social actors, even the leadership of ICU to construct and find a comprehensive lasting solution to the Somali people and to the region as well. If this reconciliation approach is chosen internally, and if there is also a shared approach by all those who have one interest or another to support reconciliation rather than partisanship and belligerence, then a window of opportunity may be open… The problem is that the warlord government does not have the vision and means to host and undertake such process. In addition, large constituents of the Somali people do not have any respect for warlord members that dominate the government. This option will be very good, but its chance is not yet that realistic.

The role of mediators and honest peace brokers is very critical. But such honest mediators that can enjoy the respect from the various groups are not easy to deploy. The AU can emerge as one of such mediators. The EU can also if it plays that role. Even the USA and other states can. Norway has been quietly taking such roles and doing reasonably well in many difficult conflicts such as Sri Lanka, Sudan and others. Even those in the region can play a constructive role instead of being party to the wrong politics imported from outside and acting as warriors and compounding the difficulties a very difficult region.

If the AU takes its mediating role seriously, it needs to be prepared not to fail but succeed. The AU can unhinge the deadlock if it is backed by the resources and power of the major and pivotal African countries such as South Africa and Nigeria and others who are in the conflict already. Also Older and wiser statesmen like President Nelson Mandela and others who most Somalis even ICU members, have respect should be used by the AU to support its efforts.

The US and EU should support the AU. The current US posture does not seem able to bring peace to Somalia. Nonetheless, some surprising contacts between the US and IUC have taken place. The US embassy in Nairobi and its ambassador met the leader of ICU, whom the media claims to have sought refuge in Kenya. Surprisingly, the US diplomats are insisting that some in the ICU leadership should be included in the Transitional arrangement. It may after all appear that America may have learnt a lesson or two from the numerous mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq that it will not pay to isolate certain legitimate political groups in these countries. If the US Government begins to treat the Somali issue differently, this will hugely help to change the conflict environment into a security environment.

Another important aspect is that the EU, the UN and the US do not share a shared approach on how in the long term to solve the Somali conflict. As experiences in Puntland and Somaliland show Somalis will only enjoy viable peace when they are left alone, in combining traditional authorities with certain form of modern state governance. Any mediation intervention should be mindful of traditional sensibilities whilst addressing universal values of human rights, rule of law and democratic governance.

The Diaspora communities in the world from the region must play a constructive role to contribute for peace and stability in the Somalia and the wider Horn. There is a need to use modern technology to communicate and create shared values in order to address the specific problems of the region. The Diaspora can be a creative and regenerative force or can enter into the conflicts of the region. There must be an intelligent way to intervene to promote regional security, creativity by providing resources and knowledge.

It is increasingly becoming evident that through the internet and the extended mobility and communication opportunities, the Horn of African migrants scattered all over the world retains daily communication with those they have left behind. This communication can be constructive or destructive in a region with many intersecting and cross-cutting conflicts. The opportunity for transforming the destructive communication into constructive communication requires learning, knowledge, capacity and research. How to mediate the communication from the scattered migrants to those in the region by strengthening research, knowledge, training, learning, capacity building will constitute an important part of the strategy of intervention.

Concluding Remarks

We propose to bring together the region’s Diaspora communities to support a:

Horn of Africa Research Network on Regional Integration and Development (HANRID). This network will Undertake and build research and knowledge through analytical scrutiny on the dynamics of conflict and migration, underdevelopment, breakdown in governance, state collapse in creating new translational modes of production and relations calling for newer and sharper tools of social and economic analytical approaches and strategies to input knowledge and information into policy making and improving the quality of debate and engagement by fostering civically engaged citizens.
Tap into the global pool of Horn of Africa’s Diaspora as knowledge and resource bearers to connect their own activities and resources to the region’s conflict resolution efforts and shaping the productive power and development futures of the region and wider Africa. The objective is to found, design, and settle how a Horn of Africa Research Network that will create policy forums, knowledge production and outreach community activities.
We have published a book on Diaspora and State Reconstitution in Somalia that will provide information and help in communicating with the wider Diaspora and home communities. We provide the link for the book:

[http://www.adonisandabbey.com/book_detail.php?bookid=68&currency1]==]

The book addresses empirical research on how the Diaspora lives, works and communicates with their own communities at home.

We have planned a workshop that will create a forum for the region’s researchers to present their research and network and develop a shared understanding and trust to support the region: see link at
www.ihis.aau.dk

www.ihis.aau.dk/development

www.ihis.aau.dk/ccis

There is more we can all do. Unless self- initiated, constructive and productive approaches are taken to bring the region to share a common approach to problems and conflict resolution, we will continue to experience problems. There is a need to build resources for the capacity to make it possible to negotiate out of any difficulty and conflict however difficult. This capacity building must be built on a sustainable basis not only in the Horn of Africa but all over Africa.

* Mammo Muchie is chair of the Network of Ethiopian
Scholars and Director of DIR at Aalborg University – Denmark.