The Horn of Africa: Africa’s Middle East

An overstatement, perhaps, but it reflects my growing concern with regard to the future of this region. In other posts, I’ve focused almost exclusively on Somalia and by extension, the proxy war being fought there between Ethiopia and Eritrea. That situation has over time deteriorated due to a growing insurgency, Ethiopia’s continued occupation of Somalia and the inability of the African Union to come up with the mere 8,000 peace keepers it committed itself to provide to facilitate Ethiopia’s withdrawal and the stability of the unpopular TFG. So far, the number of peace keepers totals 1,600 and all of which have been provided by Uganda. Additionally, the Darod clan dominated TFG has so far been unwilling, or unable to either compromise or negotiate a cessation of hostilities with the mostly Hawiyeh clan backed insurgency, which also includes remnants of the ICU. The situation has deteriorated to the point where Somalia’s interim Prime Minister has indicated that his government along with Ethiopian forces will seek to establish a Green Zone in Mogadishu, modeled after the US controlled Green Zone in Baghdad.

This past month, the UN Security Council disclosed the fact that Eritrea, has been arming and providing refuge to insurgents opposing the TFG, including Islamists from the ICU. A news report in the Seattle PI states that the US is considering designating Eritrea a state sponsor of terrorism for its role in financing the Shabab (remnants of the ICU). The VOA expands on this and reports that the US has given Eritrea 90 days to close its diplomatic mission in Oakland in an indication of the rising tensions between the two countries. The US State Department states that this move is in response to Eritrea’s harassment of the US diplomatic mission in the country. Eritrea also stands accused of supporting rebel forces in Sudan, and against the Sudanese government, who in turn has financed the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement. It is here, where the Horn’s two most pressing problems intersect (the crisis in Somalia, and the crisis in Darfur) and where the specter of a larger conflagration rears its ugly head.

First, to explain the title of this post, I’d note that this region suffers from some of same maladies that afflict the Middle East. Not only does the region have substantial petroleum resources, but these are located in disputed areas populated by ethnic or religious minorities who either resent the central government, or in some cases are actively fighting against it. An clear example of this is in Sudan, where almost 80% of its oil resources are located in the country's predominantly Christian south with whom Khartoum fought a bloody civil war which ended in 2005. As part of the peace process, Southern Sudan is scheduled to hold a referendum on independence from Khartoum in 2011, but few expect Khartoum to allow it to proceed. Ethiopia presents us with another example. There is oil in the Ogaden region of the country, where the minority Somali population have been fighting an ongoing struggle for independence from Addis Ababa. Two issues arise here, first is the fact that the region is part of what the ICU called Greater Somalia; second, in order to transport the oil from the region to market, Ethiopia will need access to the sea, and it views a friendly Somalia as its best bet.

Additionally, due to the state-of-war between these neighboring nations, many governments have used these various crises as a means of suppressing dissent and curbing what little democratic gains had been made. Added to this, is the fact that the region not only hosted Osama bin Laden in the 1990s (Sudan), but also has reportedly hosted al Qaeda elements (Somalia’s ICU and Eritrea) from time to time, since then. What’s more, due to entrenched rivalries and internal turmoil in each respective country, all aid in some way insurgent or otherwise disaffected groups in the others in hopes of keeping them weak or replacing unfriendly regimes.

The Sudanese government, for example, while fighting against rebel forces in Darfur, has not only financed the Janjaweed, but also other groups in neighboring countries such as Chad, the Central African Republic, and Uganda (The Lord’s Resistance Army). At times, the Janjaweed themselves have engaged in cross-border attacks, as was the case earlier this year in Chad, further exacerbating the humanitarian crisis on the border. More recently, the government of Southern Sudan helped to mediate between the Ugandan government and the LRA, but because it is not seen as a counterweight to the government in Khartoum, it has little effect on other conflicts in surrounding areas. The countries affected by Sudan’s meddling have in turn, financed rebel forces in Darfur, and Southern Sudan before that. For its part, Ethiopia has backed the Sudanese government, particularly against meddling by Eritrea, who has also financed the Ogaden and Oromo Liberation Fronts in Ethiopia (ethnic Somalis). This even as Khartoum and Addis Ababa (along with Cairo) continue their ongoing dispute over their shared water rights on the Nile River, but I digress. Ethiopia, for its part has also backed rebel movements inside of Eritrea with a view to enhancing the prospects for regime change. However, even as Ethiopia pays Eritrea back in kind, its leader Meles Zenawi is particularly sensitive about ceding any more Ethiopian territory; this as he is widely condemned in Ethiopia for having lost its access to the Red Sea. As has been reported here (note that ICU and UIC are the same group, the name at one point was the United Islamic Courts, and later the Islamic Courts Union) and elsewhere, it was for this reason that the ICU’s threat to recover the Somali portions of Ethiopia (as well as its financing of rebel groups there) prompted Zenawi’s forceful intervention in Somalia.

