D+C Development and Cooperation (No. 3, May/June 2001, p. 18 - 19)

The Horn of Africa region has for decades been seen as a bloody trouble spot. In Somalia, the state structure has collapsed and local autonomous units have replaced it. Now it appears that following the election of a new Somali president a change is emerging. Friedhelm Mensing reports the role the regional development organisation IGAD is playing in the establishment of peace in the country.

One could hardly believe one’s eyes when on August 27 last year Somalia’s new president, Abdiquassim Salad Hassan, was sworn-in in Djibouti in the presence of several African heads of state and high-ranking Western diplomats. A few days later he made a triumphal entry into Mogadishu. And now even demobilisation is being prepared under the aegis of the United Nations.

For more than 10 years there has seldom been good news from the East African country, whose state structure effectively ceased to exist from 1991 and which disintegrated in the areas ruled by mutually hostile clans. Almost one million Somalis fled abroad from the civil war, and about 300,000 died of starvation. Both the deployment of UN ‘blue helmets’ and peace missions by Western diplomacy failed to end the conflict.

Media interest in the story died quickly after the withdrawal of the last UN troops in the spring of 1995. Many people wrote off Somalia as a hopeless case, like almost the whole Horn of Africa region. There was the 30 year-long civil war in Ethiopia, the border conflict between it and Eritrea, the ongoing, decades-long confrontation between the Islamic North and the Christian-animist South in Sudan, Somalia’s collapse, and the more or less marked tension between many countries of the region. There were the refugee flows and the ever-recurring hunger crises and droughts. Rightly or wrongly, the majority of the public in the rest of the world now sees the Horn of Africa as a permanent crisis region. Its negative image deters investors, scares off tourists, and dampens donor willingness to help.

Peacemaking as a new mandate

Despite the continuing conflicts, however, in recent years the realisation has gained ground in the Horn of Africa that only regional cooperation can bring its often cross-border, intertwined problems closer to resolution.

Therefore in the mid-1990s the member countries of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Ethiopia, Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan and Uganda, decided to reactivate their cooperation. The mandate of the supranational union - which is comparable with the regional organisations Southern African Development Community (SADC) or the Comité Permanent Interétats de Lutte Contre la Séchéresse dans le Sahel (CILLS), covering the West African Sahel countries - was considerably expanded by its heads of state in 1996 and focused on joint efforts towards peace and security.

IGAD survived the most
difficult times

IGAD, founded in 1986 after the region’s disastrous drought of 1984-85 and based in Djibouti, concentrated initially on combating desertification, other environment policy problem areas and especially water supply, and food security. For years the organisation led an aimless existence, due mainly to differences between Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia, without having any real clout to solve problems. But while other regional cooperation bodies, such as the East African Community, broke up, IGAD developed an efficient secretariat, a strong infrastructure and its own robust identity thanks to the support of a number of Western donor countries such as the USA,Canada, Norway, the Netherlands and Britain. This enabled it to weather the most violent conflicts among its member countries.

IGAD finally developed into the communication platform for security issues in the region. For example, its regular summit meetings were used as early as the end of the 1980s to reduce growing tension between Ethiopia and Somalia. Since 1993, the Sudanese civil war has time and again been on the summit agenda. True, IGAD’s mediation in Sudan has not yet made a decisive breakthrough. But at least the warring parties have in the meantime accepted a declaration worked out by IGAD which underlines the importance of national unity and emphasises the right to self-administration of the people of South Sudan.

IGAD as “peacemaking” institution

According to conflict researcher Hizkias Assefa, of the Eastern Mennonite University in Virginia, USA, IGAD is now the most important “peacemaking” institution in the Horn of Africa. That is due mainly to the expansion of its mandate. IGAD is now accepted as the official discussion forum for security issues in the region. Furthermore, the organisation is a mechanism which enables acceptance of much-needed western assistance, but which at the same time gives the peace process the character of an original African effort.

As interventions from outside the region, the UN and US initiatives aimed at ending Somalia’s civil war had scarcely a chance of success. Frequently, they were seen by the warring parties as undesired interference. It was only when IGAD invited the hostile sides to a national Somalian peace conference in March 1998 that the path to normalisation and peace was paved. The conference delegates were exclusively representatives of civil society - the traditional leaders of all Somali clans, former politicians, intellectuals and representatives of women’s groups. Warlords were not invited, which proved the tactical skills of the then President of Djibouti, Hassan Guled Aptidon.

