Editorial: The Horn of Conflict

Author(s): John Markakis

Source: Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 30, No. 97, The Horn of Conflict (Sep.,

2003), pp. 359-362

Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4006980

Accessed: 18/01/2010 03:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless

you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=taylorfrancis.

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed

page of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Taylor & Francis, Ltd. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Review of

African Political Economy.

http://www.jstor.org

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

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

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. Instead, everything

possible is done to frustrate its aspirations and to throw Somaliland back into the

Somali cauldron.

To confound its problems further, the Horn has once more become a stage in a violent

international struggle in which it has no stake; to wit, the war on terror. As a result,

foreign interference in the region's muddled affairs is now greater than ever. The

American military are back in a region they suspect is seething with Islamic

fundamentalism and crawling with Al Qaida agents. On their part, the regimes in the

Horn are jostling each other to offer them bases at knockdown prices. A Joint Task

Force-Horn of Africa was set up under an American general to run this sideshow that

covers the land, airspace and coastal waters of Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, Djibouti,

Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen. A force of about 2,000 personnel recently moved into

Djibouti, whose regime won the first bid. Amedee Bollee in this issue details its

motives and expected pecuniary benefit. The Americans are also in Sudan, where they

have set up a mission to monitor a dubious cease-fire between the regime there and

the Southern rebels. Staffed with retired US military officers, the mission has offices in

Rumbek in Southern Sudan and Khartoum. American and European pressure and

money have promoted parallel peace negotiations for Sudan and Somalia, whose

background and prospects are discussed in this issue by Lionel Cliffe.

Seeing an opportunity for political profit as well, the embattled regimes in the Horn

wasted little time in discovering 'terrorists' among their opponents and pointing

them out to the Americans, hoping to see them listed in Washington's index of

362 Review of African Political Economy

proscribed organisations. If history is any guide, the war on terror is bound to

exacerbate local conflicts, if only by pouring arms into the region.

The post-colonial history of the Horn is a tragic tale of endemic social conflict and

political fragmentation. Who is to blame for this? Ali Iye in this issue points a finger at

the region's intellectuals who stand accused of betraying their mission and their

people by rationalising and propagating every parochial and divisive issue history

has bequeathed to the region. Incapable of transcending sectarian boundaries and

hoary myths, they exacerbate social contradictions and tensions that lead to violent

conflict. Intellectuals in the Horn enlist in every cause, no matter how absurd it might

be, and offer their services to every regime and its opponents regardless of merit. The

most serious accusation is the intellectual's failure to produce knowledge relevant to

conditions in the region that could serve as the basis for solutions of its many

problems. Instead, imported ideologies are espoused without critical examination,

and pre-packaged programmes are adopted without local input. The results have

been uniformly disappointing, yet the mimetic process goes on.

In the context of development, conflict is considered the main obstacle to progress.

Accordingly, Andrew Natsios, the head of USAID, recently directed all missions in

Africa to carry out country 'conflict vulnerability' studies prerequisite to planning aid

programmes. The cause and effect link postulated in the notion that conflict retards

development is a glaring truism that can be turned on its head; to wit, lack of

development leads to conflict. No lesser truism this, yet one that points to the heart to

the matter. There may be a host of contributing elements in the generation of a conflict

- as the Afar-Ise case presented in this issue by this writer shows - however, the

prime cause and catalyst, more often than not, is a struggle for access to scarce

resources, i.e. a struggle for survival. Lack of development means new resources are

not produced and existing ones are becoming scarcer. In the Horn, state power is the

most direct and effective means of gaining access to scarce resources. Consequently, a

share of state power is most often the bone of contention at first instance, and most

conflicts involve the state in one form or another. To demonstrate this intrinsic link

one needs simply to lay maps of those parts of the region that are (a) the least

developed, (b) politically excluded, (c) and conflict ridden, on top of each other. The

match is nearly perfect, and it is no coincidence.