The Nation State

A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa

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 The Nation State
A Wrong Model for the Horn of Africa

John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young

Studies 14
Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge
Studies 14

Cover Image:
The wrong model: Nation states as islands. By Kristin Magnucki and Günther Schlee.

ISBN 978­3­945561­56­0
e­ISBN [PDF] 978­3­945561­57­7
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DOI 10.34663/9783945561577­00
First published 2021 by Max­Planck­Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften
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Max Planck Research Library for the History and Development of Knowledge

Scientific Board

Markus Antonietti, Ian T. Baldwin, Antonio Becchi, Fabio Bevilacqua, William G. Boltz, Jens Braarvik, Horst
Bredekamp, Jed Z. Buchwald, Olivier Darrigol, Thomas Duve, Mike Edmunds, Fynn Ole Engler, Robert K. En­
glund, Mordechai Feingold, Rivka Feldhay, Gideon Freudenthal, Paolo Galluzzi, Kostas Gavroglu, Mark Geller,
Domenico Giulini, Günther Görz, Gerd Graßhoff, James Hough, Manfred Laubichler, Glenn Most, Klaus Müllen,
Pier Daniele Napolitani, Alessandro Nova, Hermann Parzinger, Dan Potts, Sabine Schmidtke, Circe Silva da Silva,
Ana Simões, Dieter Stein, Richard Stephenson, Mark Stitt, Noel M. Swerdlow, Liba Taub, Martin Vingron, Scott
Walter, Norton Wise, Gerhard Wolf, Rüdiger Wolfrum, Gereon Wolters, Zhang Baichun.
Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

List of Acronyms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1 Introduction
John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2 The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

John Markakis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3 Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

John Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

4 The Afar
John Markakis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83

5 Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

Günther Schlee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107

6 South Sudan: The Fractured State

John Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145

7 Conclusion
John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Preface

The authors of this study are social scientists who have spent their professional lifetimes
studying the process of development in sub­Saharan Africa since it emerged from colonial
rule and interpreting the subject for the general public. African studies involve several dis­
ciplines, including social anthropology, history, and political science, represented in this
volume by Günther Schlee, John Markakis and John Young, respectively. The three authors
do not comprise a particularly diverse group; they are three old white men. But their com­
bined experience in the field spans 135 years, and the Horn of Africa is the regional focus for
all three. As it happens, this region also represents a striking paradigm of the enduring crisis
of the Western nation­state model adopted in Africa, which is the theme of this collaborative
volume. There is broad agreement between the three of us on this issue and the problem of
Eurocentrism in African studies generally, although we do not have a unified position on
other matters, and this will become apparent from our individual contributions.
Scholars on the subject of imported nation­state models in Africa concur that crisis
resulted from a failure to consider material, social, cultural, and political contexts on a local
level. The outcomes of these efforts, however, should not be considered a dead end, rather a
stage in the ongoing process of development that is gradually transforming this setting. The
field is further enriched with studies on state fragility and state failure, as well as proposed
policies to prevent such scenarios. (Among the latter is a program designed “to build good
leadership capacity among young African politicians” (Rotberg 2003)).
The mosaic of nation­states that exists today is often called the Westphalian order af­
ter the Peace of Westphalia treaties ended ongoing wars in Western Europe in the mid­
seventeenth century, in part through the creation of sovereign states. Around this period,
Europe experienced great leaps in technology and had an abundance of natural resources,
and the sovereign state model was considered easily modifiable to meet local requirements
for effective governance. In the mid­twentieth century, this same model was imposed across
sub­Saharan Africa without preparation or adaptation to the continent that colonizers consid­
ered to be technologically underdeveloped and lacking in raw materials. The consequences
of these actions are well known, yet poorly understood. In this volume, the authors seek to
clearly define the causes and consequences of the imported nation­state crisis.
Although this model has been in place in Africa for over three quarters of a century,
its suitability to the locations and eras in which it was imposed has seldom been raised in
African studies. A notable exception in the Anglophone world is Basil Davidson (1992)
who called the nation­state model the “Black man’s burden” in a book of the same title.
Francophone Africanists were pioneers in economic anthropology, and prolific critics of
orthodox development theory. Steeped in the Marxist worldview, however, they had little to
say about the state, which they regarded as a dependent variable. The fact that the concept
of the nation­state has not been more thoroughly addressed challenges the epistemological
integrity of African studies. Where is the science on which this discipline claims to be based?
4 Preface

Founded in the West and dominated by Western scholars, the discipline thrives on
modes of analysis that privilege European categories or ascribe greater rationality and
agency to Western actors above all others. It is impossible to question the universal
validity of the Western model within the limits of this discipline for there is no room for
an alternative within its analytical spectrum. Because this methodology is part of the
standard curriculum, scholars of African studies, including Africans, tend to be unprepared
to challenge it. Any attempt to raise the topic elicits the stock response: what is the
alternative?
The authors of this study do not intend to answer this question. Their intention is to
provoke a debate on the crisis of the nation­state that will focus on the alien model itself, not
on the African setting. They aim to do this by presenting the manifold impact of the crisis
on two levels of society in the Horn: national and local. The challenges posed to the state
as a result of the popular uprising in Sudan in 2019 and the outbreak of civil war in Ethiopia
in November 2020 give further significance to this study.

John Markakis, Günther Schlee, John Young

Halle (Saale), December 2020
List of Acronyms

ALF Afar Liberation Front

ANDM Amhara National Democratic Movement

ANDP Afar National Democratic Party

ANLM Afar National Liberation Movement
APDO Afar People’s Democratic Organisation
ARCSS Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan

ARDUF Afar Revolutionary Democratic United Front

AU African Union
AVA Awash Valley Authority

CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement

CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
CVE Countering Violent Extremism
DDR Disarmament, demobilization and reintegration

DIU Dams Implementation Unit

DUP Democratic Unionist Party
EIJM Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement

ELF Eritrean Liberation Front

EPDM Ethiopian People’s Democratic Movement
EPLF Eritrean People’s Liberation Front
EPRDF Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front

EPRP Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party

ESC Ethiopian Sugar Corporation
ESM Ethiopian Student Movement
FLCS Front de la Libération de la Côte Somalie
6 List of Acronyms

FRUD Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy

GNU Government of National Unity

GoSS Government of South Sudan
GTP Growth and Transformation Plan

GWOT Global War on Terror

IDPs internally displaced persons
IGAD Inter­Governmental Authority for Development
IMF International Monetary Fund

ISEN Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities

JIC Joint Islamic Courts
MLLT Marxist­Leninist League of Tigray
MOARD Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development

NCP National Congress Party

NDA National Democratic Alliance
NGO Non­Governmental Organization

NIF National Islamic Front

OLF Oromo Liberation Front
OPDO Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation
OTI Office of Transitional Initiatives

PDRE People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia

SAF Sudanese Armed Forces
SAPs Structural Adjustment Programs

SCP Sudanese Communist Party

SEPDF Southern Ethiopia People’s Democratic Front
SNL Somali National League
SNM Somali National Movement

SNNP Southern Nations, Nationalities and Peoples

SPLA Sudan People’s Liberation Army
List of Acronyms 7

SPLA­N Sudan People’s Liberation Army­North

SPLM Sudan People’s Liberation Movement

SPLM/A Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army
SPLM­IO Sudan People’s Liberation Movement­in­Opposition

SPLM­N Sudan People’s Liberation Movement­North

SPRP Somali People’s Revolutionary Party
SRC Somali Revolutionary Council
SSDF South Sudan Defense Forces

SSLA South Sudan Liberation Army

SSR Soviet Socialist Republic
SSU Sudanese Socialist Union
SYL Somali Youth League

TFG Transitional Federal Government

TPLF Tigray People’s Liberation Front
UN United Nations

UPDF Ugandan People’s Defense Force

USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
WPE Workers Party of Ethiopia
WPPE Working People’s Party of Ethiopia

WSLF Western Somalia Liberation Front

WTO World Trade Organization
Chapter 1
Introduction
John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young

The modern states in the Horn of Africa are the product of historical developments beyond
their control. Having shifted from the bipolar pattern of the Cold War to the unipolar pattern
dominated by the US, the international geopolitical system now appears to be shifting toward
a multipolar pattern, in which the US retains military superiority but is no longer able to
maintain a global hegemonic status. Ideals of state sovereignty bequeathed by the Treaties
of Westphalia and later by the Treaty of Versailles are now challenged by globalization, a
process that entrenches a hierarchical order among states, increasingly based on economic
criteria. At the same time, the supranational influence of global corporations, international
trade agreements, the Bretton Woods institutions, and the European Union further undermine
state sovereignty.
As a result of these conflicting forces, states throughout the world are facing a multi­
faceted crisis of legitimacy, sovereignty, and democracy, a crisis that began with the adop­
tion of neoliberal precepts in the economy and governance in the West. These guiding prin­
ciples then spread to, or were imposed on, the rest of the world; the consequences are still
seen today. Local and national economies are undermined, and the traditional responsibil­
ity of states to protect their citizens’ welfare is overridden by foreign commitments. These
decisions particularly impact many states in the Middle East and Africa, where their gov­
ernments were destabilized and their peoples suffered.
The Horn of Africa is distinguished from the rest of the continent by the exceptionally
high incidence of political conflict experienced since decolonization at both the inter­state
and intra­state levels. Distinct from the rest of Africa, the region has seen the appearance of
two new de jure independent states (Eritrea and South Sudan), one new de facto independent
state (Somaliland), several regions under the control of insurgent movements, and large areas
that are only nominally under the control of central governments. The outbreak of civil war
between the Ethiopian government and the regional government of Tigray in November
2020, which has also involved forces from Eritrea, not only speaks to the inherent political
instability in the region, but also suggests that the process of state formation may not be
complete.
The Horn has experienced several inter­state wars, the engagement of outside armies
in conflicts in Somalia and South Sudan, and Western­dominated peace processes that serve
to reorder and reconstruct the regional state pattern and bring favored elites to power. The
Cold War waged hotly in this region by states acting as proxies of foreign powers. More
recently, the same states have become entangled in the US­sponsored Global War on Terror
(GWOT). Currently, the Horn has become a point of conflict between China and the US
and countries in the Middle East are establishing military bases along the Red Sea and all of
10 1. Introduction

them view the region as a linchpin for resources, markets, influence in Africa, and a focal
point for competition among themselves.
The study presented here seeks to address the root causes of the Horn’s troubled modern
political history. Many of these causes are endogenous and testify to the agency of the
people in the region. Others are extraneous, such as many­sided, continuous, and forceful
interventions from abroad by foreign powers seeking to promote and protect their interests
in the region, often by striking alliances with local ruling elites. Conflicts that arise thereof
invariably focus on the state, because that is where power is concentrated and access to
power ensures access to resources. State power is both the goal of conflict and the means
whereby it is waged, making the state both the object of conflict and a party to it.
Given the record of state failure to manage conflict in the region, the question raised
in this study is whether the Western nation­state model adopted, or claimed to have been
adopted, in the Horn and generally in Africa is suitable for the region today. During the
Cold War, the heady promise of modernization­cum­Westernization dogma was forcefully
challenged from the neo­Marxist perspective, with particular emphasis on the nature of the
postcolonial state. Theories such as dependency (Frank 1966), development of underde­
velopment (Rodney 1972), and world systems (Wallerstein 1974) were at the center of the
debate. With the subsequent triumph of neoliberalism and the enthronement of the free
market ideology, the debate ran out of steam. The study presented here aims to revive the
debate by questioning whether the Western nation­state is the right model for Africa, and to
encourage Africans to consider alternative methods of governance for the continent.
The introductory chapter begins with a brief examination of how the present interna­
tional system developed and then reviews the critiques of the state that began soon after the
promises of African independence were not met. It then considers how the state in Africa
has developed and repeatedly been reconstructed in response to decolonization and neolib­
eralist pressure to meet the needs of the West. It also considers the role of internationally led
peacemaking efforts, another means by which the West projects its influence to reconstruct
and even create states in the post­Cold War era.

1.1 Contextual Overview

The international state system is often called the Westphalian system. This term may be a
shorthand used by political scientists1 . But arguably, the Treaties of Westphalia first formu­
lated the principles of sovereign statehood, non­interference in the affairs of other states, and
a balance of power between states (Kissinger 2014). However, these principles were only
meant to be applied in Europe, where they were conceived. President Woodrow Wilson is
credited with the idea of national self­determination, which figured as a guiding principle in
the Treaty of Versailles. But when Ho Chi Minh appeared at Versailles to plead for the right
of his people to independence, Wilson refused to see him. It became clear that the right to
self­determination did not apply to the colonized peoples.
It was only after World War II that the right to national self­determination was recog­
nized for colonized peoples. From this point onwards, each state was granted one vote at the

1 Rüdiger Wolfrum, an international lawyer, insightfully commented that the concept of nation­state may have

originated elsewhere. For the present purpose, and because of our focus on Africa, it is sufficient to use the short­
hand term. What we mean by Westphalian order is the present global order of nation­states, whose essential features
developed in Europe. How precisely they developed there is beyond the scope of this book.
1. Introduction 11

UN General Assembly, regardless of size. At the same time, however, the principle of equal­
ity was rejected in the organization of the newly formed UN Security Council, which revived
the principle of hierarchy among states by limiting membership to the so­called Great Pow­
ers. This became obvious to Africans after decolonization, when they realized their newly
independent states stood at the bottom rung of the international hierarchy of states, and their
independence was seriously constrained by the former colonial states and recently emerged
world superpowers at the apex of the hierarchy.
The disparity between the so­called First and Third Worlds was clearly manifested dur­
ing the Cold War between the superpowers and was denounced by Kwame Nkrumah who
coined the term neocolonialism. “The essence of neo­colonialism,” he wrote, “is that the
State which is subject to it is, in theory, independent and has all the outward trappings of in­
ternational sovereignty, but its economic system and thus its political policy is directed from
outside.”2 Nkrumah’s insight updated Lenin’s (Lenin 1917a) analysis, which contended that
capitalism requires colonies for investment and a market for the metropole’s manufactured
goods.
Frantz Fanon (Lenin 1913) advanced this theory to conclude that the rulers of neocolo­
nial states do not derive their authority from the will of the people, but from the support of
their former colonial masters and the international community. Just as that support is be­
queathed to local rulers, so can it also be taken away. Fanon drew particular attention to the
Westernized, educated African elite who had gained the most from the colonial system and
he held them responsible for undermining African state sovereignty after independence.
Contributing to the artificiality of the African state is the context in which decoloniza­
tion took place. In most cases, decolonization was not the result of mass popular struggles
by colonized peoples for independence. The background for the so­called liberation struggle
was the enfeeblement of the European colonial states in the wake of World War II and their
subsequent involvement in the Cold War that opened the door for Soviet Union involvement
in support of African nationalists. It also raised the fear of communism spreading in Africa.
With notable exceptions that involved European settler regimes fighting to stay in power—
Algeria, Angola, Mozambique, Portuguese Guinea (modern day Guinea Bissau), Zimbabwe,
and South Africa—decolonization was essentially a process of negotiation whereby Africans
passed from colonialism to neocolonialism.
The Cold War was intensely waged on an ideological plane, where the specter of social­
ism that haunted the West proved a powerful stimulus for the formulation of a counter theory
of development grounded on the experience of the West. This concept was made clear in
the title of the most influential statement of this theory, Walter Rostow’s book The Stages
of Economic Growth: A Non­Communist Manifesto (1960). The belief that radically differ­
ent societies would follow the same path to development as that trodden by the West has
guided Western engagement in Africa to this day. Adherence to this ideology is a condition
for Western economic assistance and political support in the developing world, imposing
severe constraints on state sovereignty.
The attempt to economically, culturally, and politically tie African states to the West
did not end with neocolonialism and a self­serving modernization theory. Western solutions
to Western problems continued to be exported to the African continent. In response to falling
profits, growing trade union militancy, and the loss of large parts of the world to socialism in

2 Kwame Nkrumah, as quoted in A. Webster (Webster 1990, 7).

12 1. Introduction

the 1970s, the Western elites fought back with a new ideological construct—neoliberalism—
that the peripheral states were pressed to adopt. Having practiced post­World War II Keyne­
sian precepts with notable successes, including the critical role of the state in development
and the commitment to full employment, the Anglo­West now held that free markets alone
were the route to development. With this mindset, the existing state was seen as an obstacle
to development and must be reconstructed.
Neoliberalism objectives center on the strengthening and reform of capitalism to make
it a global system, which by definition means reaching beyond the Western metropoles.
Africa, in particular, was targeted, where many were not integrated into the international
economy and the majority of people had not been separated from their primary means of
production—land. Considered obstacles to development occurred where the developmental
process was equated with market dominance. In these cases, traditional economies were
deliberately undermined and the limited social programs in existence were reduced or elim­
inated. Indeed, the dependency and Marxist contention that relationships between the center
and the periphery produced underdevelopment was rejected by neoliberal economists who
instead insisted that underdevelopment was due to Africa’s lack of integration into the global
economic and state system.
Furthermore, once neoliberalism passed from a theory to established Truth, accepted
by all the capitalist states and even their social democratic parties (witness the Labour Party
under Tony Blair), it was forced on the peripheral states through the West’s control of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank and a series of international trade agree­
ments. The capitalist West, together with these organizations, imposed structural adjustment
programs (SAPs) and used the World Trade Organization (WTO) and bilateral trade agree­
ments to closely integrate peripheral states and economies into the Western­dominated global
system. The implementation of neoliberal policy involved reducing the role of the state in
the economy by privatizing state assets, rolling back social, health, and education programs,
eliminating the kind of trade barriers that the leading Western states had themselves em­
ployed to industrialize, floating their currencies, removing obstacles to the repatriation of
profits, and generally ensuring multinational corporations would have unhindered access
to their economies. As in the West, these policies lowered living standards for most peo­
ple, increased inequality and social tensions, and undermined the authority (and hence the
capacity) of the state.
A critical point of pressure for the West in its dealings with troublesome Third World
countries is the practice of withholding economic assistance and, crucially, debt relief. Both
are only forthcoming if countries meet the requirements of the World Bank and IMF, which
demand adherence to the precepts of neoliberalism. Again, acceptance of these conditions
means relinquishing the authority of the state and granting it to these institutions and in­
ternational trade agreements. Refusal to abide by these requirements can expose rebellious
countries to Western campaigns of economic and political subversion and even military in­
tervention.
Pressure increased on peripheral states with the end of the Cold War when the Eastern
Bloc could no longer provide support for alternative roads to development. The Cold War
victors now held that a free market economy was integral to democracy while policies that
gave too much room to regulation interfered with free markets and were deemed antithet­
ical to democracy. The growing inequalities within and between states were held to be a
necessary product of development. Neoliberal notions of democracy involved governments
1. Introduction 13

following the dictates of the IMF and turning their backs on their people protesting against
changes that lowered their standard of living. Instead of governments of peripheral states
being accountable to their citizens, governments were made subjects to the West and the
global economic institutions it created. The parochialism and authoritarianism of modern­
ization theory had returned with a vengeance.

1.2 Nation and State in Africa

The state and the nation are concepts that have evolved along separate lines but converged
(with different levels of success) to form what we now call the nation­state. The state has
evolved through different forms in various parts of the globe; from city states at one end
to vast empires at the other. Nation is a Latin concept that evolved in Europe and acquired
its present meaning and prominence in modern times; it is a product of Western modernity.
The marriage of the two spawned the ideology of nationalism with its ideal of a culturally
homogeneous society, underpinning the state with legitimacy and loyalty. This fusion took
place in the unique conditions of Europe, as feudalism was superseded by capitalism within
states dominated by the bourgeoisie that wanted national markets and states to protect and
administer them. This model was transposed to Africa, a vastly different world, without the
slightest concession to its uniqueness and the results have been tragic.
Even as they were compelled to accept the colonial model, the more thoughtful among
Africa’s first generation of leaders were sensitive to the incongruity involved and fought for
some form of wider unity to underpin the African state. At the end of the twentieth century,
Julius Nyerere lamented “the glorification of the nation­state [that] we inherited from colo­
nialism, and the artificial nations we are trying to forge from that inheritance. Fortunately,
we were not completely successful.”3 Nevertheless, succeeding generations of African po­
litical elites have considered the nation­state as the holy grail of modernization, and made
national integration the highest political value. Since most newly independent African states
did not comprise homogeneous nations, homogeneity needed to be achieved by nation build­
ing, even by force if necessary. The forceful pursuit of nation building has been the cause of
unending conflict in Africa, especially in the Horn, with ethnic cleansing, massive popula­
tion displacement, successive waves of refugees, political instability and enormous human
suffering. In the emotive words of Basil Davidson (1992), it has been a “curse” and the
“Black man’s burden.”
The political dynamics that reflect an African reality still in the preindustrial stage—
a social fabric defined by ethnicity and a flamboyant multiculturalism that defies homo­
geneity—are fundamentally different from those that prevailed in the West and molded the
nation­state model imposed on Africa. Ethnoculturalism (derided as tribalism) is invariably
cited as the source of political instability that has undermined modern government in Africa.
However, ethnoculturalism is a reality, a fact of life. Like the nation, it is a social construct,
neither timeless nor universal. While there has always been cultural and linguistic variation
in Africa, the features that define these variations often shifted gradually and formed cul­
tural continua, rather than delineating discrete groups. In many cases, strictly defined ethnic
groups were created in the colonial period, solely for administrative purposes. Nevertheless,
the concept of ethnic groups has a remarkable appeal for political identification and is much
3 Excerpt from a speech delivered by Julius Nyerere, in Accra on March 6, 1997 (Rasta Live Wire, January 5,

2014).
14 1. Introduction

more of a reality on the ground than the concept of a nation. African states comprise dozens
or hundreds of ethnic groups, some of them representing millions of people and larger than
many nations.
The difference between an ethnic group and a nation is the relationship to statehood.
When one calls an ethnic group a nation, it implies statehood or a claim to statehood. In
some places, ethnoculturalism defines a nation. But when ethnic and cultural criteria are
not coterminous with the “nation,” ethnoculturalism becomes the antithesis of nationhood,
which tends to be the case in Africa. Here, ethnoculturalism is the matrix of identity and
solidarity as well as the framework of political mobilization, mostly on a smaller scale than
that of the postcolonial “nation”­states, that is at the subnational level. In Africa, ethnocul­
turalism has proved incompatible with the alien nation­state model. The persistent effort
over decades to confine ethnic groups to the dictates of nations has undermined effective
government in Africa.
Many states in Africa and other parts of the world boast of a national culture of unity in
diversity. The use of the word “national” here amounts to little more than rules of conduct
and procedures for interaction between different ethnic groups and is limited to the meta­
ethnic level. Such forms of multiculturalism or ethnic federalism can be seen as a balance
between centripetal forces (shared nationhood) and centrifugal ones (ethnic particularism).
In the Horn of Africa, there are many examples of ethnicity that have proved too resilient to
be brushed aside in the name of nationalism. Ethnicity is accommodated by letting admin­
istrative boundaries run along ethnic or cultural dividing lines. So far, this has not achieved
lasting peace. For example, marginality in Ethiopia’s southern and western marches is not
overcome by giving people the right to develop their own languages and folkloric versions
of culture. More needs to be done to achieve peace, such as fairness in resource use and
budget allocations. Otherwise, ethnic pluralism does not lead to a plurality of equals, but to
ethnic hierarchies.
Our wildest fantasies cannot beat the richness and variety of forms and functions of
statehood provided by the historical and ethnographic record. That is why we always have
to ask what the functions of a given state are before we can say that it is not functional,
or that it has failed. Those who rule states judged to have failed often have no reason to
feel they have failed. For instance, ruling elite representing minority interests may focus on
parts of the economy where wealth can be easily extracted and syphon off enormous riches
that are then sent abroad. Statehood and the measure of success and failure have to take
these criteria into account. Who is the state, who identifies with the state, with whom does
the state identify, and whom are state policies and development meant to benefit? It cannot
even be taken for granted that the state has a plan for development, something that is not a
traditional state responsibility. As happened in the Horn, vast areas may drop out of state
control for long periods of time; others may never have been effectively penetrated by it.
This raises the diagnostic question: what allows us to say that there is a state? What are the
functions of statehood? Do people need to know that they live in a state in order to qualify
as citizens of that state, or for the state to qualify as real?
States like Somalia before its collapse and South Sudan since its independence func­
tioned mainly as recipients and distributors of foreign aid and, in the case of the latter, of
petrodollars as well. In South Sudan, “rent” in the form of foreign aid was the main asset
1. Introduction 15

associated with statehood. There was little else in terms of statehood.4 Policies that were
formulated to benefit South Sudan usually had an ulterior goal. Disarmament, demobiliza­
tion, and reintegration (DDR) is part of every standard international peacemaking agenda,
because it aims to reduce the number of combatants. But in South Sudan it worked as a kind
of pension scheme for noncombatants (such as cooks) and for aged or incapacitated soldiers
(Sureau 2017). In anticipation of things to come, no political faction dreamt of actually
reducing its fighting force.
State failure to manage the political forces that arise from ethnocultural, regional, and
socioeconomic differences and the disparities they represent is most obvious in the Horn of
Africa. Unlike the rest of the continent, where the colonial geopolitical legacy was accepted
as the lesser evil, it was widely rejected in the Horn, unleashing manifold struggles over
territory, boundaries, identity, and power that remain unresolved to this day. The many­
sided conflict is fought under the banner of nationalism, involving several rival nation­state
building projects—Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Somaliland, and Dji­
bouti—working at cross purposes in a zero­sum game. In the process thus far, the map of
the region has been revised several times; two states were truncated and one collapsed, end­
ing with a faithful restoration of the colonial map. At present, all the states face challenges
to their sovereignty, identity, and territory.
During the entire postcolonial period none of the states in the region have at any time
fulfilled the role attributed to the Western prototype. None has exercised effective control
over its entire territory, secured its borders, possessed a monopoly over the use and instru­
ments of force, enjoyed legitimacy and loyalty from a majority of its subjects, enforced law
and maintained order throughout its domain, or protected the lives and liberty of its subjects.
In fact, the state posed the greatest threat to human and political rights.
Palpable failure has not shaken faith in the nation­state model itself among social sci­
entists who have always perceived modernization in Africa as the mirror image of the West.
The failure of non­Western societies to adopt the alien model successfully is accounted as
proof of persisting backwardness (Rotberg 2003). The fitness of the model itself and the
logic of its imposition globally are not in question. Failure is not seen as terminal. First
introduced by Gunnar Myrdal (1968) in a comparison of South Asian countries to European
countries, state fragility is now the operative concept—a condition that can be overcome
by adopting policies devised by social scientists who are energetically producing manuals
on “how to fix failed states” (Ashraf Ghani and Lockhart 2008). Even total collapse is not
terminal: witness the persistent effort to resurrect the defunct Somali Republic, to prevent
South Sudan from falling apart, the refusal to recognize breakaway Somaliland, and the
sequestration of Eritrea.
Conflict between and within states on the Horn of Africa has provided a substantial
opportunity for Western­led peacemaking interventions that have enabled foreign actors to
mediate relations among states, to intervene in their internal affairs, to impose economic and
political policies of their choosing, and generally to wield regional hegemony. This interfer­
ence was sanctioned by the concept of the “responsibility to protect” citizens against abuse
by the state, endorsed by UN resolution R2P (Responsibility to Protect) in 2006 that enter­
tains the possibility of withdrawal of sovereignty for transgressors. The then President of the
UN General Assembly, Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann (2009),5 said, “a more accurate name
4 Sureau (2017) cites drawing lists of foreign NGOs as a state function.
5 Brockmann (2009), “Thematic Dialogue,” lecture delivered to UN General Assembly, July 28.
16 1. Introduction

for R2P would be the ‘right to intervene,’” and the targets for intervention are invariably
enemies of the West.
By holding local actors responsible for conflict, the West absolved itself of responsibil­
ity, while at the same time claiming that Africans had no agency, and this justified outside
intervention in their internal affairs. These post­Cold War notions were first played out in
former Yugoslavia and the First Gulf War, where human rights abuses served to justify US
military intervention. Under the guise of a commitment to protect human rights, the US also
invaded Somalia. After eighteen of its soldiers were killed, the US withdrew, and it was
clear that Africans were not without agency. In Libya, the West used the cover of a Security
Council resolution to protect civilians in order to remove the Muammar Gadhafi regime.
State failure is widely considered to pose a security threat to the Western­dominated
international state system. External Western powers judge the condition of a particular state
and this is sometimes endorsed by the UN. The intervention that follows aims at regime
change, though it may not always be achieved. Efforts at a regime change failed in Libya,
Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, as well as in the US peacemaking efforts in Sudan and
South Sudan. The solution to state failure is always the adoption of Western institutions of
governance and a market economy, as in modernization theory.
Since the onset of the Global War on Terror there has been an increasing effort to give
peacemaking, conflict prevention, and development a security dimension under the concepts
of stabilization and Countering Violent Extremism (CVE). These measures serve to empha­
size the security role of African states and to link them closely to the security interests of the
West. Stabilization and CVE increasingly blur the line between humanitarian operations,
including peacemaking on the one hand, and military operations on the other. They are de­
signed to mobilize Third World states in the latest international crusade undertaken by the
West. Military assistance provided for ramshackle states and embattled regimes enables un­
popular regimes to cling to power and, more importantly, to shore up crumbling states and
salvage the Western model.
Whether it is colonialism, neocolonialism, neoliberalism, the GWOT, or Western­led
peacemaking, the West finds new and innovative ways to undermine the sovereignty of
African states, create and co­opt local elites, open their economies to Western corporations,
gain control of their resources which are used to advance their own interests. While Western
countries enjoy the benefits and legitimacy of self­proclaimed democracy, Western poli­
cies in Africa over many years have been designed to separate the rulers from the people,
make these rulers accountable to the West and not to their own people, and thus limit and
shape development and preclude the emergence of indigenous systems of governance and
accountability.
Material incentives are the key to understanding politics and conflict in this region,
possibly in a clearer and less disguised form here than elsewhere. However, who allies with
whom is not merely determined by the price of loyalty. Identifications and alliances are in­
fluenced by beliefs and ideologies. Evangelical Americans believed that South Sudan would
become an English­speaking, Christian country in the heart of Africa, and Americans of all
persuasions thought it would become a democracy following the US model. This notion has
little to do with the actual collective identities, languages, and beliefs found in what was to
become South Sudan. Slavery in Sudan was an important topic in the discourse of West­
ern supporters of the independence of South Sudan, but it was also a manipulated notion
perpetuated by American and European supporters of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Army
1. Introduction 17

(SPLA) to gain support for the movement and discredit the supposed Arab and Muslim slave
owners. This discourse gained considerable support in the US because of its history of slav­
ery and the white guilt associated with slavery. Elsewhere, terrorist served as a convenient
label for everyone who opposed Western political or economic interests, appealing to fears
provoked by events as distant as the 9/11 attacks on the US and the rise of the Islamic State
in Syria and Iraq. Ideas about racial inferiority and superiority along with accompanying
practices of discrimination also exist among Africans. That is why the pervading factors of
neocolonialism and integration into a globalized capitalism at the losing end do not lead to
uniform results across the region. If they did, we could stop at this point, but they do not.
The study presented in this book seeks to address the root causes of the Horn of Africa’s
troubled modern political history. Given the record of state failure to manage conflict in the
region as measured against the Western nation­state model, the question raised in this study
is whether the Western nation­state model adopted, or claimed to be adopted, in the Horn
and generally in Africa is suitable for the time and place. Is the Horn of Africa unique in sub­
Saharan Africa with regard to the applicability of the nation­state model? It can be argued
that the region’s modern history is exceptional, overshadowed in the case of Ethiopia by the
dominating presence of an African state with ancient roots that not only avoided the colonial
experience, but itself went on to create a genuine empire in the region.
Furthermore, the Ethiopian empire was not dismantled as its European counterparts
were, instead its rulers launched a determined, longstanding campaign of national integra­
tion intended to turn the multi­ethnic empire into a homogeneous nation­state. This pro­
voked a many­sided conflict with several rival nation building projects in the region that
crashed head­on with Ethiopia’s, and the result was war across state boundaries, that is over
territory—a rarity in the rest of the continent. The policies of Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy
Ahmed including the military action against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) at
the end of 2020 appear designed to again construct a homogeneous nation­state, a project
this study suggests is doomed to failure. It should be noted, however, that the longest con­
flicts occurred within state boundaries when entire regions—Eritrea, South Sudan, and So­
maliland—rebelled against the suffocating embrace of an autocratic state pursuing national
integration through cultural assimilation.
Is the experience of this region unique for the continent, or is it an aggravated instance
of the pursuit of nation building at all costs? The pursuit of the nation in the embrace of
a tightly centralized, autocratic state is the hallmark of Africa’s postcolonial history, the
dominant force in the politics of the independent states, and the root cause of many evils.
Certainly, the Horn is not the only example of the destabilizing impact the attempt to graft
a singular national consciousness and identity onto the flourishing ethnic plurality of sub­
Saharan Africa has on the fragile postcolonial state. In fact, it can be argued that the refusal
to accept social reality and accord it political recognition is the root cause of the prevailing
instability. Uganda and Kenya, not to mention Rwanda and Burundi, are cases in point.

1.3 Where to Go from Here

The question that is never raised by social scientists and politicians alike is whether the
failure of states in Africa to manage their countries and resolve their peoples’ problems might
be due, at least to a degree, to the incompatible match of an alien form of governance with
African reality. The thought of a mismatch is not entertained because the reigning dogma of
18 1. Introduction

modernization does not recognize the possibility of an alternative form of state. The study
presented here aims to revive the debate by questioning whether the Western nation­state
is the right model for Africa, and to encourage Africans to consider alternative methods of
governance for the continent. What is alternative? is the familiar retort that rules out a
debate on this issue. Our view is that the answer is for Africans to discover.
Chapter 2
The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa
John Markakis

A manifold, violent political struggle has taken many lives throughout the Horn
of Africa, and displaced millions of people reducing them to beggary. The con­
flict consumes a large share of the region’s sparse resources, making a mockery
of plans for development and condemning future generations to enduring mis­
ery[…]. Everywhere the target […] is the state: the custodian of wealth and
protector of privilege. The state is both the goal of the contest and the principal
means through which the contest is waged. (Markakis 1987, xvii)

The lines above were written in the mid­1980s, when the crisis of the state in this corner
of the continent was already a quarter of a century old. At present, a quarter of a century
later, the situation described has not changed significantly. State sovereignty, territorial in­
tegrity, and regime legitimacy are challenged widely in the Horn (but examples can be found
throughout Africa) by political actors representing ethno­national groups who all face un­
equal access to power and material resources, as well as social and cultural discrimination;
these common denominators are the key ingredients in the chemistry of the conflict, whether
it is fought in the name of nation, region, clan, or religion. The perennial crisis of the state
in the Horn of Africa is variously attributed to ethnic strife, resource competition, weak
political institutions, inappropriate policies, corrupt and authoritarian rulers. It is assumed
that these familiar features of the political landscape in the region could be eliminated with
time, socioeconomic development, institution building, civic education, democratization,
and other equally familiar nostrums of orthodox development theory. On the contrary, all
of these supposed solutions are undoubtably ingredients in the chemistry of the unending
crisis that has afflicted the postcolonial state in Africa. They are real obstacles in the path
of modernization that hinder the Western model of nation­state building from taking root in
African soil, and social scientists have formulated new paradigms—“state weakness,” “state
fragility,” “state failure,” “state collapse”—to accommodate them, and a host of concepts to
account for the causes (John 2008).
The issue that is seldom raised is whether the model that originated during the Peace
of Westphalia in the mid­seventeenth century is appropriate for the place and time period
in which it has been imposed, and if it itself might not be the root cause of instability and
conflict. Given the record of state failure, it is reasonable to question the compatibility of
state and society and to consider whether political dynamics that reflect African social reality
are fundamentally different from those that prevail in the West, consequently rendering them
unmanageable in the Western nation­state model. To break the taboo and question whether
the pursuit of nation building at this place and time is not itself the root cause of the crisis is
the purpose of this work.
20 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

The Horn of Africa is chosen primarily because it has been the focus of long­term pro­
fessional interest for the authors. As it happens, it also provides striking examples of the
crisis that has rendered the postcolonial state dysfunctional. No state in this region has been
able to adequately perform the functions generally assumed of it: control its borders, exercise
a monopoly on the means of force within its borders, enforce the law equitably throughout
its domain, protect the life and property of its subjects, and administer justice impartially.
The region holds several continental records for political unrest: five wars between states,
two of the longest wars, two secessions from existing states, and one state collapse. Further­
more, almost every self­identifying ethno­regional group has started at least one “national
liberation movement.”

*
The issue at the heart of this work was raised a quarter of a century ago by Basil Davidson
(1992). A notable exception to the reigning consensus in the Africanist academic commu­
nity, Davidson’s theory came at the end of two “lost decades” in Africa (the 1970s and
1980s), a period marked by political and economic deterioration. Davidson not only raised
the issue, he also answered it categorically. The causes of the deterioration are not those
that preoccupy the development experts, he declared; these are the effects, not the cause.
The root cause is the headlong pursuit of the nation­state, which Davidson vividly calls a
“curse” and the “Black man’s burden.” The holy grail of modernization, he maintained,
obliged Africans to deny their history, cultures, and traditions—a deracination that left the
continent hostage to manifold alienation and estranged a majority of the population from the
Westernized elite. The elite, who promote the process of modernization qua Westernization,
rely on the state to advance their vision of the future, thus making the state a participant in
conflicts that reveal the tensions within the diverse African society. Yet, the state itself is
incapable of managing the political dimensions that arise from these social conflicts.
Social conflicts include the competition for resources between social classes, ethnic
groups, clans, and regions. Given the rapid growth of population, urbanization, environ­
mental degradation, and the failure of economic transformation to counterbalance their im­
pact, competition intensifies and is increasingly politicized. When the private sector of the
economy atrophies, the state comes to control the production and distribution of resources.
Inevitably, access to state power secures access to resources, and the reverse is also true.
Thus, state power becomes the object of social conflict as well as the means whereby it
is waged. It is inevitable in this context that ethnicity will serve as the reference point of
identity, solidarity, loyalty, and collective security.
Africa’s experience is not unique. Davidson draws parallels with the consequences of
the collapse of the Austro­Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, and
the Soviet Union, as well as the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the recent history of the
Middle East. In each instance, a host of former colonies and dependent territories emerged,
and were driven by nationalism to become nation­states. Initially regarded positively as a
progressive and liberating force, nationalism soon revealed a Janus nature, and the drive
for a purified national identity resulted in the unending series of conflicts that made twenti­
eth century Europe the “dark continent” (Mazower 1998). Many of these conflicts endure,
unresolved, in the present century. The historical parallels with Africa are clear. There is,
however, one difference, and it is a fundamental one. The core of nationalism as an ideology
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 21

is the distinct identity that differentiates one nation from others, an identity whose pillar is
the history and culture of the people it claims to represent. Nationalism turns culture into
fetish and enhances it with myth. This is not the case with African nationalism which saw
Africa’s tradition and culture as the antithesis of progress and turned its back on it.