Sudan has been getting a lot of attention in news headlines lately, and the UN Security Council recently authorized a joint UN/AU peacekeeping force. However, a more potentially explosive conflict has until very recently not received the attention it deserved. Tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea have been rising since the former’s invasion and occupation of Somalia. Things have reached such a point that some news outlets have reported an increase in military troop activity on their shared border, near the town of Badme, which though awarded to Eritrea by an international tribunal is claimed by Ethiopia as its own. Uganda, who has already lost troops in Somalia, and has expressed a willingness to increase its troop presence, is caught in the middle of this proxy war, which at the same time reduces the willingness of other countries to contribute to the peace-keeping effort even as they contribute to the mixed UN/AU peacekeeping force in Sudan.

According to Pendergast and Jensen, the problem is not so much that we can't get countries to contribute to a peace-keeping effort, but rather that we are attempting to engage in peace-keeping where we have yet to secure any viable peace agreements. Pendergast and Jensen further argue that the US has been focused almost exclusively on counter-terrorism, which explains our support (as detailed by Barnett in Esquire) for Ethiopia’s war on the ICU and the reluctance with which we have approached the subject of pressuring Sudan on the issue of Darfur. Both of these countries have sought to make themselves indispensable to US counter-terrorism efforts. Sudan has tapped its past connections with Islamists to provide intelligence to the US about al Qaeda, and Ethiopia has been a steadfast ally for the better part of the last decade. Yet, as this article points out with regard to Ethiopia, for the US this has been a double edged partnership. The same holds true in Sudan, since their ‘cooperation’ makes us less willing to either push for more political/economic reforms, or for resolving issues like Darfur which in a very real way contribute to the very instability that makes this region a magnet for al Qaeda in the first place. Hence, our problem in the region is, as Pendergast and Thomas-Jensen put it, "counter-terrorism consumes US policy in the Greater horn as much as anti-communism did during the Cold War." This is despite, some initial moves, following the Ethiopian occupation of Somalia to get the TFG to negotiate and accommodate ‘moderate’ ICU members. That process has stalled and despite rhetoric to the contrary, the TFG has so far failed to deliver anything of substance. In short, we have allowed short-term needs to overshadow our long-term interests. Due to this, we have failed to deal with Darfur, or to push Ethiopia to accept the international tribunal’s decision on its border dispute with Eritrea; this without mentioning their backtracking on democratic governance.

As stated above, the US is now moving to sanction Eritrea for supporting terrorism, when the reality of what is happening in the Greater Horn is far more complicated, and only tangentially related to the GWOT and our fight against al Qaeda. That is, Eritrea is supporting ICU remnants and other insurgent forces in Somalia, not so much because it is allying itself with al Qaeda or Islamist movements in the region (as it has for years opposed Sudan’s attempts to do this very thing), but rather much of it has to do with tribal, national interests and issues that have remained unresolved since its independence from Ethiopia, such as their continuing border dispute. In picking Eritrea as the bad guy, we are treating a symptom and not the disease. In so doing, we may be doing more harm than good, because not only do we create yet another pariah state in the region, but we do it when it isn’t necessary. Eritrea in financing the Somali insurgency and ICU remnants is trying to undermine not American counter-terrorism efforts, but rather Ethiopian aspirations to establish a friendly regime in Somalia, which would give Ethiopia access to the sea for the first time since Eritrea seceded and became independent state. Eritrea uses its denial tactics, as a means of punishing Ethiopia for refusing to abide by the international arbitration which awarded it the town of Badme, which Ethiopia continues to occupy and where a 1,700 strong UN peace keeping force has recently been extended for an additional six months. Unless we deal with this aspect of the problem, no amount of sanctioning will dissuade Eritrea from continuing its support of Somali elements opposing Ethiopia. As an aside, Egypt in many ways backs Eritrea's efforts against Ethiopia due to their ongoing dispute over Nile River water usage rights. As such, the move while easy (making Eritrea a pariah) may in practice prove more difficult to implement since its actions are backed by another of our regional allies.

In like manner, the crisis in Darfur is also affected by this, because the Ethiopian-Eritrean rivalry also stretches to Sudan. Ethiopia is backing the Sudanese regime, while Eritrea backs the Darfuri rebels (some of whom are backed by Chad, CAR and Uganda in response to similar actions by Khartoum on their territory). This means that addressing one conflict at a time, may actually not get us very far because they are all interrelated and we need a policy that addresses not only Darfur, or Somalia, but the Greater Horn itself; the issue of coming up with enough forces to peace-keeping missions for both Darfur and Somalia makes this clear. So long as we continue to have separate policies for these conflicts, were are invariably going to end up robing Peter to pay Paul. We need to work on ways to get Sudan to cease its support for insurgents in neighboring countries, in return for an end to neighboring support for the Darfuri rebels. This while also moving Ethiopia to abide by the tribunals ruling on Badme, and on internal reforms. In addition, we also need to work with Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia on resolving the issue of water rights as they pertain to the Nile River. Doing so, would lessen tensions and reduce the incentive each party has to meddle in the others' internal affairs.

