Volume 30 2003 Issue 97

Review of African Political Economy No.97:359-362 © ROAPE Publications Ltd., 2003 ISSN 0305-6244 The Horn of Conflict John Markakis Nearly twenty years ago, the editorial of ROAPE’s first special issue (No. 30, 1984) on the Horn of Africa opened with the sombre comment: ‘Manifold, violent social conflict is the hallmark of contemporary history in the Horn of Africa.’ Civil wars were raging then in Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. The latter two states had fought their second war a few years earlier, and relations between them were extremely hostile. Each was patronised and armed by one of the rival superpowers that were running a cold war sideshow in this corner of African. Not unrelated to conflict, a biblical famine was ravaging the region for the second time within a decade. The editorial of the second ROAPE special issue (No. 70, 1996) on this region observed that some things there had changed for the better. One major conflict had ended when Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia, and both states now had a young, battle-tested and sophisticated leadership avowedly committed to peace and development. Foreign power interference had subsided with the end of the cold war, and a continent-wide wave of democratisation was seen lapping at the borders of the Horn. Interstate relations in the region had improved greatly, ambitious schemes of regional cooperation were envisaged, and demobilisation of armies and guerilla forces was in progress. Added to the expected peace dividend, foreign investment was anticipated to boost development now that socialism, previously the vogue in the region, had given way to the free market. The editorial also noted some things had changed for the worse. Conflict had caused the collapse of the Somali Republic – a first for Africa – and had spread to Djibouti and to parts of northern Sudan. The latter now claimed the dubious distinction of hosting Africa’s oldest conflict. Regrettably, that hopeful period proved short-lived. Conflict is still the hallmark of the Horn and the subject of the present ROAPE special issue. That period came to a jarring end with the outbreak of war between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998, a bizarre affair involving two regimes which – to use an outmoded term – were till then considered ‘fraternal’. This was the fourth war fought by states in the Horn in the post-colonial era, a regional record for Africa. Leenco Lata in this issue looks for the sense in what was dubbed a ‘senseless’ conflict. His search for the real causes of the Eritrea-Ethiopia war, as opposed to the claims of the belligerents, is like peeling an onion. Behind each layer of imputed causes lay another, deeper and more potent layer, while the level at which groups appear to be in confrontation descends from state to region to ethnic group and it sub-divisions. Was this a war between two states, between the Tigray region of Ethiopia and the highland region of Eritrea, between two branches of the Tigray ethnic group that spans the border, or between two closely related regimes? What is clear is that none of the imputed causes seems remotely worth the cost of a massive war fought by two of the poorest states on earth. Predictably, the human and material cost of the war was considerable. Tens of thousands lost their lives, hopes for economic progress were blasted, and both J97new.pmd 359 10/28/03, 10:52 360 Review of African Political Economy countries have been in the grip of famine ever since. The political consequences of the war for both regimes were unpredictable. The ruling parties in both countries suffered deep splits in their leadership, precipitated, if not caused, by the war. Both lost many of their founders and leading figures, and with them went the last vestiges of the collective leadership that had been a source of strength in the past. In both cases, the winning faction had control of the state apparatus and used it to crush opposition from within the party. Once more, revolution has eaten its children, after first crushing them with the apparatus of the state it, itself, created. The split in the leadership and the widespread purges of the rank and file that followed, seriously limited the capacity of these parties to provide political support for the incumbent regimes, leaving them dependent on the state apparatus for their survival. Both regimes have many enemies. At least a dozen organisations are committed to the overthrow of the regime in Eritrea, although only one – the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement – is currently active inside the country. Half a dozen organisations have a similar goal in Ethiopia, where two of them – Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) – are waging low intensity insurgencies in the eastern and southwestern periphery of the country. The potential of these insurgencies is seriously limited by the fact that both Fronts suffer from crippling factionalism and