*
In the nomenclature of the time, the first generation of Africa’s political leaders referred
to themselves as “nationalists.” This identity alluded to their quest for independence from
colonial rule and the aspiration of nation­state building they shared with their comrades
throughout the Southern hemisphere. They were politicians committed to modernization
above all, the kind of modernization described by Davidson, which was (and remains) the
primary goal of the continent. “The work of African politicians is to a large extent of keeping
their countries going as nation­states in a world that recognizes no other formula of political
evolution” (Leys 1966, 55). With few exceptions (like Kwame Nkrumah who envisioned
African political unity on a higher and wider plane) they accepted the colonial carve­up of
ramshackle states, described by Wole Soyinka as “a patchwork quilt sewn by a drunken
tailor” because redrawing the colonial map risked opening Pandora’s Box of “tribalism.”
The colonial boundaries were declared inviolable, a principle enshrined in the charter of
the Organization of African Unity, and credited with keeping African inter­state relations
generally free of territorial disputes and conflicts over sovereignty.
State builders have always feared that “the failure to homogenize increased the likeli­
hood that a state […] would fragment into its cultural subdivisions” (Tilly 1975, 44). Cultural
homogeneity and a shared national identity presumably endow the state with legitimacy and
reduce the need to use force as the instrument of rule. National integration, therefore, be­
came a political imperative. Former colonies were to be turned into functioning states and
multi­ethnic populations molded into nations. This required the dissolution of traditional
systems of socio­political organization and of ethnic identities, as well as the effacement of
ethnic languages. In effect, the approach eclipsed Africa’s flamboyant multiculturalism and
designated a singular national culture for each of the more than fifty former colonies.
Western theorists who took it upon themselves to guide Africans on the path to devel­
opment perceived national integration as an exercise in social engineering. “The people in
a new state must come to recognize their national territory as being their true homeland,”
proclaimed a prominent member of the profession, “and they must feel as individuals that
their own personal identities are in part defined by their identification with their territorially
delimited country” (Pye 1963, 63).
The universal appeal of nationalism as an ideology stems from its perceived capacity
to transcend social divisions—ethnic, regional, religious, class, clan—that undermine the
state and threaten the position of the ruling elite. Nation­state building is expected to re­
place ethno­cultural diversity with a singular identity, a consciousness of national unity and
undiluted loyalty to the state. Historically, the replacement comprises the identity, culture,
tradition, and language of the nation­state builders, and national integration involves its dif­
fusion throughout the state via a process of acculturation, assimilation, and if need be, forced
conversion.
In many cases it was clear that ethnic or religious sub­identities would not simply fade
away, so attempts were made to define a level of integration with shared convictions, prac­
22 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

tices, norms, and values at the state and national level. Particular identities that were com­
patible with this “national” identity would be integrated. There are dozens of states in the
postcolonial world that have “unity in diversity” as their motto. In precolonial Africa, ethnic
differences often were along the lines of professional specialization, a circumstance which
often led to reduced competition and forms of peaceful exchange. In other cases, social
distance and restricted interaction made peaceful coexistence possible. Premodern empires
made systematic use of ethnic differences to organize heterogeneous societies, which do not
conform to modern ideas of equality and universal citizenship. In this scenario, however,
everyone could find a community, a process that can be described as “integration through
difference” (Schlee and Horstmann 2018).
Cultural differences become more of a problem when they occur in the context of mod­
ern nation­states, based on ideas of homogeneity and equality (Schlee and Horstmann 2018).
That was the case with the decolonization of Africa. The products of that decolonization
were to be modelled along the lines of the modern, Westphalian nation­state. Unlike the
dissolution of the Habsburg Empire, which was celebrated as a liberation of nations (which
existed or were believed to exist before the event), there were no nations that fitted the West­
ern model after African decolonization. The ideal of the nation­state is the congruence of a
collective, a nation with its own territory. In newly decolonized states of Africa, the territory
was there, but the nation needed to be built in order to achieve this congruence.
Accordingly, nation building became the goal, and acculturation was required at the
national level. The process of nation building stemmed from the colonial experience as the
operating responsible political units were products of colonialism. In sub­Saharan Africa,
this kind of acculturation began long before the rise of African nationalism; it was not a
local initiative and did no draw on indigenous history, culture, and tradition as its sources.
On the contrary, it aimed to eradicate them. The arrival of nationalism could not halt the
process but actually reinforced its colonial background, beginning with the introduction of
Western education tout court in conjunction with a crude form of Christian evangelism. The
intention was to produce a cadre of locals to help administer the colonial empire; proper
assimilation to Western culture would distinguish them from the rest of the population. Its
members were appropriately called assimilados, evolues or emancipados, in the languages
of the colonial masters. The qualifications needed to achieve the status of assimilado, for
example, were succinctly prescribed in the Portuguese Colonial Statute of 1954: a Catholic
baptismal certificate, a civil marriage license, and a civilized job. An assimilado furthermore
needed to practice a Portuguese lifestyle.
Assimilation is most effective with tabula rasa but is an impossible condition in this
case. As an alternative approach, colonial organizers eradicated indigenous history and cul­
ture, and quelled any beliefs and values that could obstruct the assimilation process. In Wal­
ter Rodney’s (Rodney 1972, 380) words: “to be colonized is to be removed from history,
except in the most passive sense.” The assimilado was taught to disdain the past. Tradition
was “primitive,” “savage,” “primordial,” and “uncivilized.” Local religions were called
“idolatry” and “animist”; its practitioners were “wizards,” “sorcerers,” and “witch doctors.”
Universal creeds like Islam and Christianity that had already taken root in the continent were
the exception, and became integral components of national identity in places like Ethiopia,
Sudan, and Somalia. Colonial education “was not an education system designed to grow
out of the African environment […] [and] designed to give young people pride as being
members of African societies, but one that sought to install deference towards all that was
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 23

European and capitalist” (Rodney 1972, 380). No concession was made to the past, and
no attempt was made to recognize, interact, or integrate with anything the African tradition
might have to offer. This was not a process of cultural diffusion familiar in world history,
but of cultural deracination.
Acculturation had momentous political consequences that outlived colonialism. Asso­
ciation with the colonial power endowed the indigenous cadre with administrative power
and relative economic privilege, turning it into the elite class. And independence turned
the elite into a ruling class. African nationalism rejected Western political and economic
domination, but it did not reject cultural domination. In fact, it embraced it and reinforced it
through the rapid expansion of Western education, one area of development in which African
states made great progress.
Nation building required the transcendence of ethnicity, the living cell of society, and
replacement with a nation that did not yet exist. Nation building was launched with a frontal
attack on African tradition and its defenders. “Tribalism” became a social defamation and
a handy weapon in political contests; in some instances, reference to one’s “tribe” was out­
lawed. The accusation of tribalism was successfully used to preempt claims to a share of
political power by traditional authorities, who could have served as intermediaries with the
masses, but were sidelined instead.
The result was the perfection of Western hegemony over the subcontinent. Hegemony,
according to Gramsci, can be achieved by coercive or consensual mechanisms of social con­
trol. Consensus is far more preferable because it requires less effort from the hegemon to
enforce, given the cooperation of the local ruling elite. “A Gramscian hegemony involves
the internalization on the part of subordinate classes of the moral and cultural values, the
codes of practical conduct, and the worldview of the dominant classes or groups—in sum,
the internalization of the social logic of the system of dominance itself’ (Robinson 1996,
21). Hegemony is ultimately achieved when the hegemon’s ideology is internalized by the
target society itself. While Gramsci’s reference is a class divided capitalist society, his con­
cept perfectly fits the postcolonial world system. Instead of being locked into the neoliberal
paradigm, the neo­Gramscian approach focuses on the inter­relationship between states, so­
cial forces, ideals, and world orders. In this paradigm, it is the African ruling elite that is
the pillar of the hegemonic system. The success of the hegemonic project drove a wedge
between the urban, Westernized elite—a small minority—and Africa’s rural population—a
vast majority—whose life still follows a traditional rhythm. The two are separated by a cul­
tural gap that alienates the masses from their rulers; it is a disjunction that is the source of
many of Africa’s problems.
The internalization of the Western worldview by the African elite deprived Africa of
its own organic intellectuals, born from its own womb to represent and convey the values,
norms, and logic of its own history, culture, and tradition to future generations. The African
elite proved unable to negotiate and mediate the process of breakneck acculturation that
threatened to overwhelm their societies; in other words, they could not “resist, appropriate,
interpret, and transform” as Asian and Arab nations have done to mitigate impact and pro­
tect their own cultures and identities (Mishra 2015). As a result, sub­Saharan Africa does
not produce knowledge relevant to its own reality and remains as dependent on imported
knowledge as it does for capital and technology. Africa does not produce solutions for its
own problems, but depends on foreign “specialists” whose expertise does not derive from
24 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

their knowledge of Africa. In the bitter words of one of their own, African intellectuals
function as “paid native informants for foreign donors” (Zeleza 2003, 157).

*
Like all ideologies, nationalism feeds on myth, and African nationalism is no exception. A
staple feature of it is the alleged unity of purpose and structure of the nationalist movement
in each colony, a forerunner of the anticipated unity of the future nation. In truth, a for­
mer colony rarely saw fewer than two rival nationalist organizations form and compete for
power of the future state. Moreover, factionalism derived from ethno­cultural and regional
differences within each colony and signified concern over access to power and resources in
the independent state. Protracted negotiations on power sharing along ethnic and regional
lines delayed independence in many instances. In several cases, including Sudan, Eritrea,
and Somalia in the Horn, smaller and less advanced groups asked for independence to be
postponed until they were ready to compete for power. Elsewhere, they asked for a federal
system of government to protect them from superior group domination. This was an early
sign of the cracks in the body politic and an ill omen for the future.
Nowhere was this power dilemma more evident than in the Horn of Africa. The consen­
sus over colonial boundaries did not apply in this corner of the continent, where decoloniza­
tion unleashed bloody struggles over territory, sovereignty, and identity in several fronts.
“Almost all the states of the Horn of Africa have, at one time or another, staked claim on
parts or the whole of a neighbouring country,” writes a veteran politician from the region
(Latta 2009, 4). The many­sided conflict involved rival nation­state building projects work­
ing at cross purposes in a zero­sum game, where one’s gain is another’s loss. The state, actual
or imagined, was the prize in the manifold conflict, with some actors seeking to preserve and
expand existing states, others trying to secede and create their own states, others yet fighting
to secede from one state in order to join another, and others still to capture power within their
own state. Focusing on Ethiopia’s leading role in this volatile process, Christopher Clapham
points to the “non­colonial” roots of state building in this region and the strength of “home
grown forces” involved (Clapham 2017).
To date the struggle to revise the map in this region has gone through two sharply
contrasting phases. The first brought the consolidation of state units created by imperialism,
and the second saw the negation of the consolidation. The first phase was launched by the
three largest states—Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia—and concluded when they had annexed the
small neighbor abandoned by the receding imperialist tide. Ethiopia annexed Eritrea, Sudan
incorporated southern Sudan, a region the British had administered separately from northern
Sudan while mulling over its future, and Somaliland joined Somalia in a union the former
had cause to regret, while the Djibouti enclave survived by remaining a French colony for
two more decades. The first phase reduced the number of states in the Horn from seven to
four.
The second saw the fragmentation of Ethiopia, Sudan, and Somalia with the seces­
sion of the three annexed units, which emerged as independent states; Eritrea and southern
Sudan de jure, Somaliland de facto. This marked the full restoration of the colonial map
after decades of violent conflict took the lives of millions, dislocated the region’s economy,
and undermined its prospects for development. It also condemned its people to live under
authoritarian rulers addicted to the use of force as the main instrument of government.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 25

The prize of the contest, the state, was to be the agency in the building of the imagined
nation. Unsurprisingly, since it was chosen by the ruling elite, the future nation’s identity
was to be the same as their own ethnic identity. In Ethiopia they represented the Abyssinians
who had built the Ethiopian Empire over a century earlier. Assimilation over the course of
a century reinforced the descendants of the empire builders; even so, they are a minority in
the country they rule to this day. In the imperial state, national integration was predicated
on Christianity and the Amharic language, and was aptly known as Amharization. In the
Sudan, the ruling elite represented the Arabic­speaking Muslim population of the central
riverain region. Ethnic groups in eastern and western Sudan are Muslims but not Arabic­
speaking, and together with the inhabitants of southern Sudan, they far outnumbered the
Arab elite who ruled over them. Predicated on Islam and the Arab culture and language, the
process here was known as Arabization. The ruling elite in Somalia are represented by the
Darod family of clans who are the largest group by member and are thought to exemplify the
pastoralist ethos of the Somali people. While the pastoralists of northern and central Somalia
speak dialects that are similar to each other and have been the basis of the standardized
national language, in the south of the country there are many dialects, distinct both from
the standard and from each other. The speakers of these dialects comprise large numbers of
sedentary agriculturalists. Often, they are classified as Saab as distinct from Samaale (the
eponymous ancestor of the Somali proper). In the south many people of slave origin are
found, comprising the Bantu speakers of the Juba region.
The method chosen to promote national integration in Ethiopia and Sudan was the as­
similation of ethnically diverse groups. Since both states are ethnic mosaics, homogene­
ity spelled the cultural deracination of subordinate groups. As it turned out, however, the
promotion of dominant group nationalism was to be checkmated and confounded by the
countervailing force of its opposite number, which is the emerging nationalism among sub­
ordinate groups. Many resisted assimilation forcefully, ultimately making the task of the
nation­state builders well­nigh impossible.
It was not solely cultural suppression that inspired resistance. Elite monopoly of power
and its consequences was a more direct provocation. As mentioned earlier, given the atrophy
of the private economy in Africa, access to state power translates into access to material and
social resources. The exclusion of subordinate groups from power means a lack of access
to resources commanded by the state, which range from land and water to employment,
education, and health care. Powerlessness, economic discrimination, and cultural oppression
add up to marginalization, the defining feature of subordination and the catalyst for conflict
over state power.
Ethnically and socially circumscribed, the political base of the ruling elite is narrow,
and its claim to legitimacy feeble. Consequently, it is compelled to rely on force to main­
tain itself in power while continuing to pursue the nation­state building project, ruling out
any form of representative government. Democratization had a brief life in the Horn. It
lasted the longest—nine years—in Somalia in the 1960s, where it managed a unique—for
the region—peaceful transfer of power. It made fleeting appearances, marking the transition
between military regimes in Sudan, which took a combined total of six years since inde­
pendence in 1956. It has served as a façade for authoritarian rule in Ethiopia and Djibouti
but has not appeared in Eritrea even for this purpose. To defend their monopoly, the elite
depended entirely on the state whose institutions they strive to strengthen. As a result, the
state’s repressive apparatus, especially security and the military, grew inordinately in the
26 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

postcolonial period, inevitably leading to military rule that serves as a prop for elite rule
when it falters.
Nationalism proved a weak ideological foundation for the postcolonial state and pro­
vided inadequate support for legitimacy deficient regimes. The latter have sought to re­
inforce it with transplants from contemporary ideologies that enjoyed ephemeral popular
appeal. Socialism was the ideology of liberation struggles fought in the non­Western world
during the second half of the twentieth century. Africans nationalists were naturally drawn
to it and made their preference clear in a meeting held in Dakar in 1962 to discuss the relative
merits of socialism and capitalism. Leopold Senghor, the host, vowed: “We shall not be won
over to a regime of liberal capitalism and free enterprise” (quoted in Mohan 1966, 22). Sey­
dou Kouyate, Mali’s Minister of Planning and Rural Economy put the economic argument
tersely: “You cannot be a capitalist when you have no capital” (Mohan 1966, 22). Fur­
thermore, capitalism was considered incompatible with African social and cultural values.
“The presuppositions and purposes of capitalism are contrary to those of African society,”
Nkrumah wrote, adding that “capitalism would be a betrayal of the personality and con­
science of Africa” (Nkrumah 1964, 74). “There are few African states whose leaders have
resisted the temptation of insinuating ‘Socialism’ into their political rhetoric,” concluded a
contemporary observer (Mohan 1966, 22).
The Africans’ preference for socialism came as a surprise to Westerners. The hand­
ing of state power by the departing colonial powers to their assimilated protégés had been
explained in the West with the logic of the Cold War. One scholar noted the identity of in­
terests of the African elite, a small minority of the population, and the metropolitan power,
an identity he believed “made them safe hands in which to trust foreign assets. Given the
fairly strong adherence of Africa’s elites to legitimate metropolitan socioeconomic norms
and institutions, there is no reason to expect them to forge strong ties with the communist
world” (Kilson 1963, 434). Another concluded “the fundamental sense of values of the
African states will keep them, at least for the near future, immune to the proselytizing zeal
of the communists” (Brzezinski 1963, 135). Though the popularity of socialism made cap­
italist Westerners anxious, they were unduly worried, since socialism proved to be another
Western doctrine that failed to take root in Africa. African politicians “use the rhetoric of
‘Socialism,’ not as a guide to their actual policies and objectives, but as an ideological scaf­
fold, among other devices, for their monopoly of political power” (Mohan 1966, 222).
Socialism sanctions a dominant role for the state in economic development, ranging
from the nationalization of the means of production to centralized planning. This provided
the African elite, which lacked capital assets of its own, with control and exploitation of
national resources. Thus, three states in the Horn—Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia—featured
military regimes implausibly committed to scientific socialism in the last two decades of the
past century.
Socialism also underpins the case for the one­party state. As the argument went, sub­
Saharan Africa is a classless society and doesn’t need multiple political parties to represent
them. “One party rule is the most appropriate political instrument for ending ethnic conflict
and for planning,” Nkrumah declared in (1964) as he changed Ghana’s constitution, citing
two reasons why authoritarian rule became political fashion early on and why it remains
the enduring favorite to this day. Nowadays, however, political correctness requires that it
operate behind a democratic façade. Modernization­cum­Westernization is a package that
includes democratization and the free market as intrinsically linked features of the modern
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 27

nation­state. Neither was an option for the first generation of African leaders, who displayed
a definite preference for an authoritarian style of governance. It was the single party system,
not a liberal democracy that became the model for government throughout the subcontinent
during the first decade of independence. Succeeded by military rule, the archetype of au­
thoritarianism for the following two decades made a comeback at the end of the last century
as a façade in a “wave of democratization.”

*
The sixteenth­century Muslim invasion of Ethiopia nearly extinguished Christianity in the
kingdom of Prester John, yet Orthodox Christianity is the foundation of Ethiopian nation­
alism today. This example demonstrates how religion is another ideology long used for
political purposes in the Horn. The first independent state in modern day Sudan was the
work of a messianic Islamic figure known as the Mahdi (1844–1885), and the two main
political parties in postcolonial Sudan were created by two Islamic turuq (singular: tariqa),
Mahdiya and Khatmiya. The Dervish movement in Somalia at the beginning of the twentieth
century is another historical precursor.
At the close of the twentieth century, Islam made a spectacular comeback as the ideol­
ogy of choice for political mobilization in the Horn. Having discarded scientific socialism in
the early 1980s in Sudan, Jaafar Nimeiri turned to Islam in search of solid political ground.
The introduction of Sharia was bruited about, the Sudan was named an Islamic Republic, and
thousands of bottles of alcohol were poured into the Nile in a sort of libation. Although this
maneuver did not save Nimeiri, Islamism was taken up with a zealot’s fervor by the military
regime that directly followed in Khartoum in 1989. Guided by the National Islamic Front
at the extreme right end of the political spectrum, the regime headed by Colonel Omar Al
Al­Bashir that would later be called the National Congress Party wasted little time imposing
Sharia with all the trimmings on the country. It also proclaimed itself the champion of this
creed in the Horn, upsetting both Ethiopia and Eritrea and mightily irritating Washington.
Islam has always been popular in Somalia despite having to overcome the divisive
appeal of the clan, the bedrock of their society. The recent shift in Somali nationalism toward
Islam was signaled by the appearance of Al Itihad Al Islami (Islamic Union), a religious
movement committed to the unification of all Somali lands. It provoked an Ethiopian army
invasion of southern Somalia that forced Al Itihad to abandon both the region and its goal.
Following a chaotic period dominated by clan­based warlords, another movement called the
Joint Islamic Courts (JIC) emerged to claim power at the center, and was in turn smashed by
a second Ethiopian military incursion. The defense of Islam­cum­Somali nationalism then
passed to a far more radical movement called Shabaab (youth), that has been fighting the
regime installed in Mogadishu by the West over the past few years.

*
The following survey of the history of nation­state building in the Horn highlights the com­
monality of features attributed to nationalism universally, as well as differences that endow
each case with specific attributes. The concept of the center­periphery state design provides
a common framework for analysis. It presents a duality of power and privilege within a cen­
ter that has a monopoly of decision­making power and a periphery is excluded from power.
28 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

Power is instrumental in gaining privilege in material wealth and social status, and wealth
is transferred from the periphery to the center; this dynamic creates tension between the two
poles and inevitably leads to conflict that characterizes the region’s recent past.
Ethiopia inherited this model from its imperial past and retains its politico­
administrative structure to this day. Unlike its neighbors in the region, this state has
a history that links it to antiquity. This is the history of Abyssinia, known in Christendom as
the mythical kingdom of Prester John, encircled and isolated on its mountainous stronghold
by Islam since the seventh century. It is the only place on the continent where Christianity
managed to survive as an indigenous religion to become the dominant feature of Abyssinian
culture and the reigning symbol of their national identity. After centuries of stagnation
and provincial conflicts over the imperial throne, Abyssinia was united under Emperor
Menelik (1889–1913) just as the shadow of European imperialism began to fall over the
Horn. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 restored the Red Sea to world importance
and turned the Horn into a major bone of contention among the imperialist powers. Thanks
to the intense rivalry among the Europeans, Emperor Menelik was able to acquire a modern
arsenal and the confidence to challenge them in the race for territory, launching a series
of campaigns to expand his empire in the southern part of the country in the lands of the
Oromo, Sidamo, and other groups, thereby setting a limit to British northward colonial
expansion in modern­day Kenya.
In the north, the Italians seized a long stretch of the Red Sea coast and gained a foothold
in the highlands where they established the colony they named Eritrea. Intent on seizing
the rest of the plateau, they invaded Abyssinia in 1896 and were heavily defeated by the
Abyssinians in the battle of Adwa, which proved to be a unique African victory over Eu­
ropeans. Abyssinia and Britain then raced to seize what remained unclaimed in the region.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, Menelik had obtained most of the territory he
coveted and established the borders of the newly christened Ethiopian Empire, which have
remained effectively unchanged.
The making of the Ethiopian empire is not a unique phenomenon, neither in time nor in
place. The time was the era of Western imperialism, a phenomenon whose disturbing impact
was felt early and directly in this corner of Africa and acted as a catalyst for Ethiopia’s own
imperial expansion. Nor was it the only instance of territory campaigns by Africans at this
time. The Egyptians in the north, the Mahdiya in the Sudan, the Fulani in the west, and
the Zulu in the south carried out similar contemporary efforts. The crucial difference is
that Ethiopia succeeded while the others failed. The imperial regime retained and utilized
indigenous authorities to help administer the multi­ethnic empire, and many local hierarchies
survived until its collapse. The ultimate consequence of the Ethiopian expansion, however,
was the dismantling of indigenous states that vanished from the face of the earth along with
their history. In this respect, the impact of Ethiopian imperialism was the same as that of
the European onslaught elsewhere in Africa, the obliteration of indigenous polities and the
interruption of autonomous indigenous political development.
Land hunger was a compelling motive for the expansion. Precipitation in the highlands
is normally plentiful. It is also the agent of catastrophic erosion when it falls with torrential
force on the unprotected, tilled flanks of mountains and hills, and carries away the topsoil that
is the Nile’s gift to Egypt. Little water is retained on the northern plateau itself, where irri­
gation was not practiced. More agricultural potential was found further south. The southern
region of the Ethiopian highlands was thinly populated and land was in pristine condition.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 29

The conquered territories were used to host the excess population of the north, and in the
wake of the conquest a steady stream of northerners flowed into the freshly seized territories
to appropriate land and exploit the labor of the indigenous population.
The system of administration designed for the annexed regions conformed to the time­
honored arrangement linking dominant elite in the center with subordinate elite in the pe­
riphery. In the Ethiopian Empire, the administrative structure in the periphery rested on
the traditional leadership of local communities. Indigenous authority hierarchies were pre­
served, mostly in truncated form, to facilitate the administration of the new provinces under
Ethiopian governors. The subordinate elite constituted a hierarchy of its own whose con­
tribution to imperial rule was indispensable. The new provinces were compensated with a
share of the land and the labor of its own people, as well as a share of the tax it collected on
behalf of the state.
Founding the imperial edifice on a system of land tenure imposed and maintained by
force proved to be a structural flaw because of the fateful conjunction of ethnic and class
divisions in an iniquitous arrangement. The bulk of the landholding class were Christian,
Amharic, and Tigray­speaking Abyssinians, a distinct ethnos in a region inhabited by many
other groups who speak various languages and adhering to Islam or traditional faiths. The
distinctiveness of the Abyssinian identity was accentuated by a monopoly of political power,
economic privilege, and superior social status. All Abyssinians who settled in the highland
periphery became landlords on expropriated land and exploited the labor of the indigenous
peasantry. The relationship between them was that of master and servant, landlord and
tenant, tax collector and taxpayer. This conjunction made for a potentially explosive rela­
tionship, a potential that took only a few decades to mature.
The expansion had a momentous consequence for the conquering nation. It incorpo­
rated regions inhabited by some eighty ethnic groups with different cultures and languages,
among which Islam had made great inroads. While Abyssinia had a largely culturally homo­
geneous population with a strong national identity and identification with the state, Ethiopia
has a highly diverse population within which the descendants of the Abyssinians are a mi­
nority. Moreover, their experience under Abyssinian rule for most of the conquered groups
was negative and not calculated to inspire loyalty to the imperial state.
Striving for legitimacy, “empires construct themselves around a specific culture that
they intend to defend, promote, or possibly expand” (Badie 2000, 48). It was taken for
granted that integration meant Ethiopia would become Abyssinia writ large and would re­
quire the assimilation of the non­Abyssinian population, a huge majority of the whole. This
assumption was succinctly stated by a member of the first generation of Ethiopians edu­
cated abroad: “It is for the Galla (Oromo) to become Amhara (not the other way round); for
the latter possess a written language, a superior religion and superior customs and mores”
(cited in Bahru Zewde 1991, 132–133). Language, the emblem of culture, is the cutting
edge in the process of assimilation. “Cultural and linguistic unification is accompanied by
the imposition of the dominant language and culture as legitimate, and by the rejection of
all other languages into indignity” (Bourdieu 1994, 74). Traditionally known as lesane ne­
gus (the king’s language), Amharic was the main tool in the assimilation process, inevitably
dubbed Amharization. A Ministry of Education report in 1955 declared: “the promotion
of Amharic at the various levels […] is an important task that is fundamental to national
integration” (cited in Milkias 2006, 54). The pursuit of homogeneity reached a peak when
30 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

the regime began to change place names in the periphery; for example, the Oromo town of
Adama became Nazaret.
To smooth the path of the official medium, the regime sought to eradicate all other
indigenous languages, including the second Abyssinian tongue Tigray. Amharic was the of­
ficial language and no vernacular was allowed to be printed, broadcast, taught, or spoken on
public occasions. Proficiency in the official language was required for entry to the univer­
sity, although the language of instruction was English. Needless to say, Amharic speakers
represented a large majority of the students at every level of education.
On the subject of religion, the imperial regime’s policy was ostensibly based on a state­
ment attributed to the Emperor, to wit: “religion is personal, the state is for all.” The irony
of this statement is reflected in the glaring fact that the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was the
official state church, and therefore the owner of immense landed wealth and the beneficiary
of state largesse. Muslims had only token representation in the state structure.
The fact that ruling the Empire required the largest army in the subcontinent, which
Ethiopia funded with ample support from the United States, is proof of the growing crisis
the state faced after WWII. This crisis was partly the result of the region’s instability with
decolonization, which affected Ethiopia directly with the rise of Somali irredentism in the
southeast and Eritrean secessionism in the north. The two neighboring regions both turned
into war zones where the Ethiopian army failed to eliminate direct challenges to the state’s
territorial integrity. Years of futile effort sapped the morale of the soldiers and made them
susceptible to the radical message of the emerging opposition in the center. Modest urban­
ization and the beginning of modernization of the economy provoked unrest in the center
in the form of opposition to the government of the aging Haile Sellasie. Spearheaded by
the students of the country’s sole university, the opposition was deeply concerned with the
state’s future, a concern that focused on the antiquated land tenure system seen as an obstacle
to the country’s socioeconomic development and a threat to the state’s survival.
The imperial state collapsed in 1974 when soldiers and junior officers mutinied and
the military hierarchy was decapitated, breaking the main pillar of the state. The soldiers
shared the concerns of the opposition, which is evident in the official slogan adopted by the
junta that replaced Haile Sellasie—“Ethiopia first.” One of its first actions was to nationalize
all land without compensation, outlaw private property of land, and divide agricultural land
evenly among those who worked on it. It was a historic achievement, a veritable social rev­
olution that shattered the material base of the imperial ruling class, followed by a sweeping
nationalization of the economy that brought the country’s resources under state ownership
and management. A declaration of scientific socialism as the new regime’s ideological guide
followed.
The choice partly reflected the fact that the Soviet Union now replaced the United States
as Ethiopia’s patron. More to the point, socialism in its Soviet version claimed to offer a so­
lution to the problem of ethno­pluralism in one state. The national contradiction, in Marxist
parlance, was considered secondary to class contradiction and would be resolved automat­
ically once the class conflict ended with workers and peasants coming to power. This phi­
losophy provided a theoretical delinking of the ethnic and class conjunction that threatened
the security of the state. The military regime also denounced the Amharization policy of its
predecessors, encouraged cultural self­expression in the periphery, deprived the Orthodox
Church of its vast landholdings and state financial support, granted official recognition to
Islam, and recruited non­Abyssinians in the state administration and the military.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 31

One thing the regime did not do was relax the center’s monopoly of power and rigid
control over the periphery, nor did it decentralize the state administration. In fact, the re­
verse occurred, as is to be expected in a military regime. It did however produce its own
subordinate elite to help administer the periphery. This was a corps of cadre, recruited from
all regions, ideologically indoctrinated in a special institution, superficially trained in ad­
ministration, and sent to run local government.
The junta known as the Derg (committee) also did not divert from the policy of coun­
tering opposition with force; before long, it confronted militant opposition both in the center
and in the periphery. The Derg inherited the nationalist revolution in Eritrea, which would in­
creasingly absorb the country’s energy and resources and contribute to its eventual collapse.
Somali irredentism, revived with support from Mogadishu, led to an invasion of Ethiopia
by the army of the Somali Republic that required Soviet Union and Cuban intervention to
counter. Before long, national liberation movements multiplied in the periphery to harass
the beleaguered regime. Among them, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) represented by
far the largest ethnic group in the country.
Militant opposition arose within the center, too. It initially came from the radical groups
who opposed the imperial regime and then turned against the soldiers, demanding a “people’s
government.” The contest was unequal and the radicals were ruthlessly annihilated in a
campaign dubbed the Red Terror. A more resilient opposition arose from Tigray province in
the heartland of Abyssinia. The smaller branch of the Abyssinian family, Tigray preserved
its own language and distinguished itself through an insular, conservative provincialism, a
permanent grievance against Amhara political dominance with a history of rebellion against
it. The latest rebellion led by the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF) concluded that
there was “a national contradiction between the Amhara oppressor nation and the oppressed
nations of Ethiopia, including Tigray,” and launched a guerrilla war that would eventually
carry them to power in Addis Ababa.
The regime’s fate was sealed when the Soviet Union, caught in its own political turmoil,
withdrew its support in the late 1980s. A desperate resort to federalism was made in order
to avoid collapse. It was too little and too late. The Derg collapsed like a house of cards in
1991, leaving none of its creations standing.
The incumbent regime in Ethiopia is a coalition named Ethiopian People’s Revolution­
ary Democratic Front (EPRDF), put together and largely controlled by the TPLF. Itself the
product of the worsening crisis of the state, the TPLF had made meticulous preparations to
deal with it. The first step was to form the EPRDF coalition on an ethnic basis by forming
political factions from miscellaneous groups before coming to power. The immediate con­
cern after coming to power was to secure peace throughout the country. The first step in
that direction was to recognize Eritrea’s right to independence without conditions or even
negotiations. The second was to hold a national conference to which all but a few existing
political organizations were invited. At the same time, all ethnic communities in Ethiopia
were encouraged to choose and send representatives to the conference. The response was
enthusiastic and more than one hundred political groups were hastily formed. The con­
ference was asked to approve a transitional constitution and soon afterwards a multiparty
government was formed. The arrangements received the blessing of the US, now restored
as Ethiopia’s patron, but Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Herman Cohen, allegedly
warned the Tigray leaders: “no democracy, no aid.”
32 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

The third step was to reorganize the structure of the state on an ethnic basis, a radical
departure from the past. Ethiopia was divided into regional states more or less ethnically
homogenous, which were autonomous and had all the powers not reserved for the federal
government, including the power to secede from the state. They were granted the right to
use their own ethnic languages in administration and education, and to elect their own rep­
resentatives. The 1995 Constitution stretched federalism to its limits. On the face of it, the
state was a pact of ethnic groups. It explicitly accepted cultural pluralism, and implicitly
rejected the Western nation­state model that has become the aspired norm for Africa. It dis­
solved the intrinsic link between culture and nationality inherent in this model and allowed
for a diversity of cultural identities to coexist with a common citizenship. Undoubtedly, the
radical reforms introduced by the EPRDF went a long way toward calming the crisis and
stabilizing the political system for a quarter of a century.
In theory, the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia is a monu­
ment to liberalism and state decentralization. However, practice differs considerably. Fed­
eralism in Ethiopia was designed with political objectives, not least those of the TPLF, and
was imposed from the top down, a revolution carried out from above. Like all revolutions,
it happened because the old order had run its course and had to be replaced. The replace­
ment was largely determined by the TPLF, hence the fate of the regime was tied up with
the success or failure of the federal project. It is not surprising, therefore, that the regime
has taken responsibility for its efficient management. This requires central planning and
coordination of a high order, which in practice sometimes run contrary to the diversity and
pluralism decentralization implies.
The acid test of federalism, of course, is fiscal, and depends on whether the regions are
adequately resourced to exercise their constitutional prerogatives. Under previous regimes,
Ethiopia’s fiscal system was highly centralized with the central government appropriating
the bulk of state revenue. Despite the fact that responsibility for the provision of many
public services, including health and education, has shifted from the center to the regions,
the center­periphery balance has not dramatically changed with the shift in regimes. The
result is that with the exception of Addis Ababa the regions are able to finance less than half
of their recurrent expenditure and none of their capital investment, and are heavily dependent
on subsidies from the central government. This reliance on the federal government gives the
latter leverage to dictate policy throughout the state and has used it to impose conformity over
the administrative structure, policy making, and implementation throughout the periphery.
The distribution of political power also has a bearing on the functioning of a federal
system. Ostensibly, this dynamic has changed significantly under the EPRDF, a multi­ethnic
coalition of parties that administers the regions. Most of them were founded by the TPLF be­
fore coming to power—each bearing the ethnic name followed by the title “People’s Demo­
cratic Organisation” (e.g. Oromo People’s Democratic Organisation)—and represent the
latest version of an auxiliary elite whose task is to administer the periphery on behalf of the
center. After the initial period of spontaneous sprouting of new political organizations, and
the revival of a few pre­existing ones, none of them survived to play a meaningful role later.
Thus, the promise of democratization trumpeted by the EPRDF upon coming to power
that helped it win genuine public support and a series of elections in the early years faded,
and subsequent elections held every five years became theatrical productions produced by
the ruling coalition. Genuine political opposition represented by a few parties outside the
EPRDF network was denied political space to develop and was easily outmaneuvered. The
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 33

elections in May 2005 proved a shocking exception when a renascent opposition swept the
urban vote and rashly claimed victory over a temporarily complacent regime. The regime’s
reaction was violent, demonstrating opposition supporters were killed, and opposition lead­
ers were dragged through the courts, convicted of treason, and sentenced to death. They
escaped with their lives by humbly asking for pardon and then took refuge abroad. Thus,
the democratization experiment came to an end in Ethiopia. A chastened regime took no
chances in the future. In the May 2015 elections, it claimed no less than one hundred per­
cent of the vote and admitted only one non­EPRDF representative to enter the parliament.
On a visit to Ethiopia two months later, United States President Barack Obama praised the
country for having “a democratically elected government.”
After the 2005 post­election crisis, the regime went on an economic overdrive to spur
growth, based on infrastructure development financed mostly by loans from abroad and fa­
cilitation of investment from the Ethiopian diaspora. Loans from China tied to the involve­
ment of Chinese enterprises in project construction played a key role. Loans from domestic
banks supported a huge construction surge in housing and luxury hotel accommodation that
changed the face of Addis Ababa and some regional capitals. Foreign investment supported
development in local industrial capacity including textiles, shoes, cement, and automobiles,
all of which boosted urban employment. Ethiopia was heralded as Africa’s economic mira­
cle, and the regime credited the success to its decision to follow the “developmental state”
model. This model assigns a leading role to the state in guiding the economy along a path
of its own choosing.
The regime’s expectations of political gain from economic growth however were frus­
trated. In fact, the opposite appears to have happened. Growth brought problems of its own,
including inflation and a sharp devaluation of the currency, growing inequality between sec­
tors of the population, disparity between rulers and the ruled and. The most vexing problem
of all for the common people was the rampant corruption among the ruling elite. Its gains
notwithstanding, the developmental state was stoking social and political tensions. When
the regime appeared at a loss on how to manage them, it forfeited its political credit even
among former supporters.
As in the two previous instances, the crisis that confronted the regime in 2016, as it
rounded a quarter of a century in power, was caused by the classic syndrome of popular
unrest in the center. These acts of civil disobedience included violent demonstrations in the
Amhara region that ostensibly concerned two districts on the border between Amhara and
Tigray regions that the federal map had included in Tigray in the mid­1990s. To raise this
issue now indicated a general political malaise focused on the dominant role of the TPLF.
The Abyssinian pillar of the center seemed in danger of cracking in two.
The challenge from the periphery came from the Oromo who represented more than
one­third of country’s population, and had long languished under Abyssinian domination.
Unlike the Abyssinians, the Oromo had no experience of political unity in the past, and
still find it difficult to produce a united front against the center. The Oromo Liberation
Front that emerged during the reign of the military regime was the first organization that
claimed to represent the Oromo, accepted the EPRDF Charter, and joined the first coalition
government. While the EPRDF guerrilla army was declared the national army, all other
groups that opposed the Derg were required to disarm and dismantle their own forces. Those
who refused, including the OLF, were attacked, forcibly disarmed, and their leaders fled
abroad. The OLF regrouped abroad and conducted a low intensity insurgency for some
34 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

years without success, following which it splintered in many factions and ceased to be a
threat to the regime. Nevertheless, it remained hugely popular among the Oromo people
who viewed the party as their champion. The regime chose to take this at face value and
used it in a campaign of continuous harassment that saw many Oromo accused of OLF links
and imprisoned for long spells without charge while many others sought refuge abroad.
The administration of the Oromia region was entrusted to the Oromo People’s Demo­
cratic Organisation, a branch of the EPRDF. Its political task was thankless because it was
clearly a puppet of the center, and it never acquired wide acceptance. This was made worse
by arbitrary actions of the center that magnified the subservience of the OPDO. When the
dust over the design of the federal structure had settled, it emerged that Addis Ababa be­
came the capital of both the federation and the Oromo region. In 2000, the regime ordered
the region to move its capital to Adama, a small town on the rail line, and removed the
area surrounding Addis Ababa from Oromo region. The OPDO consented and subsequent
clashes with demonstrators forced the authorities to reverse the order, only for it to reinstate
the second capital in 2005. This issue crystallized the historical grievances of the Oromo
and served as the focus of massive demonstrations with the participation of every sector of
Oromo society. The disturbances turned increasingly violent with each year, as the regime
responded with gunfire that took hundreds of lives.
The turning point came in 2016, when the challenge from the periphery and the division
in the center coincided. A series of meetings of the top EPRDF councils over several months
produced no decision, and the regime appeared to be losing control of the situation. As the
year approached an end, it declared a state of emergency and asked the military to protect
the security of the state. Unrest, particularly in the Oromo region continued and spread to
the Abyssinian provinces of Tigray and Gojjam while, paralysed by internal disagreement,
the EPRDF was unable to agree on a course of action. The impasse ended in April 2018,
when a change of leadership brought to power an Oromo OPDO leader as prime minister.
Ostensibly a historic shift from the imperial formula based on Abyssinian control of the state
center, it was followed by a wave of political reforms, among them the making of peace with
Eritrea.

*
The crisis of the state in Sudan differs from the Ethiopian case only in detail. It is the
story of state ruled by elite representing an ethnic minority entrenched in the center and
struggling to control a vast periphery inhabited by more than two hundred ethnic groups.
Continuous, widespread, and increasingly forceful resistance in many parts of the periphery
has defeated the center’s attempts to rule the country through conventional means, and turned
Sudan into a garrison state, ruled by the military for all but six years of its existence as an
independent state. As in Ethiopia, national integration in the cultural image of the ruling
elite, i.e. Arabization, was tried, as was Marxism, federalism, and Islam. Like Eritrea and
Ethiopia, a decades’ old attempt to subjugate resistance in southern Sudan ended with the
region’s secession in 2011. As this conflict was being resolved, long simmering conflicts
in the periphery of the truncated state—Nuba Mountains, Darfur, and the Red Sea region—
flared up to challenge the center.
Sudan’s future appeared bright when it became independent in 1956; it was the first
colony in the subcontinent to reach this goal. Including southern Sudan, it had one of the
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 35

largest land masses in Africa, a sizeable urban sector in the riverain valley hosting a polit­
ically sophisticated Western­educated class, a modernizing economy based on cotton that
sustained a large trader class, and a British­trained professional army. These strata com­
prised an elite defined by its Muslim faith, the Arab language, and the Arabized sedentary
culture of the riverain region with the Khartoum Omdurman conurbation in the center. It
was here that the nationalist movement the General Congress of Graduates appeared in the
1930s. Virtually “an organization of Sudanese civil servants” according to a historian (Holt
1961, 41), the Congress claimed to be the representative of what it called the “Sudanese
nation.” The appeal of nationalism outside the central region was muted. The majority of
the population in the periphery was little involved, and the pastoralists had no role in it.
Religion made an early entry into nationalist politics, as the movement was soon caught
in the rivalry between two major Islamic sects (turuq) and split into rival factions aligned
with the Ansar and the Khatmiya. These evolved a few years later into the two dominant
political parties of northern Sudan—the Umma and the Democratic Unionist Party. Sectari­
anism was the sole difference between the two parties that were both conservative with rural
constituencies and formally committed to creating an Islamic state. Their role subsequently
was to fill the few brief gaps between successive military regimes, when they proved quite
incapable of governing.
The infusion of religious sectarianism in the nationalist movement had serious conse­
quences. First, it compromised the secular character of the movement and raised a basic
issue concerning the relationship between Islam and the state that remains unresolved to this
day. Second, it undermined the appeal of nationalism among non­Muslims, particularly in
southern Sudan. Third, it involved the main political parties in sectarian conflicts that be­
came major political divisions contributing to the crisis of the state. The emergence in the
mid­1950s of the Muslim Brotherhood projected religion to the center of the political arena
by raising the demand for an Islamic constitution in Sudan.
The state was a typical colonial creation with tenuous links to the history, tradition, and
culture of the people that found themselves inside its boundaries. Nowhere was this most
evident than in southern Sudan. The region, which had been used as a hunting ground for
slavers and ivory hunters until the arrival of the British, remains one of the least exposed
regions to the outside world even today. Southern Sudan was administered separately from
the north, and was insulated from Arab contact and cultural influence, while exposed to
missionary propagated Christianity and the English language. Under the so­called Southern
Policy, northern Sudanese were kept out of the region as much as possible, the Equato­
ria Corps recruited only in southern Sudan (where it was stationed), and even the northern
Sudanese traders were displaced by Greek and Syrian merchants. Arabic and Islam were
barred, and education was entrusted to Christian missionaries in which English was the lan­
guage of instruction. Even so, both Arabic and Islam managed to establish a presence there.
Unwilling to have southern Sudan join northern Sudan in an independent Sudanese state,
and uncertain about its future, the departing colonial officialdom encouraged southern Su­
danese hopes for special treatment with Britain’s support. These hopes were betrayed under
northern Sudanese nationalist pressure, and southern Sudan was abandoned to its fate. As
with the Ethiopian struggle over Eritrea, southern Sudan was to become a fateful test for
Sudanese nationalism.
Sudanese nationalism did not produce even a distant echo in southern Sudan. None of
the nationalist organizations tried to set up branches there or rally support among the people.
36 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

