Hiiraan Online

I am celebrating with the latter group with their mixed feelings.

In order to put Somalis’ failures in the context of fragility of nation-states in Africa, and in view of celebrating or shall I say mourning for the collapse of the Somali state, I would like to share with the readers a story, which may shed some light on the problems faced by the peoples of Africa and their contemporary nation-states.

Ten years ago I travelled to Eritrea to conduct research on how theories of nation-state building were being put in practice by the birth of the newest state in Africa. At the time of my trip I was sad and heart broken because I was grieving for the death of the Somali state in 1991, a state which was created in the same year that I was born in, a state that I grew up with and lived in its heydays and sad days from liberal to military regimes and to anarchy. I can’t say that much about the liberal state and its civil governments as I was a child. However, I can still remember the day when I was taken to the polling station to vote in elections. I voted and had my hand marked with indelible ink as a confirmation of my vote and obviously to deter them from voting again. Perhaps this innocent childhood experience in an election time would explain a lot about the corruption, fraud, and vote rigging that existed in the electoral system. But looking back to that time and if I compare the liberal state with the military and current anarchy most Somalis would agree with me that the infant liberal state was working very hard to live up to the ideals of new concepts such as democracy and liberalism that were alien to peoples’ culture. In fact some sources mention that in the heydays of the Somali state there were about 60 political parties! However, the military regime which I lived in its glorious days as an adult was a brutal dictatorship that brought terror to peoples’ lives. Therefore I was happy to see the back of the military regime but I had never thought the collapse of a central government (dowlad) would lead to the total collapse of the state (qaaran) and to the current anarchy, and this was what was causing me the pain, agony and sorrow.

Anyway, the first few weeks of my trip were lovely and went smoothly. I was welcomed by an Eritrean friend, an American citizen who lived in the states a political refugee for a very long time. Disillusioned with life in exile, my friend had relocated to Eritrea where he was running business. Time was on his side and business was booming for him. He was enjoying the tantalising freedom and economic opportunities which were denied under the Eritreans were under Ethiopian rule. He was proud to be able to raising his young family in his country which he had fled 20 years ago when the country was under Ethiopian reign. His feeling was “No place is like home.” I must say I was jealous of him because my friend had a commodity that was missing from me, i.e. a functioning state that guaranteed the safety and security of its citizens at least. There were law and order in his country, but none in my country.

As a friend of mine jokingly remarked after my return to my adopted country in Europe, I don’t know whether I brought a war bug from Somalia which I then implanted in Eritrea on my arrival. But on the fourth week of my trip a major war erupted between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Not a war again, war has destroyed Somalia, I cried silently again heartbroken because I was there to witness and experience how Eritreans were putting the concept of nation-state building into practice: establishing new national institutions etc. Imagine at the time Eritreans did not even have a national airline. I was not expecting war and I could not comprehend this happening here because I knew the two regimes in Addis and Asmara were both allies who fought together against the Mengistu regime. Furthermore, at the time Afwerki and Zenawi were seen as two progressive leaders, the embodiment of new African renaissance, emancipated from the use of force to achieve political ends. Therefore, it had never occurred to my mind that they would restore force in order to settle their political differences. In this case a dispute over a barren area at the border. 

Suddenly, Asmara was on fire and burning. Ethiopian fighter jets were roaming all over the city, bombarding the airport. Eritrean jets retailed, and bombarded the Tigre region in Ethiopia. War was declared in May 1998, ironically the same month in which Eritreans were celebrating their independence. Panic and confusion spread all over the city. The international community – aid workers from the west felt threatened by the bombardment. Urgent request for evacuation were demanded by this privileged community. American aircrafts evacuated westerners. Within three days the international community was gone. At once, all foreign and UN missions closed their doors. It was sad seeing the international community, which was supposed to help this poor nation to build it self as a new nation-state, turning its back on their Eritrean friends when they needed it most, hence abandoning much needed developmental and humanitarian work. Eritrea was left to cope on its own. What a betrayal! I thought friends were for life and would be there when you need them. But obviously some friends are unreliable and are not for life.

