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The Nation State A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa Edition Open Access Series Editors Ian T. Baldwin, Gerd Graßhoff, Jürgen Renn, Dagmar Schäfer, Robert Schlögl, Bernard F. Schutz Edition Open Access Development Team Lindy Divarci, Sylvia Szenti, Klaus Thoden The Edition Open Access (EOA) platform was founded to bring together publication ini­ tiatives seeking to disseminate the results of scholarly work in a format that combines tra­ ditional publications with the digital medium. It currently hosts the open­access publica­ tions of the “Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge” (MPRL) and “Edition Open Sources” (EOS). EOA is open to host other open access initia­ tives similar in conception and spirit, in accordance with the Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the sciences and humanities, which was launched by the Max Planck Society in 2003. By combining the advantages of traditional publications and the digital medium, the platform offers a new way of publishing research and of studying historical topics or current issues in relation to primary materials that are otherwise not easily available. The volumes are available both as printed books and as online open access publications. They are directed at scholars and students of various disciplines, as well as at a broader public interested in how science shapes our world. The Nation State A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young Studies 14 Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Studies 14 Cover Image: The wrong model: Nation states as islands. By Kristin Magnucki and Günther Schlee. ISBN 978­3­945561­56­0 e­ISBN [PDF] 978­3­945561­57­7 e­ISBN [EPUB] 978­3­945561­58­4 DOI 10.34663/9783945561577­00 First published 2021 by Max­Planck­Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge: https://www.mprl­series.mpg.de/ Published under Creative Commons Attribution­ShareAlike 4.0 International https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by­sa/4.0/ The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d­nb.de. Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge Scientific Board Markus Antonietti, Ian T. Baldwin, Antonio Becchi, Fabio Bevilacqua, William G. Boltz, Jens Braarvik, Horst Bredekamp, Jed Z. Buchwald, Olivier Darrigol, Thomas Duve, Mike Edmunds, Fynn Ole Engler, Robert K. En­ glund, Mordechai Feingold, Rivka Feldhay, Gideon Freudenthal, Paolo Galluzzi, Kostas Gavroglu, Mark Geller, Domenico Giulini, Günther Görz, Gerd Graßhoff, James Hough, Manfred Laubichler, Glenn Most, Klaus Müllen, Pier Daniele Napolitani, Alessandro Nova, Hermann Parzinger, Dan Potts, Sabine Schmidtke, Circe Silva da Silva, Ana Simões, Dieter Stein, Richard Stephenson, Mark Stitt, Noel M. Swerdlow, Liba Taub, Martin Vingron, Scott Walter, Norton Wise, Gerhard Wolf, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Gereon Wolters, Zhang Baichun. Contents Preface................................................................ 3 List of Acronyms ...................................................... 5 1 Introduction John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young .......................... 9 2 The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa John Markakis ......................................................... 19 3 Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia John Young ............................................................ 55 4 The Afar John Markakis ......................................................... 83 5 Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region Günther Schlee ......................................................... 107 6 South Sudan: The Fractured State John Young ............................................................ 145 7 Conclusion John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young . 167 References ............................................................ 171 Preface The authors of this study are social scientists who have spent their professional lifetimes studying the process of development in sub­Saharan Africa since it emerged from colonial rule and interpreting the subject for the general public. African studies involve several dis­ ciplines, including social anthropology, history, and political science, represented in this volume by Günther Schlee, John Markakis and John Young, respectively. The three authors do not comprise a particularly diverse group; they are three old white men. But their com­ bined experience in the field spans 135 years, and the Horn of Africa is the regional focus for all three. As it happens, this region also represents a striking paradigm of the enduring crisis of the Western nation­state model adopted in Africa, which is the theme of this collaborative volume. There is broad agreement between the three of us on this issue and the problem of Eurocentrism in African studies generally, although we do not have a unified position on other matters, and this will become apparent from our individual contributions. Scholars on the subject of imported nation­state models in Africa concur that crisis resulted from a failure to consider material, social, cultural, and political contexts on a local level. The outcomes of these efforts, however, should not be considered a dead end, rather a stage in the ongoing process of development that is gradually transforming this setting. The field is further enriched with studies on state fragility and state failure, as well as proposed policies to prevent such scenarios. (Among the latter is a program designed “to build good leadership capacity among young African politicians” (Rotberg 2003)). The mosaic of nation­states that exists today is often called the Westphalian order af­ ter the Peace of Westphalia treaties ended ongoing wars in Western Europe in the mid­ seventeenth century, in part through the creation of sovereign states. Around this period, Europe experienced great leaps in technology and had an abundance of natural resources, and the sovereign state model was considered easily modifiable to meet local requirements for effective governance. In the mid­twentieth century, this same model was imposed across sub­Saharan Africa without preparation or adaptation to the continent that colonizers consid­ ered to be technologically underdeveloped and lacking in raw materials. The consequences of these actions are well known, yet poorly understood. In this volume, the authors seek to clearly define the causes and consequences of the imported nation­state crisis. Although this model has been in place in Africa for over three quarters of a century, its suitability to the locations and eras in which it was imposed has seldom been raised in African studies. A notable exception in the Anglophone world is Basil Davidson (1992) who called the nation­state model the “Black man’s burden” in a book of the same title. Francophone Africanists were pioneers in economic anthropology, and prolific critics of orthodox development theory. Steeped in the Marxist worldview, however, they had little to say about the state, which they regarded as a dependent variable. The fact that the concept of the nation­state has not been more thoroughly addressed challenges the epistemological integrity of African studies. Where is the science on which this discipline claims to be based? 4 Preface Founded in the West and dominated by Western scholars, the discipline thrives on modes of analysis that privilege European categories or ascribe greater rationality and agency to Western actors above all others. It is impossible to question the universal validity of the Western model within the limits of this discipline for there is no room for an alternative within its analytical spectrum. Because this methodology is part of the standard curriculum, scholars of African studies, including Africans, tend to be unprepared to challenge it. Any attempt to raise the topic elicits the stock response: what is the alternative? The authors of this study do not intend to answer this question. Their intention is to provoke a debate on the crisis of the nation­state that will focus on the alien model itself, not on the African setting. They aim to do this by presenting the manifold impact of the crisis on two levels of society in the Horn: national and local. The challenges posed to the state as a result of the popular uprising in Sudan in 2019 and the outbreak of civil war in Ethiopia in November 2020 give further significance to this study. John Markakis, Günther Schlee, John Young Halle (Saale), December 2020 List of Acronyms ALF Afar Liberation Front ANDM Amhara National Democratic Movement ANDP Afar National Democratic Party ANLM Afar National Liberation Movement APDO Afar People’s Democratic Organisation ARCSS Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan ARDUF Afar Revolutionary Democratic United Front AU African Union AVA Awash Valley Authority CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union CVE Countering Violent Extremism DDR Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration DIU Dams Implementation Unit DUP Democratic Unionist Party EIJM Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement ELF Eritrean Liberation Front EPDM Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement EPLF Eritrean People’s Liberation Front EPRDF Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front EPRP Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party ESC Ethiopian Sugar Corporation ESM Ethiopian

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