Given its isolation and the undeveloped state of education of the region, a southern Sudanese
intelligentsia had yet to make an appearance at the close of the colonial period. There was
little sign of political consciousness emerging in the south and no political groups had formed
when nationalists in northern Sudan guided Sudan towards independence in 1956.
The northern Sudanese had long opposed the separate status of southern Sudan and
Britain was compelled to concede after World War II. The question then became how the two
disparate regions were to be joined. Beginning in 1947, the issue was debated in meetings
that included Egypt but no representatives from southern Sudan. Britain promised chiefs in
southern Sudan with “special safeguards” that would protect their homeland in any eventu­
ality, but with independence it was overturned by the northern Sudanese elite. This was to be
the first of “many agreements dishonored,” as Abel Alier, the doyen of southern Sudanese
politicians, put it in the title of his book (1999). Experience during the years that preceded
independence served to confirm southern Sudanese fears of northern Sudanese domination,
and spurred political action among the nascent intelligentsia. A group in Juba issued a state­
ment in 1952 opposing independence as precipitate, and asked for southern Sudan to first
be given time to catch up with northern Sudan. Southern Sudanese who lived in Khartoum
organized the Liberal Party in 1954 and resolved that the southern Sudan would remain in
the Sudan only under a federal system. The nationalists promised the demand for federation
would be given full consideration after independence. It was indeed considered but flatly
rejected—another agreement dishonored.
Southern Sudanese fears of Arab domination were fully realized with the wholesale
replacement of colonial officialdom in the approach to independence. “Following the best
traditions of the British Civil Service” (Beshir 1968, 72), southern Sudanese qualified for
only eight subordinate posts out of eight hundred. Thus, southern Sudan passed from British
to northern Sudan rule. Southern Sudanese resentment boiled over among the soldiers of the
Equatoria Corps, where the exclusively British officers were replaced by northern Sudanese.
The result was a mutiny in provincial small towns and a pogrom of northern Sudanese offi­
cials, officers, and traders in August 1955, before Sudan was able to celebrate its indepen­
dence. Although the insurrection was suppressed by northern Sudanese soldiers occupying
the region, the events sparked a civil war that effectively lasted until the early 2000s.
Quite naturally, Islam and the Arab language became the double­edged campaign of
national integration launched by the state as soon as it came under nationalist control. Ara­
bic was introduced as a subject and later as the language of instruction in southern Sudan,
and missionary schools were closed by 1959. During the civil war in the 1960s, secondary
schools in southern Sudan were entirely moved to northern Sudan. The promotion of Islam
proceeded simultaneously but to a lesser degree. Sadiq el Mahdi, the Umma Party leader and
head of the Ansar sect once declared: “Islam has a holy mission in Africa and southern Su­
dan is the beginning of that mission” (quoted in Malwal 1981, 41). Friday was made the day
of rest, state employees were coerced into taking Muslim names, and Christian missionaries
were expelled from the region. In his inaugural speech as Prime Minister, Sadiq al Mahdi
reiterated the basic tenets of Sudanese nationalism. “The dominant feature of our Nation is
an Islamic one and its overpowering expression is Arab, and this nation will not have its en­
tity identified and its prestige and pride preserved except under an Islamic revival” (Malwal
1981, 41).
The possibility that other regions and ethnic groups in the periphery might emulate
southern Sudan was a daunting prospect for the ruling elite for it would have reduced its
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 37

political base to a purely Arab constituency. Just such a movement emerged among the Beja
in the east at this time. Muslim but not Arabic­speaking, the Beja were mostly pastoralists
but were also found among the cultivators in Kassala province and held a monopoly of the
stevedore trade in Port Sudan. With these minor exceptions, their homeland languished in
total neglect. A pamphlet appearing in 1953 entitled the “Beja Struggle” called for Beja
political unity to fight for development and warned that “although the Beja will not ask for
separation, it is probable that they will ask for something like separation” (quoted in Mukhtar
1974, 79). In 1958, a meeting of Beja politicians and chiefs considered, inter alia, a demand
for the decentralization of the state and regional autonomy.
Similar moves were afoot among other non­Arab groups in the neglected hinterland,
where independence brought no change other than the replacement of British officials by
Arabs. A social organization founded in 1954 in the Nuba Mountain region was converted
into a political party during the restoration of parliamentary rule in 1964. Darfur in the
west was another restive non­Arab region from where persistent demands for home rule
came but were not answered. Intermittent attempts at negotiation and suppression in the
following years failed to pacify these regions. Six decades later, having lost South Sudan,
the Sudanese ruling elite still struggle to control these peripheral regions.
Pressure from the periphery was not the only reason for the disablement of the polit­
ical process in the center that underlay the crisis of the state. Even greater pressure was
exerted by rising class tensions. At independence, Sudan had a strongly organized trade
union movement led by the railway workers, which included workers in the trade sector
and tenant cultivators in cotton production. Frustrated that independence did not bring the
economic benefits for which they had hoped, the unions were soon involved in clashes with
the government and with management in the private sector. The Sudanese Communist Party
(SCP) was formed as a branch of the Egyptian communist movement in 1946 and gained
a presence in the nationalist movement. It cultivated links with the trade unions and tenant
associations, and it enjoyed considerable support among the intelligentsia. The SCP struck
a radical note and warred against the sectarian parties, but refrained from engaging Islam
in ideological debate. On the contrary, it endeavored to prove that Islam and socialism are
compatible. It took a forthright stand on the issue of southern Sudan, advocating regional
autonomy and a special development program for the region as the right solution.
The volatile history of the Sudanese state resembles that of its Ethiopian neighbor in fol­
lowing a trajectory of an increasingly deepening structural crisis that led to repeated break­
downs and regime changes, each followed by progressively rash schemes to halt the decline
and stabilize the state. Such schemes were concocted in the center and imposed arbitrarily
by military regimes. Both states resorted to ideology in order to transcend the divisions that
underlay the crisis, without attempting to resolve the structural problems, namely the eco­
nomic, social, and political hegemony of the center and power monopoly of the nationalist
elite.
The incapacity of the political establishment in the center to govern provoked the first
crisis only three years after independence, when the incumbent prime minister invited the
military to take over. This action set an example for future politicians. Having exhausted
themselves after only a brief spell in government, they would make way for soldiers to take
over with a sigh of relief. The first military regime (1958–64) was a classic example of
the conventional prop for a narrowly based, faltering postcolonial regime. Accordingly,
the regime headed by General Ibrahim Abboud proceeded to suppress opposition stemming
38 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

from class and regional forces, unrestrained by the legal constraints and inhibitions of parlia­
mentary rule. Sudan Communist Party leaders were thrown in prison, as were the organizers
of the Beja Congress and tenant cultivator unions. The regime’s policy of violent suppression
of opposition in the periphery encouraged the blossoming of the rebellion in southern Sudan
known as the Anya­nya and the commencement of a full­blown civil war in that region.
The militarization of the state strained the regime’s resources and opened the door for
external intervention. Aid was first provided by the United States, and when it stopped in the
aftermath of the 1967 Arab­Israel War, it came from the Soviet Union, Egypt, and other Arab
states. Even so, poor cotton seasons in 1963 and 1964 caused a downturn in the economy,
forcing the government to take stringent, unpopular measures, such as the introduction of
a graduated income tax, at the same time as the civil war in southern Sudan was becoming
a public issue. It was a rare coming together of the political forces—from the SCP to the
Muslim Brothers—that turned into massive demonstrations and brought the regime down in
August 1964.
The second parliamentary episode lasted less than five years, and accomplished little.
Unable to form a government with a majority in parliament, the political factions produced
four fractious coalition governments. A noteworthy development was the banning of the
SCP on the grounds that it was necessary to protect Sudan from atheism and regionalism.
The latter referred not only to the civil war in southern Sudan, but to the growth of political
opposition in other parts of the periphery as well. The Beja Congress was reconstituted as
a political party and entered parliament in the 1965 elections. A political organization from
the Nuba Mountains, led by a Christian who advocated unity among southern Sudanese to
wrest power from northern Sudan managed the same feat. The Darfur Development Front
campaigned to have local inhabitants elected to parliament in Khartoum regardless of party
affiliation and was successful.
How to deal with the periphery without conceding power was by now a key issue be­
deviling the ruling elite at the center. The Communists accepted a form of decentralization
plus development, based on the familiar Marxist notion that development would efface other
contradictions. However, decentralization of the state was anathema to nationalists who also
claimed that it is contrary to Islamic doctrine. Inability to agree had prevented Sudan from
adopting a constitution, and it was still without one when this parliamentary period came
to a close. The militarization of the state was one area where progress was made. Defense
took up twenty per cent of the budget. When Sudan and other Arab states severed ties with
Washington after the 1967 Arab­Israeli War, the Soviet Union took on the role of patron to
the region and agreed to Khartoum’s request for weaponry.
The Sudanese state seemed to be adrift. “Chaos, intrigue and lack of purpose” is how
a historian described the situation that invited the second military intervention in May 1969
(Beshir 1974, 226). The junta of ten colonels and majors had no distinct ideological color,
and early on its spokesman described it as “nationalist – whatever else is said about it”
(Legum 1974, 58). Sudanese state nationalism had failed to bond the periphery to the center
and needed ideological reinforcement. The soldiers turned to socialism, very much in fash­
ion at the time. The appeal of socialism as an ideology able to transcend ethno­regional and
sectarian divisions was strengthened in this case because it was associated with the Egyptian
regime of Colonel Nasir, where it was referred to as Arab socialism. Naturally, the so­called
May Revolution was strongly supported by the SCP, whose leading members served in the
government formed by the junta. They were instrumental in steering the regime to proclaim
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 39

socialism as its policy on the first anniversary of the coup, when a series of nationaliza­
tion decrees were issued that affected mostly foreign­owned assets and property owned by
Sudanese living abroad. A little later, the regime declared its attachment to scientific so­
cialism, but what this ideological label meant was never made clear. Colonel Mohammed
Gaafar Nimeiri, the regime strongman, gave a garbled definition of “Sudanese socialism” in
a speech while a National Charter that committed the regime to scientific socialism envis­
aged a mixed economy with state and private sectors.
The Marxist pretentions of the regime and the political prominence of the Communists
disturbed the sectarian political parties, which made no secret of their opposition. When
the Ansar rioted and made a show of open defiance, they suffered severe casualties and their
leaders fled abroad. The alliance with the Communists was short lived. The SCP rejected the
regime’s demand for the dissolution of all parties and their allegiance to one movement under
its aegis, and was brutally purged in turn. Its members were arrested, sympathizers were
dismissed from state offices, and three of its leaders were hanged. The Sudanese Socialist
Union (SSU), described as a “revolutionary vanguard,” was formed to mobilize political
support for the regime. These events spelled the end of the flirtation with socialism. Sudan’s
first constitution, promulgated in 1973, twenty­three years after independence, defined the
state as a unitary, democratic, socialist republic. It reiterated the key features of northern
Sudanese nationalism, made Islamic law and custom the main source of legislation, and
made Arabic the official language. In order to facilitate a rapprochement with the rebellious
southern Sudan, it granted Christianity official recognition and sanctioned customary law
for non­Muslims.
The regime’s outstanding, albeit ephemeral, achievement was the settlement of the con­
flict in southern Sudan on the basis of a political compromise that preserved the unitary form
of the state while granting regional autonomy to the region. Compromise was forced on the
regime when the futility of trying to suppress the Anya­nya became obvious. In the after­
math of the repression of the SCP, the relationship with the USSR had soured, Soviet aid
ceased, and Sudan was left briefly without a patron to provide military hardware.
The 1972 Addis Ababa Agreement provided a large measure of self­government. The
three southern provinces formed a region with its own legislative and executive authority.
The accord provided a workable arrangement within which the outstanding demands of the
social groups that led the rebellion could be satisfied. More specifically it addressed the
key grievances of the emerging southern intelligentsia to whom it offered political control
of their region, in other words, a share of state power and all that comes with it.
The agreement highlights several features that are germane to the crisis of the state in
the Horn. The first condition relates to the quintessence of the political factor that must be
part of the solution to any conflict if it is to prove lasting. The second relates to the fact that
ruling nationalist elite will consider the first condition only as a last resort, as demonstrated
in Eritrea and Somaliland. The third relates to the crucial role of external actors in provoking,
prolonging, or resolving conflicts in the region. In this case, Ethiopia played a positive role
in bringing the Anya­nya to the negotiation table, hoping Khartoum would reciprocate by
ceasing to support the Eritrean rebels; it did not.
Sudan had reoriented its foreign policy to match it radical stance. It tightened links to
the Soviet Union and was rewarded with military support. It also strengthened ties with its
Arab neighbors and contemplated a union with Egypt and Libya. However, it was no more
able to invigorate the economy than its predecessors had been, and by the end of the decade
40 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

Sudan was hostage to the International Monetary Fund, kept afloat with loans. Popular
unrest mounted, especially among workers, and the regime’s response was to decree the
death penalty for participation in strikes.
In search of political support, the regime traversed the ideological spectrum—from
Marxism to Islamic fundamentalism and from an alliance with the communists to one with
the Muslim Brothers. The rise of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East seemed to
offer promising ideological support, and Nimeiry began to pander to the visions of Islamic
theocracy. In 1983, it prohibited the use of alcohol, and the following year mutilation was
introduced as punishment for various crimes. Later, a draft constitution was produced that
was designed to turn Sudan into an Islamic republic.
It was a desperate move because it risked alienating southern Sudan, where the regime
enjoyed considerable support, and undoing the regime’s greatest achievement. That support
indeed dissipated after the regime refused southern Sudanese demands to construct a refinery
in the oil­rich southern Sudan, announced plans for a union with Egypt, drafted a constitution
that made no accommodations for southern Sudan self­rule, and the final straw, decreed the
breakup of the region into three separate autonomous units in a clear attempt to fragment
southern Sudanese political unity. The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) made
its debut in mid­1983, and the second round of the civil war began.
Sudan had a brief respite from military rule when the Nimeiri regime collapsed despite
US support as the result of a popular uprising in the capital in 1985, and the dictator himself
was deposed by his military comrades. Following a one­year transition period under a mili­
tary council, parliamentary rule returned for three years, when the same group of politicians
displayed their utter uselessness once more. When the government endorsed negotiations
with the SPLM, it precipitated a third military takeover in 1989. Like its predecessor, the
regime headed by Brigadier Omar al Al­Bashir found ideological support in Islamic funda­
mentalism though an alliance with the National Islamic Front; the front’s leader, Hassan el
Turabi, became the junta’s ideologue. Unlike Nimeiri, who paid only lip service to this creed,
the new regime adopted Sharia law and imposed it systematically on Sudanese society. This
destroyed all prospects of negotiating with the SPLM, and the civil war in southern Sudan
intensified. Furthermore, the regime proclaimed itself the champion of Islam in the Horn,
inevitably souring its relations with Ethiopia whose own radical military regime increased
its support for the southern Sudanese rebels.
The discovery of petroleum in southern Sudan added another inflammable element to an
already highly combustible mix and brought another external actor to the scene: the Chinese.
When production reached significant levels in the mid­1990s, Sudan became an oil exporter,
and Khartoum had enough funds to prosecute the war in southern Sudan. Although the rebels
there had lost Ethiopian support with the change of regime in Addis Ababa in 1991, they were
able to widen the scope of the conflict by linking with emerging insurgencies elsewhere in the
periphery—Darfur, Nuba Mountains, and the Red Sea region—also challenging the center’s
hegemony. The SPLM also succeeded in making the oil producing region a war zone, forcing
the regime to resort to ethnic cleansing in order to clear the area of its population. Sudan now
became the target of a Western campaign to isolate the Islamist regime and sanctions imposed
by the UN and the US soon followed. In 1995, the regime was accused of masterminding
an attempt to assassinate Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak while on a visit to the Ethiopian
capital, earning the hostility of its two most influential neighbors.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 41

Initially defiant, the regime sought ways of breaking out of its isolation. Moreover, the
civil war was now in its fourth decade and had reached a stalemate that was unlikely to be
ended with a military solution in the foreseeable future. Regional and international actors in­
tensified efforts to resolve the conflict. The Inter­Governmental Authority for Development
(IGAD) took the initiative, supported by a consortium of Western governments led by the
United States. The peace process made agonizingly slow process. It was not until 2005 that
the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) was signed, bringing Africa’s longest peace
process to a close. The agreement, inter alia, provided for a referendum in South Sudan to
decide its future. By this time, federalism was not an option for southern Sudan—too many
promises had been broken.
The ink had hardly dried on the CPA when the long simmering conflict in Darfur burst
into flames, plunging the country into another civil war and Khartoum into a bitter contro­
versy with the international community. A sedentary non­Arab group of cultivators who
retain their own language and ethnic identity, the Fur have long suffered from incursions
into their land by Arab pastoralist tribes and have been neglected by the center. Fully oc­
cupied in southern Sudan, Khartoum had few military resources to invest in this region and
resorted to arming Arab pastoralists to wage war on the Fur. The same tactic was used
against the Dinka people in Blue Nile province. The atrocities committed in this conflict,
which included enslavement, inflamed world opinion, and Sudan’s president was indicted
by the International Criminal Court for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide.

*
Nation building in Somalia presented the nationalist elite with a different problem. It was
not the existence of the nation, which the Somali considered to already exist, but rather its
dismemberment under colonialism and subsequent incorporation by its African neighbors
in the region. The Somali Republic was born in 1960 with a deep­seated grievance and a
readymade cause for conflict with all its neighbors. The republic reunited only two of the
five regions that imperialism had dismembered in this nation of nomads, Somaliland and
Somalia; the other three regions found in modern day Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya. Not
surprisingly, Soomaliyen (Somali unification) became the categorical imperative of Somali
nationalism, and the Somali Republic joined the Organisation of African Unity without sign­
ing the article endorsing the colonial borders. A five­pointed star signifying the five pieces
of the dismembered nation graces Somalia’s flag. The irredenta comprised some 600,000
square kilometers, only slightly less than the size of the Somali Republic itself (638,000
square kilometers). Understandably, as Adam Abdullah Osman, the country’s first presi­
dent, confessed: “no politician in Somalia can suspend his preoccupation with the problem
of unification” (cited in Bayne 1965, 149). It is little wonder then that Somalia became a
rogue state and sponsor of irredentist movements in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti in the
1960s, initiating the first round of postcolonial mayhem in the Horn.
The bête noire of Somali nationalism is Ethiopia. An area of some 200,000 square
kilometers, “Western Somalia” in nationalist parlance but better known historically as the
Ogaden, was seized by Ethiopia during the imperialist scramble. Today it has a population
of some 4.5 million—nearly half as many as Somalia itself—and a history of fierce resistance
to alien rule going back to the early twentieth century and the exploits of Sayyid Mohammed
Abdille Hassan, derided by his enemies as the “Mad Mullah.” Decades later, Ethiopia and
42 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

Somalia fought a preliminary battle in 1964 that accomplished nothing more than to turn
their 1,600­kilometer­long border into a perennial war zone. A second battle was fought in
1977–78, when Somalia foolhardily invaded Ethiopia, only to be thrown out within a year.
The issue remained unresolved. Today, the flag of Somali nationalism in Ethiopia is held
aloft by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and the disputed area remains a battleground.
Kenya’s former Northern Frontier District represents the fourth point of the star in the
Somali flag. A Mogadishu­sponsored irredentist rebellion dubbed the Shifta War broke out
there in 1963, just as it was preparing to celebrate Kenya’s independence, obliging the gov­
ernment of Jomo Kenyatta to beg the departing colonial power for help. Britain obliged and
this Somali fragment stayed in Kenya.
The democratic experiment in the Somali Republic lasted until 1969 when, here too,
it was replaced by military rule. It was long enough to demonstrate how grossly irrelevant
the Western model is to the reality of what was, at the time, a nomad society. Pastoralists
accounted for some two­thirds of an estimated total population of three to four million. A
small urban sector, concentrated in the central region with Mogadishu at its center, was the
stronghold of the preeminent nationalist movement, the Somali Youth League (SYL), which
represented the Westernized, urban minority that inherited power in 1960.
The nationalists secured a unitary state despite the objections of the Sab cultivators in
the south who feared pastoralist domination. “There is a marked tendency for politically
conscious Somali,” noted an observer at the time, “to equate governmental centralization
with nationalism” (Castagno 1959, 355). The Sab political organization, the Hizbia Dighil­
Mirifle Somali, demanded a federal system and was supported by other minority groups in
the southern region. Their limited political strength did not allow them to press this demand,
and the parliament dominated by the SYL approved a unitary state constitution. The same
reservations were manifested in the north, the former British Somaliland Protectorate, which
was the homeland of the Ishaaq clan family and represented by its own nationalist organi­
zation, the Somali National League (SNL). The centralized state structure favored by the
SYL­proposed constitution was rejected by the SNL. Soon after, it was approved with sub­
stantial support from the center, but a group of junior officers in the north staged an abortive
coup to dissolve the union of the two Somali fragments. This was the beginning of a schism
that would come to a head three decades later with the de facto secession of Somaliland.
Despite the peculiarities of the Somali economy, the economic strategy followed by the
nationalists adhered to the colonial blueprint based on the intensification of commercial cul­
tivation for export, in this case, bananas. The opening of a major market for live animals and
animal products in the Arabian Peninsula in the 1960s was a boon for the livestock sector,
and it soon overtook bananas as the leading export. It provided Somali traders with a lucra­
tive source of capital, and they in turn invested in the domestic market. The intelligentsia
was another social stratum to benefit in this period. It increased in size with state investment
in education and secure employment in the state sector, to become what the novelist Nurud­
din Farah (1986) dubbed the priviligentsia. In the middle of the decade there were nearly as
many people employed by the state as there were in the private sector, and administration
consumed 35 percent of the budget. Trade was the state’s main source of tax revenue and
foreign exchange. It was far from enough. The state was unable to balance its budget or the
external balance of trade from 1963 onwards.
If the Somali economy could not adhere to the capitalist model, democratization proved
intolerable for the political system after nine years of trial. During this time, it became obvi­
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 43

ous that the nationalist claim of Somali nationhood had no impact whatever on the political
process, to the extent that the process determined the distribution of power and resources.
The clan proved to be the reference point and defining principle for identity and loyalty in
domestic politics; it was more powerful than any ethno­cultural alternative.
Competition along clan lines permeated the body politic turning the political process
into a caricature of democracy, making a mockery of the nationalist vision of national unity.
The extent to which clannishness segmented the political system was illustrated in the 1969
elections, when sixty­nine parties competed for 190 seats. Nearly half of these were single
constituency parties representing one clan each and most of the other half represented two
or three clans. Democratization had reached an impasse. The assassination of the state
president later that year provided the soldiers with the pretext to intervene.
The military junta headed by General Mohammed Siad Barre, known as the Somali
Revolutionary Council (SRC), ruled Somalia for more than two decades, in the course of
which it went through similar policy twists and turns as the contemporary military regimes
in Sudan and Ethiopia in its efforts to stabilize the state, promote development, and gain
legitimacy. In the end, it was undermined by the two categorical imperatives of Somali
politics, clannishness and the pursuit of pan­Somali unification.
Aware of the corrosive effect of clannishness in society, the regime declared war on
“tribalism,” an evil that the regime symbolically buried in an official ceremony in 1970.
Clannish behavior was proscribed and became a handy accusation against political oppo­
nents (Lewis 1980). Nonetheless, clannism was not eliminated and was to rise to political
prominence catching the regime in its net. The commitment to Somali nationalism remained
a major preoccupation that the regime was not allowed to ignore. Mogadishu was the gath­
ering place of refugees from Ethiopia, Kenya, and Djibouti, and of political organizations
representing the “unredeemed” territories, which exerted constant pressure on the regime
that hosted them at considerable expense. Only months after coming to power the junta
created a Ministry of Somali Affairs to organize them and take charge of their activities.
They were regrouped in three units representing the refugees from Ethiopia, Kenya, and
Djibouti, respectively, and were assigned separate camps where they were trained in guer­
rilla warfare by Somali officers while some were sent for training to North Korea. General
Siad Barre exercised strict personal supervision over them, not wishing to allow them initia­
tive that would interfere with the regime’s plans or to allow the emergence of independent
armed movements that could conceivably prove a political threat to his regime. Somalia
under the SRC was the first state in the Horn to turn to socialism for support in the quest for
development, state stability, and regime legitimacy.
Improbable as it may seem, the invocation of scientific socialism in this nation of no­
mads is not inexplicable. Somalia’s closest foreign relationship was with Egypt, and Nassir’s
appeal here was greater than elsewhere in the region, especially among the country’s bud­
ding intelligentsia. Somalia had established a friendly relationship with the Soviet Union
early on, when it was offered generous military aid, something the West refused at the insis­
tence of Ethiopia. This relationship became closer and was sealed with the offer of the port
of Berbera in the north, where the Soviet Union secured its first base in Africa.
Aside from its general appeal as the ideology of liberation and development in the for­
mer colonial world, socialism also endorses state hegemony in all fields. According to Siad
Barre himself, socialism “is a system in which the state takes primary responsibility for the
political, social and economic development of the nation” (Castagno 1971, 24). Needless to
44 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

say, it also becomes the main employment source as well as the means of capital accumula­
tion for the elite minority who administer the state. This process was accomplished by the
nationalization of the main sectors of the economy outside the pastoral sector.
Somalia also shifted its foreign policy accordingly, espousing neutrality in the Cold
War and condemning imperialism and neocolonialism. It established diplomatic relations
with East Germany and North Korea, joined the Arab League, and expelled the American
Peace Corps, which prompted Washington to cut off economic aid to Somalia.
The SRC launched a campaign of mass mobilization that reached impressive propor­
tions and carried the regime through the first half of the 1970s on a high tide of popular ex­
citement and expectations. There were successive campaigns against tribalism, corruption,
laziness, and for cleanliness and gender equality. Self­help schemes and crash programs
including sand dune stabilization and tree planting were undertaken. A lasting achievement
was the choice of the Latin script for the national language, an issue that had been the bone
of contention between conflicting factions and interests. The regime cut through this Gor­
dian knot with speed and determination and then launched a national campaign to teach the
nation to use the script. Many of its initiatives enjoyed popular support, at least initially.
On the other hand, the soldiers had shown they would not tolerate opposition of any kind.
Ten religious notables were executed in 1975, because they criticized Siad Barre’s inter­
pretation of the Quran when he introduced a law establishing gender equality and banning
polygamy. The institutionalization of the regime went forward with the formation of the
Somali People’s Revolutionary Party (SPRP) in 1976 to serve as the junta’s political front
and to consolidate Siad Barre’s personal power. The 1979 constitution gave the country’s
president—a post occupied by the regime strongman—unlimited power.
The regime’s contribution to economic development was the nationalization of foreign
trade, insurance, and finance; these sectors were mainly in foreign hands and the takeover did
not incur political risk. Nationalization did not extend to production, even where, as in the
case of bananas, it was foreign­owned. Trade in the pastoralist sector, where strong domestic
interests were involved, was not touched. Investment in agriculture went mainly to expand
irrigated cultivation in the Shebelle (in the Juba region in the south), yet food production
fell below requirements and cereal imports more than doubled in the 1970s. Investment
in industry was twice as large as that for agriculture and was concentrated mainly around
Mogadishu, whose population expanded rapidly. The results in terms of employment were
meager. Only a couple thousand more people were working in manufacturing by the end of
the 1970s than had been in 1969.
The revolution that toppled the regime in Ethiopia in the mid­1970s had a fateful im­
pact on Somalia. The unfolding drama in Ethiopia stirred great expectations in the restless
refugee circles in Mogadishu, pressuring the Somali regime to take advantage of the polit­
ical and military disarray across the border. Ogaden students demonstrated in Mogadishu,
supported by men returning from training in North Korea and thirsting for action, while
others defied a regime injunction and crossed the border to stir up unrest within Ethiopia.
Initially the regime seemed reluctant to move and cautioned patience. When it was ignored,
it threw hundreds of protesters into prison. They were released in the course of the following
year, when the regime appeared to have decided on a course of eventual confrontation with
Ethiopia. The power vacuum in Addis Ababa was pulling Mogadishu in the same direction
as Somali nationalist agitation was pushing it, and the regime was unable to resist.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 45

It was decided to probe Ethiopia’s defense capabilities using the refugee groups, whose
units were led by Somali junior army officers, and who infiltrated southern Ethiopia to com­
mence guerrilla activities in the first month of 1976. Throughout that year, Mogadishu
sought to keep the matter a secret, banning reporting about it and insisting that it was com­
mitted to a peaceful resolution of the issue. Ethiopia’s initial reaction to the incursion was
feeble. The ruling junta there was convulsed by an internal struggle for power that was re­
solved early in 1977 with a massacre of several leading members, raising the leader of the
winning faction, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, to the top of the hierarchy. At the same
time, the Eritrean nationalists were on the verge of a final victory, with only Asmara and
the Red Sea ports remaining in government hands. An Afar uprising had blocked the road
connecting Asab, the location of the country’s oil refinery, resulting in fuel shortages ev­
erywhere. Furthermore, the United States had gradually limited military aid to the avowed
Marxist regime, ending it altogether in the beginning of 1977.
Fighting for survival in the center, the Derg was forced to cede large sections of the
Ogaden to the Somali insurgents, leaving the air force to harass them with bombing raids.
Even so, they were not able to capture the main administrative centers in the disputed region,
causing Mogadishu to contemplate committing its armed forces to a full invasion. Broader
considerations also at play convinced Mogadishu to commit the Somali army to a full­scale
invasion of Ethiopia. A key determinant was the shifting preferences of the Cold War rivals
in this region. The Ethiopians were in the process of replacing lost American patronage
with a Soviet support, a tricky operation for Moscow, as it was still funding Somalia. At
first it seemed Moscow hoped it could reconcile the two regimes and retain influence over
both. However, when Mogadishu reacted angrily, Moscow abandoned Somalia to its fate,
and launched a massive airlift of arms and advisors to Ethiopia. The United States, on the
other hand, warmed to Mogadishu and offered aid but not weaponry.
The Somali invasion of southeastern Ethiopia in the autumn of 1977 proved a foolhardy
venture. The Somali regime had no long­term plans to secure the captured territory against
the inevitable Ethiopian counterattack. It gambled on the disintegration of the Derg, and on
diplomatic support from the West to balance the enemy’s military superiority. In the event,
neither calculation proved correct. The invasion was a boon for the Derg, which was able
to capitalize on the peoples’ patriotic fervor, and went on to eliminate its opponents in the
center. Western support did not materialize because the United States and its allies were set
against the break­up of the Ethiopian state that, regardless of regime, is bound to be at odds
with its Arab neighbors and their dream of turning the Red Sea into an Arab lake.
Planned and directed by Soviet officers and spearheaded by Cuban combat units, the
counterattack came in the early spring of 1978. It quickly routed the Somali forces, and
within a month Mogadishu sued for peace to prevent an invasion of Somalia by the Ethiopian
forces massed on the border. Defeat provoked widespread resentment and opposition to the
military regime. One month later, an attempted coup by military officers ended with the
execution of several of the officers and the flight of many others abroad. Together with
the steady stream of defectors from the regime, they organized, from exile, the first armed
opposition to Siad Barre’s dictatorship, the Somali Salvation Democratic Front (SSDF).
In a new twist of the hallowed principle, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” Somali
nationalists found support in Ethiopia and were allowed to establish bases there, from where
they carried out raids in Somalia. In the beginning of 1980, following the execution of
several senior officers charged with collaboration with dissidents abroad, a serious mutiny
46 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

of soldiers in the north resulted in more executions and flights of dissidents abroad. The new
wave of exiled dissidents formed another militant opposition group, the Somali National
Movement (SNM) and were also welcomed in Ethiopia. The SSDF appealed mainly to
the population in certain regions of the south and by the Mijertein further north; the SNM
was primarily representative of the Ishaaq clan that was dominant in the former Somaliland
protectorate.
By this time, the regime that had buried clannishness had become totally dependent
on the support of three Darod clans with which Siad Barre had kinship ties—the Marehan,
the Ogaden, and the Dulbahante, otherwise known as the MOD. In return, he divided the
country’s wealth among them, “the lion’s share to the Marehan, the leopard’s to the Ogaden,
and the hyena’s share to the Dhulbahante” Said (Samatar 1983, 6). Thus, true to Somali
clan tradition, both the regime and its opponents ultimately found solid ground in the clan
system, the bedrock of the Somali social system. In the years ahead, clan strife led to the
overthrow of the junta in 1991, the de facto secession of Somaliland, and the total collapse
of the Somali state once heralded as the only genuine nation­state in Africa.
Islam has always been popular with Somali who strive to overcome the divisive ap­
peal of the deeply entrenched clan system. The tumultuous relationship with clans many
Somali experienced was articulated early on by the rebel Sayyid Mohammed Abdille Has­
san who claimed: “I am not of this or that clan,” although he himself was ultimately caught
in the tenacious web of clannism. The recent turn of Somali nationalism to Islam was sig­
naled by the appearance of Al Itihad Al Islami (Islamic Union), a branch of the international
movement devoted to the dissemination of Wahabbism, the school of Islam promoted by
Saudi Arabia. What distinguished Al Itihad from conventional Islamic organizations was
its avowed goal to fight for political power and use it to unite all Somali people in an Islamic
Republic. Its objectives posed a direct challenge to Ethiopia, which subsequently sent its
soldiers into Somali territory in the mid­1990s to clear Al Itihad from the borderland. Al
Itihad later renounced the armed struggle and faded from the scene, but the region remained
dominated by clan­based warlords for years to come.
After the warlords fought each other to exhaustion, a new force the Joint Islamic Courts
(JIC) emerged to claim power. By the turn of the century, they had wrested control over large
areas of the country, tamed the brutal militia gangs, cleared the roads of self­appointed tax
collectors, and established a degree of security unknown since 1991. They also imposed
Sharia law and made plans to erect an Islamic state on the ruins of the failed republic. Over­
weening confidence led their leaders to make imprudent threats of jihad against Ethiopia,
which the latter took all too seriously.
Ethiopians were not the only ones perturbed. Concern that under the JIC Somalia could
become a bastion of Islamism led to a concerted international effort to dislodge them and
replace them with a regime approved by the West. After several abortive efforts and great
expense, a so­called Transitional Federal Government (TFG) led by a prominent former
warlord and Addis Ababa protégé was installed in Mogadishu in 2006. The TFG was pro­
tected by a small contingent of Ugandan soldiers operating under African Union auspices,
and a large, heavily armed Ethiopian force that went there at Washington’s prompting, albeit
uninvited. A foolhardy attempt by the JIC to fight the Ethiopians with untrained mobs of
civilians and light weapons resulted in carnage.
The defense of Islam­cum­Somali nationalism now passed to a far more radical gener­
ation known as Shaabab (youth). For the next two and a half years they fought a murderous
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 47

urban guerrilla war against the well­armed Ethiopians, which resulted in substantial civil­
ian casualties and effectively leveled the already devastated capital. The Ethiopians were
compelled to pull out in the summer of 2009, leaving the hapless but well­paid Ugandans to
defend a “government” in control of only a few city blocks.
At present, the green flag of Islam is raised by all factions in the Somali imbroglio, who
are committed to resurrect the failed state and compete for the right to rule it. Given that
purity of faith is the basis of the competition, it is natural that after two decades of internecine
mayhem the most radical faction is leading. The finishing touch to this bizarre illustration
of the West’s determination to put the Somali Humpty Dumpty together again and keep the
Islamists at bay is the fact that the “government” in Mogadishu is itself avowedly committed
to make Islam the pillar of a future Somali state.

*
A tangible result of the many­sided conflict that dominates the postcolonial history of the
Horn is the survival of three mini­states—Eritrea, South Sudan, and Somaliland. These colo­
nial creations ceased to exist in the first phase of nation­state building, only to be resurrected
in the second phase after decades of struggle for “national liberation.” In the case of these
three states, nationalism has a reflexive rather than authentic origin. It is not the assertion
of a historic identity or ethno­cultural distinctiveness that seeks ideological expression and
political recognition, for there are no such shared features in any of the three. National­
ism is rather a response to the attempted imposition of the identity, ideology, and culture
of ruling elite through the agency of the state and to the political exclusion and economic
marginalization that went with it. Eritrea is the clearest example of this scenario.
Despite nationalist efforts to endow it with an earlier history, Eritrea first appeared
as an Italian colony on the northern end of the Ethiopian plateau, which the Italians were
allowed to hold on to despite their defeat by the Ethiopians in 1896 in the battle of Adwa.
Previously, the region had been a dominion of Abyssinia and, demographically, an extension
of Tigray province. The lowlands below the plateau, however, were the domain of Muslim
pastoralists; consequently, the Christian highlanders had no presence and little interest in
that area.
The Italian colony of Eritrea that came into being in 1890 included both the Chris­
tian highlands and the Muslim lowlands. Over the course of half a century, colonial rule
bought considerable change to the highlands. A sizeable Italian expatriate community and
capital spurred urban growth and created demand for manufactured products, housing, and
transport. People flocked from the countryside to meet the rapidly increased labor demands.
The collapse of Italian colonialism in 1941 was succeeded with a decade under the British
Military Administration. While WWII lasted in Europe, the economy was fully engaged in
the production of goods for the domestic market and for export to the region. This period
saw the emergence of two social classes—workers and the intelligentsia—which would both
play leading roles in the political future of the former colony. Education during the Italian
period was limited and conducted in the language of the colonizer. The first primary school
was opened by the British in the 1940s. As a result, there was effectively no local Eritrean
intelligentsia at the time, a fact noted by the visiting United Nations representative in 1950
who reported: “the Eritrean people lack the capacity for self­government” (United Nations
1950, 26).
48 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

The United Nations was tasked with deciding the future of the colony and it proved a
thorny matter, not least because the inhabitants themselves could not agree. Having deemed
that self­government was not feasible, a choice had to be made between competing claims
from aspiring guardians. Italy’s claim for a trusteeship was rejected by most Eritreans.
British officialdom entertained thoughts of dividing the colony, merging the lowlands with
the Sudan and the highlands with Ethiopia. In view of the historic and cultural links that ex­
isted, Ethiopia had the strongest claim, and the imperial government pursued it vigorously.
It garnered support from the Christian highlander Tigray­speaking population and among
the budding intelligentsia who organized a unionist party. The Orthodox Church provided
strong support and ideological guidance so that Christian and unionist became almost syn­
onymous.
In view of the inferior status of Islam and second­rate citizenship of Muslims in the
Christian kingdom, most Muslims in Eritrea were strongly opposed to the Ethiopian bid.
With some opting for secession and others for a United Nations trusteeship, they lacked
political solidarity and did not command sufficient attention. Thus, religion became a key
factor in Eritrean nationalism. In the end, the United Nations chose to link Eritrea and
Ethiopia in a federal system, and it came into effect in 1952. Elections held that year—the
first and last genuine exercise of its kind in Eritrea—showed more or less an even political
schism between the two religious communities and installed a unionist administration.
The federal system granted a degree of autonomy to Eritrea that proved to be unwork­
able because it was a glaring anomaly with the pattern of centralization the imperial regime
was perfecting in its domain and also involved a liberal constitutional experiment in the
shadow of monarchical absolutism claiming to rule by divine right. Moreover, it granted
social and political parity between Christian and Muslims. The functioning of democracy in
Eritrea, complete with political parties, elections, free press, and an organized labor move­
ment, constituted a dangerous precedence for the imperial regime that allowed none of these
in Ethiopia. In short, the federation was a threat both to the regime and the imperial state.
Not surprisingly, the imperial regime entered the scheme in bad faith and began undoing it
before the ink in the agreement had dried. Ten years later it abrogated the agreement and
made Eritrea an Ethiopian province.
The struggle for national liberation began immediately. It was not “national” in a pan­
Eritrean sense for, as in most instances in Africa, it involved more than one “liberation”
movement. In this case, the two competing national liberation factions fought each other
while fighting their common enemy, the imperial regime. Again, as in most instances in
Africa, they represented different constituencies and identities, as well as different visions
of the future nation. The first movement represented the Muslims of Eritrea, who had most
to lose by the dismantling of the federation and the parity provided by its constitution. The
Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) was founded by Eritrean students in Cairo and Muslim dig­
nitaries in the Eritrean lowlands. With modest support from Nasser’s regime and later on
from Arab regimes in the Middle East, they were able to field a guerrilla force in the low­
lands of Eritrea, opening a new battlefront for an Ethiopian army already engaged with the
Somali threat at the other end of the country. The imperial regime’s response was to blame
the uprising on its Arab neighbors and to secure increased military from the United States
and Israel, the latter an aspiring regional actor already engaged in supporting the rebellion
in southern Sudan.
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 49

Entrusted to the military and security forces, the suppression tactics mainly involved oc­
casional raids in the lowlands that seldom engaged the guerrillas but had dire consequences
for the civilian population. At the same time, security harassment of Muslim community
leaders and former Muslim activists forced many to flee abroad, leading to increased sup­
port of the ELF. The movement had a conservative Muslim leadership and no particular
ideological goal, other than independence for Eritrea. As far as the future was concerned,
Eritrea was viewed in the context of the wider Arab culture and regional political relation­
ships.
Even so, the lure of independence had considerable appeal among young Christians in
the highlands, especially among workers and students in Asmara, and the ELF established a
branch there to attract them. Militarization caused a downturn in the economy. The exodus
of the remaining Italian expatriate contingent affected the workers and gave rise to a feeling
that the imperial government was deliberately stifling the local economy. Already alienated
by the quelling of the Eritrean trade union organization, workers became easily susceptible
to the appeal of nationalism. Students were particularly incensed with the imposition of
Amharic as the language of instruction and as a condition for entrance to university. Er­
itrean students were well represented in the university population in Addis Ababa, and were
swept into the radical wave of the student movement with its forceful opposition to the Haile
Sellasie regime. When this opposition took to the streets of Addis Ababa in the second half
of the 1960s, the Eritreans there turned to the ELF in increasing numbers.
The radical inflow had an unsettling effect on the ELF, whose leadership had settled
in Cairo, while the organization in the field had morphed into local fiefs competing for
resources and recruits. Imbued with Marxist notions of liberation, the newcomers envisaged
a combined social and national revolution that was far from the ELF leadership’s perception
of the future. Dissatisfaction with the absence of leadership in the field and a clear sense
of direction was diffused throughout the organization and eventually produced pressure for
reform. Former student radicals were in the forefront, and since the majority of them were
Christians, and Christians were generally were in favor of reform, highlanders represented
a disproportionately high percentage of supporters in the dissident movement.
The movement for reform took a concrete form when a few men who had been sent
to China for training returned in 1967. Their vision of reform inevitably led to a clash
with the leadership and split the ELF. The organization that became known as Eritrean
People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) was formed in 1971, and the schism in the nationalist
movement was formalized. Most of them Christians, the founders were anxious to disclaim
religious motives. “We are freedom fighters not prophets of Christianity,” they declared in
their manifesto entitled Our Struggle and its Goals. Muslims attracted to reform defected
from the ELF to join the new movement, many of them rose to leadership posts, and even
more joined it after the ELF was sidelined. Nevertheless, Christians remained predominant
in the EPLF.
The rival fronts fought each other and the Ethiopian army throughout the 1970s. When
the imperial regime collapsed in the middle of the decade, they came close to liberating their
country, only to be pushed back when the Soviet Union came to the aid of the Derg. The
EPLF proved to be by far the more efficient of the two, paying strict attention to political ed­
ucation and fighter training, as well as relentless indoctrination in the essence of an Eritrean
national identity that had to be created de novo. War was waged on ethnicity and religion,
and a fictional history of the Eritrean nation was produced. Marxism made its ideological
50 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

presence felt in the redistribution of land and in the ban on polygamy, child betrothal, and
forced marriage. Female emancipation was an impressive achievement that brought many
young women into the guerrilla army, where they were treaty equally to men. Self­reliance
was a key policy in the EPLF, which led to the establishment of medical, educational, and
technical facilities in the field. Following the rollback of the mid­1970s, the front secured a
base in the remote Sahel region in the north, where it managed to repel repeated attacks by
the overwhelmingly superior Ethiopian forces and kept the revolutionary flame burning.
By contrast, the organizational capacity of the older movement, the ELF, deteriorated.
The Derg offensive forced it to retreat to the western lowlands, weakening its presence on the
Eritrean plateau. In the lowlands, it came under attack by the Ethiopians, the EPLF, and its
Tigray ally, the TPLF. By the end of the decade, the ELF’s fighting force had been decimated,
and by 1981 the surviving units crossed into Sudan to be disarmed by the Sudanese. After
twenty years of struggle, the oldest Eritrean liberation movement ceased to exist.
Eritrea’s thirty­year struggle for independence ended dramatically in May 1991 with
the collapse of the regime in Addis Ababa. Shortly afterwards the new regime agreed to
abide by the results of a referendum held in Eritrea that reflected the overwhelming support
for independence. Having long fought to eliminate its rivals in the nationalist camp before
independence, the EPLF proved even more intolerant of competition afterwards. It set up
an administration manned by its cadre and a government composed of its leadership, headed
by Isais Aferworki and Ramadan Mohammed Nur as his deputy. After Ramadan retired to
private life, all pretense of collegiality in the leadership was abandoned, and Eritrea’s slide
to a personal dictatorship under Isais seemed as natural as it was inevitable. Keeping with
its nation building mission, the regime set about to submerge ethnic and sectarian distinc­
tions within an aspired Eritrean national identity. The traditional administrative structure of
Eritrea that coincided more or less with ethnic divisions was changed to larger, ethnically
mixed zones with new names. A direct line of command ran from the president’s office to the
Ministry of Local Government to the local administrators, all of whom were appointed by the
center. Eritrea’s system was quite the opposite of the one adopted in Ethiopia, which strove
to match administrative with ethnic units. Needless to say, Ethiopian ethnic federalism was
anathema to the Eritrean regime. The question of language in Eritrea was sidestepped by
not adopting an official one. Tigray, Tigre, and Arabic are still used in government and
education.
The Eritrean leader has often rejected liberal democracy as an alien system unsuited for
Africa and advised Africans to look to their own tradition for guidance in designing political
systems. However, he has failed to produce any system for his own country, and after a
quarter of a century Eritrea remains a rare example of a state without a constitution, ruled
by a small cabal in the president’s office. It would seem that a mighty nationalist effort has
failed to produce not only a nation but even a fully organized state.
Eritrea’s posture in its relations with its neighbors has been consistently aggressive,
leading to a falling out with all of them, starting with Sudan, a country that had provided
assistance to the Eritrean rebels for many years. The casus belli, here, was the emergence
of a Muslim opposition group, the Eritrean Islamic Jihad Movement (EIJM) in the teeming
Eritrean refugee camps in eastern Sudan, allegedly sponsored by Khartoum. In the mid­
1990s, Eritrea became involved in hostilities with Yemen over a couple of rocky outcrops in
the Red Sea that were claimed by both. At the same time, Asmara sent troops into Djibouti
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 51

to claim a strip of its neighbor’s territory, only to withdraw when France came to the aid of
its former colony.
The resumption of the conflict with Ethiopia came as a surprise, because the EPLF and
the TPLF had collaborated in the struggle against the Derg. The latter supported Eritrea’s
claim to independence, and after coming to power great hopes were raised for close ties
between the two states. A strip of valueless land on the unmarked border between the two
countries seemed an implausible cause for the war that broke out between them in mid­
1998, which lasted two years and cost the lives of an estimated one hundred thousand souls.
Ethiopia’s military superiority forced the Eritreans to abandon the disputed area, and the
fighting stopped in mid­2000 when international intervention secured a truce.
The Ethiopia­Eritrea war illustrates a malignant feature of the nationalist pursuit of
cultural homogeneity, i.e. ethnic cleansing. The victims here were the many Eritreans who
were longtime residents in Ethiopia, many of whom were born there and intermarried with
Ethiopians. They had been invited to vote in the 1993 referendum on Eritrea’s future, and
many voted for independence. The act of voting was now interpreted as the forfeiture of
Ethiopian citizenship, and thousands were deported on the grounds that they constituted a
security threat. The deportation was carried out in a summary and brutal manner, splitting
families, and depriving a community that had been prominent in trade and services of its
property. Eritrea retaliated by expelling Ethiopians living there. The bitterness caused by
this episode ensured that relations between the two countries would remain hostile and the
possibility of war imminent. Both regimes energetically worked to undermine each other
by hosting dissident movements seeking to overthrow their rival across the border. The
situation changed abruptly and dramatically with the new government in Addis Ababa in
April 2018. Among his many initiatives, the new prime minister Abiye Ahmed included
a reconciliation with the Eritrean leader Isais Aferworki and sought normalized relations
between the two neighbors.

