This week alone, leaders of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia met in Asmara to agree on a new package of economic and business cooperation between the three countries of the Horn. This is not the first such cooperation agreement and it wil not be the last. Cooperation in the Horn needs to be promoted not in a haphazard way but consistently or in a sustainable manner so that problems that might arise in the process can be addressed without delay. The three countries are playing a leading role in promoting peace, stability and cooperation in the region and they are likely to do so in the future too. They are the key countries of great strategic importance for economic development in the region. Eritrea and Somalia with their port outlets to the sea and Ethiopia as an emerging ‘land power’ so to speak, are likely to become the determinants of the nature and direction of future cooperation in the whole region.
According to some studies, before the advent of colonialism, the Horn of Africa did not know national borders and peoples of all ethnic groups and religious beliefs were living in a state of relative peace and tied together in mutually beneficial exchange of goods. They moved freely across non-existing borders, intermarried with one another and settled wherever they wanted and engaged in economic activities in accordance with the availability of resources. History tells us that, in what is known in history as the Scramble for Africa, European nations partitioned Africa at the Berlin Conference (1884-1885). The problems that the Horn of Africa presently faces are partially the making of colonial powers following which “thing started to fall apart” as Chinua Achebe would say.
According to recent study of the relationships between conflicts and economic cooperation, entitled “Prospects of Building Regional Economic Cooperation in the Horn of Africa” political instability has long characterized the region. The study says, “The Horn of Africa is one of the most politically unstable regions in the world. This vast area – comprising Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Eritrea and South Sudan, with about 140 million people – is linked not only by a shared history of conflict but also by a complex web of economic ties. Economic exchanges with the wider world have always been a feature of the region and its trading links with the global economy are growing.”
Thus, almost all countries of the Horn have experienced conflicts at one time or another in the long history of the region, the latest one being the newly independent state of South Sudan that is struggling to emerge from costly and internecine civil war after a painful search for peace.
The last hurdles in the South Sudanese recent political imbroglio are facing a real chance of being removed as the various political factions, those in power and in opposition, recently expressed their willingness to abide by the comprehensive peace agreement they are all parties to. The peace process in the country is showing signs of culminating in the power sharing agreement that had been agreed upon by the warring factions in the civil war from which the country has been staggering at least during the last three years. The people of South Sudan have unnecessarily suffered for many years as a result of the conflicts among the various ruling elites that trickled down into the various communities and produced a widespread ethnic conflict that claimed thousands of lives, injured tens of thousands and displaced millions.
The South Sudan conflict is showing signs of abating at least for two main reasons. First, the general situation in the Horn of Africa is showing solid signs of improvement. Ethiopia and Eritrea have left their misunderstandings behind and entered a period of peace and cooperation. The Sudanese political crisis after the ouster of former president Al Basher is resolved and a government of national unity is put in place. The general situation in the Horn has improved greatly and cooperation among member states is growing considerably.
The second reason for the improvement of the political situation in South Sudan is the fact that leaders of the opposing factions are tired of fighting an unwinnable war and are willing to come to the negotiating table and abide by the agreement they have already signed. The situation in neighboring countries such as Sudan and Ethiopia and Eritrea might also have a positive impact on changing the attitudes of the opposing groups. Peace can have a trickledown effect in the sense that peace and stability in neighboring countries can persuade the opposing factions to abandon the road of conflict and sit down for negotiations if not for durable agreement because conflict does no more pay any dividends.
The nations of the Horn share similar fates and they are so intertwined and interdependent that one cannot imagine them surviving as self-contained or self-sufficient national entities. The above-quoted study says the following on this score, “The Horn of Africa functions as a regional security complex, a community of states in which the security of any one country is intimately connected to the security of all the others.87 This applies as much to states’ internal security as to regional security among them.”
South Sudan can only benefit from the peace dividend in the neighboring countries because peace means business, trade and economic prosperity. This can be seen from what happened in the three years after independence when business relations between South Sudan, Ethiopia were booming. That positive process was unfortunately interrupted by the civil war in South Sudan until the present favorable situation was created. According to the above-quoted study, “The imperatives of insecurity have thus far placed overwhelming obstacles in the way of advancing formal economic cooperation in the Horn. Economic integration should be advanced within the institutional framework of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a regional grouping that includes Kenya and Uganda in addition to the six countries of the Horn.”
The other factor that can bring about positive changes in the region is Ethiopia’s new diplomacy of co-opting neighboring countries in the regional peace process by playing the role of mediator and supporter of positive initiatives. countries of the Horn region are historically, culturally, and economically interdependent so much so that no country can survive and less thrive alone by isolating itself in an ivory tower kind of existence.
As conflicts are negatively impacting all countries of the Horn, positive initiatives likewise are bound to positively impact them. If we take Ethiopia’s construction of the GERD project for instance, all neighboring countries are bound to benefit from it because the GERD is so big and so important that it will play a crucial role by accelerating the regional economic integration process. The above study reaffirms what has always remained a vivid reality and an unrealized dream in the region as follows, “Although closer economic integration may appear to be a political impossibility, the countries of the region remain bound by history and geography into relationships of interdependence that lend themselves to cooperation. There is great potential to enhance this through the development of transport corridors to sea ports, the management of shared water resources, common management of pastoral rangelands and improved energy security. IGAD deserves the support of donors to develop policy frameworks that are more appropriate for close but distrustful neighbors. In the face of half-hearted regional cooperation and collaboration, such policies should be more closely aligned to shared resource management and support for the production of regional public goods.”
This is in fact a challenge no country in the region can single handedly address. It requires the cooperation of all the countries that have already made the transition from conflict to economic reconstruction. In this sense, South Sudan will soon join the community of Horn nations that have already embarked on the same path of peace and prosperity because domestic, regional and international conditions are ripe for countries to abandon the beaten track of internal conflicts civil wars and inter-state dispute and enter a new era of collective peace and collective salvation.
The Ethiopian Herald Sunday February 2/2020
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
