“Peace and security strategy of Ethiopia and its lessons to the Horn of Africa”
Seminar Paper
Prepared by Yonas Sertse Dengle
Submitted to AAU
November 2013
Content
1. Introduction
2. Regional security analysis
3. Ethiopian security analysis
4. Synopses of Major Concepts and analysis of the strategy
i. The concept of peace
ii. The concept of security
iii. Development as instrument of peace and security
iv. Federalism instrument of peace and security
v. Democratization as instrument of peace and security
5. Ethiopian peace and security strategy
i. Development in Ethiopia.
ii. Ethnic Federalism
iii. Democratization
iv. Regional cooperation
6. Analysis
7. Conclusion and recommendation
1. Introduction
There is no agreement on the states that comprise the Horn region. The New World Encyclopedia defines the Horn of Africa as a political region that consists of only Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia. The term ‘greater Horn’ has also been used to include neighboring East African states that include Sudan north and south and Kenya. Medhane writes that only Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia comprise the Horn in strictly geographic terms (Medhane 2004: iii). For this study greater horn is consider s a orientation.
The Horn of Africa is one of the most unstable, insecure and underdeveloped region. It is synonymous with abject multiplicity of ethnic groups and internal strife, poverty, recurrent cycles and prolonged periods of hunger, drought, famine, food insecurity, diseases, huge population displacement and migration. It is a source of large number of refugees and internally displaced persons. Illegal cross-border movements, illicit small arms and light weapons smuggling, livestock raids and theft, tense and increased competition over scare resources, high rate of population growth and youth unemployment are all manifestations of the region and they remain impediments for durable peace and sustainable growth, (Ahmed 2007:92).
However in the last two decades and so Ethiopia has secured peace and stability and emerging as a reliable sub regional power. The secrets behind this success story are the adoption of developmentalism, democracy, federalism, newly emerged spirit of cooperation, a peaceful influence of Ethiopia in the region and international developments such as end of the Cold war, collapse of Somalia irredentism trend and end of military rule in the country. In addition adoption of different political orientation that guided the socio economic administration of the country play pivotal role.
Nevertheless other nations in the region namely Eritrea, Somalia, South and North Sudan are not in the same position. Therefore Ethiopian’s experience and peace and security strategy might be useful model for the region since there are a lot of socio economic similarity and political resemblance.
The objective of this paper is to evaluate the theoretical foundation of the peace and security strategy of Ethiopia and find out its strength and limitations. The study hypothesizes that regional cooperation and development plays pivotal role for the peace and security of Ethiopia that can be used as best experience for the nations of the Horn of Africa. However there are some damaging policies such as ‘ethnicism’ and Pseudo-Democratic model adopted by the Addis Ababa regime so others have to despise the trend.
The paper first tries to assess regional security analysis, examine the conceptual and theoretical foundation developemntalism federalism, democracy and other strategy as instrument of peace and security strategy. These will be tag on identifying the peace and security strategies of Ethiopian. Afterward the paper elaborates the practical experiences including success and disappointments that gives us the analysis and followed by conclusion and recommendations. Primary sources like policy documents and archives as well as secondary dates form books and internet sources and magazines are widely in use for this research.
2. Regional security analysis
The Horn of Africa is the most volatile region in the world. During the Cold War, the Horn of Africa was constantly affected by unexpected and sudden conflicts, tense ideological confrontations, territorial disputes, cross-border destabilization and continued militarization.
In the Post-Cold War period and beyond the Horn of Africa still hosts the deadliest cluster of conflicts globally: South Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea-Ethiopia, Darfur and Ogaden. Eight times as many people have died in the region’s recent conflicts as have perished in the more publicized Balkan conflicts. Since the Second World War, no other regional zone of conflicts has produced a greater concentration of deaths and destruction than the Horn of Africa, despite abundant diplomatic initiatives and peace processes.
The causes of these security threat and violence are numerous. To begin with interference from external powers, such as China, to secure supplies of natural resources, Egypt and Israel the desire to maintain their influence in the region and United States counter-terrorism policies influence politics and security in the Horn of Africa.