*
A colonial creation, Djibouti is the odd example of a state that does not claim a national
identity and is not pursuing national integration. With an estimated population of half­a­
million (it has not been counted since the 1980s), a strip of arid land with no permanent water
sources or any other natural resources, Djibouti is unviable by any standard, and owes its
survival entirely on external factors. It would be difficult to imagine a more artificial entity
than this mini­state on the Red Sea. Nevertheless, while its people are mired in extreme
poverty, the ruling elite have amassed wealth by manipulating what Bayart (1993) called
“externalities.”
When the French managed to carve out this enclave on the Red Sea coast, its inhabitants
numbered no more than thirty thousand widely dispersed pastoralists. The majority were
Afar, a nation whose homeland was parceled between Ethiopia, Italian Eritrea and the French
colony, a fragmentation that has not been healed to this day. The minority were Somali of the
Issa clan who also inhabited the adjacent region within Ethiopia. The port of Djibouti, built
by the French, developed into an important entrepot for Ethiopia and northern Somalia. The
Somali community expanded and came to dominate the emerging urban economy. In time,
the Afar, most of whom retained their pastoral lifestyle, were outpaced and marginalized by
the Somali.
52 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

As decolonization approached, the future of the enclave became a hotly contested issue
between Somalia and Ethiopia. Somalia had a strong case; after all, Djibouti was represented
in the star of the Somali flag. Mogadishu sponsored an irredentist faction called the Front
de la Liberation de la Côte Somalie (FLCS) to press for the reunification of Djibouti to the
Somali Republic. Ethiopia, who depended on the port for its foreign trade, countered with
a claim of its own. Inside Djibouti, opinion on the issue was divided along ethnic lines with
the Afar solidly in opposition to Mogadishu’s claim and the Somali generally supporting
it. France maintained a military presence in the enclave and resolved the issue temporarily
by delaying independence until 1977. When it was put to a vote at that time, the issue was
settled when, disenchanted with the Siad Barre regime in Somalia, the Somali themselves
by and large chose independence.
Since that time, the Djibouti Republic has been ruled by the Issa Somali clan. The
founder of the dynasty, Hassan Guled Aptidon, ruled until 1999, when he was succeeded
by his nephew and present ruler, Ismail Omar Guelleh. Maintaining a threadbare electoral
façade, the ruling faction has swept every election since independence, winning every seat in
the legislature, and has been able to ignore not only a feeble fragmented opposition but also
the entire population of the mini­state as well. This disjunction between state and society
was made possible by the astute manipulation of “externalities,” which has enabled the state
to function independently of the local economy.
France funded the state’s perpetually unbalanced budget before and after independence
while also providing firm political and diplomatic support for the regime after independence.
Eritrea’s independence returned Ethiopia to its historical landlocked status, and forced it to
turn its attention to the port of Djibouti, the natural entrepot for the hinterland. The renewed
war with Eritrea compelled Ethiopia to invest heavily in developing the port itself and the
transport links with Addis Ababa. This decision by Ethiopia was a bonanza for the mini­
state, and for the regime itself, which now used its power to appropriate a growing share of
the market. The emerging economic model could be termed a presidential economy since
so much of it is in the hands of the ruling family. Needless to say, power in the mini­state is
highly centralized in the office and the person of the president, who makes many of Djibouti’s
laws and policies through decree.
The Afar languished in the political and economic exclusion until the beginning of the
1990s when the Front for the Restoration of Unity and Democracy (FRUD) launched an
armed struggle in the Afar inhabited northern districts to challenge the Somali monopoly.
Initial success against Djibouti’s puny military force threatened the regime. The assertion of
Afar political ambition, however, was unwelcome to all of Djibouti’s neighbors, who have
marginalized Afar subjects of their own. The Issa Somali regime’s defense was underwritten
by France, which still had a military base in Djibouti. Isolated, the Afar uprising eventually
fizzled out, the leadership of FRUD split, and rebel factions were lured by the Djibouti
regime to negotiations in 2000 with promises of appointment to office.
The greatest economic coup for the regime came at the turn of the century, when it
managed to outbid its neighbors in the region and turned the enclave into a military base for
America’s War on Terror. It was the ultimate and most lucrative rentier deal, which, aside
of the financial windfall, secured the regime’s political future at home and strengthened its
hand in dealing with external pressure. “This monopoly rental income permits the regime to
thrive autonomously from the Djiboutian people. Those in control of the state apparatus are
not dependent on citizens for revenue. This means that the normal and mutually constitutive
2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa 53

relationship between governed and governor wherein citizens hold both rights and respon­
sibilities to the state – and vice versa – does not develop. There are very few accountability
mechanisms in Djibouti” (Brass 2008, 8).

*
The Somaliland Republic is the third state to emerge from the revision of the geopolitical
map of the Horn. The former British Protectorate in northern Somalia, home of the Ishaaq
clan, had a fleeting moment of autonomy in 1960, enough to elect a legislature that voted to
join the Somali Republic in a union that was sealed almost immediately. This period was the
heyday of Somali nationalism and the union was a voluntary expression of it. Even so, there
was anxiety arising from the realization that the unified state would inevitably be dominated
by the much larger Darod family of clans in central Somalia with Mogadishu at the center.
The northern preference for a decentralized state structure with local autonomy was made
clear when the population there voted against the unitary, centralized system designed by
the Somali Youth League and approved in a national referendum. Northern disgruntlement
manifested immediately afterwards in a mutiny of northern army officers. Subsequent events
were to amply justify northern doubts.
Reflecting the enduring defining pattern of Somali social structure, the resistance to
the Siad Barre regime that emerged after the invasion of Ethiopia debacle in 1977 formed
along clan lines. The Somali National Movement (SNM) was predominantly an Ishaaq
insurgent organization that launched raids in the north from bases in Ethiopia. In 1988,
the beleaguered regimes in Addis Ababa and Mogadishu agreed to cease supporting each
other’s enemies. Ousted from its bases in Ethiopia, the SNM attacked and briefly captured
Hargeisa and Burao, Somaliland’s largest cities. The response of the regime in Mogadishu
was extreme. It hired white mercenary pilots to bomb and level Hargeisa to the ground, and
its army carried out mass reprisals against Ishaaq civilians. The dice were cast. Following
Siad Barre’s overthrow in 1991, the clans in Mogadishu began fighting over his replacement,
prompting the SNM to declare Somaliland’s secession.
Some of the events that followed are without precedent in the region. First, the SNM
did not install itself in power, as is usually the case with successful insurgent movements.
Second, it agreed to disarm and surrender its weapons to the government that would even­
tually be formed. This unprecedented act of self­abnegation allowed the reenactment of the
traditional mechanism of conflict resolution with the full participation of traditional author­
ities. It was a long and difficult process that took more than two years. At the start, Ishaaq
clans fought among themselves for control of territory and local resources. In the mean­
time, sections of several other clans inhabiting areas of Somaliland were uncertain about the
secession and their own future in an Ishaaq­controlled state. It took months of clan con­
ferences at the local level to pacify the warring factions. A national conference held over
several months in 1993 included the participation of clan elders. There, a national charter
for peace and governance was adopted that would serve as a provisional constitution until
2001. The structure of government fused indigenous forms of social and political organiza­
tion with Western­style institutions of government. A bicameral Parliament that included a
House of Elders along with a House of Representatives integrated traditional authority into
the state structure and was the key to the legitimacy the structure enjoyed for the rest of the
decade. Another national conference held in 1997 laid down the framework for the transition
54 2. The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa

to democracy, and a constitution adopted in a referendum in 2001 allowed the formation of

three political parties to prevent fragmentation along clan lines.
A series of local and national elections held since 2002 have been judged generally free
and fair by foreign observers. To some extent they served to reassure the non­Ishaaq clans,
though not all of them. More important they have consolidated the image of Somaliland
as a state in control of its domain physically and politically. Its government set two goals
to pursue in the first decade of twentieth­first century: build a state and gain international
recognition. Considerable progress has been made in developing structures and systems
required for the state to perform the functions attributed to it. Most observers agree that
Somaliland ticks all the boxes in this category. Yet, despite the efforts of its government,
Somaliland is confronted with a solid international boycott and remains a de facto state.
To many observers this seems irrational, if not perverse. “The empty shell of the col­
lapsed state of Somalia enjoys international recognition, whereas Somaliland in northwest­
ern Somalia, which seceded in 1991 and developed as a de facto state, goes unrecognized,”
one observer remarks (Hoehne 2009, 163). It seems the mobilization of clan solidarity to
underpin the state and the enlisting of traditional mechanisms to facilitate its transition to
modernity does not fit the model approved by international agencies. It also demonstrates
Africa’s lack of sovereignty and freedom of choice.

Conclusion

The overarching goal of political life in the Horn of Africa since independence has been the
attainment of the nation­state, generally considered the pinnacle of political modernization.
This article outlined the simultaneous pursuit of this goal by a number of rival nation­state
building projects working at cross purposes in a zero­sum game. The process has been
mayhem, the result has been mutual self­destruction, some states were mutilated to make
room for others, but none has made progress towards the goal commensurable to the cost.
Moreover, the process continues with no end in sight.
The Horn of Africa is an extreme example of a phenomenon that is not uncommon
in sub­Saharan Africa: the imposition of a model of political organization in an entirely
alien setting regardless of consequences. Fundamental to this phenomenon are the divisions
opened between tradition and modernization, nation and tribe, urban and rural society, the
ruling elite and the rest of the population. Much of sub­Saharan Africa’s political turmoil is
the result of this Procrustean experiment.
Chapter 3
Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia
John Young

3.1 Introduction

Civil war broke out in Ethiopia on November 4, 2020 when the national army at the be­
hest of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed attacked the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)
administered state of Tigray. There were many differences between Abiy and the TPLF,
but foremost was the Front’s support of national federalism and the prime minister’s back­
ing of a return to the centralized administration of past Ethiopian governments. The issue of
national federalism has been controversial since it was first introduced by the Ethiopian Peo­
ple’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) in 1991, but the war encourages the debate
to be revisited. This chapter considers national federalism as an alternative arrangement to
the Western nation­state and examines its theoretical origins in the writings of the Bolshe­
viks and the early experience of the Soviet Union, compares Soviet experience with that of
Ethiopia under the EPRDF, and attempts to draw some insights.
Alone in Africa, Ethiopia was not a colony, but an independent state that took the form
of an empire and competed with the European powers in the scramble for territorial gain in
the continent. While other African empires collapsed before or with the advent of European
colonialism, successive Ethiopian imperial governments defeated—as in the case of Italy
in 1896—or came to arrangements with the colonial powers—as in the case of Britain and
France—and thus maintained its empire well into the modern era. Moreover, its collapse
late in the twentieth century was not due to foreign intervention, but because of internal
contradictions. Ethiopian experience thus set it apart from the rest of Africa; its wars of
liberation were not against a foreign power but against the imperial regime of Haile­Selassie
and the Derg. With the possible exceptions of South Africa and South Sudan, all the major
African armed struggles were anti­colonial, but the EPRDF fought the state socialism of
the Derg to realize its own version of socialism and ways to address the national question.
Again, in contrast to the rest of Africa, the EPRDF explicitly rejected the European modelled
nation­state. Instead, the system of national federalism formulated by the EPRDF has its
inspiration in Bolshevik ideas and the experience of the Soviet Union, spurned Western
practice. And the ideas it drew upon were the product of a long debate among the Western
political left in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in response to the brutality of
forced assimilation, marginalization, and crushing of rival nationalities during the national
democratic revolutions of the British, French, German, Italian, and American states.
In opposition to the European model of political development, the international politi­
cal left was of one mind in viewing the nation­state and nationalism as obstacles to achieving
a society of free people (Bookchin 1994). For the left, nationalism united people in a hier­
archical arrangement that obscured the ultimately class­based contradictions that served to
56 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

oppress the workers and other marginalized groups to advance the interests of capitalists
who needed captive national markets. Anarchism represented the most extreme manifesta­
tion of this leftist conviction and held all states to be barriers to human freedom. Marx and
Engels sometimes endorsed nationalist struggles, such as that for Polish self­determination
because it had the objective of undermining the reactionary Russian Tsarist regime. How­
ever, they held the nation­state to be a transitional phenomenon to be overcome in realizing
a nation­less and class­less communism.
In response to the threat posed by the rise of reactionary nationalism and Islamism, the
Bolsheviks oversaw the construction of a federation that deliberately undermined the domi­
nant Russian nation and endeavored to politically, culturally, and economically advance the
marginalized communities, not as an end in itself, but as a means to give birth to a social­
ist state. That the commitment to this ideal declined, the Soviet Union under Stalin and his
successors perverted the goal of socialism, and it collapsed in 1991 does not negate consider­
ation of that experience since it continues to cast light on the national issue in contemporary
Ethiopia and elsewhere.
The collapse of the Soviet Union cannot be attributed solely to the rising nationalism
of its component parts and instead to growing anger at the unaccountable elites ruling the
federation and a misconstrued reform process under Soviet President and General Secretary
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), Mikhail Gorbachev. But it is notewor­
thy that the Soviet Union broke up along national lines and should Ethiopia not overcome
its long­running crisis, given added weight by the outbreak of war in November 2020, the
country could follow the trajectory of the Soviet Union and disintegrate.
Although the writings of the leading Bolsheviks on the national issue and the early ex­
perience of the Soviet Union had widespread support in the Ethiopian Student Movement
(ESM) from which all components of the EPRDF and much of the opposition had their
origins, its practical application to federalism was widely greeted with skepticism and op­
position. On the one hand, it was opposed by Amhara and other Ethiopian nationalists who
held it would bring about the disintegration of Ethiopia. On the other hand, it was opposed
by secessionists, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), and those who assumed that it was
subterfuge to keep the minority Tigrayans in power, that no serious power would be de­
volved, and that none of the country’s nations would be permitted to secede. Although the
EPRDF maintained that its approach was a realistic response to the country’s endemic na­
tional conflicts and that the Western modelled nation­state was unsuitable for Ethiopia and
Africa, it was at best ignored on the continent and at worst viewed as a recipe for disunity
and weakening the central state.
Most scholars have opposed the EPRDF’s approach to the national issue and thus began
a dialogue of the deaf. Academic critiques have typically been informed by Western social
science, a belief in the superiority of the Western nation­state, support for models of fed­
eralism designed to suppress the kind of national consciousness that the EPRDF’s policies
gave rise to, and a religious like faith in Western liberal democracy. Hence the popularity of
Abiy’s rejection of EPRDF ‘authoritarianism’ and support for a Western version of democ­
racy. Abiy’s vision for Ethiopia harkens back to a golden age of pan­Ethiopian unity and
the absence of ethnic conflict under unitary governments. Unfortunately, there was no such
golden age and instead there is a long history of Ethiopian emperors and the Derg trying to
overcome national revolts at great human cost.
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 57

Understanding this better than Abiy and the Amhara centrists who form his ideological
core, the EPRDF tried to construct a system that passed considerable powers to national com­
munities, not as its critics would have it to bring about the demise of the Ethiopian state or to
ensure the self­aggrandizement of Tigrayans, but instead to overcome national oppression
and ensure the state’s survival. That the TPLF and EPRDF model of decentralized national
based administrations was not always successful and in need of reform cannot be contested,
but it represented an important attempt to contain national strife that has long threatened to
dismember Ethiopia, while the centrism pressed by Abiy is a tried and failed approach.
In an environment of Western triumphalism in the post­Cold War era, critics often con­
sidered it enough to link the EPRDF’s model of federalism to Bolshevism to discredit it.
Meanwhile, EPRDF supporters were reluctant to acknowledge their theoretical dept to Bol­
shevik ideas and Soviet experience and instead were reduced to contending that only a radi­
cal devolution of power to national communities could save the country from disintegration.
There was much truth in this, but it provided little basis for understanding the EPRDF’s
model of federalism and could not be defended on either theoretical or comparative grounds.
The EPRDF had the power, but the academics and other critics have overwhelmingly dom­
inated the debate, and with each crisis faced by the regime there were new attacks national
federalism. The November 2020 war provides a context to reconsider whether centralized
unitary government or a version of national federalism best meets the needs of Ethiopia,
assuming that the country survives its present crisis.
After reviewing the writings and approaches of the leading Bolsheviks on nations and
nationalism and the experience surrounding the establishment of the Soviet Union, this study
will outline the development and implementation of the TPLF and EPRDF system of national
based federalism. The experience of the TPLF (and subsequently EPRDF) system will then
be compared with that of the early Bolsheviks. The chapter concludes that Ethiopia’s ongo­
ing crisis is not due to the EPRDF’s national federalism, and a reformed version of it still
provides the best hope that the country can survive. But national federalism could have been
strengthened if the TPLF and EPRDF had not rejected class as both a unifying factor in the
country and a means to mobilize Ethiopia’s marginalized people.

3.2 Bolshevism and the Nation­State

On the eve of revolution, the Russian empire state covered one­sixth of the planet and was
made up of an enormous variety of peoples, cultures, and religions overseen by a tsar who
doubled as both head of state and of the Orthodox Church. The tsar gained the loyalty of
the various national components of the empire by co­opting part of the indigenous elites, as­
similating them through administrative adaptation, and establishing Russian settler colonies
in the peripheries. The collapse of the Russian empire was ultimately due to its over­reach
in the First World War and the growth of nationalist movements in the non­Russian parts
of the empire, both of which provided a critical opportunity for revolutionaries. National
consciousness was largely a Western import and initially restricted to intellectuals, but the
heavy­handed response of the regime, Russification campaigns, and the construction of a
national hierarchy produced growing resentment. Meanwhile, the Central Asian revolt of
1916 served as an expression of these developments and Muslim fears of assimilation by a
Christian regime.
58 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

After initially playing down the significance of national sensitivities, the Bolsheviks
supported national demands. Josef Stalin, himself a Georgian, who became the Bolshevik
commissar of nationalities wrote what became his most influential theoretical contribution,
“Marxism and the National Question” in (1913) on the problem. Stalin defined the nation
as “a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common
language, territory, economic life, and psychological make­up manifested in a common cul­
ture” (Stalin 1913, 10). Stalin followed Marx in holding that nations developed in the context
of the decline of feudalism and the rise of capitalism. But herein lay a tension because the
Bolsheviks held that the nation and nationalism would ultimately disappear with the real­
ization of socialism, but in the short­term it treated nations as primordial identities. For
Stalin and the Bolsheviks, nationalism was “a bourgeois masking ideology,” and they made
a distinction between opposing national oppression and supporting nationalism.
In Western Europe, the rise of capitalism produced independent nation­states under na­
tional bourgeoisies while in Eastern Europe, including Russia, it gave rise to multinational
empire states under feudal, capitalist, and mixed political elites representing the dominant
national bloc. In Russia, this role was carried out by Greater Russians (Russians, Belorus­
sians, and Eastern Ukrainians) who dominated a well­organized aristocratic military bureau­
cracy. The Bolsheviks held that tsarist Russia was a “prison house of nationalities” perpetu­
ated by a “Greater Russian chauvinism” that imposed its language, culture, and religion on
the empire’s subjugated population, and this produced nationalist responses. To gain the sup­
port of ethnic minorities, the Bolsheviks attacked Greater Russian chauvinism, proclaimed
the sovereignty and equality of the empire’s nations, and mobilized the marginalized minori­
ties around a commitment to national self­determination. The right of self­determination
meant that only the nation had the right to determine its destiny, outsiders did not have the
right to forcibly interfere in the life of the nation, and a nation could arrange its life in the
way its members wished (Stalin 1913, 23). This demand shocked European rulers, most of
whom hosted discontented national minorities, but it was also attacked by many in the revo­
lutionary left of the era, including Rosa Luxemburg. Even though she herself was Polish and
Jewish, she opposed granting her own communities rights, including Polish independence,
which Lenin strongly advocated, because—she contended—it undermined the international
class struggle (H. Scott 2008). Bolshevik thinking, however, was not based on any liberal
idealism and instead was meant to undermine bourgeois nationalism, win the support of the
people, and facilitate their advancement.
These notions were enshrined by the Bolshevik government’s Declaration of the Rights
of the Peoples of Russia on November 15, 1917, immediately after the October Revolu­
tion. The declaration included the equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia, self­
determination, including secession and formation of separate states, abolition of all national
and religious privileges and restrictions, and free development of national minorities and
ethnographical groups inhabiting the territory of Russia. This commitment was deemed de­
cisive in the civil war which pitted the Bolsheviks against a Russian chauvinist White army
committed to a “one and undivided Russia” (Simon 1991) and supported by Western armies.
But Lenin always made a distinction between the right to self­determination, which was part
of a broader struggle for democracy on the one hand, and secession on the other. The com­
mitment to self­determination would allow nationalities to realize that they did not need
secession to retain national rights and privileges, or as Stalin would later say, “disunion for
the purpose of union” (Kasprzak 2012, 152). In other words, if nations were sovereign and
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 59

equal conditions prevailed, the national will would determine whether autonomy or federa­
tion would prove satisfactory and secession would be rejected.
Lenin emphasized the importance of acknowledging the nationalism of the oppressed
peoples and establishing a socialist federation of nations in the former Russian empire to
ensure they were not captured by a reactionary bourgeois nationalism. He considered the
national struggles of economically undeveloped colonized countries for liberation as being
inherently progressive because they undermined the power of capital and distinguished them
from the reactionary nationalism of the bourgeoisie. Accordingly, “Lenin’s acceptance of
the reality of nations and national rights was one of the most uncompromising positions
he ever took, his theory of good (‘oppressed nations’) nationalism formed the conceptual
foundation of the Soviet Union and his NEP­time policy of compensatory nation building
was a spectacularly successful attempt at a state­sponsored conflation of language, culture,
territory and quota­fed bureaucracy” (Slezkine 1994, 414). But doubts remained and in
1933, Hans Kohn (Kohn 1933, 21) wrote, “by the very process of dragging the peoples of the
Soviet Union out of the period of religious medievalism through its work of enlightenment,
and leading them to a new trust in themselves and to modern technical product, it awakens
in them also the will to self­expression and to cohesion of the nation, and there grows up in
them […] through nationalism, the opposing force with which Communism has to contend
not only in the Russian people but in the other peoples inhabiting the Soviet Union.”
Also problematic was the position of the “backward” peoples of the Soviet Union who
did not constitute nations and thus did not have the right to self­determination. The focus
here was less on their rights and more on state paternalism to politically, culturally, and
economically raise them. In this light, raising backward groups culturally was held to be as
significant as the provision of territory for their advancement. Nationalism was not meant
to preserve small national units, but rather modernize them, even if this meant that they
would have to be assimilated. Indeed, nationalism as a tool of modernization would be­
come a defining characteristic of the Soviet Union. While Lenin (1913) opposed forceful
assimilation, he considered resisting assimilation as akin to swimming against the currents
of history. In many cases, demands for language or separate national schools were futile
and the dangers of doing so were many. Foremost, it amounted to the promotion of ar­
chaic, feudal, and backward elements, thus stalling modernization. It offered an illusion of
the permanence of national identities to small groups with little vitality and facilitated the
bourgeoisie’s exploitation of the proletariat, thus distracting the working classes from the
objective of socialism.
In the early period of the Soviet Union the Bolsheviks sought to end domination by
Greater Russians, a position taken even though most Bolshevik leaders were themselves
Russians. In their efforts to combat Greater Russian chauvinism, the Bolsheviks actively
discouraged assimilation of national minorities and went to considerable lengths to promote
the development and consciousness of the non­Russian peoples. This sometimes even in­
cluded the expulsion of Russian settlers from non­Russian territories. At least until Lenin’s
death, Greater Russian chauvinism was assumed to pose a bigger danger than local nation­
alisms. The result: “The Soviet central state did not identify as Russian, and Russians were
driven to bear the burden of the empire by suppressing their national interests and to identify
with a non­national empire” (Vihavainen 2000, 79). But chauvinism was not limited to Rus­
sians and a new policy towards national equality had to be pursued to remove all traces of
distrust and alienation inherited from the epoch of capitalism. A comprehensive resolution
60 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

to the nationality problem within the former empire, Lenin believed, would ensure loyalty
to the emerging Soviet state.
The 1920s and 1930s in the Soviet Union were devoted to the assignment of national
territories to national groups and nationalities, and this was followed by nation­building,
which attempted to construct a full range of national institutions within each unit. Lenin
favored establishing autonomous units, however small, with homogeneous populations that
could attract fellow nationals from all over the country and even beyond to eliminate na­
tional oppression. While Rosa Luxemburg advocated territorial autonomy, Lenin held that
did not go far enough to resolve the nationality question or quench the thirst of nations
for the right to complete liberation and only amounted to a reformist change. As well as
granting each officially recognized nation its own territory, they were given a measure of
autonomy under indigenous elites, encouraged to develop their own culture and language
(and where the language was not in written form to construct it), and have a direct role in
the central government, essentially an affirmative indigenization action program known as
korenizatsiia.
The Soviet system embraced traditional custom, law, and local leadership of Asian
minority peoples, including nomadism and the integration of the Islamic Sharia into the
Soviet legal code. The territories of the nations were extended from the republic level to
townships and villages, so that each republic was a mosaic of differentiated national subunits,
often with different languages. For groups who did not have a national republic, an all­union
administration was created.1
Language was the core of the policy, and minority nationals received preference in ac­
cess to higher education and job openings in industry and public administration while the
use of languages other than Russian was promoted in administration and higher education.
The focus on language led to the conversion of sixty­six languages from the Cyrillic script
used in Russian to the Latin script before its reversal in the 1930s (Martin 2001, 185–203).
At the time of the revolution, literacy rates in Central Asia ranged between 2 and 7 percent;
by the end of the 1920s the Soviet Union had largely eradicated illiteracy and was in the
process of industrializing the national republics and oblasts with indigenous workers (Smith
1999). Nor were the Bolsheviks only concerned with advancing nations, and efforts to ex­
pand the social, political, and economic opportunities for women constituted “the earliest
and perhaps most far­reaching attempt ever undertaken to transform the status and role of
women” (Lapidus 1978, 3).
Many of the groups granted national status did not fully meet the criteria laid down by
Stalin’s “Marxism and the National Question” because of their lack of national conscious­
ness and the problems posed by the enormous diversity of the old Russian empire. Unin­
tentionally, the USSR became an “incubator of new nations” rather than a “melting pot,”
and thus it was the first state in history to be formed of national political units. In complete
contrast to the old European multi­ethnic states, the Soviet Union responded to the rising
tide of nationalism by promoting the national consciousness of its minorities, which in the
view of one observer represented “the most extravagant celebration of ethnic diversity that
any state had ever financed” (Slezkine 1994, 414).

1 By linking the definition of nation to possession of land, Stalin precluded groups like Jews and Germans in the

Russian empire from having the right to self­determination because they did not have their own territory. Later,
a region was established for the Jews, but they were typically urbanized and highly educated and did not adapt to
farming, and the project failed.
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 61

Dividing the Soviet Union along national lines was also held to be the most effective
means of governance, and local rulers—even though vetted by the CPSU—had to be indige­
nous people to assure the non­Russian peoples that they had been granted genuine national
self­determination. Both Stalin and Lenin had written critically about the disintegration of
the Social Democratic Party of the Austro­Hungarian Empire along national lines shortly be­
fore the First World War, and to ensure that experience was not repeated in the Soviet Union
all existing national socialist parties were forcefully dissolved, replaced by local affiliates
of the CPSU, and all national armed forces were either incorporated into the Red Army or
eliminated (Simon 1991).
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was officially established in 1922 as
a federation of nationalities, which eventually encompassed fifteen major national territo­
ries, each organized as a Union­level republic (Soviet Socialist Republic or SSR), and each
republic had constitutionally guaranteed equal rights and standing in the formal structure
of state power. Smaller minorities were made into autonomous republics (ASSRs) and still
smaller minorities were given oblasts in a comprehensive multi­tiered federal arrangement.
To ensure the interests of the national groups were defended at the center, a Soviet
of Nationalities was established as one of the two chambers of the Supreme Soviet of the
USSR. As opposed to the Soviet of the Union, the Soviet of Nationalities was composed
of the nationalities of the Soviet Union, which in turn followed administrative divisions
rather than being a representation of national groups. The arrangement seriously diminished
representation of larger groups, such as Russians, in favor of the smaller national groups of
the Soviet Union. Many of the functions of the presidium of the Soviet of Nationalities were
dissolved at the end of 1937, but it survived as the sole central political institution formally
devoted to the nationalities question (Martin 2001).
The opposition of the Bolsheviks to any differentiation between nations that could give
rise to insurgent nationalism was expressed in the widely repeated slogan: “national in form,
but socialist in content.” The building blocks of the Bolsheviks were class and internation­
alism and while nationalism was to be courted in the short­term, it was to be abandoned
in the mid­term in favor of a unified worker’s socialist state, and in the long­term the ideal
was one language and one culture under international communism (Vihavainen 2000). The
Bolsheviks contended that nations could only develop socialism when they reached equal
status with the majority Russians.
Even though foreign policy was the prerogative of the all­union government, the
Ukraine pursued foreign relations with Ukrainian minorities in Poland and Czechoslovakia
and eight million Ukrainian nationals in the Russian and other Soviet republics. Central
Asian republics exerted control for a time over immigration and delegates of the Turkic
republics participated in an international conference in 1926 on a plan for the development
of Turkic written languages (Martin 2001, 193).
The authority of the central government, however, was never in doubt, because it main­
tained sole responsibility for economic and military matters and was under the direction of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, itself a centralized body made up of the various
federation components. The frequent result in the view of Lenin and Trotsky was excessive
centralization, and they repeatedly complained that the central bureaucracy was a major ob­
stacle to realizing the commitment to nation­building. Indeed, a major theme in Lenin’s State
and Revolution (Lenin 1917b) was his concern to destroy all the remnants of the old regime,
including its stultifying bureaucracy, which he saw being replicated under the Bolsheviks.
62 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

The emphasis on a nationalized and centralized economy also limited the authority of union
governments. But given the pervasive poverty, especially in the central Asian republics,
unified economic planning was deemed critical to rapidly increasing desperately low living
standards.
By the mid­1930s this policy was in retreat, and while the large national regions were
kept intact most village and district level units were abolished. During Stalin’s Great Terror
of 1936–38 “narrow nationalism” became the focus of repression. Nonetheless, Articles 15
and 16 of the 1936 Constitution guaranteed the rights of the Union Republics and for each
Republic to have its own constitution, while Article 17 gave each Union Republic the right
to secede from the USSR.
Stalin’s commitment to “socialism in one country” further undermined the nationality
policy and began a process that weakened the internationalist focus of the Bolsheviks. On
the eve of the Second World War, Stalin began a campaign of Russification, which increased
with the war, and Russian became the language of inter­national communication throughout
the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, the choice of language in the schools was given to parents
and most of those outside the Russian federation selected Russian because it was deemed
to offer more job opportunities for their children. Nonetheless, the commitment to national
rights remained a core principle of the Soviet Union, and until its demise it continued to
serve as a key point of distinction with Western governance practices.
Despite the retreat from the transformative positions of the first two decades of the So­
viet Union, the theoretical writings of Stalin, Lenin, and other Bolsheviks on the rights of
nations and national minorities and the means to give expression to those rights are impor­
tant because they challenged Western orthodoxy, particularly the notion that the nation­state
is the end­point of political evolution. One of the greatest achievements of the Soviet Union
was the rapid advance and industrialization of the various Asian nations and this develop­
ment led to claims that the USSR had realized its mid­term objective of a unified worker’s
socialist state. But its longer­term objective of one people and one culture under international
communism became increasingly unrealistic. By the time of Khrushchev and Brezhnev it
had become clear there would be no transcending of nationalism. “Nations were there to
stay; nationalism would have to be managed rather than transcended” (Lovell 2009, 113).

3.3 Ethiopia: Ideologies Under Assault

The parallels between the pre­revolutionary and revolutionary Russian empire and Ethiopia
are remarkable. The Ethiopian emperor, who like his Russian counterpart was head of state
and of the Orthodox Church, attempted to assimilate the different ethnic elites into the cul­
tures and languages of the Amhara ruling class. It employed neftegnas (gun carrying settlers)
from various ethnic groups to forcefully occupy territory for the empire. While Ethiopia
did not have pogroms like Tsarist Russia, it did have indentured peasants, forced national
evacuations, lowland African people who were viewed as slaves, and a distinct racial hi­
erarchy. The Ethiopian student revolutionaries began their campaign against that empire
and its prison of nationalities, which proved remarkably easy to collapse. Afterwards the
real struggle began against the Derg. Future EPRDF leaders were strongly influenced by
Bolshevik experience and contended that the establishment of a federation along Russian
lines was the best means to preserve the integrity of Ethiopia and advance its objectives, and
Soviet experience continues to provide insights into the EPRDF’s national policies.
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 63

While there had been revolts in the periphery against Emperor Haile­Selassie, their
leaders did not have the capacity to overthrow the imperial authority. It was not until the
emergence of the Ethiopian Student Movement in the late 1960s that an opposition took form
that could ideologically challenge the regime and prepare the ground for it to be overthrown.
Before, the primary influences were Western modernization and the development of Japan
as a traditional polity. In a context of rising global radicalism, however, the ESM quickly
assumed a Marxist orientation even while the students initially rejected national divisions in
the country and extolled Ethiopian nationalism, which was held to transcend other identities
and loyalties (Young 1997b). The early ESM focused on three trends: pan­Ethiopianism,
democratization, and the national question.
The national question came to the fore over the problem of whether to support the
Eritrean demand for the right to self­determination. Most student activists contended that
since Ethiopia was feudal, Eritrea could not be considered a colony and therefore supported
a unitary Ethiopia. Only a minority held the country to be in a transitional phase in which
nations and nationalist movements could emerge and be supported. Particularly influential
was student leader Walleligne Makonnen’s contention that Ethiopia was not yet a nation, but
an Amhara­ruled collection of nationalities and paraphrasing Fanon concluded that “to be
an Ethiopian you will have to wear an Amhara mask” (Balsvik 1985, 277–278), a position
also held by the nationalist Oromo students. Debate continued, and the students progres­
sively shifted at least in principle from a position of outright condemnation of secession to
recognizing the right of Eritreans and all of Ethiopia’s people to self­determination. They
also endorsed a conception of Ethiopia as a “prison of nationalities,” a phrase drawn from
Russian revolutionary experience.
Debate over the national question continued to bedevil the students and while accept­
ing in principle the full right of self­determination, in practice many students followed what
became Stalin’s later position of condemning any calls for national self­determination as
“narrow nationalist” and “separatist.” Meanwhile, the country’s leading revolutionary party,
the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP) mobilized on a pan­Ethiopian basis and
called for a proletarian revolution. Nonetheless, its leaders were sufficiently aware of na­
tionalist sensitivities to establish the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) to
mobilize Oromo. In contrast, groups largely from the non­Amhara core of the country, in­
cluding the future leaders of the TPLF, highlighted the nationalities issue and held “Amhara
chauvinism” to be the enemy in a context where a Shoan Amhara elite imposed its language,
culture, and Coptic faith on the peoples who made up Ethiopia. Ultimately the difference be­
tween the EPRP and the TPLF was not a strategic question since the TPLF affirmed that the
class contradiction superseded all other contradictions. Rather it was a question of whether
the national issue was primary for purposes of mobilization, as affirmed by the TPLF, or
class, as held by the EPRP. The TPLF contended that its own formation as a Tigrayan na­
tional party, together with other national parties, such as the Afar Liberation Front, Western
Somali Liberation Front, Sidama Liberation Front, and the OLF, provided conclusive ev­
idence in support of its position. Not only was the issue unresolved, but it led to conflict
between the parties.
In opposition to what became the EPRDF position, the future OLF did not single out
Shoans for the imposition of their culture but all northern Ethiopians who were frequently
64 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

conflated with neftegnas.2 The OLF concern was with the traditional Abyssinian state dom­
inated by the Amhara, but in which the Tigrayans were junior partners, and both practiced a
form of settler colonialism in the territories. The TPLF view was that the regime was feudal
and Amhara­dominated, not like South Africa as contended by the OLF. Oromos, they held,
interacted and lived throughout the country. While they had the right to self­determination,
because their problem was not a result of colonialism, they did not have the automatic right
to secession.3
Sensitive to the nationalism of their Tigrayan followers and appreciating the limited
capitalist development in the country, which meant that the working class was a negligible
force while the peasants and ethnic minorities loomed large, the TPLF focused on the peas­
antry. The Front emphasized national struggle and held that the national contradictions had
to be resolved before multinational class struggles could be settled. The early TPLF enter­
tained the idea of Tigray’s secession before proclaiming the right of Tigrayans as a nation to
self­determination but insisted this would only take the form of secession if the revolutionary
forces failed to overthrow the Derg and realize a democratic Ethiopia, a formula consistent
with the position of the Bolsheviks. According to one TPLF veteran, Stalin’s (1913) article
became a “bible,” while another said it was read “scores of times.” The TPLF leadership
widely read the Marxist classics that were translated into Tigrinya to the extent that another
veteran said, “Our life was one of fighting and studying Marxism,” and Meles Zenawi was
smitten with the experience of Enver Hoxa’s Albania after a 1984 visit. However, the front
never proclaimed itself Marxist or even socialist and at best would only acknowledge that
some of its leaders were Communists or Marxists.
The Derg also ascribed to Marxist principles, aligned with the Eastern Bloc, declared
equality among the country’s ethnic groups, and promised self­administration. In 1983, it
established the Institute for the Study of Ethiopian Nationalities (ISEN), which had two
mandates—assessing the distribution, social, and economic conditions of ethnic groups in
the country and recommending a new state structure that would provide regional autonomy
for the various ethnic groups. Ultimately, the regime was not prepared to accept nationality
as a political phenomenon that had to be addressed by a radical re­ordering of the basis of
power in the state. Instead, the Derg introduced the constitution of the People’s Democratic
Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) in 1987, which established an asymmetrical regime of regional
autonomy.
Under this configuration, some of the provinces affected by the national/regional insur­
gency were organized into five autonomous regions—Eritrea, Tigray, Dire Dawa, Ogaden
and Assab—while Eritrea was provided with more autonomy. In addition, the Derg trans­
lated the constitution into some peripheral languages and employed non­Amharic languages
in its literacy programs, but there was no linguistic autonomy and Amharic remained the
working language of the government at all levels. Moreover, “these measures were not
intended to provide administrative and political autonomy as the military regime and its
vanguard party, the Workers Party of Ethiopia (WPE) continued to centralize power.”4
The failure to fully acknowledge national rights encouraged the national based revolts
that would ultimately be the undoing of the regime. The threat that politicized national

2 Email from former and late President of Ethiopia and former OPDO leader, Dr. Negaso Gidada, March 1, 2017.
3 Author interview with Gebru Asrat, former Chairman of Tigray, Addis Ababa, May 13, 2017.
4 ‘Ethiopia’s Ethnic Federalism: History and Ideology’, retrieved from https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/

handle/1887/13839/chapter%20three.pdf, accessed March 20, 2020.

