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Horn of
Africa Disaster Politics and Its Geopolitical
Implications
Ghelawdewos Araia, PhD
July 25, 2020
The
Horn of Africa comprises Sudan, South Sudan,
Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, and Djibouti, and all
but Djibouti are in turmoil, terror, and
trepidation. Of these Horn of Africa countries,
Ethiopia was by far the most stable, peaceful, and
more hopeful nation during the entire period of
EPRDF rule from 1991-2018, but now the country has
become one of the most unstable countries beset by
disorder, internal displacements, and political
assassinations, not to mention the messy local
politics in some regional states that, in turn,
effectively undermined the socioeconomic progress
that Ethiopia was making.
The
chaotic atmosphere that is now hovering over
Ethiopia under the watchful eyes of the present
regime apparently is the legacy of the Abiy-led
government that operates outside the
constitutional order and tramples over the rule of
law. Paradoxically, the regime seems to emulate
the failed states of Somalia, South Sudan, and
Eritrea, and more so the regime prefers to imitate
the latter; and instead of continuing the
socioeconomic gains that Ethiopia has scored over
the twenty-seven years rule of the EPRDF, it chose
to discontinue major projects initiated by the
previous regimes.
Somalia
has destroyed itself via its meaningless civil war
and al Shabab military confrontations; the country
has been in a comma for the last three decades and
there is no light at the end of the tunnel that
promises the resuscitation of this Horn of Africa
nation. The current regime, presided over by
Mohmmed Abdullahi Farmajo, could hardly perform
outside Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia, and
cannot claim a state in the strict sense of what
makes modern nation-states.
South
Sudan declared its self-determination on July 2011
and was recognized as a nation by Sudan, the
African Union, and the United Nations, but soon
after the country has been enmeshed in constant
civil wars at two levels: 1) at violent
confrontations level between the ruling party
Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and
various opposition groupings; 2) at intercommunal
strife level, in which ethnic warfare effectively
destroyed the socioeconomic fabric of the country.
Both political confrontations have now irreparably
damaged the new nation, naturally endowed with
petroleum but ironically a black gold that has
become a curse to the South Sudanese people; and
since the civil war erupted in this unviable
country, close to half a million people have been
killed and some two and half million people have
become refugees and/or internally displaced.
Eritrea
is a small country in the Horn of Africa that has
gained its independence in 1991-93 after
protracted wars with the Ethiopian governments of
Haile Selassie and the Derg military regime. At
the eve of independence, a significant number of
Eritreans were ambitious enough to create a
prosperous nation by the Red Sea, and had they
seized a moment or were given a chance they could
have established a model country at least in what
economists and development theorists label
‘middle-income’ countries. But their dreams
were shattered by the regime of Isaias Afewerki
that is interested in militarization of the larger
Eritrean society rather than evolving a
development agenda for the welfare of the Eritrean
people; the government distracted the Eritrean
potential of being economically viable by its war
policies with its neighbors; it provoked and
conducted wars against Sudan, Yemen, Djibouti, and
Ethiopia, and as a result the country was unable
to witness meaningful development projects. It
looks that Eritrea has chosen arrested development
on purpose, because in the last three decades
global observers could not testify any
foundational economy that could have uplifted
Eritreans from poverty. Incidentally, Eritrea is
now governed without a constitution, without a
parliament, and without legally registered
political parties.
Djibouti,
by all measure, is a tiny nation that solely
depends for its survival on its port and on
Ethiopian food resources, including water. But,
this nation located on the confluence of the Gulf
of Eden and Bab El Mandeb is strategically located
where the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean meet, and
most importantly it is the most stable and
peaceful country in the Horn.
The
nascent instability of the Horn is not a novice
phenomenon; disorder politics has confronted this
region since antiquity, the Jihad wars of the 16th
century and the 19th century
Ethiopia-Egypt (Ottoman) wars; the late 19th
century Italo-Ethiopian wars of 1885, 1887, and
1896; and again the last Ethiopian-Italian war
from 1936-41. These successive wars between
Ethiopia and Italy resulted in immeasurable
damages and sacrifices.
