Regionalization of Conflict and Opportunities for Peace in the Horn of Africa
BY TERRENCE LYONS
Protracted civil wars are nearly always embedded within regional and global systems of insecurity where conflict in one area feeds and, in turn, is fed by tensions and confrontation in another. Analysts have pointed out the regional dimensions of conflicts in the Middle East, Balkans, Central and West Africa, and in other war zones where the distinction between civil war, cross-border interventions and interstate war is blurred. As globalization challenges the sovereign integrity of weak states in a variety of ways, civil wars are increasingly linked to conflict dynamics at the regional and international levels. These systems tend to make specific conflicts more difficult to resolve but also generate new opportunities to make progress on linked conflicts when major changes take place anywhere in the broader region.
Events in late 2005 and early 2006 in the Horn of Africa provide an opportunity to examine how conflicts become regionalized. Recent upheavals in Somalia are embedded within regional rivalries between neighboring states such as Ethiopia and Eritrea. These struggles are further complicated by connections to the global war on terrorism and Washington’s concerns that the leadership of the Islamic Courts in Somalia was linked to al-Qaeda. Stalled processes of political reform in Ethiopia and increased authoritarianism in Eritrea are also part of this regional system of insecurity and conflict.
Somalia, the archetypical failed state, has lacked a functioning central government since 1992. At times, rivalries within Somalia have become linked to the broader international community, as during the period of UN peacekeeping in the early 1990s. Somalia’s internal issues have also become intertwined with affairs in Ethiopia and other neighboring states, as when Ethiopia attacked the Somali Islamist group al-Itihaad al-Islamiya in 1996. Renewed conflict in Mogadishu in May and June 2006 pitted a US-supported Anti-Terror Alliance of militia leaders against the forces organized by the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC). The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) based in Baidoa was unable to gain control in most of Somalia. Later in 2006, power within the UIC shifted from relative moderates to hard-liners who controlled the main militias, flows of arms, and funds from outside state and non-state actors. Ethiopia and the United States viewed this radicalization as a threat to their respective interests.
Non-Somali regional actors escalated their involvement in December 2006, when Ethiopia sent several thousand troops equipped with tanks and aircraft to oust the UIC and assisted the TFG in establishing itself in Mogadishu. Contrary to the expectations of many outside observers, the UIC retreated from Mogadishu without a fight. Ethiopia and TFG troops subsequently trapped remnants of the Courts’ militias along the Kenyan border. In January 2007, the United States launched two air strikes against suspected al-Qaeda leaders in southern Somalia using an AC-130 gunship. Both attacks failed to kill their intended targets.
The Ethiopia-Eritrea war of 1998-2000 developed out of unresolved issues related to Eritrea’s independence from Ethiopia, following the defeat of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991. This conflict then became linked to the power struggles within Somalia. While the spark that initiated the fighting arose from controversy over the precise location of their international border, the rapid escalation and stubborn commitment to contentious strategies developed because neither regime felt it could compromise on nationalist positions. The war generated large casualties and huge costs, with perhaps 100,000 killed, a million displaced, and a generation of development opportunities squandered. The two sides signed the Algiers Agreement in 2000, which created a 25-kilometer Temporary Security Zone to be patrolled by the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) and the Eritrea- Ethiopia Border Commission (EEBC) to delimit the border.
In April 2002, the border commission issued its ruling and determined that key parts of the disputed zone, including the symbolic town of Badme, belonged to Eritrea. Ethiopian leaders strongly objected to the ruling and have failed to implement it. In October 2005, Eritrea, frustrated with the international community’s unwillingness to pressure Ethiopia, began taking measures intended to force action. Eritrea banned UNMEE helicopter flights, which led the UN to withdraw its forces from nearly half of its deployment sites. In November 2005, the UN demanded that Eritrea lift its restrictions and Ethiopia accept the EEBC’s border demarcation decisions. Lack of progress in implementing the Algiers Agreement led the UN to reduce the size on UNMEE and for the EEBC to pursue its work in demarcating the boundary using aerial maps in the absence of cooperation from either state.
The Ethiopian- Eritrean border crisis became linked to the conflict in Somalia as both states escalated the conflict through their support for opposing sides in Somalia. Addis Ababa supported the weak TFG. Asmara, consistent with a deeply ingrained pattern of giving support to the enemy of one’s enemy, facilitated arms supplies to the UIC and Ethiopian insurgent groups such as the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) operating from Somalia, hoping to tie Ethiopian forces down away from their disputed border.