3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 65

groups pose to social stability arises directly from their exclusion from states specifically
organized to monopolize power for particular favored groups and preserve a status quo in
which they are the prime beneficiaries (Markakis 1994), something both the Bolsheviks and
the TPLF opposed. It is thus national monopolized states, and not marginalized groups, that
are the cause of struggles over state power in Ethiopia and the Horn.
After establishing itself in Tigray, the capture of central state power increasingly be­
came the focus of the TPLF and that necessitated either accepting non­Tigrayans within
its ranks, which would involve reinventing itself as a pan­Ethiopian movement, or—and
this more closely matched its philosophy—forming a multi­national front. The TPLF thus
established the EPRDF as a front with a unified program, leadership, and army. Where
movements did not exist, it established them (see Young 1997b, 62, 166). The OLF was
never considered for membership because it favored the “establishment of a people’s re­
public of Oromia” although it subsequently divided over the issue (Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF) 1976, 15–16). For its part, a consistent fear of the OLF was that “the TPLF aspires to
forge hierarchical relations with the Oromos.”5 The Amhara­dominated Ethiopian Peoples’
Democratic Movement (EPDM) was replaced by the Amhara National Democratic Move­
ment (ANDM) to emphasize its national character and distinguish it from Professor Asrat’s
All Amhara Organization. The ANDM came together with the TPLF to form the EPRDF,
which were joined in 1990 by the TPLF­constructed Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organi­
zation (OPDO) and later by the Southern Ethiopia Peoples’ Democratic Front (SEPDF). It
was that alliance as the EPRDF took power in May 1991. A host of other armed national
groups were invited to a peace conference in July and subsequently joined the EPRDF in the
transitional government.
Some leaders, including Meles, had visited Europe prior to the EPRDF assuming
power, most had travelled in the region, and all had spent time in Sudan. Nonetheless,
they were surprised by the political realities they faced on the eve of their assumption
of state power. The realities were two­fold, and both proved major obstacles to EPRDF
hopes of implementing socialism, which their leaders understood to mean a transformative
make­over of Ethiopia. First, they were coming to power at a time when the “socialist
world,” even if condemned by the TPLF/ EPRDF leadership for its betrayal of socialism
and the working class, was collapsing before a triumphalist and aggressive capitalist West.
Capitalism only had a weak hold economically in peripheral areas of the global economy
like Africa in 1991. But as an ideological formation it was rapidly assuming a hegemonic
position that could not be ignored by a poverty­stricken Ethiopia that desperately needed
finances, not only for development, but to fend off the prospect of another famine on the
scale of 1984. Moreover, by the early 1980s neoliberalism had been widely embraced by
the metropoles of capitalism, and with the collapse of the Soviet Bloc they were anxious to
speed up the role back of the welfare gains of the post­World War II working class.
Second, Derg rule had completely tarnished the notion of socialism in the mind of the
citizens of the country. 1991 marked the formal collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern
Bloc, but its crisis was evident to even the most casual observer by the late 1980s, and there
was a growing need for the EPRDF to confront the emerging situation. In addition, as one
TPLF veteran said, “The Derg was so hated that upon coming to power we [the EPRDF]
couldn’t say a word about socialism. Our people hated Marxism.” Another veteran said,

5 Email to the author from Leencho Lata, former leader of the OLF, March 12, 2017.
66 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

“The Ethiopian people think that socialism and the Derg are the same and both are hated.”
No doubt this was true, but hatred of the Derg’s so­called socialist project was widely known
long before the EPRDF came to power.6
It was in that context that the Front held an emergency congress in the field in 1990 in
which it decided to be “more political and less ideological to survive.” This was graphically
expressed in a transitional program that Meles hastily formulated and which contradicted
much of what the TPLF and EPRDF had long advocated. The EPRDF endorsed a mar­
ket economy, effectively the previously hated Washington Consensus, and felt compelled
to further endorse—but not effectively implement—multipartyism and political pluralism
to alleviate Western fears of its perceived Marxism­Leninism. The EPRDF also quickly
stopped referring to its role as that of a vanguard party overseeing Ethiopia’s transition from
pre­capitalism to socialism, and the TPLF’s Marxist­Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT) and
its ANDM, OPDO, and EPRDF counterparts were quietly dropped. Among the EPRDF
leadership, the rapid displacement of a set of ideological formations that had informed and
inspired a generation of cadres was carried out with remarkably little dissent, so convincing
were the obstacles that had to be confronted. But acceptance by the Front’s base of these
ideological gymnastics was not so easy to put into practice.
While any notion of a transformative project was rejected, the EPRDF was not pre­
pared to accept the loss of Ethiopian autonomy demanded by the Western power brokers,
the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. The issue came to a head within a
few months of the EPRDF assuming state power in 1991 when the IMF demanded not only
adherence to a market economy, but for the government to privatize land, financial insti­
tutions, and all state corporations. Refusal to bow down to these demands led to the IMF
suspending a USD 127 million loan, an action strongly condemned by Joseph Stiglitz (2002)
in his book, Globalization and its Discontents. Even Meles, who was among the EPRDF
leaders most willing to compromise with international capital, insisted that the government
would not permit a market in peasant land, loss of control over the financial and other key
elements in the economy, or reverse national based federalism that the Front was in the pro­
cess of implementing. Although accepting that endorsement of capitalism meant some loss
of sovereignty, control over fiscal and monetary policy remained key objectives of the Front
and this more than any remaining socialist sentiments explain its willingness to stand up to
the IMF.
While the notion of a vanguard party had lost its meaning since the EPRDF had given
up its socialist aspirations and no longer claimed to lead any classes, the practice of the party
maintaining a leading role in governance continued to ensure its program could be realized,
convince its cadres that a progressive project (even if not a socialist project) was still being
pursued, and maintain power in a context where a measure of pluralism was demanded by
the West. This approach was called revolutionary democracy, a confusing term popularized
by Meles in a context where socialism was formally rejected. In practice, it was largely
directed at rent­seekers who in class terms were defined as the corrupt wing of the national
bourgeoisie.7 Although no longer the vanguard of the peasantry, the EPRDF maintained
an attachment to it. And while the individual rights that characterize capitalism were af­

6 During my visit to TPLF occupied Tigray in 1988, party cadres were reluctant to talk about ideological issues,

especially the attraction of some of its leaders to Albania.

7 Alex de Waal takes up this issue in his 2015a published book, The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa, Polity

Press, 2015.
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 67

firmed, group or national rights under the guiding principle of national self­determination,
and through the pursuit of a nation­based federalism, became a core commitment of the
regime, which held that there was no contradiction between the two principles.

3.4 Establishing a Nation­Based Federalism

The EPRDF convened a national conference in July 1991, which was attended by twenty­
seven organizations, nineteen of them representing national groups and only three were of a
pan­Ethiopian persuasion. The EPRP and the All­Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON)
were not permitted to attend the conference, ostensibly because they failed to renounce vi­
olence, but it had more to do with their opposition to the national­based program of the
EPRDF and a history of bad relations between them.
During this period, two main opposing groups took shape, together with a third mi­
nor group.8 The EPRDF, its allies, and the OLF gave priority to the right to national self­
determination, which was held to be a necessary precondition for democracy. Like Abiy in
present times, the second group resisted what they considered the ethnicization of Ethiopia
because it did not reflect the country’s history, would undermine unity, and sow the seeds
of discord. Essentially this group viewed Ethiopia as a nation­state and saw the EPRDF and
OLF project as a threat. A final and smaller group made up of national minorities welcomed
these expressions of national assertiveness and self­rule but feared that some of the more
developed nations might decide the fate of the weaker minorities.
The conference adopted the EPRDF’s Transitional Charter, which laid down the le­
gal framework for reconstituting the state and devolving power along ethno­regional lines.
Some critics claimed these arrangements were designed to ensure the hegemony of the mi­
nority Tigrayans (Balcha Berhanu (2007); International Crisis Group (2009)), others that it
gave the central government too much power, and still others that it would bring about the
disintegration of the country. Essentially the argument pitted the fears and claims of ethnic
nationalists (primarily Oromo) against those of upholders of a centralized Ethiopia (primar­
ily Amhara). In a response that could have been written by Stalin, the EPRDF said that the
war had been a product of an ethnically dominated state that threatened state disintegration
and Front policies were designed to both preserve the unity of the state and harness ethnic
energies to promote development.
The EPRDF’s denigration of historical conceptions of Ethiopia was in sharp contrast to
previous regimes (Clapham 2002) and was not even accepted by many Tigrayans. But like
the Bolsheviks, the TPLF wanted to move beyond frequently mythical portrayals of the past
and remove the central place of the Amhara in that past. Nonetheless, Ethiopians continue to
be challenged by the questions as to whether Menelik II was an oppressor or a nation builder,
with Abiy in the latter camp. The EPRDF wanted to reconstruct an Ethiopian identity that
acknowledged its imperial past but was not in tension with existing and emerging ethnic
identities.
In January 1992, the Transitional Government passed the “Proclamation to Provide
for the Establishment of National/Regional Self­Government,” which divided the country
into ethnic blocs. The Boundaries Commission was founded that made language the critical

8 Email from Medhane Tadesse, independent researcher, February 12, 2017.

68 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

variable in defining ethnic markers9 and fourteen regions were established, with divisions
in the regions left to local governments, again following the pattern of the Soviet Union.
But anger over what it perceived as the EPRDF’s failure to follow the spirit of the
Transitional Charter led to clashes between OLF and government forces. While the EPRDF
demanded that the Oromo Liberation Army be demobilized, the OLF insisted that its forces
be integrated into the national army. Competition between the OLF and the OPDO, together
with the flawed 1992 regional elections, led to increasing tensions and the departure of the
OLF from the transitional government. From the perspective of the EPRDF, the OLF was
trying to achieve through negotiations what it could not accomplish on the battlefield while
the OLF wanted to press to its fullest the logic of the EPRDF commitment to national self­
determination. There were also problems with the National Liberation Front in the Somali
region and the Sidama Liberation Front but given the overwhelming military and political
power of the EPRDF they were brought in line.
The departure of the OLF ended a major obstacle to EPRDF plans, but it also lost the
support of an organization that broadly shared its vision of a federation and opposed a cen­
tralized Ethiopian state. Although the OLF was militarily defeated, it remained a political
threat. Without an alliance with the OLF, centralizing tendencies increasingly came to the
fore. This problem is even more evident in the wake of the assent of Abiy and pursuit of
a renewed centralization when the two strongest forces in Ethiopia in favor of decentral­
ization—the TPLF and OLF—have been divided by a legacy of bitterness. If the TPLF is
defeated in the November 2020 war it would also dash Oromo hopes of a decentralized fed­
eralism, and thus Abiy may be inadvertently laying the groundwork for their reconciliation.
While having important minorities, Tigray, Amhara, Oromo, Somali, and Afar regions
had ethnic cores. But the other regions were formed by bringing different ethnic groups
under one unit. The only apparent basis for this distinction appears to be the size of the ethnic
community. Even here, tiny Harar was given special status and not included in Oromia,
despite its Oromo majority, to protect its cultural survival. Meanwhile, the two and half
million strong Sidama were only granted a zone within the Southern Nations, Nationalities
and People (SNNP) Regional State. The EPRDF was slow to organize affiliated parties in the
Somali and Afar regions because it concluded that clan, and not ethnicity, defined identity
in pastoralist societies, and thus it endeavored to work with traditional leaders.
The resulting configuration was far from clear and the regions were highly diverse with
respect to size, population, and resources. The lack of ethnic homogeneity in even the five
aforementioned states necessitated special zones and woredas (districts) to accommodate
minorities. The Southern Ethiopia Peoples’ Region was the most ethnically diverse, which
necessitated the establishment of fourteen zones and five special woredas. This restructur­
ing did not always take place peacefully as some areas lost administrative status and groups
fought to have regional and woreda centers and the accompanying budgets. The regional
structures were already operational before they were given a constitutional basis by the Fed­
eral Democratic Republic of Ethiopia constitution, which was passed in August 1995.10

9 In making language as the critical indicator of ethnicity, the EPRDF again closely followed Bolshevik practice.

Although experience in northeast Africa provides numerous examples of national groups that see themselves as
part of a broader national community even when they do not share the same language, other groups do share a
language, but do not consider themselves part of a shared community. (See Schlee 2001; 2008.)
10 Proclamation No. 1/1995.
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 69

Unlike those in the West, the Ethiopian constitution is not just an agreement between cit­
izens but also constitutes an agreement between national groups (Young 1998). The EPRDF
explicitly rejected the nation­state model that underpins Western states and was transplanted
to Africa. The constitution’s definition of the nation closely followed Stalin: “a nation, na­
tionality or people is a group of people who have or share a large measure of common culture
or similar customs, mutual intelligibility of language, belief in a common or related iden­
tities, a common psychological make­up, and who inhabit an identifiable, predominantly
contiguous territory.”11 The definition proved sufficiently vague (the distinction between
nation, nationality, and people was never made) that determining boundaries was largely
made politically.
In keeping with devolving power to national groups, the powers of the federal govern­
ment were identified and limited: “All powers not given expressly to the Federal govern­
ment alone, or concurrently to the Federal Government and the States, are reserved to the
States.”12 But this is immediately clarified by Article 51/2 that gives the federal government
the right to “formulate and implement the country’s policies, strategies and plans in respect
to overall economic, social and development matters” and Article 52 empowers the states to
“formulate and execute economic, social development policies, strategies and plans for the
state.” By this provision economic planning and development were centralized in similar
fashion to that of the former Soviet Union.
The same tension exists between centralization and decentralization. For example, Ar­
ticle 39 specifies that “Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has the right to
speak, to write and to develop its own language; to express, to develop and to promote its
culture; and to preserve its history.” It is not clear whether land belong to the nations, na­
tionalities, regional states, or the federal government although practice has been that natural
resources belong to the federal government. That would also seem to be implied by Arti­
cle 40 which states that, “The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as natural
resources, are exclusively vested in the State and the peoples of Ethiopia.”13
While the rights of peasants and pastoralists is affirmed, a problem arises due to the
statement, “Without prejudice to the right of Ethiopian Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples
to the ownership of land, government shall ensure the right to private investors to the use
of land on the basis of payment arrangements establishment be law.” How the federal gov­
ernment can give land grants to private investors, an area of considerable controversy in the
lowlands, without prejudice to the rights of individual Nations, Nationalities and Peoples is
not explained.
A further basis for centralization and critical to the pursuit of state­led development is
Article 89, which makes clear that development is primarily the prerogative of the federal
government and that “government has the duty to hold, on behalf of the People, land and
other natural resources and to deploy them for their common benefit and development.”
The constitution provided for a bicameral legislature at the center made up of a House
of Peoples Representatives and a House of the Federation, which bears comparison to the
Soviet of Nationalities. While the former body is elected by direct universal suffrage for five
years and has exclusive power of making laws, the House of Federation represents national

11 Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Article 39(5). http://www.wipo.int/edocs/lexdocs/

laws/en/et/et007en.pdf, accessed February 4, 2020.

12 Ibid, Article 52.
13 See also chapter 5 in this volume.
70 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

groups, and its representatives are selected by the regional or state councils with every rec­
ognized nationality having at least one representative and an additional one for every million
people. The House of Federation has the responsibility of resolving differences between the
country’s national groups and acting as a court of last resort through its Committee for States’
Affairs. It also decides on the division of joint federal and regional tax sources, subsidies of
the federal government to the regions, and it nominates a largely symbolic president for the
country who must then be approved by a two­thirds vote of both houses.
As in the Soviet Union, language is considered the determining characteristic of nations
in Ethiopia and Article 5 of the 1995 constitution grants the equality of all the country’s
languages and gives the regions the right to determine their own working languages. But
just as Russian became the language of inter­ethnic communication across the Soviet Union
after 1936, Amharic was designated the “working language” of the federal government.
Apart from the Amhara, the other major language groups, such as Oromo, Tigray, Somali,
and Afar, began teaching in their indigenous languages for the early years of school and
Amharic served as a secondary area of study, before turning to English for the latter years.
Just as many Central Asian groups dropped the Cyrillic script used in Russian in favor of
the Latin script, the OPDO abandoned the Abyssinian Geez script for the Latin alphabet
and this was followed by many ethnic language groups in the Southern Region. And just as
the shift from Russian proved to be an obstacle for employment prospects for many Central
Asians, so many Oromo have discovered they are handicapped in seeking jobs outside their
region and in the Amharic­speaking central government. Hence rose the demand that Afaan
Oromo be given the status of a national working language.
After initially encouraging the development of indigenous languages, the problems of
isolation and lack of resources led the EPRDF to stress unity and efficiency and discourage
administrative proliferation. With every incentive for local politically ambitious groups to
call for their own region, zone, or woreda, the ruling party shifted gears on a process that
followed from their own political program. The Soviet Union took the same course, in part
for these same administrative reasons and because Stalin returned to promoting a Russifi­
cation that he and the Bolsheviks had previously attacked. After the break­up of the Soviet
Union, President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has also encouraged Russian
nationalism and emphasized its links to the Orthodox Church.
However, the war with Eritrea produced a wave of pan­Ethiopian nationalism that ini­
tially trumped the national consciousness the regime had fostered and gave the lie to Presi­
dent Isaias Afwerki and others who had assumed that Ethiopia under the EPRDF had been
reduced to a collection of warring national groups. This bears comparison with Soviet expe­
rience where the Second World War (the “Great Patriotic War”) produced a powerful wave
of nationalism led by Russians, which encouraged Stalin to launch his Russification cam­
paign against narrow nationalism. In the wake of the Eritrean war (1998–2000), the EPRDF
also condemned narrow nationalism, but it is noteworthy that the pan­Ethiopian nationalist
wave was often led by peripheral and marginalized communities like the Nuer of Gambella
who used the war to assert their Ethiopian identity. The Tigrayan­led EPRDF could not per­
mit the espousal of Ethiopian nationalism to be confused with Amhara chauvinism and as a
result attempted to popularize notions like democratic nationalism to distinguish it from the
chauvinist nationalism of the Amhara and the narrow nationalism of separatists.
As was the case in the Soviet Union, national states in Ethiopia are based on a concep­
tion of primordialism although, unlike the Soviet Union after 1991, the EPRDF end game
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 71

was no longer to construct a nationless and classless future. Following Soviet practice, the
officially designated regions do not always coincide with the established regional bound­
aries, the system undervalues shared histories, changing characteristics, population move­
ments, and by attempting to contain these groups it sometimes undermines national integra­
tion. As was the case in the Soviet Union, many people in Ethiopia have mixed national
origins. And just as Greater Russians in the non­Russian heartland bore much of the cost for
the Soviet governance configuration, so the status of the Amhara in Ethiopia was reduced
because of the imposition of a nation­based federalism.
Like the Soviet Union, Ethiopia’s regional states have executive, legislative, and judi­
cial powers and are headed by powerful presidents. Below the presidents are zonal adminis­
trations that are appointed by the regions and tasked with overseeing woreda administrations.
Woredas have elected council, elected executive and judicial bodies, and the power to pre­
pare, determine, and implement activities within its own areas concerning social services
and economic development.14 There are also provisions for special woredas to provide self­
government for minority ethnic groups not numbering enough to establish zones or regions,
and they report directly to the regional governments. At the bottom of the governance hier­
archy is the kebele which has responsibility for law and order and providing basic services.
Critics of the EPRDF system of federalism have noted that the privileging of “indige­
nous” national groups has often come at the cost of limiting the rights of minority groups
within the regions. In response, some of the regions have granted these minorities special
woredas, but they do not have guaranteed representation in the regional government or its
institutions and unless they form geographical blocs, they may be politically marginalized.
Regional states have not always protected the rights of national minorities, but out of respect
for the constitution, or in the case of Oromia concern about arousing national sensitivities,
the center has refused to take up the issue in a context where Oromo nationalists direct
their anger against what is held to be a TPLF­dominated EPRDF and national government.
There have also been problems over boundaries and the establishment of local administra­
tions throughout the country, and some of them have led to violence. As with the Soviet
Union, such disputes were dealt with in an EPRDF­dominated state, but in the case of the
Oromo region the disputes spread to the streets and posed a major political challenge for the
government.
The Constitution of Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples (SNNP) has elected
zonal councils, which in some cases represent specific ethnic communities, while the re­
gional state executive is shared among the political elite in much the same manner as at the
federal level. As a result, the Southern region has been called a “federation within a fed­
eration” (Assefa Fiseha 2015), and with the exception of demands of Sidama for their own
region until recently the region was widely considered the best administered in the coun­
try. The same cannot be said of Oromia, which has from its inception been administratively
weak and has major border conflicts with its neighbors.
In other regions, like Benishangul­Gumuz and Gambella, which could be compared
to some of the backward Soviet Asian republics, a different practice emerged. Before the
imposition of the EPRDF system of federalism, national conflict was common, particularly
in Gambella between the Anywaa and the Nuer, but there was no developed nationalism and
no support for secession. There, the EPRDF took a paternalistic approach to governance.

14 Proclamation 7/92, Article 40.

72 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

Initially, this took the form of the Regional Affairs Department and later the Ministry of
Federal Affairs, which operates out of the Prime Minister’s office. Previously known to “hire
and fire” poorly performing governors and other regional officials, since 2001 its overt role
has declined and it is now limited to “enhancing the capacity of the less developed states”
(Assefa Fiseha 2015, 17). Despite the weaknesses of some of the regional governments, the
EPRDF followed the Soviet Union in devoting considerable human and financial resources
to developing peripheral cultures and languages, expressed by the country’s foremost secular
holiday, which celebrates cultural diversity.

3.5 Comparisons and Analyses

The EPRDF came to power at the end of the Cold War and the start of a new era of Western
triumphalism and renewed efforts to remake the world in its image. The West insisted that
capitalism and its system of economic organization, governance, values, and ideology be
wholeheartedly embraced and the socialism that inspired the EPRDF relegated to history’s
dustbin. The EPRDF was caught between its own ideology and the unanticipated realities of
the post­Cold War era. The EPRDF model of governance was based on the writings of the
Bolsheviks and experience of the Soviet Union, but during the armed struggle it condemned
the same Soviet Union as “social­imperialist.” Indeed, shortly before taking power and on
the eve of the collapse of the socialist bloc, the appointed leader of the TPLF and EPRDF,
Meles Zenawi said, “the Soviet Union and other Eastern­bloc countries have never been
truly socialist. The nearest any country comes to being socialist as far as we are concerned
is Albania.”15 Despite such views, the EPRDF might still have expected to align with the
socialist bloc or at the least have it provide a counterpart to the West and the ideological
space to pursue its program.
A useful starting point is the debate of the left at the end of the nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries that foresaw the dangers inherent in unbridled nationalist movements.
The Bolsheviks’ fear that they would assume a reactionary and violent form if they did not
encourage and lead rising nationalisms was borne from the First World War in which 17
million people were killed. This was followed by fascistic nationalistic movements that
provided the background to the Second World War and the death of 50 million more people.
And in the present era, neofascist movements are expanding in Eastern Europe, finding
constituencies in Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, and xenophobic nationalism
was at the core of Donald Trump’s electoral victory in November 2016. Closer to Ethiopia,
waves of ethno­nationalist violence have swelled in Somalia and Sudan, and independent
South Sudan experienced a full­fledged civil war in 2013.
Until the recent appearance of balanced studies of the Soviet Union and its experience
with nation­building (e.g. Blaut 1987; Vihavainen 2000; Martin 2001; Slezkine 1994)16 ,
the widespread view was that its collapse on December 26, 1991, was due to its failed state­
managed economy and a misplaced federal model. These conclusions were also used to dis­
credit the EPRDF project. However, the collapse of the Soviet federation can be attributed

15The Independent, London, November 28, 1989.

16Western “Sovietology” held that national rights were systematically denied in the country in favor of a totalitarian
Communist Party of the Soviet Union, but when the Soviet Union splintered along national lines the position of the
Western experts abruptly changed. Even the role of Stalin is being challenged in important studies such as, Getty
and Manning (1993) and Furr (2011).
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 73

to many factors, in particular dissatisfaction with the central government and not intractable
national differences. In response to widespread dissatisfaction, Mikhail Gorbachev intro­
duced glasnost (opening), perestroika (restructuring), demokratizatsiya (democratization),
and uskoreniye (acceleration of economic development) at the 27th Congress of the CPSU in
February 1986. He subsequently called for a confederal Soviet Union in which the republics
would regain much of the autonomy and sovereignty they had prior to Stalin’s changes.
Apart from the Baltic republics, Georgia, and Armenia, there was little support in the Soviet
Union for outright secession. This was made clear in a March 1991 referendum in which 76
percent of the people with an 80 percent turnout voted to preserve the Union and eight of
the nine republics subsequently signed the new union treaty (Brown 1996).
To reverse the reforms and reassert the central government’s control over the republics,
eight high­ranking Soviet officials orchestrated a coup and demanded that Gorbachev reject
the treaty and declare a state of emergency. He refused, was held prisoner, and only freed by
the intervention of the Russian leader, Boris Yeltsin, who declared the coup unconstitutional
and led a public protest in the streets of Moscow. Once the coup was defeated, however,
Yeltsin (who wanted to quickly carry out market reforms) and the other republic leaders set
about dissolving the Soviet Union without consulting the voters or even the Supreme Soviets
of their respective republics. The beneficiaries of the breakup of the Soviet Union were not
the people, many of whom continue to be upset at the development, but the newly emergent
political elites who moved quickly to assume the role of petty national based autocrats and
take possession of state industries, resources, and properties.
While the USSR economy was stagnant in 1991, it was still experiencing a 2 percent
growth rate and the economic crisis only developed after the breakup as a result of the shock
doctrine of privatization and free markets pressed by Western economists in thrall to market
fundamentalism. The result in Russia was not only hyperinflation and a 50 percent GDP
loss but also the rapid decline of all social indices: sudden spikes rates of poverty, crime,
corruption, unemployment, homelessness, disease, mortality, and income inequality, along
with decreases in calorie intake, life expectancy, adult literacy, and income. Russia, Kaza­
khstan, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia witnessed a 42 percent increase in male death rates
between 1991 and 1994.17 It was not socialism that brought about the rapid decline in living
standards for the people of the former Soviet Union, but the pursuit of neoliberalism and the
so­called Washington Consensus, under the direction of the IMF and World Bank. More­
over, until the coming to power of Vladimir Putin, Russia had become a virtual colony of
the West and the US.
In the wake of Abiy’s war against the TPLF Ethiopia faces a not dissimilar crisis, and
like the Soviet Union the crisis had its roots in bad political decision­making and not because
of its system of national federalism. Before Abiy dissolved the EPRDF, it experienced three
major crises—in 2001 in the wake of the Ethio­Eritrean war, after the 2005 national elections,
and in 2016 after a dispute over the expansion of Addis Ababa. This chapter cannot analyze
these crises, but it is important to make their political character clear and emphasize that
they could not be resolved by undermining the two major accomplishments of the EPRDF—
national federalism and state­led development.
The crisis facing the EPRDF in the first instance derived from attempting to pursue a
program of political and economic reform and rapid development in a highly unfavorable
17 BBC (2009) “Privatisation raised death rate,” January 15 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7828901.stm,

accessed March 20, 2020), see also Vladislav M. Zubok (2009, ix).
74 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

international context even though its conclusive military victory over the Derg gave the
ruling party a measure of authority, administrative competence, and autonomy that set it
apart from other ruling parties in Africa. But those advantages could not insulate the EPRDF
from power struggles and conflicting visions that beset the party during and in the wake
of what should have been its triumphal victory over Eritrea in the 1998–2000 war. While
glossed over to present a united front, the TPLF was bitterly divided over the conduct of the
war. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi led a minority faction that advocated a more conciliatory
approach. The struggle came to the fore after the war and spread to other components of the
EPRDF. The outcome was the emergence of a much empowered Meles, a massive purge
of the party that eliminated many veteran leaders, and the end of the long­standing system
of collegial leadership. One of the positive features of TPLF decision­making had been
its rejection of the personality cults that have always featured in Ethiopian politics and the
embrace of shared decision­making. This position meant that individuals like Tewolde W.
Mariam with his sober thinking and organizational skills could complement Meles’s quick
intelligence or check his sometimes authoritarian impulses.
As well as eliminating many party stalwarts who he considered obstacles to his increas­
ingly authoritarian rule, Meles also used the opportunity to remove (in the case of former
Defense Minister Siye Abreha) and jail corrupt members of the EPRDF, or “rent­seekers”
in the parlance of the Front. Siye was a particular concern because he had gained the sup­
port of a group, including some who challenged Meles’s wartime opposition to the capture
of Assab, the Eritrean Red Sea port. Meles turned to Marx’s “Bonapartist thesis,” which
examined the circumstances in which counter­revolutionary military officers coopt the rad­
icalism of the popular classes to mask their narrow base and attack their enemies. Meles’s
contended that some among the TPLF and later EPRDF were using their privileged posi­
tions in the state for individual gain. It was a curious argument to make for the leader of
a party that had disavowed any attachment to Marxism and while some rent­seekers were
removed in the resulting purge so were party devotees who embraced Marx more than Meles
did. Crucially, Tewelde, who had opposed Meles’s military policies, was removed as was
Tsadkan, the chief of staff, who played a lead role in defeating Eritrea.
Also, of concern was that instead of conducting a gim gema or evaluation of the
EPRDF’s performance in which he would likely have faced strong criticism, Meles insisted
that the party assess his Bonapartist thesis. This demand set the stage for the leadership
division and the subsequent expulsions. Meles then continued his battle into the EPRDF
and after refusing to call a meeting of the party’s General Assembly, its highest organ, the
purges spread. Achieving an almost complete victory, Meles and his colleagues claimed
that the changes and expulsions brought clarity and ideological coherence to the party. But
subsequent events prove that was not the case.
The EPRDF may have ascribed to capitalism, but nation­based federalism was not al­
tered, the economy continued to be state led, the EPRDF affirmed its commitment to “rev­
olutionary democracy,” decision­making continued to be based on democratic centralism,
the party officially rejected liberal democracy, and in practice it claimed what amounted to a
proprietorial right over the country’s peasantry. Medhane Tadesse and I concluded two years
after these changes: “there are limits to how far the EPRDF can move away from its Marxist­
Leninist origins. On one hand, it has accepted the presence of a national bourgeoisie, on the
other it has made clear its continuing support for the development of an autonomous national
economy in which the state retains a major role. Moreover, in such key areas as national
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 75

self­determination, land tenure, federalism, the vanguard status of the TPLF and EPRDF,
support for the peasants, and lukewarm attitude to pluralism and civil society, the ruling
party has not shifted position” (Medhane Tadesse and Young 2003).
Rather than a genuine renewal and audit of the party’s performance, the main feature
of the exercise was the demotion of Kuma Damaksa of the OPDO, the imprisonment of
Abate Kisho of SEPDF, the resignation of the former Ethiopean president Negasso Gidada,
and with the assistance of the ANDM, the empowering of Meles. These expulsions made
it possible for Meles, who had become the darling of some sections of the West, to expand
the country’s military cooperation with the US and brought it increasingly into the US and
Western security network. Given its overwhelmingly dominant political and military posi­
tion in the country, opposition outside the party did not pose a serious threat, and few of the
party dissidents wanted open conflict. The party thus united around Meles and this ensured
that its problems could be attributed to the displaced dissidents, the changes he introduced
would set Ethiopia on the right course, and no real evaluation would take place.
The unification around Meles also ensured that genuine problems of political direction,
relations with the increasingly disaffected and growing urban population, and international
relations were left to Meles and his advisors. These tensions came to the fore during the
2005 national elections in which 192 protestors were killed and 50,000 youth were arrested
by the Ethiopian security forces. Meles’s response was that this was not a political problem,
but due to youth unemployment and economic disaffection. Against this background, he
announced the goal of rapid economic development through state led development. In fact,
this approach was already being implemented (Tadesse Medhane 2016), but under Meles it
was largely guided by the experience of the rapidly industrializing states of Southeast Asia
and not the Soviet Union.
The results of EPRDF state led development have been impressive: from 2000 to 2013
Ethiopia’s annual per capita growth rate has averaged about 10 percent or almost double
that of sub­Saharan Africa and life expectancy has increased from 52 years in 2000 to 63 in
2011. And while Ethiopia had one of the highest rates of poverty in the world in 2000 with
56 percent of its people living below USD 1.25 a day, by 2011 that figure had dropped to
31 percent (Hill and Eyasu Tsehaye 2014). Other social indices are equally impressive. The
World Bank found that “Agricultural growth drove reductions in poverty, bolstered by pro­
poor spending on basic services” and that 60 percent of the national budget was allocated
to sectors of the economy that favor poor people (Hill and Tsehaye 2014, 17). Consistent
with the EPRDF’s claim to represent the interests of the peasantry, poverty reduction was
almost exclusively in the countryside. These achievements, however, have been denied or
ignored by critics of the regime. Since coming to power, the EPRDF contended that Ethiopia
would disintegrate if poverty was not overcome. Front leaders also believe it would have
to govern for decades to ensure the implementation of the necessary economic policies to
secure a genuine transformation for the country, a policy that is inconsistent with notions of
pluralism, competitive elections, and the regular transfer of power. Moreover, and unlike the
proscriptions of economic orthodoxy, these achievements were not due to an unconstrained
free market, but to high levels of government investment, projects, and planning.
However, rising living standards have not dampened discontent, which peaked again
in 2016 over the expansion of Addis Ababa into Oromo lands. Land grabbing for real es­
tate speculation and industrial use had caused conflicts in various parts of Oromia and these
problems came to the fore when Oromo farmers on the outskirts of the national capital were
76 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

victimized. The problem began as a result of the arrogance and incompetence of administra­
tors of the central government who were so anxious that land be made available for industrial
development that they did not follow constitutional provisions to consult the Oromo regional
government whose lands were needed or the municipal government of Addis Ababa. It also
became apparent that OPDO officials were complicit in the extortion.
In a context where the government was increasingly distrusted, this administrative issue
became a major political problem as Oromos claimed their fundamental rights were being
denied. The government responded to their grievances by shooting hundreds of demon­
strators, arresting thousands more, declaring martial law, and bringing the army on to the
streets, thus exacerbating the problem. Meanwhile, Amhara in their regional state had their
own grievances that included claims of Tigrayan dominance and the incorporation of the ter­
ritory of Walkait into neighboring Tigray. They, too, went to the streets to protest and were
shot. Probably more alarming for the EPRDF leadership was fear that the Amhara demon­
strations were encouraged, or at least not discouraged, by the regional government. While
the prevailing narrative maintains that Tigray benefited from domination of the national gov­
ernment and the EPRDF, Tigrayans complained of their expulsion from the Amhara region
and the abuses and political marginalization they experienced in Oromia.
Apart from unleashing the security forces, the government responded by conducting
hundreds of in­house appraisals, carrying out a massive purge, particularly of the OPDO,
and holding out the possibility of further devolution of authority. As was the case after
2005, the government claimed that youth unemployment was a contributing factor to the
problem and diverted more state resources to overcoming it. It promised better governance,
reform of state institutions, appointment of non­party members to the cabinet, and other
measures of a largely technical nature.18 But these measures did not dampen the distrust in
the government, just as raising living standards did not bring the EPRDF support.
The government’s critics were not united, with some attributing the problem to national
federalism and others to state led development, but collectively they emphasized EPRDF au­
thoritarianism, TPLF domination, and the need for democratic change. Critics accused the
EPRDF of being elitist and opaque, running roughshod over competing political organiza­
tions, having scant respect for elections, controlling parliament (of the 547 MPs in the current
House of Representatives only 1 belonged to an opposition party and 1 to an independent
party), having a fetish about control, opposing the emergence of an independent judiciary,
viewing urban dwellers and middle class Ethiopians as potential enemies, and assuming a
proprietorial position over the peasantry.19 EPRDF policy successes included the raising
living standards, increasing educational levels, and improving opportunities served to cre­
ate a growing class of people disaffected at their political marginalization. While cultural
diversity was encouraged, political pluralism was given short­shrift and independent voices
in civil society, the media, and trade unions were repressed by the EPRDF. The state was
crucial to the EPRDF in similar fashion to that of the Bolsheviks. The situation is analogous
to that described by Gramsci (Gramsci 1992, 873) who wrote, “the state was everything, yet
civil society was still primordial and gelatinous.”
The authoritarianism tendencies of the EPRDF was a genuine concern, but the de­
mand for democratic change is problematic. First, the kind of democracy proposed—liberal
democracy—has been radically revised under the impetus of neoliberalism and lost much of
18 Ethiopian Prime Mister Speech to the parliament, October 10, 2016.
19 See e.g. Ottaway (1995), Gudina (2003) and Aalan (2006).
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 77

its liberating character. Second, it is a product of the advanced capitalist states and cannot
be translated wholesale to Ethiopia as Abiy is discovering. Neoliberalism is not just a means
by which the economy is organized, but also involves increasingly undemocratic forms of
governance. The notion that the only means to achieve development is for peripheral states
to adopt the institutions and practices of the West was the by­word of modernization theory
in the 1960s. It subsequently fell out of favor because of its blatant Eurocentricism, but
again came to the fore in the late 1970s and 80s under the guise of neoliberalism, which held
that privatization of state assets, floating currencies, rejection of economic justice, and the
like are prerequisites to achieving development.
In practice, this meant elections served as a means for the orderly circulation of elites,
the role of governments was reduced as decisions were increasingly made by corporations
beyond public purview, national sovereignty was undermined as governments were made
beholden to the Bretton Woods institutions and international trade agreements, and every­
day life was increasingly subject to the laws of the market and commodification. Former
US Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan, gave the game away when he declared
that elections do not matter much because thanks to globalization the world is governed by
market forces, not elected representatives. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West
rejected long established notions of economic justice and equality while private enterprise
was held to be the foundation of democracy (Abrahamsen 2000). The growing inequalities
within states and between states were legitimized and held to be a necessary product of de­
velopment, while socialism was viewed as antithetical to democracy and associated with a
failed Soviet model.
The EPRDF was correct to view neoliberalism as inappropriate for a poverty­stricken
Ethiopia. But issues of accountability, the authoritarian character of the state, and the
EPRDF’s hegemonic position in the government could not be brushed aside simply
because the model of governance being pressed on it by the West and its elite supporters
in the country were not suitable. To be clear, the EPRDF’s endorsement and pursuit of
national self­determination, national rights, economic justice, and equality are all critical
components of democracy, especially when it is appreciated that historically democracy
was understood to be a process to advance the interests of the poor, the disenfranchised, and
the nationally marginalized. But genuine democracy involves the widest possible popular
engagement and empowerment, respect for basic human rights, and does not involve the
protection of powerful interests, all of which characterized EPRDF governance.
The EPRDF rejected liberal democracy, but failed to develop, refine, and press alterna­
tive means of accountability, such as gim gema, that had been widely employed to critically
assess programs, leadership, and the personal conduct of its members (Young 1997a). Gim
gema became a cornerstone of the TPLF’s practice of governance and after 1991 was in­
troduced into the various institutions of the state. TPLF leaders believed that gim gema
would ensure that the movement maintained its revolutionary ideals and not succumb to the
temptations of state power. But the TPLF never had the power or the level of commitment
to fully introduce gim gema into the federal government and civil service, therefor it was
never given a legal basis or refined in response to the new conditions of administering a state
(Tadesse Medhane and Young 2003). As one senior TPLF cadre noted, party members were
receptive to gim gema and personal criticism during the armed struggle because they had
little to lose materially, but after victory careers and social standing could be threatened and
78 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

this potentially revolutionary tool has become formalistic and an instrument of management
(Medhane and Young 2003).
Notions like gim gema were a product of the revolutionary past and, together with the
Bolshevik thinkers that inspired the TPLF and EPRDF, became a source of embarrassment.
The EPRDF rejected neoliberalism but at the same time endorsed its two main principles—
capitalism and global economic integration. The EPRDF spurned liberal democracy, but its
alternative was a thinly disguised authoritarianism. The high moral standards of the TPLF
during the armed struggle were rooted in socialist values, but since the commitment to cap­
italism in 1991 public morality was increasingly shaped by the market, and the EPRDF
looked to technocratic leadership and managerial systems to contain corruption and rent­
seeking with, at best, mixed results.
While it would be a mistake to blame Meles entirely for the problems faced by the
EPRDF, he did end the system of collegial leadership, which provided a measure of control
over him and ensured open debate at the highest levels of the party and government. Even
his admirers cannot defend the underhanded means he used to force long serving and loyal
cadres to leave the TPLF and EPRDF. He replaced experienced cadres with technocrats,
apparently assuming that since he had provided the development map the country could
safely be put on auto­pilot. This ensured there would be no audit of the EPRDF and debate
would be restricted to technical measures. Meles was widely respected but never popular in
the country.
Although condemned by international human rights organizations he was admired by
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and former US President Bill Clinton. Meles’s
desire for international acceptance led him to cooperate with Western security forces and
align Ethiopia’s foreign policy with the US Global War on Terror and join George Bush’s
“coalition of the willing” in the war against Iraq. To his credit, Meles inaugurated Metekakat,
or leadership replacement, which led to the retirement of many among Tigrayan political
and security elite. It also meant that upon Meles’s death in 2012 Hailemariam Desalegn, a
Pentecostal Christian and a member of one of Ethiopia’s most disadvantaged communities,
the Welayta, assumed power. But perhaps the biggest failing of Meles was marginalizing
potential challengers, constructing a government and ruling party dependent on him, turning
his back on the pursuit of class politics, and laying the basis for the EPRDF’s ideological
confusion and displacement.
Abiy was able to come to power because of a tactical alliance between the Amhara
and Oromo components of the four parties that made up the EPRDF to isolate the TPLF.
Once in power Abiy ended the state of hostilities with Eritrea for which he gained the 2019
Nobel Peace Prize, although by the end of 2020 the borders between Eritrea and Ethiopia re­
mained closed and there was no trade between the countries. He was successful, however, in
establishing a pact with Eritrea’s President Isais Afwerki, who also opposed national feder­
alism because it threatened his unitary state, to fight the TPLF. Abiy’s policy of reconciling
with foreign based armed groups weakened the central state, made parts of the country un­
governable and led to what he claimed was an attempted coup in June 2019 when an Amhara
extremist officer who had been dismissed in 2009 for an earlier attempted coup and then re­
habilitated by Abiy, killed the Ethiopian chief of defense staff and a handful of other senior
officials.20

20 New York Times, June 23, 2019.

3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 79

Apart from Tigray, Abiy has faced major problems in Oromia where the central govern­
ment has lost control of western parts of the state and jailed many from the recently returned
armed groups as well as civilian party leaders, while 81 civilians were killed in June 2020
after the popular activist musician Hachalu Hundessa was killed by the army. Many of these
problems stem from the disillusionment of Oromos who have discovered to their dismay that
Abiy who they had viewed as one of their own supports the centrist government that gener­
ations of Oromos have opposed. Having lost his ethnic constituency, Abiy largely depends
on the Amhara elites who he elevated to senior positions in the security services, Amhara
militia angered that the TPLF has taken over disputed border lands, and state governments
that are largely made up of allies he has placed in power. Although Abiy has made clear that
the main point of contention is to replace TPLF supported national federalism with a unitary
state, there is no indication that most Ethiopians want a return to the centrist government
that produced countless national rebellions under the imperial system and the Derg.
Almost from the day he took power, Abiy viewed the TPLF as the main threat to his
regime and long before war broke out, he had dismissed Tigrayan ministers and officials
in the government, Tigrayan heads of the army and national security, and many generals.
Things reached a crisis when Abiy, who has never been elected by the Ethiopian people,
indefinitely postponed national and state elections scheduled for September 2020, because
of Covid­19 according to his allies, or because he would lose claim his critics. Responding as
strict constitutionalists or in an effort to embarrass Abiy, the TPLF went ahead with elections
in Tigray, won resoundingly, and as a result neither the central government, or the state
government recognized one another.
Long before Abiy took power there was a virtual consensus of the need to reform, but
not end, the system of national federalism. EPRDF policies had served to increase the stan­
dards of living of many Ethiopians, but this economic advance empowered the central state
and threatened to undermine the EPRDF’s decentralized national based federation. Mean­
while, economic development gave rise to classes in the towns, cities, and countryside that
employed the nationalism that EPRDF policies encouraged to attack the government. Youths
in Oromia and the Amhara region launched attacks on the TPLF and Tigrayans, shutting off
road transport to Tigray for weeks while the central government did nothing. The central
government also did little to protect Tigrayans living outside their home state, mostly in the
Amhara region, from being killed and forced off their land. Meanwhile, Oromos charged
Tigrayans along with Amhara of expanding into their lands during the feudal era and com­
plained of TPLF domination of the EPRDF.
Like the Soviet Union, in the wake of Meles’s death Ethiopian governance was in need
of reform, but the changes pressed by Abiy together with his anti­TPLF and by extension
anti­Tigrayan campaign have led to war. And the longer the war continues the more that
central government troops will be reassigned from locations, particularly in Oromia, to the
Tigray battle fronts and thus provide opportunities for armed groups in these areas, the more
that ethno­nationalist groups elsewhere in the country led by the OLF will conclude that
should the TPLF be defeated their hopes for achieving a decentralized Ethiopian state will
die, and that differences between these groups and the TPLF can be overcome and bring
their collective weight against the Abiy government. Instead of defeating the TPLF as a
means to defeat national federalism, Abiy’s war could instead bring about the disintegration
of Ethiopia or result in an even more decentralized federation.
80 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