In the Horn of Africa, the nature of state power is a key source of conflict: political victory assumes a winner-takes-all form with respect to wealth and resources as well as the prestige and prerogatives of office. Irrespective of the official form of government, regimes in the Horn of Africa are, in most cases, autocracies essentially relying on ethnic loyalties. The military and security services, in recent times emerging from a liberation-front background, ensure the hold on power of these militarized regimes. By default, a controlled – not to speak of peaceful – change of power is an exception. And insufficient accountability of leaders, lack of transparency in regimes, non-adherence to the rule of law, and the lack of respect for human and people’s rights have made political control excessively important and the stakes dangerously high.
Also, given the highly personalised milieu in which politics operates in the Horn of Africa, ‘strong-man benevolent leader[s]’in the likes of Mengistu Haile Mariam, Gaafar Nimeiri or Siad Barre, Meles Zanawi, and Isayas Afeworqi who were all deeply insecure behind their ruthlessness and vindictive egomanias, were able to shape the political destiny of a state almost single-handedly and enter into either warm or conflictual relations with other states, inducing civilian populations to join in and converting them into military and paramilitary groups.
Moreover, political competition in the Horn of Africa is not rooted in viable economic systems. All of the region’s states are barely capable of reaching a level of economic development at which even the basic needs of their populations are met. Economic activities are strongly skewed towards primary commodities for export, which are subject to the whims of the fluctuating prices of the international commodity markets. Economic activities are also hampered by external dependence, inadequate infrastructure, shortage of capital, short-age of skilled labour and misguided development policies. Compounding this, the state is unable to provide adequate health and education services or
Even though the states of the Horn of Africa appear to be independent of each other, ‘there may have to be a sharing of resources. An obvious example is the flow of a river ... but shared resources may also be reflected in the cross-border movements of pastoralists’. The most prominent river is the Nile, which has always been an intricate part of the geopolitics of the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, Sudan and Egypt are geographically partly owners and users of the river, and all three consider it a major security issue.
The states of the Horn of Africa took advantage of every local tension or conflict to support rebel movements in neighbouring states. Sponsoring subversive activities had simply become a customary tool poised to destabilize and endanger the security of another state, in what some observers called the time-honored principle of ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ extending throughout the Horn of Africa.
This enhanced inter-state rivalries, mutual suspicion and the development of an eye-for-an-eye mentality. One example is the long and bloody game of tit-for-tat that bedeviled relations between Ethiopia and Sudan for over four decades.
It is ‘impossible to prove who was the original culprit in this long-running proxy war’,as ensuring the secrecy of the support’s details was paramount because a disclosure of its true extent would threaten its ef-fectiveness and risk major embarrassment to the regimes. In any case, Sudan’s support for Ethiopian rebel movements was the reason why the Sudan People’s Liberation Army enjoyed strong and sustained support from the post-1974 Ethiopianregime.
Alliances are usually assigned to prevent or contain external disruptions of security and to establish a viable equilibrium of forces in a region. The formation of alliances, which is part of the balance of power system, is a strategy devised and implemented in conjunction with regional or external partners.
In the Horn of Africa, alliances span a wide range of different configurations. They range from formal military alliances between leaders or regimes to state support for rebel movements in neighbouring states and further afield, or even alliances between rebel movements.
However, as in the case of subversion, alliances may not bring together like-minded partners, whose loyalties are by no means fixed, as they may be sometimes working at cross purposes. Every alliance ‘tends to have a logic of its own when once set in motion’ and accordingly cannot withstand the test of time (see Table 10). It is plausible to argue that one exceptional alliance that did stand the test of time and the Cold War’s realignments was the one established between Kenya and Ethiopia after they signed a military pact in 1963 aimed at neutralizing Somalia
To summarize due to the interference of external forces presences of multiplicity of ethnic groups in each countries of the Horn together with the presence of an ethnic group in one or two or more countries of the Horn rise suspicions and conflict. S sponsoring the rival of the other country and proxy wars are peculiar security threat. Religious fundamentalism and terrorism are also the other security concern of the region. Militarization, armed struggle for self rule and self determination ethnic and clan rivalry solidifying the current divisions of the Horn of Africa
Interdependency of national security of countries of the Horn has been proved as fact by peace and strategy scholars. Absence of democracy and liable leadership that manage ethnic and religious rivalry the region are making the region a battleground.
