The Horn of Africa States seems to be falling into a new trap, engineered from beyond the region and which will only cause the region to endure more pain, more horrendous and more damaging than it has already suffered over the past three to four decades. It is strange how the region falls into traps so easily, just like hares grazing in the wild. The region seems not to appreciate peace and all that it entails.
Most of the leaders of the region seem to be gullible to the lives and lies of others, perhaps for uno pocco di dolari or a fistful of dollars to borrow one of Sergio Leone’s western movies titles. The region can address its security issues, and development and governance challenges in a better way than has hitherto been the case and perhaps the first act, the key actors of the region could do is to think peace first, and not wars. It was why a Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to one of the leaders of the region who seems to have abused it multiple times.
Peace and stability in the region requires fundamental changes in the thinking processes of the current leaders who all seem to have abused the trust of the poor people in their jurisdictions be they in Somalia, Ethiopia, Djibouti and/or Eritrea. They should know that they have complete responsibility over the fate of their peoples, as to whether they suffer or live in peace. Poverty and peace are both functions of governance.
One thing they should be doing is to eliminate the foreign interferences or at least reduce them, as they themselves bring these interferences into play. The culprit usually falls to those who believe in their grandiose poise and in this case Ethiopia which seems to believe it can go alone, when it also knows it cannot stand alone.
It is how it is used by others to play their tunes and especially when the wrong historical narratives are played for it all the time – the Great Ethiopian empire, the historical Ethiopia, which was never colonized, etc., etc.…. These are all baseless narratives. Ethiopia was just a small Abyssinia at the turn of the nineteenth century in the Simien mountains which spread to Shoa and then spread over to the current large land space with the help of colonial Europe.
It was the local agent in the region for those foreigners and still works as that local agent for the same foreigners and particularly the French who do not care whether some Africans die in the process or not. It is reported that the French are building naval ships for a landlocked country like Ethiopia! But who is financing this wild venture? Perhaps the culprit is another foreign entity, which has interest in the region!
It was also, indeed, colonized by the Italians who built Addis Ababa from a small village in Shoa to its current status as the capital of Africa. The Italian names of “Merkato” in the center of Addis Ababa and “Plaza” are evidence of the Italian influences during their stay there.
Ethiopia should realize that conflicts and confrontations be they ethnic-based or confrontations with neighbors like it is working today on Somalia, Eritrea and Djibouti always disrupt the lives of its own people and those of other countries in the region. Development can never, therefore, be reached on the blood of others and one’s own people.
Ethiopia should abandon the continuous flare-ups which it initiates at the expense of its own people and neighbors. The countries of the region would neither serve the foreigners nor the region and most in danger is Ethiopia, in particular, which might end up the way it started with long ago as the warring enclaves in the high mountains of Ethiopia’s north.
Long-term stability of the region and hence its peace and prosperity depends on the region’s countries working together and not warring against each other. It also depends on each leader foregoing and stopping the wars within each country through realization that peace can only be obtained through equitable distribution of wealth and abandonment of the ethnic factor and justice. The best person for the best position and equality under the law, less corruption and the rule of law together with foresight for a better future should be added to the calculations. This is the way of peace and not war.
The Horn of Africa region needs to prioritize strengthening intra-regional dialogue not only to overcome regional challenges but also internal governance challenges. It is the only way to accelerate development in the region and hence peace and stability, both prerequisites for local and foreign investments, and hence jobs and employment.
There is no doubt that the region is rich in resources. The geostrategic location alone is a bountiful asset. Its large youthful population is both a market and a source of an efficient labor force with many years of working life ahead of them. Add to this, the large other resources in terms of agriculture and marine, sub-soil and even Aerospatiale, and the region is certainly not a poor region as it appears to be currently.
It is why the region needs to change its narrative from that of warring, conflicted, and confrontational ethnicities to one of peace, stability, and development thereof. The region would be surprised how fast it can change its fate. The second half of the last century was lost to being grounds for proxy wars of the rivalries between the Ex-Soviet Union and the Capitalist world. The region should not lose the first half of the twenty first century being the ground for the proxy wars of even smaller states of West Asia, let alone the proxy wars and competition between the larger countries of the West and the East.
There is nothing complex about peace. It is live and let others live. The countries of the region owe to each other that much and Ethiopia, the current bully in the region, should accept that it is a landlocked country. It is then when it will get the best terms for its survival and development. The Horn of Africa States region is a vast region and despite being poor, it owns and lies over rich resources. Its deposit of gold, oil and gas, lithium, iron ore and cobalt and even coltan and other minerals are vast. It is also an agricultural heaven for it can produce coffee, tea, and edible oils, cereals, some of them native to the region such as the teff. Its animal population, tame and exploitable is also vast and probably the largest in Africa. It is clear that there will be pressures on the region, as other countries covet its wealth, but that does not mean it should lose its way. It is how it is managed.
The region should change its narrative to “Rising Horn of Africa” in the place of the “Poor Horn of Africa” or the “Troubled Horn of Africa.” This is a possibility and not a mythical dream. Indeed millions of the region’s population live in poverty and the leaders who enjoy their lives on the backs of those poor people should start to think and act differently towards their own people. They should be ashamed of their lives when they see their people.
The leaders of the region are not only at each other’s throats but have no plans for the region. Each one of the leaders of the region works on his own turf as to what is good for his country or himself personally, perhaps, and that is why so many others are competing over this ready and ripe fruits for picking. No wonder there are so many foreign parties involved in the region, each one courting not only countries but also regions of countries in the region. The Tigray, Amhara, Oromia states and other are all part of the Ethiopian state but they deal with foreign parties on their own. The same goes for Somalia where nearly all the regions seem to have their own foreign policies.
It is why there is an urgent need for countries of the region to abandon this ill-advised competition among each other and collaborated. They should have created long ago an integrated economic platform to address the dealings with non-regional parties be they major countries like China or regional powers like the West Asian countries with enormous wealth.
Interference from others only creates more security perils for the region. The region, therefore, needs to cooperate and join forces in the face of the foreign parties who may have more wealth at present but do not have the best interest of the region at heart. The region’s organizations like IGAD and the East Africa Community, both NGO-like bodies who work on the basis of funds from beyond the region have all failed to install peace in the region. Perhaps the first step towards peace in the region is to deflate those organizations and work on a new platform, the Horn of Africa States, which should be negotiated among the five troubled countries of the region, namely the SEEDS countries of Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Sudan.
Such an organization should be working solely first to negotiate peace among the countries of the region. Making the countries come to the same level and platform is not an easy matter and such an organization will have to be a regional initiative and not based on interference, support, both financial and technical from others, if it has to truly succeed in this complex endeavor.
An important element in the works of the organization should be to respect for the sovereignty of the five countries of the region and if the country institutions of each state is weak, it should be helped to strengthen them. The region must know that it cannot remain the laughingstock of the world, which it really is today, as a result of its continuous intra-state and inter-state conflicts and confrontations coupled by its droughts and famines and hence cries for help all the time.
The peace and stability of the region cannot be the workings of the leaders only, although they can play significant roles. It is the regional citizen who should also play his role more expansively than has hitherto been the case. The regional citizen should be working earnestly in the peace processes of the region and its stability. It is the only way forward to address the security perils of the region.