3.6 Conclusion

Consideration of the EPRDF’s system of national federalism and approach to the nation­
state has largely taken place within the confines of Western social science, but this chapter
has proceeded from the assumption that much can be gained from examining these issues
in light of the studies of the Bolshevik leaders and early developments of the system in the
Soviet Union. Not only were the TPLF and other political parties that emerged from the
Ethiopian student movement strongly influenced by the Bolsheviks on the national question
but the imperial Ethiopia they were dedicated to overthrowing bore striking comparisons to
the Tsarist Russian empire overthrown by the Bolsheviks.
There are, however, limits to these comparisons, notably the early Bolsheviks were
largely Russians dedicated to dismantling a Russian constructed empire, while the leaders
of the TPLF were drawn from a community that had been junior partners in an Amhara
dominated feudal state. While the Bolsheviks smashed the Tsarist state and replaced it with
their own as a means—they hoped—to realize their objective of socialism, upon coming to
power the EPRDF dropped its commitment to a transformative project, endorsed capitalism,
and largely operated through the existing central state. While national federalism was an end
in itself for the EPRDF, for the Bolsheviks it was a way station on the road to socialism.
Despite, not because of, its approach to the national question, the Soviet Union col­
lapsed, and thus ensued a long period of decline and suffering for many people of the former
federation. Unless Ethiopia can overcome its problems, it could face a similar fate. The suf­
fering in the states of the former Soviet Union was due to the adoption of neoliberalism and
acceptance of liberal democracy, the solutions professed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed
for Ethiopia. But what set the Soviet Union on the course to that catastrophe was a flawed
reform process and one that did not address growing economic inequalities. The reform pro­
cess launched by Gorbachev was desperately needed, long delayed, and unavoidable, but its
catastrophic results were due to the fact that the Soviet Union had long since betrayed its
revolutionary origins (Furr 2011).
Although the EPRDF leadership contended that ideological concerns were resolved in
1991 with the acceptance of capitalism and the Front and its components did not take up ideo­
logical issues again until the advent of Abiy, there remained a tension, if not a contradiction,
between its commitment to capitalism and the remnants of a leftist past in its orientation,
party structure, policies, and commitment to the peasants. TPLF and EPRDF fears about
the response of the West to its leftist ideological orientation in 1991 were understandable
given the triumphalism of a resurgent West claiming victory over socialism and prepared to
use its political, economic, and even military power against dissenting third world regimes.
That global power continues to be a major constraint on the ability of peripheral states to
formulate policies that meet the needs of their people, not serve the interests of the capitalist
metropoles, and maintain national sovereignty.
But that was then, and the global context now is less constraining. The unipolar world
that existed in 1991 has undergone radical changes and the West no longer poses the threat
it once did. China is a major player on the international stage in both the economic and
political spheres. Having forged close relations with Ethiopia, China ascribed it a major
role in the African link to the China’s One Belt One Road project. The European Union is in
crisis, and in the aftermath of the election of Donald Trump the alliance between Europe and
3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia 81

the United States, which served as the bedrock of the post­Second World War international
order, is decidedly shaky.
But what has most altered the global context is the growing international opposition
to neoliberalism in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and this has been acerbated by the
Covid­19 pandemic. To be sure, neoliberalism remains entrenched and continues to be en­
dorsed by Western social democratic parties. But socialism has always been a broad house
and one that more closely conforms to the pre­Abiy EPRDF commitment to state led devel­
opment, land nationalization, and a Bolshevik inspired national federalism than adherence to
capitalism and global economic integration. Moreover, any version of socialism must have
a base in the working class, yet that class barely existed when the EPRDF assumed power
in 1991. A generation later, a working class is emerging in Ethiopia, opening up a range of
political opportunities.
Related to this was the confusion that proceeded from EPRDF’s attempt to be all things
for all the people. Embracing capitalists and the working class often led to repression of
workers and unions and undermined the Front’s relationship with the working class, which
should have been at the core of a party committed to fostering rapid and equitable devel­
opment. Indicative of the problem is the fact that fewer than 10 percent of workers in the
expanding textile industry are unionized, and there is no national minimum wage in the pri­
vate sector (Rosen 2016). While the World Bank drew attention to the success of the EPRDF
in dramatically reducing extreme poverty, even before the advent of Hailemariam and Abiy
there were also indications of a society becoming increasingly unequal, one being the 108
percent growth in the number of millionaires in Ethiopia between 2007 and 2013, the high­
est growth rate of this group in Africa.21 This figure is explained by both the phenomenal
levels of growth in the country as well as privatizations. The biggest beneficiary of the
privatizations—amounting to 60 percent of all government privatizations—was Mohammed
Hussein al­Amoudi, an Ethiopian­Saudi dual citizen and richest man in the country, whose
close relations to the government, particularly Meles Zenawi, had long been a matter of con­
troversy and has called into question the competitiveness of these actions.22 Al­Amoudi was
one of many rich and powerful businessmen arrested by the Saudi Arabian government in
mid­November 2017.
Equally misplaced was the EPRDF claim to represent the interests of both rich and
poor peasants, something Giday Zera Tsion warned against in the 1980s (Young 1997b,
137–138). While rich peasants did not pose a threat during the armed struggle, development
in recent years generated growing economic differentiation and produced disaffected youth
who proved crucial in forcing the resignation of Hailemariam and bringing Abiy to power.
But there is little indication that Abiy’s program of liberal government and a free­market
economy will staunch this disaffection. Indeed, while he touched all the nationalist and
anti­Tigray and anti­TPLF nerves in the country with his November 2020 war, the war and
his efforts to replace the developmental state with market­based capitalism will produce
economic polarization, uneven development, and increased tensions. To be sure, a crisis
was already emerging because the EPRDF had rejected its commitment to politics that were
“ethno­national in form, class in content,” in favor of a devotion to programs and policies
that are ethno­national in both form and content.23
21 New World of Wealth, nw­wealth.com
22 https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08ADDISABABA82_a.html, accessed February 3, 2020.
23 This insight is to be credited to Assefa Fiseha an email to the author, November 19, 2017.
82 3. Bolshevism and National Federalism in Ethiopia

While political reforms were needed even before the displacement of the EPRDF,
Abiy’s rhetorical commitment to democratic pluralism should be treated with skepticism.
In its Western version, pluralism recognizes a plurality of groups, interests, and associations
in society, but crucially does not acknowledge their power imbalances and the possibility
of them being subverted by foreign, particularly Western, interests as has been the case
many so­called color revolutions. Genuine pluralism means the existence of a rough equi­
librium of power between contending interests and social forces, something which does not
exist in Western capitalist societies (Miliband 1989, 29). In any case what Abiy considers
democratic government to date has involved power being centralized in the prime minister’s
office, over­ruling parliament, indefinitely postponing elections, and replacing most state
governments with his allies. He also eliminated virtually all Tigrayans from government,
the security services, and government corporations, charging them with corruption, although
none have been convicted.
Critics from the right argued that the EPRDF’s version of national federalism would
bring about the destruction of the country upon coming to power in 1991, but instead it
preserved the unity of Ethiopia when faced with disintegration after the overthrow of the
Derg. Furthermore, it played a critical role in ending the heavy hand of centralization under
the Haile Selassie and Derg regimes, gave new life to long suppressed national cultures, and
served as a base to develop regional economies. But this achievement was threatened by a
recentralization as a result of the developmental state under Meles and the near collapse of
the state under the weak leadership of Hailemariam Desalegn, which led to his replacement
by Dr. Abiy Ahmed in April 2018.
The national federalism of the early TPLF was part and parcel of a socialist project, but
upon coming to power the EPRDF jettisoned that project even while ascribing to a version
of the Bolshevik system of national federalism. The Bolsheviks and the Communist Parties
of China and Vietnam differentiated the peasantry and explicitly aligned with the poor and
middle peasants. In contrast, the TPLF viewed the peasantry as a homogeneous class and did
not make common cause with their natural allies among the poor and middle peasants and
that left them susceptible to the nationalist appeals of rich peasants and others. The TPLF
focus on the peasantry was appropriate given the under­developed state of the Tigrayan
and Ethiopian working class. But Ethiopia has been developing a working class and an
expanding population of urban poor, and by not championing their interests they too were
prone to nationalist appeals of the growing middle class. The Bolsheviks were committed
to advancing the marginalized national communities but fearing that nationalism could be
used to undermine the state they espoused class­based politics.
The Soviet federation ultimately failed, but Bolshevik support for the rights of op­
pressed nations was far in advance of the Western capitalist states which until recently
worked to eliminate national minorities in their construction of a nation­state. The TPLF/
EPRDF and its system of national federalism may also be assigned to history’s dustbin, but
a reformed version of it offers the best hope that Ethiopia will not follow the experience of
the Soviet Union and disintegrate.
Chapter 4
The Afar
John Markakis

They are taking our soil; we don’t know why

They are digging our land; we don’t know why
Motorcars overwhelm our animals
Foreign languages overwhelm our language.

Afar song (circa 1970s)

This chapter will present a detailed case study designed to illustrate the impact of factors
highlighted in the chapter “The Crisis of the State in the Horn of Africa” on people in the
periphery, including their identity, livelihood, security, welfare, and their response to ruling
elite initiatives for nation­state building and socio­economic development. Specifically, the
study will examine one ethno­regional group—the Afar—selected due to geography, history,
ethnicity, mode of production, and distinct relationship with the center of state power. While
these parameters distinguish it from other groups in the periphery, it shares the subordina­
tion, marginalization, and alienation that are their common experience. Because the Afar
experience with state initiatives has a history unmatched by others in the lowland periphery,
an analysis of this group’s history and current situation proves helpful in anticipating their
future.
The lowlands zone in Ethiopia covers about 78 million hectares, making up about 61
percent of the country’s total area. The area has an elevation up to 1,500 meters above sea
level, and the general climate is broadly categorized as arid (64%), semi­arid (21%) and sub­
humid (15%). The average annual rainfall is less than 700 millimeters, and is unreliable and
erratic. The temperature during most months of the year reaches about 30 degrees Celsius,
rising to around 45 degrees Celsius during the months of June to August. Evapotranspiration
is very high, reaching up to 250 millimeters per year. Low annual rainfall coupled with
high evapotranspiration results in a critical moisture deficit and poor prospects for rain­fed
cultivation. Throughout history, this terrain has been the domain of mobile pastoralism and
remains largely so; however, this mode of production now faces extinction.
After the secession of southern Sudan, Ethiopia had the largest land mass in the Horn,
the largest population (about 90 million in 2015), the largest lowland region, and the largest
livestock herd in Africa. The bulk of the livestock is held by mobile pastoralists who belong
to some 30 ethno­regional communities, representing approximately eight million people,
according to official population statistics. Pastoralism is not included as a category in the
national census; therefore, this estimate is considered low. The Afar homeland lies entirely
within the arid zone. The Afar regional state population is given as 1.4 million, the majority
of whom are pastoralists.
84 4. The Afar

*
Geography isolated the Afar to an unusual degree until recently, and has more profoundly
impacted their identity than any other factor. Their homeland, on the eastern edge of the
continent facing the Red Sea, is commonly described as the “most inhospitable” in the re­
gion. The Afar Depression in the north sinks below sea level in places. It holds the record
for the highest mean annual temperature recorded on earth, and it is covered with sunbaked
deserts, salt flats, active volcanoes, and bubbling lava lakes. Salt, exported to the Ethiopian
plateau, provided the Afar with a rare link to the world outside. The southern part of the
Afar homeland is crossed by the Awash River, the only river that drains the eastern side of
the plateau, and irrigates a broad valley where irrigated cultivation is possible. The Awash
River is the mainstay of the Afar pastoralist economy, and also supports cultivation in its
inland delta where it forms lakes and swamps but never reaches the sea. The potential for
commercial cultivation here created an opening for strangers to enter the Afar world and
launch an ongoing process of forced transformation. In the second half of the twentieth
century, once the Ethiopian state had claimed sovereignty over the region and controlled it
effectively, outsiders began to farm the Afar land on a commercial level.
Afar was part of the vast territory incorporated into the Ethiopian Empire during the
imperialist Scramble for Africa. During this period, the Christian kingdom on the northern
plateau, otherwise known as Abyssinia, massively expanded, doubling its territory and pop­
ulation by conquering what is now the southern half of the country. Typical of pastoralist
societies, the Afar had never created a state and had no history of political unity. They had
established a more centralized and hierarchical form of government in five sultanates, but
four of them were dismantled in the Scramble for Africa. At this point, the Afar Triangle was
divided between Italy, France, and Ethiopia, whose share included the Awash River Valley.
Only the Aussa Sultanate in Ethiopia retained its coherence and a degree of autonomy until
the demise of the imperial regime in 1974.
Pastoralist societies do not lack governance, laws, institutions, or leaders. Maada, the
Afar customary law is precise, comprehensive, and efficient because it is known and re­
spected by members of the community. Generally, pastoralists take a limited view of tra­
ditional authority (makabantu), which is exercised only in conjunction with a council of
elders, and this particularly true for the Afar. Every level of Afar social organization has its
chief (Aba) whose authority is thus circumscribed. The heart of Afar social order is the clan,
which is ruled by its elders.
The colonial carve­up did not inconvenience the pastoralists unduly. The Italians and
French limited their presence to the coast, and Ethiopians claimed a distant lordship over the
hinterland without setting foot in the lowlands. The Italians were first to spot the agricultural
potential of the Awash River Valley when they occupied Ethiopia in the 1930s. The Opera
Nazionale Combattenti, the agency charged with promoting the settling of Italian farmers in
Africa, viewed the Awash as a promising site and began their agricultural endeavors in the
Gewane area (Larebo 1994, 106). However, their stay was short and nothing came out of it
apart from the present town. The Afar population at the time was estimated at about 60,000
in Ethiopia territory, 19,270 in Eritrea, and 12,341 in the French colony (Trimingham 1952,
172).

*
4. The Afar 85

After the Second World War, the imperial government made its first plans for economic
development through import substitution and increased exports. The Awash River Valley
(whose three sections are distinguished according elevation—Upper, Middle, and Lower)
was chosen for obvious reasons, but mainly its potential for large scale, commercial irriga­
tion. Its proximity to Addis Ababa and a string of emerging towns to the south was another
advantage, as was the Addis Ababa railway line that crossed the valley. Also advantageous
was the fact that, here, land and water were available at no cost because under Ethiopian
law pastoralist land was considered unoccupied and classified as state domain; therefore, it
could be disposed by state fiat and offered to investors for free along with the water of the
river crossing it.
In the 1950s, the first invitation, namely to establish sugarcane plantations and pro­
cessing factories in the Wonji plain in the Upper Valley, was extended to a Dutch firm with
extensive experience in colonial Indonesia. Some 6,000 hectares were cleared for sugarcane,
displacing the local Gilo herders as well as many Karrayu cultivators who were promised
land as compensation. Emperor Haile Selassie was present at the inauguration of the Mata­
hara Sugar Estate, and the Karrayu people complained to him about the loss of their land
without compensation. The Emperor ordered that 8,000 hectares should be given to them.
They were still waiting for it when he was toppled from the throne in 1974.
The Upper Valley lies outside the land of the Afar, and they were not directly affected.
A few years later, the British firm Mitchell Cotts negotiated an agreement with the impe­
rial government to cultivate cotton in the Middle and Lower Valleys for domestic use. The
government thought it prudent to inform the Afar, whose acquiescence was considered es­
sential, given their warlike reputation. Sultan Ali Mirah, whose traditional authority over
the affected region was recognized in return for an annual tribute of 2,000 litres of ghee, was
summoned to a meeting in the capital and asked to facilitate the project by approving the
land grant for the cotton plantations. “I will not give Afar land to the foreigners. You’ll have
to take it by force,” was his initial response (Soulé 2005, 74). Admonished by government
officials, he changed his mind the following day. He became the prototype peripheral elite,
and went on to enjoy a long tenure with status and wealth spanning three regime changes in
Addis Ababa.
The Awash Valley Authority (AVA) was set up in 1962 to promote development in the
Middle and Lower Awash Valleys. By 1975, the total irrigated area covered some 57,000
hectares, one­third of the estimated potential cultivable land in the valley, nearly every square
meter of it covered in cotton. The investors were a mixed group of foreign firms and private
persons, operating on their own or in partnership with the state. Among them was Sultan Ali
Mirah, who turned into an entrepreneur overnight. Together with his family and clan elders,
he set up 2,500 small plots of less than 10 hectares each and an Aussa Farmers’ Association.
Free labor was provided by clansmen. When world cotton prices doubled in the early 1970s,
the small group of Afar investors became wealthy overnight.
The impact on the pastoralist economy was far reaching. Loss of pastureland caused
overstocking in the remaining grazing areas and overgrazing as a result. Plantations blocked
access to the river that provided precious refuge for men and animals during the dry season.
Hydroelectric dams in the Upper Valley reduced flooding, affecting pasture growth further
down the river. With abundant stagnant water, malaria, a common scourge, now became the
leading cause of death for the population. There was no compensation for the loss of land or
water. Nor did the Afar benefit from the introduction of commercial agriculture. There was
86 4. The Afar

no similarity between the traditional pastoralist economy and the modern plantation system.
Very few Afar, other than the Ali Mirah coterie, took direct part in the cotton production,
neither as investors for lack of capital nor as employees for lack of skills. Under the AVA
program, only a few hundred Afar were settled.
There were 150,000 persons involved in 11 irrigated projects in the valley, of whom
100,000 were non­Afar. Some 10,000 were administrators and technicians, all of them high­
landers (Kloos and Adugna 1989, 139). Poorly paid, unskilled seasonal labor was provided
by destitute Oromo peasants who came down from the plateau, while Afar worked mostly as
guards to prevent herds from invading plantation land. The decline of the traditional econ­
omy became obvious during the drought and famine of the early 1970s, when the Afar lost
the bulk of their cattle and thousands of human lives without aid ever reaching them. “This
destruction of both livestock and grazing areas is of such magnitude and persistence, that
the ability of the Afar society to survive as significant pastoralists is endangered,” warned a
contemporary witness (Cossins 1981, 11).
Land in Afar was held communally and was shared equally by all members of the clan.
Authority to distribute land and settle issues relating to it was the prerogative of clan elders.
Now land was becoming a commodity to be traded in the market and people’s perception
of its value was changing. Claims to land became more exclusive, and conflicts over land
within and between clans became more frequent. Afar elders exploited their authority to
distribute land by renting plots to outsiders and sharing the money with the clansmen. On
the one hand, this scheme was viewed favorably by many, particularly the young, who had
no inclination to take up cultivation on their own, and Afar participation in the new economy
was very limited. On the other hand, elder involvement in land transactions with investors
opened possibilities for abuse and self­enrichment, illustrated by the Ali Mirah initiative,
giving rise to complaints and resentment that damaged the abuser’s status status in the com­
munity.
Population displacement and shifting land caused by increasing pressure on land and
water worsened Afar relations with their immediate neighbors. On the border of the Upper
Valley they clashed with the Karrayu Oromo, themselves displaced by the sugar plantations
in Wonji and Metahara. On the opposite side of the valley, the old conflict with the Issa
Somali escalated, eventually becoming a major problem for the central government.

*
The overthrow of Haile Selassie’s regime in the mid­1970s was the result of a social revolu­
tion that eliminated the imperial ruling class together with the land tenure system that was its
economic foundation. Abruptly converted to scientific socialism, the military junta, known
as the Derg (committee), that seized power at the center of the state proceeded to nationalize
the economy, including all land. They also confiscated all investment in commercial agri­
culture, quickly putting an end to the rise of an Afar land­owning upper class. The latter did
not take this latest dictate from the center passively and resisted. Afar warriors chased state
officials out of the region and blocked the road to Assab, where Ethiopia’s sole refinery was
located, causing fuel shortages in the capital. Ali Mirah fled across the border to Djibouti,
and an Afar Liberation Front (ALF) led by his sons rose to confront the Derg. Government
forces soon cleared the road to Assab, but security in the region was never entirely restored.
Commercial cultivation in the Middle and Lower Valleys ceased. When the military regime
4. The Afar 87

collapsed in 1991, the Afar looted the plantations, destroyed infrastructure and machinery,
and left the rest to decay. Not long after, the successor regime intervened with their own
policy for the exploitation of the region’s resources.
The 1975 Land Reform marked the first time that pastoralist rights were given legal
recognition in Ethiopia. Pastoralist “possessory” rights over their land were recognized,
and their isolation and marginalization in the state and society was officially noted. It was
promised that “special attention” would be given to raise their political, economic, and cul­
tural life and “to equalize these nationalities with the rest of the nationalities in Ethiopia.”
With the establishment of a Settlement Authority in 1976, the regime laid down the princi­
ples that have governed the state’s policy vis­à­vis pastoralism ever since: resettlement and
agro­pastoralism. Replacing the derogatory term zelan (wandering herder) for arbdo ader
(livestock producer) was a symbolic gesture.
The AVA and its projects in the Awash Valley came under critical scrutiny by the Derg,
and in 1977 its scope was limited solely to development of water resources while other state
agencies took the initiative for development in the valley. Sugar production on the Upper
Valley was nationalized and its management was taken over by the newly­formed Ethiopian
Sugar Development Agency. Famine on a biblical scale in the early 1980s highlighted the
plight of a country with a 2.9 annual rate of population growth and a 6.9 annual rate of growth
of per capita food demand. By this time, the Derg’s program to boost agricultural production
through collectivization had proven a failure, and a desperate search for an alternative was
on. The Ethiopian Valleys Development Studies Authority (EVDSA) was formed in 1987
to prepare the ground for the utilization of the potential for large scale irrigated cultivation
in the fourteen major river valleys of Ethiopia. The Awash Valley Authority was integrated
into the new body.
In the meantime, the regime had proceeded with the transformation of the Afar econ­
omy according to its own terms. Former plantations became state farms, small dams were
built to produce more cultivatable land, and improved mechanized production methods were
introduced; all of these projects were to produce cotton, not food. This need for food was
addressed by the people themselves who organized in settlement schemes. The land claimed
by the Ali Mirah family and Afar elders was distributed to the clansmen in a program de­
signed to convert them to sedentary agriculture. Villagization, a program pursued by the
regime on a country­wide scale, was part of the scheme.
The settlement program was designed, managed, and heavily subsidized by the state and
proved neither profitable nor sustainable. One report described it as a “welfare programme”
(Kello 1989, 105). Three successive livestock development programs were designed for
lowland regions, including the Afar Valley. They were designed to promote the integration
of livestock production in the highlands through a variety of inputs intended to improve
livestock quality and transport routes to link it with markets in the highlands. These pro­
grams had the same fate as many others of the kind carried out in the Horn. A report by the
Ethiopian Red Cross at the end of this period remarked: “The Afar feel their way of life has
failed in terms of the viability of their pastoral economy, and politically in the maintenance
of their regional autonomy and in competition with their regional adversaries” (Ethiopian
Red Cross (ERC) 1988, 4).
The list of proffered reasons for the abject failure of pastoralist development in the en­
tire Horn region is long. The design of these programs did not assist pastoralism by adjusting
to the demands of the times within the frame of its own mode of production but rather co­
88 4. The Afar

ercively transformed it to fit into a model of development that, in fact, had no place for it.
“Pastoral production systems are a highly efficient response to an environment which began
to disappear in the early twentieth century and has been disappearing at an accelerating rate
ever since” (Dyson­Hudson 1985, 173).

*
The collapse of the military regime in 1991 signaled a second round of profound socio­
economic and political transformation in Ethiopia within a quarter of a century. The succes­
sor regime of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) is a coalition
formed and led by an insurgent ethno­regional movement, the Tigray People’s Liberation
Front (TPLF). It began as a self­declared radical Marxist group, but was compelled to lower
its ideological sights in order to gain Western support, ostensibly converting to the free mar­
ket and democracy. It also committed itself to a federal system of government that promised
to shift the balance of state power towards the periphery. In the following years the regime
took steps to realize these commitments, yet twenty­five years later it is still far from its
goal.
The EPRDF’s economic policy retained a major role for what it called the “develop­
mental state,” which in effect restricted the space allowed for private enterprise and the free
market to function. Similarly, the concept of a “people’s democracy,” which the EPRDF
claimed as its political guide, served to rationalize severe limitations imposed on rival polit­
ical actors that rendered them impotent. Federalism in practice turned out to be the transfer
of administrative functions from the center to the periphery without a meaningful shift in
the balance of power between them. The task of administering the periphery was entrusted
to a new class of local elite, allied and entirely dependent on the center and bereft of the
economic and political resources needed to function autonomously.
The federation was organized along ethnic lines, with administrative boundaries drawn,
as far as possible, to coincide with ethnic groups, whose identity and culture were recognized
and reinforced through their use in administration, education, and political life. Federalism
raised the profile of the lowland periphery and its pastoralist population in the national con­
sciousness. The lowlanders were now administered by their own kinsmen, who constituted
the new peripheral elite, free to use their own language, and to celebrate their own history
and culture. The EPRDF also promised to close the development gap between the highland
and the lowland regions, now called “emerging states,” with special programs administered
by the center.
Afar became one of nine regional states in the federation comprising the Awash Valley
and the Afar Depression, and the Afar in Ethiopia finally got their wish to be united in a single
administrative jurisdiction. Simultaneously, however, the colonial dismemberment of this
nation was once more replicated be the rival state­building projects in the Horn. Ethiopia’s
annexation of Eritrea in the 1960s had reunited this northernmost segment of the Afar nation
with its kinsmen in the south, albeit separated by provincial boundaries. Despite repeated
petitions by Afar notables, the imperial regime refused to merge it administratively with the
Afar province, and the military regime rejected similar pleas to consolidate the Afar into
one province. Eritrea’s independence in 1993 restored the colonial map, and the northern
segment was once again separated from the bulk of the Afar by an international border. With
the rest of the Afar in Djibouti, this nation remained under three flags.
4. The Afar 89

In the Awash Valley, the collapse of the military regime saw the abandonment of all
projects for pastoralist settlement, the demolition and looting of infrastructure and machin­
ery, and the return of much land to livestock pasturage. The capacity of the surviving state
farms declined steadily due to lack of maintenance and failure to replace worn­out machin­
ery, the silting of canals and clogging of locks after dredging ceased, and the lack of pesti­
cides and insecticides. These problems were all due to loss of funding and direction from
the center.
Land remained nationalized, but land earlier confiscated from private investors by the
Derg was returned to the clans to use as they saw fit. Ali Mirah returned home and was able
to reclaim some of the land confiscated by the military regime. Claiming credit for founding
the Afar Liberation Front (ALF), his family became involved in the new political system,
competing for local power under the banner of the ALF. It had initial success, and one of
his son’s became the first president of the Afar regional state. However, the ALF was not an
EPRDF creation and refused to join the ruling coalition. It was eventually sidelined.
An Afar People’s Democratic Organisation (APDO) was cobbled together, and the
trusted former TPLF Afar veteran Ismail Ali Shiro was made the leader. Following a farcical
election in 1995, he became region president and took charge of Afar affairs. He proved an
able successor to Sultan Ali Mirah in the role of the peripheral elite, and went on to serve in
that capacity for the next two decades, a national record for tenure in this office. Ali Mirah
was compensated with the return of some 10,000 hectares of land in his homeland and a
villa in Addis Ababa. Among his twelve sons and ten daughters several were appointed to
ambassadorial and other official posts.
Initially, the new regime’s policy for economic development focused on the transforma­
tion of the highland peasant economy to eliminate the country’s perennial food shortage and
dependence on food aid. Later dubbed the Agriculture Led Industrial Development plan, it
was also expected to serve as the driver for agro­industrial development. It was a great effort
to modernize a peasant mode of production that had changed little over the centuries. Am­
bitious programs, formulated by foreign experts and funded with foreign aid, were launched
with great fanfare in the early 1990s to convince the peasantry to adopt new practices and
imported inputs like fertilizer, improved seeds, and chemical pesticides. An army of trained
agricultural agents was deployed to oversee implementation. The results were disappoint­
ing. The annual rate of growth in agriculture at 2.27 percent was an improvement on past
performance, yet still below the rate of population growth of around 3 percent. The attempt
to rely on peasant agriculture to spur development throughout the economy was abandoned.
It was a decade before the regime turned its attention to the perennial economic stag­
nation of the lowlands and pastoralism. Previously, it had concerned itself primarily with
securing control over the state’s perimeter by setting up political structures tailored to the
ethnic federal format. Like the Westernized ruling elite throughout Africa, it ignored the
traditional authority structures of pastoralist society and handed over administrative power
to a new set of peripheral elite who organized overnight in wholly artificial political parties,
clustered under the wings of the ruling coalition.
In the EPRDF’s perception, traditional authority was considered a feudal remnant and
was entirely ignored in the new federal structure. In Afar, as everywhere else, a centralized
regional system of decision making and administration was imposed on a society whose
affairs were managed by the elders until now. Traditional authority was not represented
at the regional state level, and as a result it had no influence there. However, new state
90 4. The Afar

structures took time to emerge, allowing chiefs and elders to continue administering local
affairs, particularly in matters concerning land and justice.
Creating a modern administrative system in the Afar region proved difficult, especially
due to the lack of educated and skilled manpower. Highlanders filled most of the posts,
while Afar secondary school graduates were sent for training to the Civil Service College
in Addis Ababa, an institution founded especially for this purpose. Upon their return, they
were appointed to head administration departments, supported by experienced highlander
deputies.
At the dawn of the twenty first century, the federal government launched a new de­
velopment program that relied on two sectors to spur economic growth. The Growth and
Transformation Plan (2010/11–2014/15) massively invested in infrastructural development
and energy production, funded mainly with loans and aid from abroad. Dams to harness
the country’s hydroelectric potential and also support irrigated cultivation were the core of
the program. Transport and communication were likewise targeted. Ethiopian bank loans,
supplemented with funds from the Ethiopian diaspora, sparked a boom in urban construction
for housing and tourist hotels that changed the face of Addis Ababa overnight and also be­
gan to transform regional state capitals. Urban employment reached unprecedented levels,
trade thrived, and the economy scored rates of growth that gained Ethiopia fame as Africa’s
“economic miracle.”
Belatedly, the Afar began to benefit from the economic upsurge. A new town, Samara,
emerged on the road to Djibouti to serve as regional state capital, replacing Asaita, Ali Mi­
rah’s old seat. Several settlements on the road that served as truck stops expanded to service
the increased volume of traffic. These roads later became a bone of contention between the
Afar and their Somali neighbors and a perennial thorn in the central government’s side. In
line with the federal government’s policy of upgrading services in all regional states, Samara
acquired a university and hospital, while the regional administration strove to expand local
education, health, and transport facilities.

*
Having failed to turn peasant agriculture into the engine of economic development, the
EPRDF turned its attention to the long­neglected lowlands at the end of the twentieth cen­
tury. Three factors combined to transform the perception of the periphery from land of want
to a future cornucopia. Technological advancements to restore fertility in such terrain was
the first factor. Increased production was achieved through irrigation innovations, improved
crops, fertilizers, pesticides, and modern methodology and machinery. The second factor
was the steady increase in the price of foodstuff worldwide, the result of population growth
in densely inhabited parts of the world, which attracted capital investment for commercial
cultivation in sparsely populated areas in Africa and elsewhere. The dire need in the conti­
nent for more accessible and cheaper sources of energy was the third factor. The search for
energy sources had been going on for some time. In Ethiopia, it was initiated by the imperial
regime and concentrated in the southeastern Somali inhabited section of the periphery. It
was continued by the military regime and succeeded in discovering significant gas deposits
near the border with Somalia. The perpetual political instability and conflict in the area has
not permitted the exploitation of this resource to this day. Exploration on a much wider
scale began in the 1990s, with the participation of foreign capital from many countries—led
4. The Afar 91

by China—in parts of the lowland periphery, none of which have come to fruition to date.
The role of the lowlands in this context is highlighted by the fact that crop produce can be
converted into a source of biofuel energy.
The EPRDF’s initial statement of economic policy referred to nomadic regions as areas
with special problems, and promised to “issue policies based on studies in order to alleviate
the particular problems of these regions” (Transitional Government of Ethiopia 1991). No
studies or policies were produced, save for a statement a dozen years later, which referred to
“phased voluntary sedenterization along the banks of the major rivers as the main direction
of transforming pastoral societies into agro­pastoral systems, from mobility to sedentary
life.” The statement claimed that twenty districts of Afar were already settled (Ministry of
Federal Affairs 2002).
The initial intervention in Afar, taken in the early 1990s, was to return the land confis­
cated by the Derg from private investors, outsiders, and Afar notables to the local people,
to be distributed to the clansmen by the elders. The state­owned plantations remained under
central government control. It was not long before the combination of cheap land, water and
labor began to attract outsiders looking for land to invest in. Since it could not be bought
outright, a land renting system was used, whereby the investor negotiated with clan elders
to rent plots of land that fell within their jurisdiction to manage. Turning elders into agents
in outsourcing land put them in a position to profit personally and to prefer renting clan land
instead of encouraging their people, especially young men, to take up cultivation. Pastoral­
ists themselves preferred to collect their share of the rent paid by the investor and to continue
raising livestock. Neither the central government nor the region produced a land use policy,
and the investors were allowed to use the land and the water as they chose. Environmental
damage due to mismanagement of irrigation was one notable result.
The EPRDF also invited the NGO sector to assist the pastoralist sector to adapt to
change, provided it “worked in line with government policies.” In absence of such policies,
NGOs were left free to improvise. Innumerable NGO programs designed to modernize the
lowland economy and integrate pastoralism into the national economy followed. The pro­
grams covered the gamut of foreign assistance targets, including famine relief, health, edu­
cation, support of vulnerable groups, and conflict resolution. Theoretically these programs
were devoted to preserving pastoralism by adjusting to social change and participating in the
modern market. Success was predicated on changing the wandering lifestyle of traditional
pastoralism by anchoring men and animals to a settled location, i.e. agro­pastoralism. In
effect, pastoralists were required to change their way of life to meet the requirements of the
nation­state, not to preserve it. The NGOs were, in fact, preparing the ground for what was
soon to become official policy. The blanket failure of these programs testifies to the inability
or unwillingness of pastoralists to accept the change demanded of them.

*
It was at the turn of the century that the EPRDF began to draft ambitious plans for the Awash
Valley that would have a fateful impact on its inhabitants. In 2008, the Ministry of Water
and Energy announced the launching of two projects for sugar and ethanol production: one
at Tendaho in the Awash River Valley, another in the far southwest corner of Afar on the
Kessem River, a tributary of the Awash River. The first phase of building dams and irriga­
tion channels, as well as levelling land had already started. The Ethiopian Sugar Corporation
92 4. The Afar

(ESC) was established in 2010 to take over the projects, as part of the Growth and Trans­
formation Plan (GTP) (2010/11–2014/15). An Accelerated and Equitable Development for
the Emerging Regions program developed in line with the GTP that had a particular focus
on the lowland’s periphery.
This plan was designed on a scale that dwarfed previous development ventures. It
intended to commit over 320,000 hectares across the country to sugar production. A large
part of this expanse was represented by the Awash River Valley where cotton was to be
replaced by sugarcane. The Tendaho Dam and Sugar Project was designed to occupy nearly
all the irrigable land of the Middle and Lower Valleys for sugar production. It is envisaged
to cover a total of 85,000 hectares, 65,000 hectares for sugarcane cultivation, and the rest
for infrastructure. It will include not only the existing state­owned cotton plantations and
vast areas of grazing land but also—inconsistently, given the EPRDF’s penchant for agro­
pastoralism—the land traditionally cultivated by Afar in the river’s inland delta.
India’s Export­Import Agency invested substantially on condition that 75 percent of
the project’s inputs would be imported from India. The Indian consultancy firm that carried
out the first feasibility study described the area to be inundated by the dam, some 17,000
hectares, as “desert” of no importance to the Afar people. The loss of pastureland, it claimed,
would be more than compensated by range improvement and the services provided for the
people. To compensate the herders for this massive dispossession, it recommended that a
mere 1,800 hectares should be reserved for “pastoralist development”(Interim Report: En­
vironmental Impact Assessment (Interim Report 2005, 105). Follow­up studies warned of
potentially devastating consequences, such as the loss of 15,000 hectares of forested land
and 19,000 hectares of bush and shrub land, the consequent extinction of bird life, a malaria
epidemic, and the drying of the lakes in the Awash River inland delta.
Initially, the EPRDF vowed not to continue with the population resettlement and vil­
lagization policies of previous regimes. These were radical measures taken to deal with
overpopulation and consequent land hunger, mainly in the northern plateau, and the spatial
dispersal and isolation typical of rural settlement patterns throughout the country confounded
development efforts. Initiated by the Haile Selassie regime, resettlement and villagization
turned into a major campaign under the Derg, when a large number of people were moved,
willingly or not, from north to south, causing much suffering and loss of life. The campaign
would not have a lasting effect; most of the survivors abandoned the villages and returned
home after the fall of the Derg.
Resettlement and villagization were revived by the EPRDF, with plans to resettle 1.5
million people. Under federalism the central government has no power to move people
across regional state lines, and resettlement must take place only within regional state bound­
aries. The target this time is the sparsely inhabited lowland zone, where people will be con­
gregated in villages to free land intended for commercial cultivation by private investors.
Conversion of herders to agro­pastoralism is official state policy implemented jointly
by the Ethiopian Sugar Corporation and the regional state administration. The documents
outlining the implementation are prepared in politically correct and pastoralist friendly for­
mat, envisaging monetary compensation for expropriated land, provision of pastureland for
those who remain pastoralists, cultivable land and water for those who convert to cultiva­
tion, resettlement in villages provided with housing, health and education facilities, as well
as training for the young who will be employed in the sugar industry. Private investors are
expected to share this burden. The Afar administration asked investors to provide at least
4. The Afar 93

20 percent of leased land for this purpose. The Ethiopian Sugar Corporation was expected
to do the same, but on a much smaller scale.
State as well as private enterprise is expected to offer local people the opportunity to
engage in the production of commercial crops as sharecroppers and outgrowers. The oldest
and most successful program of this type is the Wonji project, which includes 12,000 house­
holds and 7,000 hectares in a sharecropping partnership that supplies more than one­half of
sugarcane production for the factory. The input and operational costs are provided on credit
by the state and are deducted from the final income, and irrigation is provided for free. Ob­
servers suggest that success in this case is due to the fact that most of the sharecroppers are
peasants, not former pastoralists.
The ESC support program for agro­pastoralism has earmarked some 10,000 hectares
of land in Tendaho for pastoralist resettlement, of which 2,000 hectares had been distributed
by 2016 to 2,000 families in one­hectare plots while 1,000 hectares had been distributed to
1,000 families in Kessem. Eighteen so­called villagization centers have been established,
14 in Tendaho and 4 in Kessem, totaling 18,000 households settled in individual housing.
The newly established villages will have schools, health centers, grinding mill facilities,
bakeries, mosques, and shops.
The Tendaho and Kessem projects provided compensation for the land taken based on
prior land use. The price of land used for crop production was worth double that of land
used for pasturage. The money distribution was carried out by elders and project coordina­
tors without supervision, and they received no guidance as to who should receive it or how
the money should be used. According to one report, “there are still beneficiaries who com­
plain that they have not been paid and who further note that the money disappeared between
the projects’ coordinators and the community leaders. Many of the officials interviewed
believe that even those who managed to get the payments used the money for their daily
consumption rather than investing it to augment productivity and that there was no proper
guidance from the regional government as to how to spend the money in useful ways other
than consumption. It was after recognizing these problems that the regional administra­
tion disbanded the project coordination secretariat and decided that all future compensation
disbursements would be done through the region’s Bureau of Finance and Economic Coop­
eration” (Gebrehiwot and Sintayehu 2014a, 107).
Compensation was also offered in the form of plots of land for those willing to take up
cultivation. Financial assistance was also additionally offered on an annual basis in order to
bridge the time until their first harvest. Plots were limited to one hectare, intended for cereal
production and irrigated accordingly. Infrastructure was provided free of charge, and the
hope was that they would switch to sugar cane when more irrigation is provided. Accord­
ing to ESC records in 2016, six associations with total of 1,347 Afar households had been
formed.

*
ESC’s ambitious, detailed programs and targets for agro­pastoralism in Afar were seriously
affected by the inordinate delay in the completion of the infrastructure and plant. In 2016,
several years past the planned date of completion, neither of the two projects was opera­
tional and not a single kilogram of sugar had been produced. Built by Chinese contractors,
the Kessem project was five years in the making. Planned to cultivate 25,000 hectares, it had
94 4. The Afar

3,000 hectares under cultivation by end of 2016, whose produce was sent to Matahara for
milling, or burned. Construction of the Tendaho project had begun earlier and was sched­
uled to be completed by 2013. About 50,000 hectares were planned for cultivation; with
infrastructure the total area would be 85,000 hectares. At the time, the area under irrigated
cultivation, both state and private farms, was 26,000 hectares.
The reasons given for the delay are many. “Though the task of covering such a large
area of land with sugarcane in three years is challenging, it can be made possible by effi­
cient management and perfect planning,” was the blithe conclusion of the original study by
the Indian consultancy (Draft Final Report 2005, 36). Unfortunately, neither prerequisite
materialized. The grandiose size of the Growth and Transformation Plan and the unreal­
istic targets it set, are now said to be far beyond the country’s economic, technological,
and administrative capacity to deliver. The government’s choice to entrust a major role in
planning, construction, and administration to federal and regional state agencies had neg­
ative consequences, given the lack of capacity for the task at both levels. State agencies,
ministry divisions and departments, and ministries themselves bid for contracts directly or
set up parastatal structures for this purpose. The Ministry of Defence became the biggest
local contractor to use state assets. Soon after coming to power, the original parties that
formed the EPRDF set up their own business ventures, which flourished on state contracts,
and gradually expanded into production, transportation, and construction. The practice was
imitated by political parties that appeared afterwards at the regional level as affiliates of the
EPRDF. Obviously well placed to win state contracts, the parties were able to get unsecured
bank loans. The ESC was staffed with inexperienced young graduates, and senior posts were
filled with persons with political connections who were frequently recycled. The Kessem
Project had four managers in five years.
The result was a feeding frenzy involving Ethiopian state and private capital, as well
as foreign state and private counterparts. Eleven Indian contractors were involved in Ten­
daho. Chinese contractors were brought in to finish Kessem, after a company owned by
the Ethiopian Ministry of Defence walked out of the project, without returning the funds
received or incurring any liability, legal or financial. Within a few years the Ethiopian “mir­
acle” had produced a new hierarchy of power and privilege spawned by the “developmental
state.” It also produced corruption on a monumental scale, which did more than anything
else to dim the luster of the “miracle” and peoples’ confidence in the EPRDF regime. As
an editorial in a local paper noted, “the construction of around ten sugar factories […] is
saddled by a plethora of shortcomings that have dented the government’s credibility in the
eyes of the public” (Reporter, 16 July 2017).