Immediately all international flights from and to Eritrea were suspended because of Ethiopia’s threat to shoot down all airplanes that dared to enter Eritrea’s air space. The proud and young state of Eritrea was reduced and declared by the Ethiopians to be no more than a secessionist region occupied by rebels!

I was bewildered by the new development. I questioned the concept of nation-state in Africa. Was this the destiny of the newest African state, I wondered. What is the concept of nation-state in Africa’s politics? Is it a fixed structure or is it a malleable socially constructed molecule that melts away as the Somali state did in 1991? Is it a concept imposed by Europeans on Africans and because of this it will never work? I asked myself. The two leaders were personal friends and close allies. Out of the blue they were sworn enemies. What are they fighting for? Don’t they know the futility of war as we, Somalis, have proven? I asked myself.  Or perhaps, war is an evil experience that new states must go through as part of their political survival. I wondered.

My Eritrean friends tried hard to come up with some geopolitical and economic explanation for the war. But I was not terrible impressed by this. I therefore struggled to come up with my own explanation, and here are the most plausible ones. Ethiopia is a massive land-locked country, which has no access to the sea. Eritrea is a small country with a long cost. Eritrean seaports had been serving Ethiopia for centuries. Therefore the feeling between the two neighbouring states must be: “I envy my neighbour because it has some tantalising commodity or facility, which I cannot have it” and because of this there will always be a conflict between them.

But my preferred explanation was what I called “the need for reforms cycle.”  This is a political cycle in which some developing nations seem to go through. Unless bold domestic political reforms are introduced they either (i) go to war with their neighbours, (ii) end up in a coup d’etat, or (iii) in a bloody civil war or (iv) under brutal dictatorship. I noticed this scenario during the military regime in Somalia. After 6 years in power, the military regime was at beak of its power. It accumulated a large military hardware which was supplied by the former USSR. Meanwhile, domestically there was a need for political reforms, i.e. to allow the formation of political opposition parties and to hold general elections as the regime had promised. And because of lack of courageous political vision, the regime indulged itself in a self-destructive war with its neighbours, which was the beginning of its end. After the Ogaden war the regime, reluctant to accept defeat and to introduce much needed political reforms, waged an oppressive campaign against political opponents. This led to the current civil war and anarchy.

The above political cycle or scenario do seem to happen in a lot of African countries. Basically it goes like this: an African leader in power for 5-6 years; he can see the need for political reforms but ignores or refuses it for the sake of keeping power, and then the country ends up in one of the above scenarios. At the time, the two regimes in Addis and Asmara had been going through similar cycles and the border conflict was and is still a manifestation of a need for political reforms but the two regimes were/are unwilling to entertain such an adventure that might lead to their fall from the grace.

During the conflict, both leaders were under pressure from their supporters. Meles Zenawi’s supporters wanted him to bleed Eritrea to death, after all Eritrea was once an Ethiopian region, so why not restore the status quo?! On the other hand, Eritreans, who gained their independence after a long and bloody war, wanted to maintain the newly found state quo: an independent African state.

Through down to my trip, as it was my plan to visit Assab, a very remote city and a modern seaport by the Red Sea, I boarded on a ferry called the Aucan II from Massawa, the seaport at the Red Sea. On the board I made new Eritrean friends. One of them was an academic and a government officer. We indulged ourselves in discussing politics in the Horn of Africa, particularly the Ethio-Eritrea war. My friend was angry with Eritrea’s neighbours from both sides of the Red Sea. He called them expansionist regimes, violating his country’s territorial integrity. He said Yemen had attempted to capture Hanish islands, small islands in the Red Sea claimed by both Eritreans and Yemenis. He said Ethiopians had invaded his country. He added that Egypt (once a former colonial master) had been trying to influence Eritrea affairs. He explained some Egyptian fishing boats were caught fishing illegally in Eritrea waters. He said that even the very ferry that we were travelling on was a fishing boat owned by an Egyptian private company that was confiscated by Eritrean for illegal fishing in the Eritrean waters. I was shocked when I discovered that the fish boat converted to ferry was the only means of public transport from Asmara to Assab by sea as Daallo, a Somali airline private company, was the only means of transport from Eritrea to the outside world during the conflict and after the declaration of war. Daallo airplanes and pilots – Russians! - were the only one that dared to venture into Eritrea airspace. At the time, the seven years old or so Eritrean state, did not have a national airline carrier, it heavily depended on other airlines companies, including the Ethiopian Airline which was suspended after the war was had erupted.