On
top of the above wars, throughout the second half
of the 20th century and beyond, the
Horn was disturbed by guerrilla insurgency in
Eritrea against the status quo in Ethiopia; the
SPLA-led guerrilla warfare against the northern
Sudanese government; the civil war in Somalia; and
the Ethiopian-Eritrean war of 1998-2000.
From
the above objective analysis of the Horn of
Africa, it is abundantly clear that peace has been
a rare commodity in this region, and given this
reality, thus, we can now safely assess the
geopolitical implications of the disaster politics
of the Horn.
On
the onset, however, the Horn of Africa crisis is
instigated by domestic and International actors; a
lot of Horn observers wrongly dichotomized the
Horn disaster as if it was initiated or influenced
by endogenous actors or separately by exogenous
forces, and they were unable to see the duality of
the disaster politics in which the twin forces of
both local and global actors forged alliances. The
latter two forces, in fact, have worked in tandem
in many instances and operated hand-in-glove in
matters that could promote their interests, but in
some cases both forces miscalculate and create
havoc not only to their interests but also the
larger societies that for the most part define
them as workshops or experiment laboratory
outposts. Perhaps
it is wrong to use the word ‘miscalculate’ on
my part; on the part of the actors it is actually
done on purpose but it could have gone out of hand
in all the terrible man-made crisis and it could
turn out into offensive politics that adversely
affects citizens.
At
any rate, the old revolutionary guards in the Horn
of Africa struggles for change and/or liberation
are gone for good and are replaced by ‘running
dogs’ that managed to capture state power. These
new leaders are the ones who would collaborate
with regional and global forces to promote the
interests of the latter and not the interests of
their respective states. These leaders, after all,
are interested in power and pecuniary gains as
opposed to national development and the welfare of
the ordinary citizens.
Examples
of this idiosyncratic Horn phenomenon are abound,
but suffice to mention some: After the former
leader of SPLA, John Garang died on a helicopter
crash in 2005, he was succeeded by Salva Kiir
Mayardit, the current president of South Sudan;
Salva Kiir is not as charismatic as John Garang,
nor is he endowed with intellectual prowess like
his predecessor; Garang was a revolutionary and a
developmental economist by profession; moreover,
he was a fiercely independent man; Salva Kiir, on
the other hand, operates at the behest of
exogenous interventionist forces; and above all,
he is intolerant to ideas coming from the
opposition and even any thought coming from his
colleagues like the former vice president Rick
Machar. So many brilliant South Sudan
intellectuals and professionals were attacked by
the security forces; some of the victims were
forced to seek asylum in neighboring countries
like Ethiopia and Kenya, and one of these
political preys is Peter Biar Ajak, a known critic
of Kiir’s government and founder of the Sudan
Youth Leaders Forum, who claims that he was about
to be killed or abducted during his stay in Kenya;
Ajak has now sought asylum in the United States.
The
trend of suffocating politics, eliminating
opposition forces, hunting down revolutionary
intellectuals is almost the same and uniform
across the board in the Horn of Africa. In
Eritrea, for instance, critics were systematically
alienated or eliminated; Isaias Afewerki
incarcerated so many of his own colleagues like
Petros Solomon, Haile Woldetenssae (Du’rue),
Mohammed Sherifo etc. and he banished others to
exile. Isaias incidentally posed as a
revolutionary representing the progressive
Eritrean forces when he ejected himself out of the
old Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and founded
Selfi Natsnet Ertra or Eritrean Liberation
Movement that later was renamed Eritrean
People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) or Shaebia when
the Sabe group joined it in 1971. I recall the
EPLF manifesto that was distributed in Addis
Ababa, particularly in student circles of Addis
Ababa University; the title of the manifesto was
Neh’nan Ela’ma’nan (Our Objective and Us); I
translated the salient features of the document
for the non-Tigrigna speaking Ethiopian students
in campus, and not only did we like it, but we
were impressed by its progressive ideas and
revolutionary mottos. Now, we know it is not the
case.