Special security analysis for the security threat of Ethiopia is required since Ethiopia’s case was the model of reference in the study.
3. Ethiopian security analysis
Ethiopia is located in this part of the world and was synonymous with famine and war for long period of time. The very survival of the Ethiopian state has been challenged by various factors. The major ones include process involved in state formation, the image of the state, separatism, irredentism and external intervention by proxy.
There are a number of internal and external factors that caused the under development and conflict in the region most importantly in Ethiopia. Internal division and ethnic conflict were sources of conflict and separatism in Ethiopia. Presence of many ethnic groups, plurality of religions and ethnicity and heterogeneous society and together with absence of democratic culture and absence of matured and strong institutions that can management conflict and build peace aggravated the existing conflict. Absence of governance provoked the conflict and diminishes peace building conditions.
a. Irredentism
In addition irredentism the quest to gain the territory occupied Somali ethnic territory in Eastern part of the country is the national threat for Ethiopian regimes. The successive Somali regimes employed various techniques to realize their grandeur dreams of creating “Greater Somalia” by using propaganda and diplomatic moves at international fora, building arms capability, organizing and infiltrating insurgents inside the Ethiopian territory to the extent of naked invasion.
b. Intervention by Proxy
There are various factors that encourage states to pursue a policy of intervention by proxy vis-à-vis other states. According to Horowitz (1985:273), the first reason lies in the principle of considering “the enemies of one's enemies as friends”. According to some authors (Dawit, 1989; Erlich, 1986; 2007; Korn, 1986; Woodward, 1996; 2003), the neighboring states such as Somalia and the Sudan as well as regional actors including the Arab states had provided insurgents striving to dislodge the regimes in Ethiopia with arms, logistics, training and explicit ideological support. The involvement and interference of international actors and regional powers aggravated the situation. International situations such as the cold war and Arab Israel conflict had its repercussions on aggravating conflict in Ethiopia. The quest for domination in the region among the Horn countries most importantly between Ethiopia and Somalia, Sudan and recently between Ethiopia and Eritrea created fertile ground for combating elements to distort peace and fuel the internal conflict. The natural resources particularly the Nile invite significant involvement of Egypt and its allies in the internal divisions and turmoil of the country and aggravated conflict in the country.
Egypt persistently follow weakening Ethiopia and aggravating internal conflict and inculcate mistrust among different political forces, religious and ethnic groups in Ethiopia. Egypt hegemony in the North East Africa and rival power in the Nile basin for Ethiopia instigate suspicion and rivalry against Ethiopia from its neighboring nations due to its aspiration to dominate the Nile basin and utilize the Nile waters unfairly.
All secessionist organization such as OLF, ONLF, TPLF, EPLF, Ginbot 7 and so on has the financial and material support of Egypt and its allies such as Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Yemen and so on. This Egyptian divisive agenda and activity has been a mare suspicion until recently. However on August 28 2012 a secret meeting had been held in Cairo among different Egyptian prominent political parties and religious leaders and it reveal their customary policy and strategy of assisting opposing political parties and armed groups so as to weaken Ethiopia in hope of forcing Ethiopia to halt the construction of the grand renaissance dam.
Not only Egypt bust also Sudan, Eritrea and Somali were arming the opposition and armed rebels of the other group. This reciprocal of arming and assisting the opposition of the other groups further escalated mistrust and suspicion.
The existing reality is indeed fertile to an opportunistic alliance; using the hostile relation between Eritrea and Ethiopia, and mutual intervention taking into account that both states have perennial internal problems and both are hosting opposing groups of their counterparts in order not to be an odd man out victim .