unresolved leadership problems. Medhane Tadesse and John Young in this issue trace the dramatic split in the leadership of the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) in Ethiopia. It is not easy to establish the rationale for the fracture in an organisation renowned for the cohesiveness of its leadership. Differences over strategy in the war against Eritrea seem to have been a catalyst for the challenge launched by his senior colleagues to the growing autonomy of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. In the event he prevailed, but at the cost of seriously weakening his political base. Meles outmanoeuvred and isolated his opponents, and afterwards jailed a few of them for ‘corruption’, but did not attempt to annihilate them. President Issayas Afewerki in Eritrea saw off a similar challenge with much harsher methods. A dozen of his former comrades and senior colleagues are detained incommunicado in unknown locations, with their lives in peril because they are charged with ‘treason’. Debessay Hedru in this issue depicts the Kafkaesque political atmosphere that has descended on Eritrea, and dashed the extravagant hopes raised by victory in the war of independence against Ethiopia. The fact that a dozen years later Eritreans are seeking political refuge in Ethiopia is the height of irony. What is striking in both countries is the gullibility of veteran guerilla fighters-turned politicians who relied on party regulations and ‘constitutional’ provisions to challenge comrades who controlled the state apparatus. The regime in Sudan also suffered a split when Hassan El Turabi broke with Omar Hassan Al Bashir, depriving the military ruler of the politico-ideological cover offered by the National Islamic Front. The regime managed to overcome this setback thanks to the revenues provided by oil from the Southern region, a resource it has been able to exploit unhindered because of the unending fragmentation in the ranks of the Southern Sudanese rebels. John Young’s contribution in this issue portrays the kaleidoscopic nature of the conflict in Southern Sudan where, behind a facade of catholic Southern resistance against Northern Arab rule, a bewildering array of armed factions struggle for power and resources. ‘Commanders’ change sides easily and frequently, a situation that bodes ill for the future. Southern Sudanese factionalism not only plays into the regime’s hands and weakens the southern cause, it also raises serious questions about the prospects of future governance in an autonomous or independent Southern Sudan. The flames of conflict have spread to J97new.pmd 360 10/28/03, 10:52 Editorial: The Horn of Conflict 361 parts of the North. Preoccupied with the war in the South, the regime in Khartoum has allowed a decades-old communal conflict in the far West to ripen into a regional insurgency led by the Darfur-based Sudan Liberation Army, while Beja rebels in the Northeast skirmish with government forces along the border with Eritrea. Somalia remains a battleground for warlords, clan militias, and religious groups with fundamentalist leanings, where Ethiopia feels compelled to intervene forcefully on occasion to help friends and keep enemies at bay. State collapse in this case has lasted long enough to have acquired a semblance of normality, leading Ken Menkhaus in this issue to look for patterns that underlay and explain this unique state of affairs. Disaggregating the Somali debacle into three distinct crises – collapse of central government, protracted armed conflict, and lawlessness – he notes significant changes over the past dozen years, with conflict becoming more localised and less bloody, and criminality more constrained by customary law and private security forces. These trends are linked to changing interests on the part of the Somali elite, who now profit less from war and banditry and more from commerce and services, enterprises that require a predictable operating environment. The country’s elite would profit greatly from the revival of a recognised but ineffective ‘paper’ state. Interestingly, the inability of the elite to cobble together such a state is seen as a strategy of ‘risk aversion’. The Somali elite fear change in the operating environment that, though far from ideal, is one in which they have learned to survive and profit. Somaliland is an oasis of relative peace and stability in a turbulent region. Mark Bradbury in this issue describes how this segment of the Somali nation managed to detach itself from the main body, and spared itself the fratricidal mayhem that continues in the south. He describes a functioning political process that is a mixture of the traditional and modern, and makes the case for international recognition of this mini-state; as did Ian Spears in the last ROAPE issue (No.95, 2003). Oddly enough, Somaliland’s achievement remains unrecognised and unrewarded by the international community which takes its cue from the United Nations.

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