The election of Abdiquassim Salad Hassan as Somalia’s caretaker President in August last year has certainly not eliminated all the country’s problems. Individual clan leaders and the self-proclaimed rulers of Somaliland and Puntland, the two now autonomous areas in North Somalia, have warned of a new civil war. But, for the first time, development has been set on a path that promises a lasting solution.

Niels von Keyserlingk, seconded as a consultant to IGAD by the German Agency for Technical Cooperation (GTZ), says another positive indicator is that IGAD’s appeal that one must create a culture of peace has gone down well in the Horn of Africa countries. He also notes: “Most of the membership dues to finance the IGAD secretariat are being paid punctually.”

An early warning system
for regional small wars

Keyserlingk is currently focusing on building up an IGAD early warning system covering limited local, but often cross-border, conflicts in the region’s virtually impassable savannah and semi-desert areas. The Western media publish hardly a word on the bloody clan feuds between Turkana and Pokot, between Boran and Somali, or those between them and the Samburu. Cattle rustling and the extreme scarcity of pasture and water resources are the main causes of the conflicts.

In earlier days, the nomadic people fought their feuds with spears and pangas (Kisuaheli for bush-knife). Now, the partly motorised Morani, the warrior castes of the pastoral tribes, fight each other with Kalashnikov assault rifles and machine guns. The region’s many conflicts have flooded it with modern weapons to such an extent that almost anybody can afford to buy them.

Regular small wars with often dozens and sometimes hundreds of dead, many wounded, kidnapped women and slaughtered cattle have an enormously detrimental effect on trade and commerce in the region. State power in Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia hardly extends to their remote provinces, to say nothing of Somalia and Sudan. And when the military turns out, the perpetrators, who know their way around the terrain, have mostly disappeared rapidly over country borders. Another problem is that it is scarcely possible to estimate when the next bloody clashes will occur, because outsiders hardly have an insight into the decisions of the nomadic tribes. Therefore major peacemaking actions are usually too late.

The early warning system is aimed at helping to prevent such clashes, says von Keyserlingk. He is aware, of course, that there still are many problems to overcome before the system will some day function passably well. The system’s concept, developed by a group of academics and practical ‘peace workers’, is in place. It is based on information from government offices and civil society organisations such as women’s groups, mission stations, universities, NGOs and clan leaders, among other sources.

Despite the problems in getting the system up and running, von Keyserlingk is optimistic. For even in the savannah areas more and more people are realising that the ever bloodier raids - which earlier were part of the Morani tradition and, as it were, a “social balance” between the tribes - must stop. In particular, the clan elders, who have the say among the pastoral people, are pressing for the permanent feuds to cease. Peace initiatives are now forming in many places. In northern Kenya, for example, an initiative that has become well-known under the name Wajir Peace and Development Committee, is seeking to stabilise security and peace. In Ethiopia, a peace initiative of the Boran, the country’s largest nomadic group, is promoting mediation efforts in internal disputes and conflicts with neighbouring peoples.

Donor goodwill is dwindling

Donor countries also are now pressing harder for visible results. “Technical Cooperation has become more political;” says von Keyserlingk. “In view of the many unsolved problems in Africa, a certain weariness is spreading among the donor countries about continuing to provide money for projects at the previous levels.”

New pledges for infrastructure, agricultural and environmental projects within the framework of the IGAD make sense only if a more peaceful development can be got underway in the region. The planned development of the road link between the Kenyan towns of Isiolo, to the North of Mount Kenya, and Moyale, on the border with Ethiopia, will boost cooperation between the two countries only if security for travellers in the region can be guaranteed. Not even a tarred road is of any use when driving in northern Kenya beyond Isiolo is banned after 6 p.m., and travel on some parts of it is allowed only in armed convoys even during the day.

Other planned projects in the roadbuilding, railways and telecommunications sectors also will be able to achieve their full impacts only if peace is secured and cooperation improved. That applies also to IGAD’s food and environmental programmes.

Friedhelm Mensing is a German freelance journalist who focuses on development policy and Africa. (connectcom@web.de)