The Somali crisis was also linked to domestic political struggles within Ethiopia. After a series of boycotted and noncompetitive elections in 1995 and 2000, elections in 2005 presented the Ethiopian people with a remarkable opportunity to express their political views by participating in a poll that offered them a meaningful choice. Controversy over the counting process, violent demonstrations, a decision by key leaders in the opposition to boycott parliament, and the subsequent arrests of top opposition politicians, civil society leaders, and journalists, however, raised concerns that Ethiopia might degenerate into political violence. The regime has restored order but has effectively criminalized dissent and closed down political space.
Although the opposition remains marginalized by repression and by its own tactics, the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Party (EPRDF) still faces fundamental challenges in relating to two large constituencies that are essential for any Ethiopian regime to govern successfully. First, the EPRDF has failed to develop a significant base of popular support among the Oromo people. The Oromo represent 40% of the population, and many remain loyal to the Oromo Liberation Front despite that organization’s inability to organize openly within Ethiopia since 1992. Second, the May 2005 elections saw an almost complete sweep by the opposition in the main cities.
Without a basis for support in the Oromo region or in the urban areas, the EPRDF’s ability to govern is inherently precarious and must rely upon force, which in turn alienates more of the population. The 2005 elections demonstrated high levels of opposition but failed to usher in an orderly transition based on peaceful multiparty competition. The links between some Ethiopian opposition groups to Eritrea and the OLF’s willingness to pursue military strategies while working alongside Eritrea and the UIC stifled prospects for political reform and decreased the space for non-violent participation.
Political restrictions in Eritrea have increased dramatically since the end of the Ethiopia-Eritrea war and the arrest of 11 senior officials who criticized President Isaias Afewerki in 2001. In recent years, the regime has become increasingly isolated after it ejected the US Agency for International Development and most other international humanitarian organizations. The current authoritarian order in Eritrea can be sustained only at a tremendous cost and inherently creates opposition and anger, even if underground and silent for now. Isaias has made Ethiopia’s refusal to honor the Algiers Agreement and international collusion in that betrayal the principal theme of his public speeches for several years. If the border demarcation process can commence, Isaias will get a short-term boost in his popularity but will inevitably face difficult internal political issues in the longer term.
The conflict in Somalia in late 2005, therefore, had local Somali dynamics that were complicated and distorted by a proxy war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, by links to internal processes of stalled political change in the region, and by the overlay of US policies in the global war on terror. From the perspective of Addis Ababa, the rise of the UIC in 2006 represented a threat, because this change in Somali domestic competition had implications for Ethiopia’s conflict with neighboring Eritrea and with internal insurgent groups. These interlinked threats (rather than hostility to the ideology of the Islamic Courts or concerns regarding their links to al-Qaeda) led Ethiopia to act preemptively by providing the military capacity to drive the Courts out of Mogadishu, to end the safe havens offered Ethiopia’s enemies, and to bring the TFG to power in the Somali capital.
These events have opened up opportunities to revisit failed or stalled processes of political change and conflict resolution across the Horn of Africa. These new dynamics may lead to increased conflict, however, a period of change and uncertainty may also open up new opportunities to resolve other conflicts in the region. In Somalia, the new government’s authority will soon dissipate if Somalis perceive it as an agent of Ethiopia or the United States. The new regime will need to quickly reach out to key constituencies including moderate leaders, elements within the diverse Islamic courts movement, and the powerful Hawiye clan leaders entrenched in Mogadishu, in order to build a broad-based coalition capable of administering the state without depending upon external forces for security.
Beyond Somalia, regime change in Mogadishu may open up new opportunities to resolve other conflicts in the region. At the moment,Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is clearly victorious and has demonstrated a considerable degree of military capacity and boldness. A sense of triumph may make Addis Ababa less willing to take action on other difficult issues. It is possible, however, that a greater sense of security may make the regime more open to ending the stalemate over the disputed border with Eritrea. Asmara similarly may seek new options now that its allies in Somalia are on the run. By the same token, the failure of the Somalia-based military strategies pursued by some of the regime’s domestic opponents may provide opportunities for Meles to reach out to those leaders within the opposition who are willing to engage in electoral competition within Ethiopia. Talks with political leaders from the Oromo Liberation Front may offer particular promise.
Recent events in Somalia serve as a case study in how conflict systems and the linkages among different levels of conflict can regionalize or internationalize the struggle for power within a state. Washington’s global war on terrorism and Addis Ababa’s regional and domestic insecurities shaped how outside forces intervened and, in turn, produced new conflict dynamics within Somalia. By the same token, regionalization of conflict creates new opportunities to promote conflict resolution in Ethiopia and Eritrea as the ripple effects of the dramatic events in Somalia alter expectations and calculations across the Horn of Africa.
Terrence Lyons (tlyons1@gmu.edu) is assistant professor at the Institute for Conflict Analysis & Resolution (http://icar.gmu.edu) and co- director at the Center for Global Studies at George Mason University.