*
The weight of the argument for agro­pastoralism rests on the expected conversion of wander­
ing herders to sedentary farmers. This scheme has yet to be tested in Afar and Ethiopia, but
there is considerable experience in other areas of the Horn, particularly Sudan and Kenya,
showing strong pastoralist reluctance to comply. Instead, wherever possible, they far pre­
ferred to sell or rent land allocated to them for cultivation to others, quite often to outsiders.
Needless to say, this was the experience in Afar under the imperial and military regimes.
“Sedentarization though impoverization” is a trend noted elsewhere in the Horn. As
the mobility of the herds is increasingly constrained, their habitat is progressively degraded,
4. The Afar 95

the climate turns drier, and the traditional strategies of coping with successive crisis are ex­
hausted, herdless pastoralists are compelled to take up cultivation wherever possible. Others
are forced out of the system and into the peri­urban periphery to take menial jobs, loosening
ties to their clan kinsmen.
The staple argument in favor of large­scale land cultivation in Ethiopia is the creation
of employment for local people. At full capacity, the projects in Afar plan to employ more
than 100,000 people in plantations and factories. The bulk of these jobs are seasonal and
the lowest paid, as well as bereft of any form of security. Historically, these jobs have been
taken by impoverished peasants who migrate seasonally from the highland to the valley.
Afar participation has been minimal and mainly as plantation guards; in 2016 guards worked
eight­hour shifts for 32 birr (USD 1.50). It is expected that this will change as young Afar
acquire education and relevant skills.
Agro­pastoralism claims to be a replacement for pastoralism, but the economic ratio­
nale of this policy is far from proven. Recent studies contradictory to this claim cite, among
other reasons, the disappearance of pastureland designated for agro­pastoralism as nearly all
the land has been earmarked for cultivation. Furthermore, agro­pastoralism puts a high labor
requirement on households as they then have to divide labor between cultivation at home
and care of livestock away from home. What is obvious already is the rapid decline and
ultimate disappearance of mobile pastoralism, for the very simple reason that mobility is no
longer possible. “From our interviews with regional officials, the overriding consensus was
that pastoralism has reached a dead end when it comes to sustaining the economic livelihood
of the communities,” is a recent appraisal (Gebrehiwot and Sintayehu 2014b, 105).
Several studies of the ongoing process in the Awash Valley conclude that “sedentary
agro­pastoralism has not been able to provide food security for humans and animals, and thus
continued the reduction of livestock through compromising mobility” (Botterli 2015, 21).
Others maintain that “pastoral livestock husbandry is more profitable than cotton farming.”
The same can be said for sugar; livestock remains the best, if not the only, option under these
ecological conditions (Behnke and Kerven 2013, 33). As in the 1970s and 1980s, drought
induced famine threatened 600,000 people in Afar in 2013. Whatever the final outcome of
the latest massive intervention in the Awash River Valley will be, it has initiated a process
of economic and social transformation that leaves the future of the Afar people uncertain.
Pastoralism is more than an economic production system. It is a way of life that en­
compasses a system of social and political organization and a culture woven together since
time immemorial. It is an accomplishment that guarantees the integrity, coherence and co­
hesiveness of pastoralist society and defines its identity, all of which are threatened when
mobile pastoralism, the foundation of this way of life, is no longer viable, and a process of
adaptation to a sedentary existence is the only option. These consequences are even more
potent when the option is dictated by external actors and the pace of adaptation is forced to
meet their goals.
The loss of autonomy is the context in which this forced process unfolds, impacting
every aspect of society, starting with the clan, the living cell of pastoralist society. It im­
mediately affected the clan structure by undermining the decision­making process and the
status of traditional authority. Less obvious is the impact of localized interventions on the
clan­based social fabric of Afar society. One report describes the model of plot distribu­
tion devised by the regional government, which appears designed to dilute clan claims to
land by assigning neighboring plots to members of different clans. Accordingly, each plot
96 4. The Afar

is worked individually by its owner, instead of one person assigned by the clan to work on
several adjoining plots belonging to members of the clan. Plots belonging to members of
the same clans are often located far apart from each other, making it hard for clan members
to help each other.
Demographic change is a noted trend with potential consequences on Afar ethnic iden­
tity. The total population of the region is currently estimated at 1.5 million of which some 10
percent is not indigenous. The non­Afar are concentrated in the small towns that have sprung
up in the region. The plan envisages a workforce of 100,000 at full capacity, signaling a size­
able increase in non­Afar employment in the sugar industry. The regional administration is
another sector with a significant number of non­Afar employees, estimated at over 45 per­
cent. If only because they do not speak Afar, the regional government opted to use Amharic
as the working language. Rising concern for the survival of the Afar language prompted the
government to prepare to make Afar the language of administration. As part of it, non­Afar
civil servants are required to attend Afar language lessons for one hour daily.

4.1 Afar Response

Because of its enormity and hurried pace, the Afar experience provides a particularly striking
illustration of state­imposed transformation and the absence of local autonomy and agency.
While it is true that change is a negotiated political process involving various agents with
varied access to power, including local agents, it is also true that their situation is highly
asymmetrical given the loss of local autonomy. It is equally true that the situation itself
is subject to change, as shown in the case of the three regime changes in Ethiopia, and
that change affects local response and agency. The consequences of regime change are
particularly significant in the center­periphery context because regime change has a direct
effect on the composition of the local elite and, therefore, the representation of the periphery
at the center. A variable factor that lays outside the center­periphery binary relationship yet
still impacts it is the interaction among groups within the periphery, a particularly heavy
factor in this case. The following pages will describe the Afar position in the negotiation
process and their response to the transformation of their way of life.
Afar history is a tale of repelling incursions into their homeland by outsiders to preserve
an untrammeled autonomy. The familiar description “inhospitable” in their case applies both
to the landscape and to the fearsome reputation of the people. The reputation was sealed in
1875 when Werner Munzinger, a Swiss adventurer and the first white man to venture into
the region was killed along with his entire escort. Ethiopia’s royal chronicles going back
to the fourteenth century record the unsuccessful attempts of Abyssinian rulers to subjugate
these people. Although they came under Ethiopian suzerainty at the turn of the nineteenth
century, no state official entered their homeland until 1945. At this time, an Ethiopian force
was sent to Aussa to dethrone an obstreperous sultan and replace him with his nephew Ali
Mirah, who enjoyed official favor. The nephew was left to exercise traditional authority of
the post with minimum interference from Addis Ababa. The Ethiopian governor of the Afar
district resided on the heights above in Wollo province, and few highlanders ventured into
the lowland below. It was not until the appearance of the sugar cane plantations on the Upper
Valley in mid­twentieth century that the Afar directly confronted the world outside.
This new development did not directly inconvenience the Afar for they held no land in
the Upper Valley. The displacement of the Karrayu and Gilo peoples saw them forced to the
4. The Afar 97

edge of the escarpment in the vicinity of the Awash National Park, where they clashed with
the Afar who consider the park their own grazing ground.
Historically, the Afar who live on and near the escarpment have had a complex rela­
tionship with their highland neighbors. The relationship was closer in the north where Afar
districts were incorporated in the provincial administration of Tigray. The salt trade in which
both Afar and Tigray were involved strengthened their relationship. In their frequent clashes
with the imperial government, Tigray rebels frequently sought refuge in the Afar lowlands,
a tradition continued by the TPLF in the 1970s and 1980s. Afar relations with Amhara and
Oromo peasants further south were permanently troubled with frequent clashes over land.
Land shortage forced highlanders to cultivate land lower on the escarpment flanks, where
they confronted Afar herders moving higher in search of pasture. Drought frequently added
further strain on the relationship and provoked violence.
Regional state borders drawn under the federal system sought to prevent conflict of this
sort, yet often provoked it, with both sides claiming the borderlands. There have been many
clashes on the escarpment border since 1991. The most dramatic occurred in November 2002
when thirty Afar women on their way to market were killed. A study conducted jointly by
Amhara and Afar regional governments and based on official police figures reported that
174 people were killed and 75 wounded between 1995 and 2003.
As the cotton plantations began to transform the landscape in the Middle Valley, push­
ing herders away from the Awash River banks, the peoples’ response was bewilderment;
they “couldn’t understand why” as one song put it. No information or explanation was
provided by the AVA, and the traditional leaders were equally perplexed. The example of
acquiescence given by Sultan Ali Mirah and elders of his clan was instructive, and no major
incidents of violence are recorded for that period, other than clashes between herders whose
livestock overrun plantation grounds and guards hired to prevent just that.

*
Afar militancy was focused on containing the Issa Somali expansionist pressure westwards
in the Afar River Valley. This conflict is the most serious ongoing dispute in the region, with
cross­border linkages in Djibouti, Somaliland, and Somalia that concern national security
and, consequently, the federal government (Markakis 2011, 301 ff.). “An everlasting ani­
mosity,” as a painstaking study of it describes it (Yasin 2010, 2), it has a history of gradual
escalation and has proved intractable despite persistent efforts at various levels to resolve
it. The two have fought for control of a vast rangeland area stretching from the northern
foothills of the southern plateau to the Awash River Valley a long time. “War with Afar is
fourteen generations old,” the Issa say.
Its recorded history goes back over a century, when the battlefront was the Erer River
Valley north of Dire Dawa in Ethiopia and west of Tadjura Bay in Djibouti. In the second
half of the twentieth century, the Afar and Issa fought a series of bloody battles for control
of this area. A battle at Mefayidela in the Alighedi Plain on July 16, 1963, ended with
481 Afar killed and 25,000 of their cattle looted. Seriously weakened, the Afar gradually
ceded territory. Weima (Afar) clans were forced to evacuate Erer, Afdem, Mulu, Hurso, and
Mieso and move into the Middle Awash Valley, where other Afar jokingly referred to them as
refugees. A large clan, the Issa Somali inhabit the Shinile Zone in the Somali regional state
adjacent to Zone 3 of the Afar regional state in the Middle Valley. The Issa share the territory
98 4. The Afar

of Djibouti with Afar clans, where they have monopolized state power since independence,
largely excluding the Afar. This conflict has scarred the collective Afar psyche. They have
not forgotten or forgiven, nor have they lost hope of recovering the lost land.
Until recently, the conflict was over pasture, water, and access routes, a purely pastoral­
ist confrontation. Unlike the introverted nature of the Afar, the Somali are highly mobile
nomadic herders, who range widely over the Horn, constantly shifting territory in search of
green pasture. Also unlike the Afar, they are active in local trade, exchanging livestock prod­
ucts for grain with peasant neighbors. In the past, they were engaged in the long­distance
trade of luxury goods, such as ivory, animal skins, myrrh and frankincense, civet oil, and
ostrich feathers. They were actively involved in the caravan trade that linked the hinterland
of the Horn with the towns on the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean, as transporters, guides,
and guards. More recently, they have become major exporters of livestock through Djibouti
and Somaliland to the Arab Gulf.
The imperial state kept a low profile in the pastoralist zone, leaving the people to man­
age their own affairs, and to settle disputes among themselves in the traditional manner. The
usual form of intervention was to threaten, or indeed to use force to disarm the belligerents.
The furthest the imperial regime went to manage the Afar­Issa dispute was to redraw dis­
trict boundaries in order to separate them and temporarily station soldiers there to enforce
them. It was only when state security was threatened—when violence spilled across inter­
national borders, or blocked transport links—that the state intervened. For example, when
Issa warriors attacked a train and killed a Frenchman in August 1963, units of the Imperial
Bodyguard carried out a massacre of people in Ayisha, the district capital.
External factors intervened to tilt the balance against the Afar. The construction of the
Djibouti­Addis Ababa railway line that was completed in 1917 crosses the Erer River Valley.
Begun in Djibouti by the French, it employed Issa clansmen as transporters, workers, and
guards, who later settled in the lowland region crossed by the railway that is now Shinille
zone, the Issa homeland. Two decades later, the Italians came and recruited large numbers
of Somali askaris from Italian Somalia for the 1936 invasion of Ethiopia. The Issa fought
for the Italians and received arms and training in return, as well as a lucrative market for
their animals. They used the arms to evict the Afar from the Erer River Valley and gain
access into the Alighedi plain for their expanding herds. The Italians considered the Somali
as allies, while the Afar, who fought on the Ethiopian side, suffered retaliation.
With the expulsion of the Italians in 1941, the entire southeast region of Ethiopia came
under British control. It ended in 1944, but a belt of land alongside the railway line to
Djibouti, called the Reserved Area, remained under the British until 1948. Taking advantage
of British protection, the Ishaaq clans from Somaliland moved en masse into the Jijiga Plain
inside the Somali inhabited region of Ethiopia, creating overstocking and overgrazing that
put pressure on clans to the north, including the Issa, to move westwards.
The focus of Afar militancy shifted as an emerging generation of educated youth was
drawn into the radical current created by the student movement in Ethiopia to oppose the im­
perial regime. Afar students in Addis Ababa, Djibouti, Cairo and Europe debated the future
of their nation and began to organize. An Afar Rassemblement Movement was founded in
1972 by students from Djibouti. A joint meeting held in Berlin in 1974 resulted in the strate­
gic formation of separate organizations to represent the Afar in Djibouti and Ethiopia, and
an Afar National Liberation Movement (ANLM) was founded a year later in Addis Ababa.
The division along state lines became a political imperative for the Afar, who realized that
4. The Afar 99

any expression of pan­Afar nationalism, implying a quest for independence, would face op­
position by every state in the Horn and would likely be drowned in blood. Afar politicians
in Djibouti and Ethiopia knew better than to arouse suspicion on that score.
The nationalization of land in 1975 by the Derg, the show of resistance by Sultan Ali
Mirah, and the founding of the Afar Liberation Front marked a turning point in Afar political
posture. Initially, the ANLM and the ALF collaborated in preparations for an armed strug­
gle and sought assistance from the Eritrean Liberation Front and the Siad Barre regime in
Mogadishu. It was not long before the ANLM radicals fell out with the ALF, led by Ali Mi­
rah’s sons, and both organizations became inactive. In 1976, the Derg issued its Programme
of the National Democratic Revolution, promising equal treatment for all nationalities and
cultures in socialist Ethiopia. Having dismissed traditional authorities throughout the pe­
riphery as “feudal remnants,” the regime proceeded to raise its own corps of peripheral elite
by recruiting lowlanders into a corps of cadres that comprised its political and administra­
tive support. A limited number of lowlanders were trained and then assigned to political and
administrative posts in the lowlands.
Leading ANLM members were tempted by the promise of the program and travelled
to Ethiopia to meet Derg representatives. Several meetings were held in Afar to negoti­
ate terms, to which elders were invited. Once more, the Afar asked for all their kinsmen,
including those in Eritrea, to be united in one province within Ethiopia and to be adminis­
tered by their own people. The first request was rejected, and the Afar remained divided in
three provinces: Eritrea, Tigray, and Wollo. The second was accepted, and several ANLM
members were appointed to administrative and political posts in the Afar region. Upon
meeting Yusuf Mohammed Gas, the newly appointed head political commissar in Asab, the
Derg leader Mengistu Haile Mariam reportedly said: “I found the man who’ll work for us.”
A couple of hundred Afar joined the Working People’s Party of Ethiopia (WPPE) when it
appeared in 1984. In his speech to the founding congress of WPPE, the regime’s leader,
Mengistu Haile Mariam, declared: “Regional autonomy is the practical solution to the prob­
lem, in view of the objective conditions of our country.”
The deterioration in the relationship between the regimes in Addis Ababa and Mo­
gadishu, which both avowed Marxist Leninist regimes, led to the Somali invasion of Ethiopia
and had a serious impact on the Afar­Issa struggle. In the early 1970s, Mogadishu trained
a guerrilla force to prepare the ground for the invasion of Ethiopia. The Western Somalia
Liberation Front (WSLF) had several divisions, one of which was intended to occupy and
annex Djibouti and was composed mainly of Issa clansmen. The Djibouti part of the plan
was abandoned, but when the invasion of Ethiopia came in 1977, the Issa, well­armed and
well­trained, once again pressed their advantage to push the Afar farther to the west.
The Ethiopian counterattack and expulsion of the Somali forces the following year was
enthusiastically supported by the Afar but proved only a temporary setback for the Issa, who
were later to return to the vicinity of the road to Djibouti. In the 1970s, when the nationalist
revolution in Eritrea cast a shadow on the future of the Assab port, Ethiopia’s only outlet to
the sea, the military regime constructed a road to Djibouti as an alternative. Several of the
construction camps along the road soon evolved into hamlets living off the traffic, and Issa
clansmen initially employed by the German construction company settled in two of these,
Gadamaitu and Adaitu. Here they became involved in the truck­stop service trade, also in
smuggling goods across the border from Djibouti and Somalia, as well as raising livestock.
100 4. The Afar

Few Afar settled in these hamlets, and they departed when hostilities between the two groups
broke out.
The EPRDF came to power well prepared with plans to transform both state and society
in highland Ethiopia, and wasted no time in implementing them. By contrast, it had no
knowledge or experience of the lowlands, and had made no provision in its plans for their
unique character. The regime’s leader, Meles Zenawi, later admitted: “These are clan­based
societies, unlike our own peasantry, and we didn’t know if our political experience suited
them.”1 Nevertheless, later on, the regime went on to impose the same plans on lowland
society with little concession for its distinctiveness.
Afar was not a blind spot for the TPLF leadership. Northern Afar had been adminis­
tered by Tigray and, while still fighting the Derg, the TPLF had recognized the Afar who
lived in Tigray as one of the five nationalities in the province and even tried to recruit them
in its guerrilla army. The Afar chiefs opposed this, as well as TPLF attempts to set up bases
in northern Afar. In 1978, a clash with TPLF units in the region resulted in heavy Afar
casualties and further strained the relationship. Eventually, Afar resistance to highlander in­
trusion into their homeland brought together a band of warriors that included former ANLM
members, who called themselves Ugogomo, meaning “revolution.” They led a shadowy ex­
istence in the depths of the Afar Depression, and menaced any and all intruders. Ugogomo
gained notoriety in later years by kidnapping foreigners for ransom and embarrassing the
EPRDF regime in Addis Ababa. Despite many efforts, the regime has been unable to elim­
inate them to this day.
The ANLM leaders and Derg collaborators were rounded up in 1991 and spent the
decade in prison. After release, several were appointed to posts in the Afar regional state
administration. Mohamood Gas escaped abroad to organize a rebel faction named the Afar
Revolutionary Democratic United Front (ARDUF), which claimed to represent Ugogomo.
The appearance of TPLF units in Afar was initially opposed by the ALF, and in September
1991 the two clashed in Gewane in a battle that lasted four days and left hundreds of Afar
dead and wounded. This signaled the beginning of the political decline of the Ali Mirah
family, which made things worse when it demanded the return of nationalized land that had
been distributed by the Derg to local people. Hanfare Ali Mirah’s term in office lasted only
a few months; the ALF split and disintegrated amidst family quarrels. A miffed Ali Mirah
took himself to Saudi Arabia once more. He returned after the Ethiopia­Eritrea war broke
out in 1998 to attack Eritrea on television and was rewarded with a grant of land in Aussa
and the aforementioned villa in Addis Ababa.
In the early 1990s, EPRDF watched Afar political factions compete for local power, a
forbearance it maintained elsewhere in the lowland zone while it secured political control
of the highlands. In the meantime, the loss of northernmost Afar to Eritrea went almost
unnoticed. No Afar voice spoke out against the issue when it was discussed and settled in the
July 1991 conference in Addis Ababa or when Eritrea became formally independent in 1994.
The Afar People’s Democratic Organisation (APDO) was cobbled together in 1995 and won
elections that year. The election was a farce that even the government press could not take
seriously. In Asaita, the regional capital, one newspaper reported, “voters had virtually no
idea how to cast ballots, election officials in the area were either just as ignorant or not willing
to explain the process, ten to twelve year old teenagers were voting, and officials harassed

1 Author interview with Bitew Belay, TPLF Central Committee member, Addis Ababa, April 2, 2007.
4. The Afar 101

press people when asked for an explanation” (Ethiopian Herald, June 19, 1995). The APDO
was renamed the Afar National Democratic Party (ANDP) and won every electoral contest
held subsequently. It rules the Afar regional state to this day.
The Afar­Issa confrontation escalated steadily in the years that followed, with a number
of factors adding to its complexity in the 1990s. The restructuring of the Ethiopian state un­
der federalism unwittingly introduced two contentious points. Firstly, the federal structure
of the state requires fixed, recognized boundaries that separate its constituent units. Since the
territorial boundaries between states, once drawn, will be definitive and final, it is crucial
for the parties involved to secure as generous a settlement as possible. This strategy in­
hibits compromise and makes negotiations difficult. Secondly, decentralization of the state
administration has aggravated local conflict because it provides resources associated with
local administrative status. Because of materials and social resources allocated to a woreda
(district) and the right to control its own budget, local governments aggressively competed
to achieve the woreda status.
The third factor is the loss of Assab as a result of the Ethiopian­Eritrean War and the
consequent rise in importance of the road connecting to Djibouti that crosses the Awash
Valley. After 1998, traffic on the road multiplied, the truck­stop hamlets became hives of
activity that attracted highlanders, and the road emerged as a new and valuable source of
wealth in the midst of a deprived region. Given the collapse of state control on the borders
between Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somaliland, and Somalia, contraband trade acquired new di­
mensions, and a veritable “common market” emerged throughout this part of the Ethiopian
periphery. Not surprisingly, Somali, and especially Issa, pursued this trade, moving freely
among their own kin throughout the region. More Somali hamlets appeared on the road to
function as staging posts for the contraband trade. The Afar remained aloof and gained no
benefit from these activities.
The civil war in Djibouti in the early 1990s was another contributing factor. On one
level, the war was an extension of the struggle in Ethiopia—the steady retreat of the Afar
westwards in the face of Issa pressure. On another level, it was a struggle between Afar
and Issa urban elites in Djibouti for access to state power. The conflict in Djibouti raised
tensions across the border and made the mini­state a reference point for conspiracy theories
in the Afar­Issa dispute within Ethiopia, each side claiming the other received weapons and
manpower from their kinsmen in Djibouti. The end of this forceful assertion of Afar political
militancy in Djibouti was an object lesson for them. It was strongly opposed by Ethiopia,
Eritrea, and warlords in Somalia, as well as France, which committed soldiers to save the
Issa regime from collapse. In the end, the Afar insurgent movement, FRUD, split, and
another faction abandoned the struggle when its leaders negotiated with the Issa regime for
appointment to government posts.
The Ethiopian­Eritrean War (1998–2001) was fought partly in northern Afar and caused
havoc among the population who had to abandon their land and move south with their ani­
mals, increasing the burden on already congested and desiccated pasturelands. Thousands of
Afar from Eritrea sought refuge among their kinsmen in Ethiopia, and two groups emerged
to represent the grievances of the Afar in Eritrea—the Red Sea Afar Democratic Organisa­
tion and the Afar Liberation Democratic Movement in Eritrea. The relationship of the Afar
with the Eritrean nationalists was spoiled long before they came to power as a result of the
EPLF’s attempts to create bases in the northernmost Afar lowland and to recruit local youth
for its guerrilla army. After coming to power, the EPLF forcefully disarmed the Afar and
102 4. The Afar

forced them to join the National Service scheme that made conscription indefinite. The fact
that women were subject to conscription further alienated this community. Above all, the
Afar in Eritrea resented the nationalist regime’s policy of national integration, which aimed
to eliminate ethnic distinctions in order to produce a homogeneous Eritrean national identity.
This policy is the opposite of the one implemented in Ethiopia that has gained Afar cultural
recognition and a degree of local autonomy.
In 2000, Saudi Arabia imposed a ban on animal imports from the Horn, the second one
in recent years, due to the outbreak of Rift Valley fever. The ban hit the Issa particularly hard,
because they are major exporters of sheep and goats to the Saudi Arabian market. It caused
overstocking and overgrazing in Shinile zone, and pushed Issa herders to range deeper into
Afar territory towards the Awash River where they met an increasingly hostile reception
from the Afar.
Violence spilled onto the Addis Ababa Djibouti road, making travel on it dangerous.
Afar stayed away from Issa hamlets; even driving through was risky. Provoked by the mur­
der of a popular Afar politician and member of the federal legislature in May 2000, the Afar
carried out a massacre in Somali hamlets and the road was closed. In the following four
months, some fifty Issa deaths were recorded by the Shinile zone administration. Two years
later, an Afar ambush killed a dozen Issa. The road was closed on several occasions, and
at least one lorry driver was killed, prompting his colleagues to stage a strike that caused a
shortage of fuel in Addis Ababa.
The loss of Assab Port had made the railway and road to Djibouti virtual lifelines for
Ethiopia, therefore the federal government became involved in the effort to resolve the Afar­
Issa conflict. A newly formed Ministry of Federal Affairs was made responsible, but the
Prime Minister’s Office took the initiative. The EPRDF’s approach to conflict management
in ethnic disputes generally relied on consultation, negotiation, and persuasion. Having
sidelined the traditional leadership, the federal government depended on the new political
leadership in the regional states to take the initiative. The Somali and Afar regional adminis­
trations came under increasing pressure from the federal government to reach an agreement
on the issues that divided them and to put an end to violence.
This approach made little progress; both sides became even more unwavering in their
respective positions. A key issue was the boundary between the two regions that had not yet
been adequately demarcated. Basing their case on history and the right of prior possession,
the Afar claimed the return of territory up to Erer Valley and jurisdiction over all settlements
on the road to Djibouti. The Somali countered with the right of actual possession of the land
they now occupy and a demand for a referendum in the roadside settlements, in the obvious
expectation that they would become part of their region. They had already moved to preempt
the issue by claiming administrative jurisdiction of these towns by integrating them into the
Shinile Zone, although the towns lay within the Afar­controlled Zone 3.
The regime’s next move was to order the formation of “integrated peace committees”
with administrators and elders from both sides, as well as military and security officials
to mediate local conflicts and adjudicate disputes in order to avoid clashes. It was agreed
that both Afar and Issa would have access to the Alighedi Plain until a definitive border
demarcation was made. Innumerable meetings followed without result. The Afar demanded
the return of lost territory and a delineated border. “When two people fight, they have to be
separated before they reconcile,” they said. They wanted the federal government to draw
the boundary so that it would have the responsibility of enforcing it. Basing their claim
4. The Afar 103

on current political practice, the Somali wanted a referendum to decide the status of the
contested territory, a method that was widely used to determine the border between Somali
and Oromo regional states.
The federal government faced a political dilemma. A return to the territorial status quo
ante would alienate the Somali, while a referendum would further upset the Afar. And there
the matter rested. As clashes continued, the federal government resorted to familiar tactics
by bringing in the army to keep the road clear and to stamp out the contraband trade by
raiding the settlements, arresting smugglers, and confiscating goods and vehicles. The army
also burned a couple of settlements and generally disrupted the local economy founded on
smuggling. Though the Issa suffered more, the Afar were not spared; eighteen of them were
killed by soldiers in August 2008. Finally, the federal government sought to solve the prob­
lem with a dictate. It put the towns on the road under Afar jurisdiction and administration
while stipulating that the Somali residents are recognized as an ethnic group and accorded
certain rights as provided in the Constitution. Whether this plan succeeds remains yet to be
seen.

*
The huge expansion of sugar production in the Middle and Lower Valleys began in the first
half of the 2000s with the commissioning of feasibility studies that were completed in 2005.
In 2008, the Ministry of Water and Energy announced that they were breaking ground on
projects in Tendaho and Kessem that was then taken over by the newly­founded Ethiopian
Sugar Corporation in 2010. While it is not clear whether the Afar administration was con­
sulted at the outset, there is no doubt that the people in the Valley were unaware of the
plans until the second half of the decade. As the construction process proceeded, the fed­
eral and regional governments undertook a public relations campaign to convince the Afar
of the benefits they stood to gain directly from the sugar industry and from conversion to
agro­pastoralism.
Little was said publicly about popular opinion, but the large number of meetings that
were held and the multiple visits to the region by the regime leader, Meles Zenawi, to ad­
dress the meetings indicates a less than enthusiastic attitude among the people. The plan
was promoted by the Afar ruling party whose leadership and cadre had a great deal to gain
from it since it involved a huge investment in the region from which the peripheral elite
were certain to appropriate a share as well as administrative posts. Pressure for posts in the
ESC was almost immediately exerted, and the Afar were appointed to several senior posts,
including deputy CEO of the ESC. Others made it to similar positions in the federal state ad­
ministration. The former leader of ARDUF, Mohamood Gas, made peace with the EPRDF
and returned to Ethiopia to become vice minister of youth and sports.
The support of the elders was critical for it would determine the reaction of the rest
of the population. Naturally the elders were dubious about the news from Addis Ababa,
having heard similar promises from previous regimes. They complained of having been ig­
nored by the EPRF and sidelined in the regional administration by the politicians. Redress
was promised, and a council of elders was attached in an advisory capacity to every level of
the regional administrative hierarchy, a model applied gradually to every lowland regional
state. The Afar elders demanded compensation for land taken by the sugarcane plantations,
and the state allocated 241 million birr for this purpose. Entrusted to the Tendaho­Kessem
104 4. The Afar

Coordination Secretariat for distribution, “the money disappeared between project’s coordi­
nators and the community elders” (Gebrehiwot and Sintayehu 2014a, 107). The Secretariat
was disbanded and the task was assigned to a regional bureau.

4.2 Conclusion

For over a century since it was incorporated into the state, the lowland periphery of Ethiopia
was regarded as a buffer zone between the highland kingdom with its Christian core and
its Muslim neighbors. This role did not require its integration into the highland economy
and society, and the state did not intrude into the lives of the people there beyond the claim
of a vague suzerainty. As a result, lowland society remained distant and aloof from the
profound transformations—economic, social and political—that prepared the ground for the
dramatic initiatives pursued by the state in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The Afar
experience is a partial exception in that it was the subject of early state initiatives before the
era of globalization.
In the global economy in which Ethiopia has recently placed itself, there is literally no
space for the traditional pastoralist mode of existence. It has survived to this day because the
country itself is underdeveloped and stands near to bottom of the world development scale.
Left to itself, the state would not have been able to take significant initiatives in nation­
state building or development, especially in the lowland zone. A globalized economy has
made it possible by providing the required resources in a formidable combination of external
and internal forces—funds and technology for the economy as well as political and military
support for the state.
The integrity of Afar society, culture, and identity are facing an existential challenge.
Although the typical Afar reaction in the past was forceful and largely effective, the Afar
reaction to the latest challenge is divided and weakened as a result. The conflicting opinions
stem from the appearance of Western­educated Afar, who have no role in traditional society,
and the rise of this group to power under federalism, yet another combination of external
and internal factors.
Federalism guarantees autonomy that allows space for the exercise of local agency. In
this case, local agency is practiced by a small elite section of the population to neutralize the
majority of the Afar people who, at the very least, would have preferred a less cataclysmic
approach to development, one that did not involve the loss of their land and dislocation
of their society. It can be rightfully argued that the resources of Afar land belong to the
Ethiopian nation and the state has the right to make use of them. It is also argued that the
Afar way of life would be swept away by globalization anyway, regardless of state action.
Whatever the merits of these arguments, it remains true that the fate of the Afar will be
decided not by negotiation but through force majeure. “We were unwilling to move because
we were comfortable where we lived,” one Afar remarked. “The government forced us to
move” (cited in Botterli 2015, 22).
The same process of indigenous dispossession in the production and trade of salt is tak­
ing place in northern Afar. Once an Afar monopoly exported to the plateau, the exploitation
of this essential commodity is now dominated by highlanders associated with the EPRDF.
According to a recent study, while Afar are still involved their share is steadily decreas­
ing, and the option of livelihood diversification this sector might have offered is closed.
The study concludes that “instead of economic empowerment, what can be observed in the
4. The Afar 105

largely pastoralist peripheral areas is rather a growing economic insecurity and a threatened
livelihood. Powerful farming neighbors and a state with an agrarian bias have encroached
onto the rangeland, putting the viability of pastoralism into question. This continuity of
center­periphery relations of dominance threatens to undermine the moral and political le­
gitimacy of the federation” (Feyissa 2011, 20).
Chapter 5
Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region
Günther Schlee

With a focus on the region between the Blue Nile and the Sobat, located in Sudan, South Su­
dan, and Ethiopia, this paper engages with cross­border interactions and cross­border com­
parisons following the separation of South Sudan from Sudan in 2011.1 This division is
reflected in some of the current problems of both South Sudan and Sudan, including the
blocking of nomadic routes, redefinition of citizenship, and expulsions. Within the more
narrowly defined resulting “states” in both Sudan and South Sudan, access to citizenship
and concomitant entitlements are not granted equally to the entire population, even after the
aforementioned processes of exclusion. Since late 2013, South Sudan has been in a state
of intermittent civil war. Revolution broke out in Sudan in December 2018, leading to the
overthrow of President Al­Bashir in April 2019. Rival forces appropriated the revolutionary
process, spawning much violence and culminating in a massacre of peaceful demonstrators
in June 2019. In August of that year, an interim government that combined military leaders
and leaders of the civilian opposition was formed. In this situation, questions like what and
who the state is, whom it represents, who belongs to the nation and who to the state, what
kind of nation­state is now in the process of forming, and which rights such a formation
entails, are far from having clear answers. There is neither agreement on the empirical level
(what is going on) nor on the normative level (what is to be done about it).
Like all human institutions, the nation­state is not a thing but a way to speak and a way
to act that works as long as it is shared by many people. What is its status in Sudan and South
Sudan? Does it grant uniform citizenship (“universal citizenship”) to all its members? Is it
just a self­representation addressed at outsiders (like Europeans and North Americans)? Is
it an ideal in the head of activists and members of the opposition? Is it contested by people
who claim membership or by people who want to keep others out?
Glances across the borders into neighboring areas of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda
show that some of these questions loom large much beyond the confines of Sudan and South
Sudan. The question raised in the introduction to this volume of whether the nation­state is
the right model for the region can be answered in the negative if we take “model” to mean
a descriptive model, a model of the nation­state as it is, putting aside the question whether
it is a suitable model for the nation­state, as it ought to be. The political forces at work
are not based on identification with the “nation.” Whether this will change in Sudan as a
result of the recent regime change remains to be seen. This chapter examines which other
identifications are at work in current societal and political changes in the region.

1 Fekadu Adugna, Carol Berger, Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, Ameyu Godesso Roro, Katrin Seidel, Timm Sureau, and

John Young have made substantial comments on earlier versions of this chapter and I am greatly indebted to them.
108 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

5.1 The “Nation”­State: Questions of Identity and Cohesion

All three of the largest countries comprising the Horn of Africa have split into two or more
parts. There has been the split between Ethiopia and Eritrea (1991), the de facto separation
of Somaliland from the fragmented south of Somalia (1991), and most recently between
Sudan and South Sudan (2011). This contrasts to the rest of Africa, which has honored the
policy of the African Union, formerly the Organization of African Unity, that the boundaries
of African states, inherited from the colonies which preceded them, should not be changed.2
Focusing on the latest split, that between Sudan and South Sudan, this chapter seeks to
explain this tendency toward fission in terms of the insufficient power of integration or in­
sufficient will. It will explore who the state is, with whom the state identifies as a collective
actor or a composite of heterogeneous actors, and which segments of the population identify
with the state.
Discourses about the state in Africa show the dominance of the modern European
nation­state model.3 This model is not only used on the level of the “nation”­states, by
unionists and separatists alike. In many places, the administrative boundaries at all levels
below that of the “nation” or state have been drawn to create miniature versions of European
nation­states by following linguistic or ethnic lines. Africans have not been the only ones
to do this. Often, the process had already begun during the colonial period. For the case of
northern Kenya we have shown (e.g. Schlee and Shongolo 2012, 115) how miniature ver­
sions of “nation”­states have won the day even against economic and ecological imperatives.
The drive to create “order” by dividing and subdividing the open range into tribal districts
and tribal grazing grounds has done much harm to the pastoral economy by depriving it of
some of its flexibility to respond to erratic rainfalls and the uneven distribution of pasture.4
Apart from a rather mechanical diffusion of inappropriate models, a degree of ratio­
nality may also have been involved in the decision to apply European nation­state models.
These divisions might have made control easier, by reducing complexity and introducing
ways of perception that fit the state, similar to what Scott (1998) describes in “Seeing like
a State.” The ongoing processes of subdivision in recent years can often be explained as
the result of a combination of government and local “elite” interests. The government buys
acceptance from local “elites” by creating new districts so that there are new jobs, but the
bill for these proliferating bureaucracies is paid by the taxpayer.
Founded in July 2011, South Sudan can be seen as the most recent replication of the
European nation­state model, which aims at either giving a territory to a nation that existed
before in the framework of some larger entity (the Wilson doctrine) or creating a nation for
a territory that previously had a heterogeneous population but had not perceived itself as a
nation (nation building). Either way, it is about building congruence between two entities:
a nation and a territory. We have learned to accept this congruence as normal, and non­
congruence as somehow deviating from the norm. But on closer inspection, territory, which
refers to a surface area and is rather a material, and nation, which is a semiotic construct
about a collective of people who can also be categorized in dozens of other ways, are unlikely
candidates for congruence. One may also look at nation and territory as strange bedfellows

2 Art. 3, OAU­Charter 1963, OAU Res. AHG/Res.16 (I), Cairo 1964, Constitutive Act of AU; see also Declaration

on the AU Border Programme and its Implementation Modalities, BP/MIN/decl.(II) 2007; see also Touval (1967).
3 See Seidel and Sureau (2015); Wassara (2015).
4 Schlee (2011); Schlee and Shongolo (2012).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 109

and the territorial nation­state as an odd phenomenon that one would not necessarily have
expected to become a global model.
There are northern Sudanese who do not regard the separation of the south as a loss.
Rather, for them it meant a contraction to what they perceive as the “real Sudan,” char­
acterized by Arabism and Islam, mirroring the peoples of South Sudan who self­identify as
African and Christian. Disregarding the still numerous citizens who do not fit the description
of Arabs and Muslims, they saw the more narrowly circumscribed Sudan as a chance to live
their culture and religion in a purer and intensified fashion. As they sought the congruence
of their nation, their culture, and their state, they were in a tacit alliance with the leadership
of the emerging South Sudan. They wanted to “un­mix” the people in support of creating a
homogeneous nation­state, or rather two of them, at least in their rhetoric.5 Officially, this
un­mixing was to be brought about by a referendum, and for that some preliminary division
was useful.
The negotiated rules for the referendum stated that southern Sudanese, identified as
those belonging to southern “tribes,” would be able to vote regardless of whether they were
residents in northern or southern Sudan. In the months leading up to the referendum, the Su­
dan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) opposed the right to vote of southern Sudanese
residents in the north. Having established themselves in the north, many of them might have
voted for unity. In the end, residents in the north were permitted to vote, but long queues
and other impediments made it difficult.
Possible fears by the SPLM that the polls were more vulnerable to fraud by the National
Congress Party (NCP) were hardly justified given that separation was by then a forgone
conclusion (Young 2012). Whether the NCP actually wanted southern Sudanese to vote for
unity is also highly debatable. After the death of John Garang in 2005, the SPLM abandoned
Garang’s stated aim of a united, reformed “New Sudan,” an aim that many of its leaders had
only accepted grudgingly. They then embraced the goal of independence. Both sides sought
to have their own people in their own territories and did not want any complications, such
as the “transnational spaces” social scientists like to talk about, dual citizenship, or special
status for minorities.6
Attitudes may have changed since 2011, most certainly for marginalized peoples in
South Sudan. There, the enthusiasm for freedom from Khartoum and independent nation­
hood has disappeared in the wake of a new civil war that has killed tens of thousands and
displaced millions from their homes. In the last years of the Al­Bashir regime, even NCP
loyalists in the north engaged in some form of advocacy for the rights of South Sudanese.
Furthermore, the outbreak of renewed civil war in the south saw refugees flee in waves to
the north where they were welcomed. Harsh exclusionary policies may have given way to a
more relaxed attitude, but this change should not be mistaken as a move towards secularism
and pluralism. Rather, it can be explained as the generosity of those who can afford to be
generous. Separation has made Islamism in the north only stronger.
The events of 2019 certainly deserve to be labeled a revolution in terms of the courage
shown and sacrifices made by many young people. The long­term changes, however, have

5 To which extent all this involved sincere intentions and had realist prospects is, of course, debatable. As ex­

plained, the Arabic­Islamic identification offer in the north, was not comprehensive enough and did not fit nor
appeal to important segments of the nation. “Nation building” in the south soon changed into undisguised attempts
to spread Dinka domination, as many sceptics in the north had predicted.
6 See Seidel and Sureau (2015).
110 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

yet to be seen. Much of the Freedom and Change movement has a clear secular or religiously
liberal and pluralist undercurrent, and peace outside the country (such as withdrawal from the
Saudi war in Yemen) and inside the country (such as addressing ethnic claims and regional
imbalances) is high on their agenda. Sceptics, however, note that the composition of the
“new sovereign council”7 formed in August 2019 does not reflect this agenda.
But let us move back to 2011. Instead of dual citizenship and the mutual acceptance of
minorities, there was a huge wave of repatriation to South Sudan as soon as that new state
was formally founded. Timm Sureau witnessed boatloads of people being shipped up the
Nile, often stranded halfway and undergoing all sorts of hardship.8 Some South Sudanese
in Khartoum gave up their houses and apartments, but did not make it to South Sudan. Now,
they live in tents provided by the UN on the outskirts of Omdurman and Bahri (Khartoum
North). Others decided to stay and see what would happen. They have not been expelled
but have lost their resident status and no longer have a local administration to rely on if
they need documentation. Nor are they eligible for such benefits, such as buying consumer
goods at reduced prices when they are subsidized by the government during Ramadan. (To
be entitled to the subsidized prices, they would have to prove their resident status, not their
religious affiliation.) If they are entitled to a government pension, they only receive half of
it and are told that if they want it all the matter must be dealt with in Juba, the capital of
South Sudan.9
In spite of all this, since the beginning of 2014 there have been new arrivals from South
Sudan because of the renewed violence.10 Before the separation one would have referred
to them as IDPs (internally displaced persons). Now they are international refugees. This
status may (or may not) make it easier for them to be recognized as refugees by the UN
and other agencies. In terms of the numbers of refugees, the situation is comparable to pre­
2005 wartime. South Sudan, alone, produced as many refugees in this period as the whole
of Sudan did when the north was still directly involved (Schlee 2014). The actual benefits
of the “international” refugee status, for which South Sudanese in the north are supposedly
eligible, is not quite clear. There have been changing positions on this issue within the
NCP. The government of Sudan again has given them some special status, maybe to reduce
UN involvement. They are, also, no longer the most conspicuous group of refugees. Since
2015, Khartoum has received a substantial number of refugees from Syria who have been
granted a secure status and have started to found businesses. They come closer to the type of
immigrants the Al­Bashir government wanted to have because they are Arabs, Muslims, and
have much lighter pigmentation. Although impoverished Syrians could regularly be seen
begging in front of mosques, other Syrians had money or procured money for investment.
As a rule, refugees from South Sudan were destitute.