Private companies such as Daallo, the confiscated Egyptian fishing boat and the Somali private company appear to have played an important role in servicing the State of Eritrea in one of its most crucial political moment. I then questioned whether the peoples of Africa do need nation-states because the public sphere, in this case the State of Eritrea, seemed powerless to provide air and sea transport in one of most difficult times of her life. I asked myself why not privatise every thing that is public so that economy, politics, security, defence and even morality could be provided by private companies, motivated by the pursuit of profit maximisation? Would not this be the perfect way of governing the peoples of Africa because the concept of nation-state seems to have created more problems, (e.g. border dispute) than solutions? Somalia is a classic example in which the private sector has replaced and monopolised the public sphere/sector. In the past 17 years or so, non-state actors: e.g. NGOs, private companies, UN agencies, and wealthy individuals took over the role of the state, providing much needed services and sometime dictating morality over their constituencies.

However, the fear of anarchy and the horrible impact it has had on Somalia persuades me that after all there is a need for a modern state structure in African so that political communities can be managed better. After all, this is the structure that the world knows and is comfortable with.

I left Eritrea and returned to my adopted home once again feeling sad and heart broken.

Now 10 years have passed since my last trip in the region. However, the political situation in the region seems similar. The two regimes in Addis and Asmara are still in power; despite attempts to resolve the issues through the international court in Hague the border conflict is simmering. What is more and new to the situation is that in December 2006, Ethiopia, a powerful country, invaded Somalia a poor country that has been plagued by a civil war for a long time. It occupied the country illegally under the pretext of removing an immediate threat to its national security posed by Islamic extremists. Ethiopian jets bombarded Mogadishu airport exactly as they did to the Asmara airport in 1998. Ethiopia’s firepower is causing mayhem to Mogadishu’s residents and many thousands of civilians fled the city. There is even a talk of massacre and war crimes committed by Ethiopian forces against civilians. Even after the invasion, it is still questionable whether Ethiopia has achieved its objective if any. It may have even created more extremism in that part of Africa. Religious fundamentalism and extremism have not gone away, and although Ethiopians have dismantled some of the Islamic Courts Union structures Islamist movements remain a political force in Somalia. This is evidenced by daily bombings and political assassination in Mogadishu where the combined forces of TFG and Ethiopians are still struggling to exert control more than year after ejecting forces loyal to the Islamic Courts.

Conclusion, the need for, and lack of political reforms in both Eritrea, which in my opinion are the main causes of much of the conflict in the region, have yet to be resolved. Both regimes have yet to show an appetite for reforms as they cling to power. This is likely to cause increased instability and insecurity in the region.  One can only hope and pray for much needed political reforms that would bring in popular and moderate governments thus heralding a new era of peace and stability in the region. The international community should pressurise Isaias Afewerki of Eritrea and Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia to surrender or share power with elected leaders as soon as possible like Daniel Arab Moi of Kenya – though not perfect – did when he relinquished power to his successor Mwai Kibaki. 

Also, thanks to the recent Djibouti peace agreement in June, there is an opportunity for creating and maintaining peace and stability in Somalia thus paving the way for power sharing between the TFG and opposition forces as, though after painful experience, Mwai Kibaki is now sharing power with his ex-rival Raila Odinga. A good  example of African way of conflict resolution and power sharing that deserves respect and admiration.

Muuse Yuusuf

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