As noted in an earlier post, we will also have to deal with China's entry into the region where it is investing heavily. This is particularly true of Sudan, Chad and now Somalia, where it recently was awarded a permit for oil exploration. As I noted in my own post on the subject, Tom Barnett has argued that this is a good thing as it connects very disconnected regions in some way to the global economy, limiting America’s liability in the long run. However, it is undeniable that China's entry adds a new dimension to the type of policy we can pursue. There are many opportunities here, however, as China has a lot of influence in Sudan, and through them we can begin to resolve many of the outstanding issues that continue to make this, one of the most unstable places in Africa.

As I write this post, some positive developments are coming to light. First, the UN recently extended the AU mission in Somalia for another six months, while also moving to plan for a contingency UN led operation in the country. I also ran across this post from the Civil-Military relations blog, which noted that the VOA recently published a piece on an East African Nations Regional Peace-keeping force. The force's stated goal is to "handle any crisis, from terrorist attacks to natural disasters, on the African continent" and is expected to come online by 2010. The force will be called the Eastern Africa Standby Brigade and will be based in Addis Ababa and is also intended to address the high demand for peace-keepers in the reguon. According to the article, 13 countries have already agreed to participate, these are: Kenya, Uganda, Sudan, Rwanda, Mauritius, Madagascar, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Seychelles, Somalia and Tanzania. It is unclear, however, how Eritrea feels about the basing of the force on Ethiopian soil. These are good steps in the right direction, particularly the last one which seems to be an indigenous effort to address the region's problems, as opposed to an American or European led venture. However, even as some positive developments are reported, we also get troubling reports such as Khartoum's recent raid on a Darfur Refugee camp, which could threaten to derail peace negotiations, which are still two months off.

In trying to address the problems in this region, it is important that we move away from the administration's policy of seeing everything as part of the War on Terror. In part, that is what pushed us to acquiesce to Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia, and even the TFG's refusal to negotiate with moderate ICU members. These leaders even appeal to American sensibilities by raising the specter of al Qaeda behind every rock as a means to avoid having to make hard decisions to accommodate the legitimate demands of other tribes/groups within their territory. In Somalia's case, this means that the Darod dominated government will have to negotiate with the Hawiye backed insurgency. Unless they do so, the country will continue to be mired in chaos and anarchy. If the ICU achieved anything during its brief stint in power, it was that it brought calm and order to Somalia. So far, the TFG has failed to fill that vacuum. Recent reports even indicate that the ports, which the ICU had taken under governmental control and which it used to finance its operation are now merely prizes to be won between competing TFG factions (as is the case with regard to the Port of Kismayo).

It has been the administration's inability to address these problems in Iraq, for example (where for a long time the only enemy they saw was al Qaeda), that allowed things to devolve to where they now stand (even with the minor improvements achieved by the surge). We must learn from those mistakes and not repeat them again. Like Iraq, the issues surrounding the crises in Somalia and Darfur stem from local conditions, and conflicts between local tribes, reglious/ethnic groups and nation-states. While it is likely true that there are some al Qaeda elements in the region, they are not the most pressing problem. Rather, solving the festering problems identified above is of utmost importance, as more than anything, these will affect the region as a whole and determine whether the Horn can be immunized from the al Qaeda virus.

The TFG's inability to provide the Somali population with peace or prosperity is a problem, because the ICU, for all its doctrinal religious beliefs and alien Islamist ideology, was able to establish order, and to get a minimal state apparatus working again. If the TFG ultimately fails, and Somalia descends into anarchy once again, what message does that send the population that lived through both the TFG and ICU regimes (apart from inflaming tensions between the Darod and Hawiye clans)? Islam is the answer. That is the slogan of Islamists everywhere, particularly the Muslim Brotherhood. If the TFG is unable to provide even a minimum of what the ICU did, that is the message Somalis and others will carry from that experience, and that more than the presence of a few al Qaeda operatives is the most dangerous problem we face with regard to the GWOT. This of course, requires that before even looking for a strategy to address the problems of the region, we understand that things are never as simple as good vs. evil. As noted above, in most instances even our allies are engaging in practices which add to the instability of the situation. Picking sides, Ethiopia over Eritrea, only entrenches these problems without addressing their causes. This is not to say that Eritrea's actions are not bad, but rather that we need to understand the reasons behind them. Only by doing so can we hope to come up with a realistic strategy for dealing with the region and its many problems. Understanding that just as Eritrea has to cease supporting the most hard-core Islamist elements in Somalia, so too does Ethiopia (our ally) have to abide by international demands to resolve the border dispute with Eritrea over the town of Badme. That is, the issue is not is Eritrea a terrorist supporting state, but rather, what is motivating Eritrea to support Islamists in one theater (Somalia) while opposing them in another (Sudan)? The answer, of course, is Ethiopia's involvement. As such, it is incumbent for the US government to realize that looking at the region solely through a GWOT lense, which ignores the very real problems that exist and allows us to back strong men instead of economic development or democratic governance, is a strategy that will only fulfill that which we are trying to prevent; turning the region into a perfect base for Jihad.