The Horn of Africa

Abstract

The Horn of Africa is a region of peculiar character; its incorporation in a survey of black Africa since independence presents distinctive problems of comparative perspective. In a sense, much that has taken place in this region during the past quarter-century seems familiar enough; the problems caused by the imposition of artificial boundaries, ethnic conflicts, the decay of civilian political institutions, and subsequent military takeovers have been quite as intense in the Horn as in other parts of the continent. The region shares with the Third World as a whole the difficulties resulting from economic and (particularly in this region) military dependence on the industrial states. But the setting is nevertheless different. Central to an understanding of the Horn is the premise that the political evolution of the region is driven by an indigenous, and not an imported, dynamic of statehood. Three striking facts serve to illustrate this dynamic. First, of the five territories that made up the region during the main part of the classic colonial period from 1890 to 1950, only one (the insignificant microstate of Djibouti) has followed the postcolonial pattern prevalent in other parts of Africa and attained independence as a separate state; the others—Ethiopia, Eritrea, former British Somaliland and Italian Somalia—have been incorporated into larger units whose boundaries ultimately derive from the late nineteenth-century partition but whose ethos go back to precolonial identities. Second, the region has experienced a level of political violence both within and between states that even exceeds the violence produced by settler colonialism and failed decolonization in the southern part of the continent and that derives directly from the conflicting structures of statehood in Ethiopia and the Somali Republic. Third, the two main states in the region have both experienced real revolutions (not simply military coups); Ethiopia in particular has provided the most unequivocal example of revolution anywhere in Africa. This chapter will explore the implications of this peculiar dynamic of statehood and its effects on the range of issues dealt with in this volume.