The Horn Of Africa States: The Unruly Governance – OpEd

The Horn of Africa States region is not new to dictatorial tendencies of its leaderships. The region’s population consists of tribal and clan infrastructures, which have not yet moved into modern nation infrastructures. The tribes/clans are usually held together through chieftaincy, irrespective of the different names they have assumed over the centuries. They had kings, sultans and emperors, and whatever a tribal leader would call himself.

They have ruled mostly through either suppressive laws or anarchic processes where the strong-willed would over-rule everyone else. A new breed has arisen in the region who call themselves the politicians. They discovered a new way of earning a living by inciting one tribe or clan against another and they come to power in the new governing infrastructures inherited from colonial Europe in the form of governments. They hardly understand how governments work but only see them as a source of power, money and prestige or really do not care as long as they can squeeze the last cent of the systems they have created, and they usually are the first to break the rules these governments, which they lead, institute.

No wonder, the populations rise against them, while many migrate and exile themselves in other countries. Many more are jailed or killed by the junta politicians who take over countries through tribal/clan appeals. Still many more are maimed through the wars and the irritatingly continuous disruptions to life in the region.

The challenges to the region continue through many new phenomena that have arisen in the region including the appearance of a plethora of NGOs, many genuine but the majority with ill-intentions, the appearance of gun markets and new trades in weapons that kill people, violent tribal/clan based propaganda in the open social media, many supported by the new tribal or clan-based government apparatuses and hence dysfunctional government institutions, terror groups and foreign ideologies imported from beyond the region, and more evils.

It is ironic they all appeal to the populations through people’s last resort of belief systems, pretending they have been chosen to lead at their particular time. These politicians, as clever as they think they are, abuse the belief systems of the people, to cow them and manipulate their behavior such that they continue to blunder the societies of the Horn of Africa States region. The current Ethiopian Prime Minister is a perfect example of those who claim they have been chosen through higher order or the President of Somalia who talks to the people through Friday sermons in a mosque in the presidency compound.

It is most unfortunate that some of them have come to power through dubious means, and/or mob justice, while others have already overstayed in the seats of power for far too long. This only breeds the art of dictatorships, for the next leaders who come, would also emulate them and stay longer than is really necessary. These pseudo-politicians should know they only ruin their later lives for dictators and bad politicians either die in difficult and bad situations or are exiled from their lands and expire in other distant lands, away from their lovies and countries and the environments in which they grew up. Leaders of the region should remember how Emperor Haile Selassie, General Mohamed Siad Barre, and Meles Zenawi died in extremely awful circumstances and how Mengistu Haile Mariam has been exiled from home and all the others who lost their powers through the tribal/clan processes, they themselves instigated.

The regimes of the Horn of Africa States over the past hundred and more years have been known to be brutal and authoritarian while on the other side of the spectrum, others have been and still are anarchic with no rule of law in place. Even the traditional customary laws, through which the societies of the region managed their affairs throughout centuries is dying away, as they have killed most of those elders who were knowledgeable of those skills and rules of the game. The region is currently populated by a youthful population with knowledge perhaps applicable to nations and countries far from the region but empty of its own environment, history and traditions, with nothing to fall back to in terms of culture, customs, traditional rules and systems.

Our continuous studies and observation of the region and its governance, including its leadership, politicians, and populations, leaves us to conclude that it is in a precariously dangerous situation, where the countries of the region seem to be as far apart from each other in their outlooks and their goals as they could ever be, compared to even the second half of the last century, when there were country clashes and wars mostly between Somalia and Ethiopia.

The populations which were getting closer appear to being pushed apart or drifting apart with each engrossed in its own idiosyncrasies. Some of the nationalities in the region such as the Somali and Afar people, the Tigray and Amhara, the inter- Oromo fighting and the Oromo and Amhara, the Benishangul and the Amhara and others are currently all at each other’s throats, killing each other, and this seems to being pushed mostly by the Ethiopian authorities for some unknown, unfathomable reasons, except perhaps the accusation that they are slaving for the United Arab Emirates, which is providing them with some lip service support and meagre financial assistance.

The respect for the rule of law is declining year after year as the security of the region becomes more volatile with the leaderships of the region enmeshed either in disheartening hate for each other or keep serving others who do not wish the region well. Ethiopia, which is a landlocked country, has never truly accepted that fact, where it could have had better relations with all its neighbors. The fact that Eritrea fought back for years to regain its independence of Ethiopia after it forced itself into that country, should have been a lesson for the country - no one takes another’s territory and that countries fight back.

The ongoing attempts by the regime of Ethiopia to push itself into Somalia and its territorial waters and lands can only be described as absurd, foolish and at best quixotic. They simply forgot the 30-year brutal war of Eritrea with respect to its sea and coast. How much it would cost Ethiopia to move into Somalia, is perhaps of no consequence to the prime Minister of Ethiopia, who seems unmindful of killing his own people to fulfill his maddeningly unruly governance.