By
the same token, when Abiy Ahmed ascended to the
level of prime minister following a smooth
transfer of power from Prime Minister Hailemariam
Desalegn to him, he impressed Ethiopians and the
world by his rhetoric of democracy, peace, love,
and unity of Ethiopians; he even took bold
measures at reforming the state apparatus by
establishing a cabinet of minister with 50% women
ministers, but soon his reform was increasingly
drifted to emasculating the fledgling Ethiopian
democracy, dismantling democratic institutions,
muzzling opposition voices, and ultimately
assassinating key government officials,
professionals, and even artists; good examples of
the latter are the killing of Engineer Simegnew
Bekele, who was the chief engineer of the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD); the Chief of
Staff General Seare Mekonnen and his friend Major
General Gezae Abera; and Dr. Ambachew Mekonnen,
who was governor of the Amhara Regional State at
the time he was assassinated. The last victim in
these series of assassination plots is the popular
Oromo Ethiopian singer Hachalu Hundesa, who was
shot and killed in a broad day light on June 29,
2020. The blood of Hachalu has now become a
rallying cry all over the world.
Why
is the Abiy regime promoting chaos, crisis, and
disaster politics instead of leading great and
historic Ethiopia to what some middle-income
countries like the Tigers and Brazil have attained
the capacity of manufacturing industry? What is
the purpose of having industrial parks, major
infrastructure, and the GERD if the government
wittingly or unwittingly sabotage these
foundational economies? What is this current
government of Ethiopia up to? Is its agenda to
replace the federal system by a unitary state as
many Ethiopians suspect, or is it to lead Ethiopia
on purpose toward a complete failed state, or even
let historic Ethiopia implode and dismember into
its constituent parts, on purpose. One could
create several scenarios and anything is possible
in the context of the disaster politics in the
Horn.
The
domestic actors, the architects of disaster
politics, mentioned above, are not alone of
course. Other foreign forces, including Saudi
Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Egypt and some
Western nations apparently are acting as caretaker
hegemonies and their main power is the dollar
(more specifically petrodollar) that finance the
security apparatus of the various Horn of Africa
regimes; the latter local governments are poor in
both economic and ideological contexts and they
can be bought off easily, and to be sure the
leaders of these governments have no integrity,
and to them surrendering the sovereignty of their
respective nations is tantamount to selling a
commodity in the market place, and they don’t
seem to realize that they could be charged with
treason when the dust settles down and a
relatively patriotic government assumes state
power; now blindfolded, they are easy prey to the
grand exogenous predators, although they
themselves are predators against their own people.
Of
all the Horn of Africa actors, however, the chief
actors are Abiy and Isaias and they have
established a very unique but incredibly
mysterious shuttle diplomacy, mostly via air
instead of employing the main roads that connect
Eritrea and Ethiopia, but since the roads from
Eritrea to Tigray and from central Ethiopia to
Tigray are closed, the Horn actors cannot use
these roads for obvious reasons. It is crystal
clear that these two actors have now a common
enemy known as the TPLF and by extension Tigray;
if they can, they want to encircle Tigray and
starve the people of Tigray by their devious
economic embargo or declare war on Tigray and
quench their appetite of pogrom and massacre; the
massacre and wanton destruction of villages has
already been conducted against the Oromia area of
Wellega and vicinity, and it is highly probable
that they want to try it on Tigray as well. But it
is also highly probable that Abiy’s chance to
conduct war against Tigray could be squandered
given the objective conditions in Ethiopia that
ironically and unexpectedly turned out to be in
favor of Tigray and it is for the following
reasons: 1) the myopic and visionless Amhara
regional state leaders miscalculated by attacking
Tigrayan residents in their state and indirectly
rendered unforeseen bonus to the TPLF, and soon
after thousands of Tigrayan people returned to
Tigray; the Amhara region disturbed itself by
killing its own leaders and furthermore by
entering into lawlessness and disorder, and, in
turn, created havoc to the routine livelihood of
the innocent Amhara people; 2) Ethiopia as a whole
is now in a state of nature-type chaos, thanks in
large measure to the disaster politics promoted by
the government itself, and now it is so obvious
that Abiy has lost his grassroots support and the
trust of Ethiopians as a whole.
If
we superficially analyze the Ethiopian reality on
the ground, we could very well surmise that
Ethiopia is on the verge of disaster and this
would not be surprising, because the cloud of
disaster politics is hovering over it anyway.
However, it is also highly probable that the
present regional states of Ethiopia that have
enjoyed self-determination and internal
administrative autonomy would fight to the end to
safeguard the hard won right. It is true that Abiy
successfully recruited and coopted some leaders
from Somalia, Afar, Benishangul Gumuz, but the
people of these regions would not simply yield to
the future unitary state that could erode their
self-determination rights; in point of fact,
Mustafa Muhammad Omer, the current president of
the Somali Regional State, the right hand man of
Abiy, is not liked by the Somali Ethiopians, nor
does he enjoy support from his own party, the
Somali Democratic Party (SDP), a party that
rejected its own dissolution and being
incorporated into the Prosperity Party of Abiy
Ahmed. The Somali Ethiopians, like the Afar, Harar,
Debub, Gambella, and Benishangul-Gumuz, not to
mention Tigray, would like to jealously guard
their newly gained autonomy in the federal
structure of Ethiopia that enabled them to
flourish their cultures and languages, as well as
dignity and relative equality that they have
obtained in the Ethiopian federal system
So,
in the end, the Ethiopian federalist forces might
gather momentum despite the current terror and in
spite of their present weak position in Ethiopian
politics, and could get support from the
relatively strong Tigray Regional State; defeat
the unitarian elements along with the former Derg
fascistic remnants, and rescue Ethiopia from total
collapse. That will be the day!
But,
if the unitarian forces, the Derg elements, and
chauvinistic groupings of yesteryear politics
prevail and successfully dismantle all that is
left of the federal system, the constitution, and
the agenda of the developmental state, they could
forge alliance with their financiers and come up
with a new map of the Horn of Africa that could
accommodate new beggar states and weak lackey
governments. This could be the prime agenda of the
twin actors; the latter also could completely wipe
out the developmental state in the name of
democracy and neo-liberal economy; they could tell
their new constituents that their objective is to
find a viable capitalist economy, which by the way
is a system that has historically proved to have
brought significant socioeconomic changes for the
better. This historic victory of capitalism that
has completely transformed Western nations,
however, cannot be implemented in the Horn of
Africa, simply because the Horn nations, the rest
of Africa, and for that matter the significant
countries in the southern half of our planet,
don’t have the wherewithal, the technology, and
knowledge-based economy, and by merely depending
on their financiers, they could hardly realize a
viable independent economy; they are locked up and
they have no way out from their disaster politics,
but they could realize a dependent economy
presided over by autocratic and a despicable
dictatorship.
Given
the above scenario thus, the geopolitics
implications of the disaster politics of the Horn
of Africa is immense and its negative impact on
the Horn people will outweigh its positive
contributions; furthermore, if the geopolitics of
the Horn changes in accordance to the twin forces
political program, the Arab League and some
Western nations could install security and defense
bases in the heart of Africa, as already
speculated by some observers.
On
the other hand, when the twin forces attempt to
implement their disaster-infested politics, they
could inadvertently provoke other non-Western and
non-Arab nations that have invested in Africa.
China in particular has invested heavily in all
Africa and the Chinese have told the world that
“Ethiopia is the gate to China’s investment in
Africa”, and for this reason alone, China is not
going to be a bystander and simply watch when its
dear investments are being dismantled. Moreover,
China, Turkey, and Russia could strengthen their
political-cum-military capacities and Putin could
expedite the Eurasia camp of countries, and a new
global order could be forged. This, in turn, might
create a new bipolar or multipolar world; or a new
cold war; or even a third world war. That will be
the day.
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