5.2 The Borderlands along the Blue Nile and the Sobat and the “Third Sudan”

The state Blue Nile, with its capital in Damazin, is part of the area for which the 2005 Com­
prehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) provided “popular consultations”11 (instead of a proper
7 https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/who­sudans­new­sovereign­council, accessed September 2, 2019.
8 Sureau (2017).
9 Interview with a Dinka resident of Omdurman by Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, March 2014.
10 For the political events that led up to the renewed outbreak of violence, see Dreef and Wagner (2013, 23).
11 CPA Ch. I “Self­determination,” Machakos Protocol, Kenya, July 20, 2002, 1.3; https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/

Machakos_Protocol, accessed March 16, 2020 Naivasha 31 December 2004, Section B “popular consultation”:
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 111

referendum). The CPA stipulated that an elected government needed to be in place before
popular consultations began, meaning that the elections were already over by the time the
popular consultations were held. The wisdom of that regulation is, of course, questionable,
because it means that most of the transition period from 2005 to 2011 was spent without
effective broad consultations on this issue. The Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA)
won across southern Sudan, the NCP in northern Sudan. Each side turned a blind eye to any
rigging carried out by the other, and the separation of the country was a foregone conclusion.
According to the CPA, the popular consultations should have been held within the interim
period, but the elections of the State Legislative Assemblies in the two states were delayed
by more than a year. Since the results of the popular consultations were meant to be the
basis of deliberations of these assemblies, these were also postponed.
Thousands of people participated and addressed a wide range of issues, including the
lack of development and security. According to Article 3 of the Popular Consultations Act,
“constitutional, political, administrative, and economic issues” were to be discussed.
But the discussions were politicized and narrowed down, by selective reporting and steering
the procedures to the alternatives: autonomy (in the SPLA doctrine) versus federalism (not
true federalism but a shorthand for the NCP position). As the consultations proceeded, more
and more participants appeared to have been coached by one or the other party and made only
formulaic statements. So the intended exercise of gathering a broad range of opinions meant
to inspire legislative assemblies to look for political implementation was reduced to a kind
of opinion poll with a choice between two positions, SPLA versus NCP.12 The information
collected was not suitable for any sort of quantitative evaluation as the participants were not
representative and procedures not standardized. Like the CPA itself and other negotiations in
and about Sudan and South Sudan, the popular consultations were hijacked by elite positions
and reduced to narrowly defined alternatives rather than including a broad range of views
and ideas (Young 2015b).
The other state (not in the focus of this chapter) where popular consultations were sup­
posed to be held was South Kordofan, also known as Nuba Mountains. Whereas elections
were held in 2010 in the rest of the country, disagreement regarding census figures caused
them to be postponed in this region. War broke out when the SPLA did not accept the 2011
election results there. As a consequence, the consultations never took place. Shortly there­
after, war erupted in the Blue Nile.
In the north (the country that continued to be called Sudan after South Sudan had split
off), particularly in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile states, the locally based forces of the
SPLM felt cheated, abandoned, and sold off to the north by their fellow SPLM members in
the Juba Government. Within what remained of Sudan, they continued their struggle for a
secular “New Sudan,” similar to the late Garang’s vision of Sudan. The situation for them
was not made any easier when, in 2017, the SPLM­N was effectively dissolved with the
former chairman, Malik Agar (ex­governor of the Blue Nile state), and the former General

subjecting the comprehensive agreement to the will of the people of the two areas (p. 221), https://peacemaker.un.
org/sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/SD_060000_The%20Comprehensive%20Peace%20Agreement.pdf, accessed
February 4, 2020.
12 Carter Center Urges Political Parties and Blue Nile Popular Consultation Commission to Ensure Genuine Di­

alogue on Key Issues in Blue Nile State, March 21, 2011; Statement on the Recent Developments of the Popular
Consultations July 15, 2011, https://www.cartercenter.org/, accessed June 6, 2017.
112 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

Secretary, Yasir Arman, dismissed by the new chairman, Abdel­Aziz Al­Hilu (ex­governor
of South Kordofan).
For the six years of the transitional period (2005–2011), the SPLM was part of a gov­
ernment of national unity,13 with northern Sudanese bureaucrats in many cases serving min­
isters from the south and vice versa. SPLA ministers had NCP deputies and at the end of the
day the NCP may have had more leverage. Indeed, all SPLM ministries had NCP deputies,
and it was understood that the NCP person held the power. But ostentatious displays of sta­
tus and conspicuous consumption by southern elites became part of the Khartoum lifestyle.
Oil had started to flow. In 1999, Sudan managed to produce enough oil for its own needs for
the first time, and since then it became an oil exporting country throughout the CPA period
(2005– 2011). In 2011, due to the loss of the oilfields in South Sudan, the exported amount
decreased, but the oil kept flowing from South Sudan through Sudan to Port Sudan, provid­
ing Sudan with high transfer fees. In 2012, the SPLM government in South Sudan stopped
oil production because of a disagreement with Sudan on transfer fees to Port Sudan. So, a
period of relative peace coincided with a period of a relatively relaxed budget situation.
War and peace also had effects on rural life, even far from the war zone. In the state
of Sennar and other areas along the Blue Nile River in which Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, Awad
Alkarim Tijani, and I conducted field research in agricultural villages in this period, laborers
from the south no longer wore rags but fashionable jeans and T­shirts. The farmers com­
plained that the costs of labor were rising, which put them in a difficult position as prices
for their products did not rise proportionally.
Wages in Sudan never have been freely negotiated. Only late in the colonial period
slavery has been abolished and been fully replaced by wage labour. Abolition often led
to problems because the wages of the ex­slaves often did not meet the minimal costs of
living which before had been carried by the masters. Later, large parts of the work force
in agriculture has been composed of refugees as a result of the turbulent politico­military
history of the country, and as these refugees had nowhere to go back to and nowhere else
to go, they had no bargaining power and wages remained depressed. So, cheap labor—at
worst, forced, at best, not quite voluntary—from slaves (who received no wages and were
kept at low costs) and underpaid refugees, has been an essential part of Sudanese agriculture
for most of its history.
Now, the southern Sudanese had other alternatives. They could go to the south where
foreign aid poured in, the price of rent in Juba was increasing and Kenyan and Ugandan
traders were setting up businesses. There, a remigrant might find employment and at least
better chances of survival than before, during the war. To have alternatives elsewhere also
gave them a better bargaining position in the north. It would be another six years after the
beginning of the CPA period, before the region would see independence and the subsequent
expulsions of South Sudanese from Sudan (2011). It is safe to say that it was better to be a
southern Sudanese in the north during this period than any point in the past or future.
Most importantly, although fluctuations in the levels of violence in Darfur continued
most of northern Sudan experienced peace. Fighting between the SPLA and the South Su­
dan Defense Forces (SSDF), two long­competing forces within Sudan, ended with the Juba
Declaration of January 2006, which provided for the integration of the SSDF soldiers into
the SPLA. The engagement of the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) had ended with the CPA

13 CPA Ch. II “power sharing,” Naivasha May 26, 2004, Part II 2.2.2.1.
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 113

in 2005. In northern Sudan, the TV features celebrating martyrs and martyrdom were no
longer on the air, and parents no longer needed to fear that their sons would be lured or
pressed into the army. Many people might remember these six years as the best time Sudan
has ever had. The same was not true in South Sudan, where sporadic fighting particularly
affected the Greater Upper Nile (Young 2012). However, in much of the Sudan, especially
the central areas of the north, big projects were implemented (or at least started); there was
foreign investment, often Chinese, and a building boom. At the time of writing (2016 to
2019) the city landscape of Khartoum is filled with buildings from that period, often only
half­finished.
That relatively peaceful period ended when the SPLM governors of the northern Sudan
(now Sudan) states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan, lost their offices and took up arms.
Since then, both states can be seen in a broader picture, as part of the violent half circle on the
new, post­2011, margins of Sudan. This region, called by some Third Sudan, stretches from
Darfur via the border regions with South Sudan to the Red Sea. In both Darfur and eastern
Sudan (Red Sea, Kassala and Gedaref states) there are armed counter­powers with whom
the Khartoum government has had to negotiate. The Darfur “peace process” has dragged on
without a conclusion for over a decade, while the Eastern Sudan Peace Agreement, signed
in 2006, has never been properly implemented,14 especially as far as promised development
funds are concerned. It is only a matter of speculation of when, rather than if, troubles will
resume there.15
Sudan thus seems to be in the process of shedding its second layer of periphery. After
losing South Sudan to independence, it does not even seem able to integrate the proximate
south, “the south of the north.” Malik Agar and Yasir Arman want to reform the whole of
Sudan, but they will hardly be in a position to do so. Abdel­Aziz al­Hillu advocates self­
determination of the Nuba Mountains (South Kordofan). These layers of periphery are best
visualized as an onion, whose layers can be removed, one by one, until no onion is left.
South Sudan seems to be going down the same path. South Sudan may even break up first.
It is too early to say whether the revolution that started in 2019 will change this pes­
simistic picture. Peace is high on the agenda of the Freedom and Change movement, and
there is plenty of good will to address regional imbalances and to solve the internal conflicts
of Sudan. But travelling in Sudan in early 2019, when the demonstrations and sit­ins were in
full course in Khartoum, I wondered how little the countryside was affected by these events.
Rural people suffered from some of the same shortages, like that of gasoline, which had
triggered the crisis. But I was surprised to find that national politics was not the dominant
theme in the conversations around me, there. The protests and the convictions articulated
in Khartoum and some larger provincial towns seemed to be an urban phenomenon (time of
writing: August 2019).
There are also dominant and marginalized ethnicities and regions in South Sudan, but
unlike the ongoing16 violence in Sudan, the recent fighting in South Sudan has not been
14 GlobalSecurity (2014).
15 John Young (2006a, 2007) describes the NCP politics of isolating the Beja Congress by striking a deal with
their former supporter Eritrea and by insisting of treating the conflicts in the peripheral areas of the Sudan (Darfur,
Southern, Kordofan, Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan) strictly as issues to be dealt with separately and in separate fora.
See also Pantuliano (2014, 165) and Calkins (2014, 197).
16 “Ongoing” here does not necessarily mean incessant and high­level. The frontlines in the Blue Nile state and

South Kordofan appear to have stabilized and violence may only be intermittent. An army member told me in 2018
how tired the army is of fighting and by 2019 a lot of attention may also have been absorbed by events in Khartoum.
114 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

between the center and the margins but within the center itself. Until recently, it has almost
exclusively been between two dominant groups that had been fighting for the control of the
country for many years. On one side were the Nuer who were mostly in the SSDF and in
alliance with Khartoum. On the opposing side were the Dinka, the dominant component of
the SPLA that “won” the war of separation (by forcing the government of Sudan to join the
peace negotiations that led to the CPA of 2005 and ultimately to separate statehood in 2011).
Their so­called win came with the aid of many outside factors, such as political pressure
put on Sudan by the US to negotiate for peace, knowing that the SPLA had not come close
to defeating the SAF and that parts of southern Sudan were actually controlled by the rival
SSDF (Young 2006b). Power games within the SPLM/A have an international dimension
because different fractions had different foreign sponsors. But as far as the local and ethnic
dimension is concerned, one can say that they have always been between Dinka and Nuer
groups and their leaders.17
The present split in the government has strong parallels with the SPLA’s Dinka­Nuer
split in 1991, involving the same Nuer leader, Riek Machar.18 Though the current, now
(2018) five­year­old, conflict initially involved only two ethnicities and can therefore be
called an “ethnic conflict,” this term should not mislead us to believe that ethnicity or cul­
tural difference is the cause of it.19 Rather, it is similarity leading to competition that makes
the Nuer and Dinka rivals. They have a long tradition of warfare,20 maintain similar forms
of social organization, speak related languages, and, especially because of the large number
of Dinka incorporated into Nuer society,21 share most of their ancestry.22 They practice
similar forms of agro­pastoralism, which means they compete for the same resources. Their
leaders and the educated among them also share the common ambition to run the country.
The history of conflict between their pastoralist followers, moreover, helps them to mobi­
lize their communities. In fact, the acquisition of the state as a resource and the practice of
pastoralism are not just parallel activities but closely interwoven. Army officers and gov­
ernment employees with urban residences might still invest in herds of cattle kept for them
by relatives. Lack of trust in the currency leads to money being quickly converted into cattle
and ultimately into wives who again give birth to sons, who need cattle for bridewealth, and
to daughters, for whom bridewealth might be received. Commanders may have twenty or
so wives from different kin groups as a political resource; it narrows the risk of potential re­
venge by broadening the in­group (Berger 2014). Similarity, not difference, and competition
for the same sort of resources, was thus at the root of the renewed outbreak of violence,23
which started between Nuer and Dinka and later involved others, as far as structural causes
are concerned. Of all South Sudanese, the Nuer came closest to the Dinka in terms of fighting
skill, warlike traditions, and proximity to state power, and so the Dinka dominated govern­
ment had more reason to fear Nuer than any other ethnic group. This fear was expressed
in private military forces established by Salva Kiir, who were recruited exclusively among
coethnics, a system also applied to other government forces.

17 Hutchinson (2009) ; Johnson (2009).

18 de Vries (2013, 165); Walraet (2013, 175).
19 Schlee (2008).
20 Sahlins (1961).
21 Sahlins (1961, 339, 341); Evans­Prichard (1940, 125 ff.).
22 For similar dynamics between Nuer and Anywaa, see Feyissa (2011).
23 Cf. Schlee and Horstmann (2018).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 115

These were the structural causes, but not the triggers of the renewed violence. In De­
cember 2013, Dinka­led Juba government forces massacred thousands of Nuer civilians in
Juba. The desire to avenge these atrocities led to spontaneous mobilization of Nuer youths.
Following a pattern that has existed since 1991, the Nuer youths mobilized community de­
fense forces, known as white army forces, or rather a plurality of such armies because there
was no formal military hierarchy encompassing them all. Later, some of these were coor­
dinated with or even incorporated into the regular army contingents loyal to the SPLA­IO.
Riek Machar claimed to speak for all of these military forces, “white” or regular (“black”), in
the context of internationally sponsored peace negotiations, but the fervor of the Nuer forces
was fueled by the desire for revenge against the Dinka and the desire to rid the country of
Salva Kiir, who was held responsible for the Juba massacre (Young 2015a, 2016).
Precolonial states in Africa and Asia (if not universally) had the strongest articulation
of statehood at the center while their power petered out at the margins into a stateless zone or
the weakly controlled margins of another state (Schlee 1992). But in South Sudan, the most
recent “nation”­state to come into existence, much of the state­like behavior is exhibited
on its margins, on the boundaries. The thesis has been quite plausibly put forward that the
country is being built up from its borders, although not so much by borderland peoples as by
members of the politico­military class who man border posts and run businesses across the
borders.24 Instead of being marginal, the resource­rich and contested boundary with Sudan
is the focus of attention, with the other borders also being fertile ground for the emergence
of statehood. The state has been able to project such an image even at the border to Uganda,
as de Vries (2013, 157) explains in a discussion of a disagreement between local police and
the South Sudan government (GoSS) police: “[The local police] felt subordinated and oc­
casionally intimidated by the implied superiority of the GoSS agents, whose understanding
of themselves and their role derived from their guerrilla repertoire and their predominantly
Nilotic background, which they broadly associate with power.”25
The ongoing fighting in South Sudan reminds us of the factional wars in Somalia in the
1990s in at least one way. Until 2015, the conflicts had not involved marginal people striving
for representation, participation, and an end to oppression (which is the pattern seen in South
Kordofan and Blue Nile in neighboring Sudan). That is, they do not involve these marginal
people as fighters or as party to the conflict. They are not fighting; they are being fought
about. Some of the protagonists might have political ideas meant to serve the whole country,
but the gross demographic picture lets the conflict appear like an internal affair among some
dominant groups of Nilotes: “national” leaders and their predominantly26 Dinka or Nuer
followers. Inside this ethnic core of the state, the Nilotic nucleus, the Nuer are clearly the
numerically weaker part. With some justification, they feel sidelined by the Dinka, but they
do compete for power with the Dinka, which is something many groups of the outer margin,
especially the non­Nilotes, never dared to do until recently.

24 Schomerus, de Vries, and Vaughan (2013, 2, 9).

25 On the continuities between the wartime military factions and the present South Sudanese army, see Jok Madut
Jok (2014).
26 The ethnic base of this political class is broad in terms of numbers as well. The Dinka make up 40% of the

population of South Sudan (Dreef and Wagner 2013, 6). This is a high demographic proportion for a dominant
ethnic group in the region. In Kenya, the Kikuyu comprise only some 20% of the population, while the Amhara
make up about 30% of the Ethiopian population, alongside only 6% of the, until recently (April 2018), dominant
Tigray.
116 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

In Somalia, there were indeed marginal and oppressed people during the 1990s: the
cultivators of the south, some of whom were former slaves and of Bantu origin. They were
just a resource to be appropriated by others, at least until some of them had a good harvest
and could invest in firearms. Until then, the fighting was about them (along with other
resources), not with them and was conducted between northern and central Somali groups
of pastoral background with a fighting tradition, not unlike the Nuer and Dinka.27
In South Sudan we can note a similar development. The war started in 2013, triggered
by the Juba massacres. The political class situated itself in this conflict to compete for
state power. All relevant actors were Nilotes: Nuer or Dinka. But since 2016, much of the
fighting has been between Dinka and Equatorians. Just like the agriculturalists in Somalia,
the Equatorians rapidly changed from being mere victims to being fighters. A difference
between the Equatorians and the agriculturalists of southern Somalia may be that the latter
were appropriated as a captive work force along with their land. They were part of the
loot. The Equatorians often were just expelled. Their land was needed for Dinka cattle.
In Western Bahr al­Ghazal, an identical pattern can be observed. The same is true for the
Greater Upper Nile region. SPLM­IO, which has its stronghold there, is a broad house
that began as a largely Nuer organization but now includes fighters and politicians from
many tribes. Even at its inception, many senior IO officials were from non­Nuer tribes.
With the fighting increasingly shifting to the Equatorians, Henry Odwar, an Equatorian, was
appointed deputy leader.
Just as there were changing alliances within the northern and central Somali clans and
sub­clans, we also find alliances that cut across ethnic divides in the Nuer and Dinka clusters.
Being capable of crossing the line and bringing one’s followers along is a feature of political
and military clout.
Moving on from these comparisons between fighting with marginal people and fighting
about them, we return to Blue Nile and its cross­border dynamics with South Sudan. When
the SPLM governor, Malik Agar, did not accept his dismissal and was replaced by an army
officer appointed by the president, a full­scale war was waged against him and his followers.
One may ask what the Sudan People’s Liberation Army­North (SPLA­N) was fighting for
after it had become clear that Blue Nile and South Kordofan would not become part of South
Sudan. They may have rightfully felt betrayed by South Sudan, but the enemy they were
fighting against was in Khartoum, not in Juba. Part of the explanation may be that they still
received support from South Sudan, which, in turn, was supported by Uganda. Whether
Juba and Kampala have any policy for the people in Blue Nile and South Kordofan may be
questioned, but they still find it useful to have allies there who help them limit Khartoum’s
power in regional politics.
Being on the same side in a conflict does not mean having the same aims. The aims
of these foreign powers need to be distinguished from those of local leaders and these need
not be the same as those of their followers. Sudan People’s Liberation Movement­North
(SPLM­N) leadership wanted to use its bases in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile to build
a country­wide insurgency, but has completely failed and now simply wants to use these
territories as leverage for political advantage in Khartoum. But people in Nuba Mountains
now resent this game and are again demanding self­determination, not wanting to be used as
cannon fodder by their leaders looking for higher positions in Khartoum. (Big positions are

27 Schlee (2002) versus Besteman and Cassanelli (1996).

5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 117

often the reward for stopping fighting, but to get a top position one first has to prove one’s
military clout.)
After massive ground operations and aerial bombings, new patterns of refugee flow
have arisen. For the first time, modern day South Sudan has come to be a country that
receives refugees, in addition to having been and continuing to be the source of refugees for
many decades. Ingessana, Uduk, and Koma have sought refuge in Upper Nile,28 but how
these refugees will fare there in view of the troubles in South Sudan is anyone’s guess. In the
refugee camps in South Sudan, they have not been unaffected by Sudanese politics either,
like the SPLM­N leadership division. There has been fighting between Ingessana and Uduk.
The Khartoum government’s influence is also felt there.

5.3 War, Politics, and the Disruption of Nomadic Movements

While these groups of sedentary farmers have fled south in large numbers or have crossed
into Ethiopia, nomads who used to cross from Sennar all through Blue Nile well into what
is now South Sudan have now gotten stuck in Sennar, north of Damazin, for a number of
years.
I shall dwell on the example of the region between the rivers Blue Nile and Sobat
somewhat longer than on other areas around South Sudan, as that is where I have been
doing field research since 1996, including work with Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, Awad Karim
Tijani, and Al­Amin Abu­Manga on “Pastoralism in Interaction with other Forms of Land
Use.”29 The processes observed and the social and political configurations encountered here,
however, find their parallels throughout the whole border zone between Sudan and South
Sudan. I will try to point out these parallels here and there, in an inevitably incomplete way.
For many nomads, Sinja used to be the northern turning point of their seasonal north­
south migration. In the early 1990s, many Fulbe at the end of their migrations had two
options. For a number of years many of them had been moving far into what is now South
Sudan while others had been crossing into the Benishangul, Oromia, and Gambella states of
Ethiopia.30
A few contextualizing words about Gambella may be in order here. In colonial times,
the British had a harbor on the Sobat river (the Ethiopian stretch of which is called Baro) in
Gambella and used it to connect this part of Ethiopia to the Atlantic via modern day South
Sudan, modern day Sudan, Egypt, and the Mediterranean. In contrast, the French had built a
railway from Addis Ababa to Djibouti and tried to steer trade toward the Indian Ocean. The
Ethiopian highlands, which separate the rivers flowing west from those flowing east, both
literally and figuratively, provided watersheds to foreign influences and trade.31 Gambella
was on the British side of this watershed and closely connected to what now is South Sudan.
The relationship between Ethiopia and Khartoum, however, tended to be conflictual.
The history of these two countries supporting each other’s armed opposition is a long one.
The SPLA was established in Gambella in 1983 largely at the instigation of the Derg or
at least its programmatic commitment to a united Sudan. The Derg support of the SPLA
was a way to retaliate against Sudan for its unofficial support of various Ethiopian and Er­

28 James (2013, 216).

29 Schlee and Shongolo (2012); Alkarim and Schlee (2013).
30 Feyissa and Schlee (2009).
31 See Triulzi (1981); Zewde (1976, 1991).
118 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

itrean rebel groups although support was on a very small scale. The Ethiopian People’s
Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) only supported the SPLA after the NCP tried to
overthrow the regime and establish an Islamist Ethiopia. EPRDF support for the SPLA also
took place in the context of regional opposition to the NCP and this was supported by the
US. Gambella, marginal as it may be in all other aspects, was central to these power games.
But since 2013 or 2014, in spite of all this, relations between Addis and Khartoum have
been surprisingly close, and in 2016 Umar al Al­Bashir even attended the Nationalities Day
celebrations in Gambella town, the capital of the state Gambella, as Mossa Hamid Wassie
(n.d.) describes. This was neither the first nor the last time al Al­Bashir attended these yearly
celebrations in different state capitals of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia.
Some Fulbe considered the Ethiopian direction preferable. On the Sudanese side (now
South Sudan), Dinka militias carried out cattle raids and abducted Fulbe women. But in
Ethiopia, local opinion started to form against the Fulbe and their cows, which were de­
scribed as ecologically harmful and having different grazing habits from the smaller and
less demanding local cows. Official fears of Islamist terrorism (of which the pastoral Fulbe
were unlikely representatives) fanned the flames, and the Ethiopian option was closed to
the Fulbe. The generally strained relationship between Ethiopia and northern Sudan, the
part with which the West African originating Fulbe were closely associated, and Ethiopian
sympathies for the cause of southern Sudan and Sudanese opposition forces certainly were
of no help in this situation. Between the 1990 and 2016,32 there appears to have been an
interruption of sizable Fulbe movements into Gambella.
What remained was the option to move seasonally into what is now South Sudan. Fulbe
migratory groups made arrangements with the local Dinka, sometimes paying for their safety
without actually obtaining it. Fulbe actually allied themselves with or joined southern Su­
danese militias. Predominantly, however, pastoral Fulbe became even more closely associ­
ated with northern Sudan. While the north­south dichotomy and local pressure to identify
with one side or the other was certainly not helpful, from the point of view of local arrange­
ments involving pasture and water, it appears to have been inevitable. Osman (2009, 2013a,
2013b) shows how the Fulbe, who formerly had a reputation of being peaceful, evasive, and
always preferring withdrawal to a fight, became more militant and assertive with the backing
of the Khartoum government. They were not only provided with arms but with a measure
of social security as well, receiving zakat (which in the Sudanese case stands for a tax for
the poor collected by the state) in the case of the death of a provider or loss of animals.
One prominent figure is Salih Bank, a Pullo (singular of Fulbe) from South Kordofan
who developed a following in the Blue Nile region and founded the Katiiba Maa Yanoom
(the militia of those who do not lie down). He was believed to possess magic powers that
would protect his fighters from bullets so that they would not have to seek cover during an
exchange of gunfire. He died of bullet wounds in 2002 (Osman and Schlee 2014).
With the CPA in 2005, the SPLM became a legal and recognized party in northern
Sudan as well. In Blue Nile, it had a power sharing arrangement involving the rotation of
offices with the National Congress Party, the party of President Omar al Al­Bashir. Being
in power in what would later become South Sudan, the SPLM/A was the obvious partner for
nomadic groups that needed to cross the emerging north­south divide, and many Fulbe made
arrangements with them. Some Arab groups succeeded in doing the same, overcoming the

32 Interview by Elhadi Ibrahim Osman at Kineeza, March 31, 2016.

5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 119

suspicions the SPLM/A had because of the role northern nomads had played in various rival
militias.
These arrangements did not help them when South Sudan officially became a separate
country in July 2011. Along with many Rufaʿa al­Hoi Arabs,33 the other major pastoral
element in the region, the nomadic Fulbe were expelled from South Sudan. With the war
renewed after the dismissal of the SPLM governor, Malik Agar, Khartoum again armed the
Fulbe, this time against Malik Agar’s “rebels.” It later disarmed them again, apparently for
fear of independent action and under pressure from large land “owners.”
In the southern reaches of the state of Sennar, there are now vast spontaneous settle­
ments of Fulbe and Rufaʿa whose nomadic routes have been closed. The Khartoum gov­
ernment, remembering the services of their former allies, has decreed that 10 percent of the
large­scale mechanized farms should be given back to the nomads to be used as pastures.
Many of these farms are in fact technically illegal, as they are not in the zone designated for
farming. But the governor (wali) of Sennar, himself a large­scale agricultural entrepreneur,
has not implemented this directive.34
Ethnic interpretations are easily overdone. Local (Nuba) cultivators in the Nuba Moun­
tains (South Kordofan) have complained about the government’s pro­nomad (which in this
setting amounts to pro­Arab) bias and spoken of “imposed stock routes.”35 In Darfur, the
national government is in an uneasy alliance with pastoralist militias, and in many parts
of the state well­armed pastoralists go where they like and take what they want.36 These
stock routes are defended with little success by range management officers in Blue Nile and
Sennar, whose efforts appear somewhat desperate. More powerful players, such as state
ministers who double as mechanized farmers, began encroaching on their land a long time
ago, even denying rights granted to nomads by higher levels of government.37 For those
confronted by more powerful Arabs, having Arab ancestry is of little help.
The stock routes are typically two­kilometer­wide corridors of pastureland that connect
wider pockets of pasture with each other and include water points and markets. They are
official and well­documented but often disregarded in practice. Pastoralists who are sued for
crop damage by farmers who are illegally using the land for agricultural purposes are usually
held liable by local councils dominated by farmers. However, pastoralists might be found
right and even successfully claim compensation for any harm done to their animals if they
make it to a court of law. Judges who are not corrupted by power and money often side with
pastoralists as do dedicated range management officers who want to revitalize the official
policy, which they find to be good and sustainable for the overall economy and the natural
environment. One other civil service group often allies with the pastoralists. At state level,
the ministries of agriculture have different departments for rain­fed agriculture, for pasture
and fodder, and for forestry. The “forest people” often sympathize with the pastoralists and
want to maintain the stock routes. The routes allow for the survival of trees and shrubs (not

33 Ahmed (1974).
34 The wali stepped down in 2015 and has had four successors since, two of them since the regime change in 2019.
But still nothing tangible has been done with regard to land allocation and provision f social services to the returnee
pastoralists.
35 Komey (2013, 135).
36 Musa Adam Abdul­Jalil (2015) describes the war economy in Darfur. Some traditional stock routes are blocked

while pastoralists in other areas are unimpacted and even graze standing crops of agriculturalists with impunity.
37 Schlee (2013).
120 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

to speak of grasses and herbs), which would fall victim to bulldozers and plows outside these
corridors.38
State representatives, such as those in the forestry department, who prioritize “the cre­
ation of public goods,” as Alex de Waal calls it, are rare compared to those who are guided
by personal or more small group interests.39 Apart from the occasional support by judges
who are concerned with justice and civil servants who want to do their duty, the situation as
a whole has forced many pastoralists stuck in Sudan to return to South Sudan, irrespective
of cost or safety. Agricultural fields not only encroach on areas reserved for pastoralists,
but it has been reported that farmers may even burn the grass and other natural vegetation
around their fields to oblige the pastoralists go buy crop residues like the stalks of sorghum
left standing after harvest from them.40 Such situations put pastoralists in an increasingly
difficult position as money is extorted from them wherever they go and necessary resources
for their production are more and more commercialized. Across Africa, farmers and herders
long had a mutually beneficial relationship. Herders could graze their livestock on stub­
ble fields at no cost, and the manure left behind by the animals was free fertilizer for the
farmers.41 Now, pasture rights on stubble fields are sold. In years when grain production
fails, the withered, immature cereals are only accessible with payment. Likewise, in places
where grain production is not even attempted, land owners or controllers demand payment
to access natural vegetation. The price of stock for slaughter does not reflect these new cat­
egories of cost (Osman and Schlee 2014). Pastoralists are fortunate if they get crop residues
at all, even for money. Some farmers have been reported to burn crop residues so as to keep
pastoralists away. Today, farmers regard dung as a source of seeds of weeds rather than
a fertilizer. Agronomic rationality seems to change with group relations. The exclusion­
ist attitude about nomads is transferred to the dung of their animals. All of these incidents
pressure pastoralists out of Sudan and back into South Sudan.
Regarding the situation on the border of Kenya and South Sudan at the other end of
the country, Immo Eulenberger (2013, 75) states: “Pastoralists on both sides of the border
refuse to take [it] more seriously than the vital needs of the animals they rely on […]. [T]hey
routinely expose themselves to the consequences entailed by movement into territory prone
to attacks.” Some Fulbe also decided they would have to take their animals back into South

38 Interview by Elhadi Ibrahim Osman and Al­Amin Abu­Manga with Osman Al­Arabi, Damazin, June 16, 2013.
39 “Most members of the political elites of northeast Africa have failed to create basic public goods, and many
have abandoned the effort and come to resemble gangsters rather than civic political leaders” (de Waal 2015b, 9).
Note that de Waal here speaks of politicians, not of civil servants or judges. Civil servants may of course collude
with the political leadership, they may have to carry out orders issued by them, and they may be corrupt. But even
de Waal, whose basic point is about venality, underlines the commitment of bureaucrats to maintain order and to
keep institutions functional in some cases. For example, he mentions the uninterrupted continuity of statehood in
Ethiopia (not all parts of Ethiopia, of course). When the TPLF moved into Addis Abeba and took power in 1991, it
was three days before public service salaries were due. The state personnel were told to come to work, and salaries
were paid on time (de Waal 2015b). One might call that a transcontinuity, i.e. a continuation across a revolutionary
change (Janssen 1992; Schlee 2002). Young notes that the “bureaucratic state” has firmer roots in Sudan than in
South Sudan (Young 2015b). This term may refer to commitment rather than technical capability. Alex de Waal
observes: “The South Sudanese were perfectly capable of running institutions and developing their country. But
Salva Kiir and the leadership had other priorities” (de Waal 2015b, 101).
40 Interview Ali Osman al­Arabi.
41 Fricke (1969; 1979); Diallo, Guichard, and Schlee (2000). Regarding Darfur, Musa Adam Abdul­Jalil (2014,

112) writes: “The nature of that relationship [between pastoralists and farmers] has transformed from complemen­
tarity to conflict. The same nomads whom the sedentary used to invite to camp on their farms so that the soil would
benefit from animal manure are now barred from passing by the village.”
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 121

Sudan, regardless of cost. And the costs turned out to be considerable indeed. Local admin­
istrations charge them all sorts of so­called taxes, often one in addition to others, including
dariibat ad­diginiyya (beard tax, SDG 2,000 (about EUR 220) from every grown man), dari­
ibat qalam ahmar (red pen tax, SDG 1,500 from every person), dariibat ad­dul (shade tax,
SDG 1,500 from every person), dariibat al­qutaʿan (herd tax, SDG 3,000 to 5,000 according
to herd size), dariibat al­fariq (camp tax, SDG 20,000 to 30,000 according to camp size).
Some Fulbe have gone as far as the Sobat River, paying all along the way.
A note on Fulbe relations with South Sudanese, based on interviews Elhadi Ibrahim
Osman conducted with Fulbe elders in the village of Kineeza in Sennar on March 31, 2016,
allows us to describe some more aspects of these recent interactions.
Traders from this village in Sudan hire a tractor and a trailer and take consumer goods
such as sugar and sorghum flour to the area of Girinti in South Sudan to sell to the pastoral
Fulbe groups who congregate there during the dry season. There are no Rufaʿa al Hoi in
Girinti. The last point they reached is Kashkaash in the Upper Nile area, not far from Buut.
One of these traders stated his dislike of the Nuer because they extract payments from
northern traders. He has therefore avoided the Nuer areas (Jikaw and the surroundings of
Nasir)42 and trades mainly with Dinka. He noted that the way the Dinka treat them is getting
better year by year and there is no rigid system of fees and taxes as before. He describes
this as a kind of normalization of the relations between the Dinka and northern traders after
secession.
In contrast to the Fulbe traders, the pastoral Fulbe have good relations and arrangements
with the Nuer allied to Riek Machar. (We repeatedly heard comparisons between Malik
Agar and Riek Machar in favor of the latter.) Fulbe relations with the Thawra Jikani (Jikani
Revolution, one of the militias), as with the rest of the Nuer, are good as long as the Fulbe
make the payments demanded by the Nuer. The traditional authorities of both sides, like the
Nuer chief Kong from Daat, the Fulbe leaders Omda Bayda, Omda Osman of Uuda Fulbe,
and Omda Adam Gawe (killed in 2017)43 of the Woyla Fulbe, mediate conflicts between
their respective groups. Nuer chiefs regularly come to collect money from the Fulbe.
The number of those livestock traders from Sudan has increased and the growing de­
mand has led to rising livestock prices. These traders have more problems with authorities
in Sudan than in South Sudan. The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) in Buut only allow a
limited quantity of consumer goods to go south and confiscate excess goods.
From an interview conducted by Elhadi Ibrahim Osman in Jar Maare just north of
Damazin on May 5, 2016, we learned that the Fulbe have benefited from the fighting be­
tween the Nuer and the Dinka, which started in December 2013, as they can buy arms from
both of them. Fulbe live in the lands of both Nuer and Dinka and have had conflicts with
both, but conflicts with the Nuer are reputedly easier to resolve. Since the Nimeiri regime,
clashes with the Dinka have led to long lasting hostilities but their clashes with the Nuer
have been short. “We disagree with the Nuer today and might agree with them tomorrow.”
Fulbe experience the lack of space and freedom of movement in the north as confine­
ment and many of them have to move with their herds to the south. Older herders are tired
of the sedentism forced on them in Sudan and join the younger generation with the herds
in South Sudan. They say: “Let whatever happens to them also happen to us!” They are
42 Nasir town has been under the control of the government, i.e. Dinka, for many years. The trader is referring to

the rural areas populated by Nuer pastoralists.

43 He was killed in a quarrel over water allocation. (Conversation with Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, December 7, 2017).
122 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

aware of the risks. The south is said to be a place where cattle suffer from flood and flies.
Moreover, the place is detached and there are no urban centers or markets anywhere near.
One Fulbe sheikh is said to travel as far as Juba riding his bulls.
By contrast, Rufaʿa Arabs have only ventured into the neighboring Renk area of Upper
Nile, where parts of the local population are also Arabs. They did not have to pay any taxes
there.44
On October 23, 2016, the land conflict between Rufaʿa (ex­)nomads who were stuck in
Sennar and local forces turned violent. We say “local forces” instead of “the state” or “local
(economic) elites” because it is not always clear whether state agents act on behalf of the state
or on their own behalf. The redistribution of land had not been carried out systematically.
Some land was given to the ex­nomads, but it may have been land for which the yearly fees
had not been paid by their agro­entrepreneurial occupants or had reverted to the government
ownership for some other reason. People spoke of token transfers. Other areas remained
contested. One large­scale farmer, Kenaana by tribe, claimed a field on which Rufaʿa ex­
nomads had grown sesame. Rather than letting the Rufaʿa harvest, he told the police that he
ceded the field to them and that they should harvest it. The police, in turn, tried to stop the
Rufaʿa from harvesting so that they could harvest the sesame for themselves and killed two
of them. The others withdrew and informed their clansmen in Mazmuum. A larger Rufaʿa
force then attacked the police unit, known as Abu Teera (the ones with the bird), killed many
of them, and set a four­wheel drive mounted with a machine gun on fire. They also burned
down the farm of the Kenaana man.
The conflict had been foreseeable. A month before, ʿUmar Abu Roof, an SPLA member
and former minister in the Sennar state government under the National Unity Government
(2005–2011) turned representative of the Rufaʿa family Nazir, had gone to Khartoum to alert
the government about the harassment of Rufaʿa returnees from South Sudan by the police
and the resulting growing unrest.45
Our interviews about these matters point to numerous inequities and paradoxes. Land
for ex­nomads who have been cut off from their pastures in South Sudan is normally taken
from traditional small­scale farmers rather than the big schemes (mashaariʿ). The latter are
“registered and everything” and the authorities do not dare to interfere with their holders.
According to the presidential order from Al­Bashir, if 1,000 feddan of land were taken from
these large allotments then 200 feddan (20 percent) would be given to farmers who had
cultivated (sometimes even officially!) inside the stock corridors.46 This order was intended
to indirectly help the nomads by clearing the routes but they in fact only got back what had
been theirs anyhow. If they even got it back. By 2013, only one route had been opened.47
In this section we explored an example of the identification of the state or the state class
with a certain economic activity (with large­scale agriculture at the expense of pastoralism),
be that a relationship of personnel overlap, part­time engagement in different activities, in­

44 Conversation with and e­mail from Ibrahim Mustafa Mohammed Ali, Khartoum, March 18, 2014.
45 Conversation with Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, Khartoum, November 28, 2016.
46 Land within the stock corridors has been allocated officially to agriculturalists by the Ministry of Agriculture of

the state of Blue Nile. This designation may help to explain their demanding attitude. Agriculturalists who settle
inside the stock routes also use fields as traps (known as champs piège in West Africa). They have provoked crop
damage in order to be able to sue the pastoralists. They have also acted in quite violent ways. (Interview by Al­
Amin Abu­Manga and Elhadi Ibrahim Osman with Omda ʿUsman al­ʿArabi, Damazin, June 16, 2013).
47 Interview by Al­Amin Abu­Manga with Mustafa Daa’uud, Administrative Director of Planning, Blue Nile,

Damazin, June 19, 2013.

5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 123

strumentalization of state­derived power for personal business activities, or kinship and pa­
tronage relations between the two spheres. Often, it is simply the same persons involved.
Umbadda (2014, 42) describes the absentee landlords in possession of large mechanized
schemes as being “mostly merchants from major towns, ex­army officers and retired gov­
ernment officials.”48
This overlap between state and economy, including violence­based forms of economy,
also corresponds with a regional pattern. In Uganda’s Karamoja District, Knighton (2003)
discovered another overlap of statehood and economy. In his article “The State as Raider”
about Karamoja District, he describes how disarmament of the pastoralists has enormously
facilitated cattle raiding by the army. A similar relationship has been found by Walraet in
South Sudan. The special relationship between a perceived Dinka domination and statehood
in South Sudan has already been briefly mentioned, with Walraet (2008, 53) describing the
relations “between the SPLM/A and the numerous Equatorian ethnic groups, who view the
SPLM/A as a vehicle of Dinka domination,” as tense. Apart from forcefully appropriating
the tobacco grown by the Didinga, Dinka in state employment or connected to Dinka in
state employment engage in cattle raiding and have monopolized the transborder cattle trade
with Uganda (Walraet 2008). The SPLA, instrumentalized by their Dinka officers, has also
attempted to control the artisanal gold mining carried out by Toposa (Walraet 2013, 177). It
goes without saying that the proceeds from such activities are not state revenue but end up in
the possession of groups and individuals rather than institutions that regulate accountability
and pursue institutional purposes. When the so­called nation does not identify with the state,
and the state, likewise, does not identify with the nation, then these events beg the question
who and what the state is, and who controls it. We shall come back to those questions after
dwelling for a few more moments on the connections between armed force and agriculture
and some of the consequences of that connection.

5.4 The Militarization of Agriculture and Migration to Europe

That agriculture, in the wider sense that includes livestock production, is increasingly car­
ried out in arms is evident from some of the examples mentioned in the preceding section.
Herders have to defend their herds from raiders, including the armed forces of the state. A
landowner gives the right to harvest a crop to the police, and the latter do not manage to
harvest because they meet armed resistance from those who have planted the crop. The list
of examples of armed agriculture can be expanded. In peripheral areas of Ethiopia one can
find farms run by army officers with their soldiers as workers and defenders of the crop.
In the area highlighted by this study, the lowlands around the Blue Nile, the president
of Sudan stationed a unit of former Janjawiid (known as Janjaweed in an anglicized mis­
spelling) from Darfur as “rapid deployment forces” (“rabbits,” in local pronunciation). For
a while, local people compared them favorably with other armed forces, because they were
not from the area, not tied to local interests, and also comprised people of pastoralist back­
ground. Then their leader, Hemeti, was rumored to have appropriated a large chunk of land
near Mazmoum in the part of Sennar and to have started agriculture. Whatever the arrange­
ment was, his soldiers were instrumental in keeping pastoralists out. Local farmers, often
those who had leased parts of their land to him, settled around Hemeti’s forces to benefit

48 See also, Ahmed (2008, 4).

124 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

from their protection.49 In other parts of the country, Hemeti is said to have used the Jan­
jawiid to bring gold extraction under his control. (In a different context and over two years
later, these Janjawiid became notorious for their brutality against demonstrators in Khar­
toum. They moved around town in long convoys of Toyota Land Cruiser pick­ups, and it
was they, not the military, who emerged from the gate of the military General Command
into the camps of demonstrators in front of it and committed the massacre in June 2019.
On whose order they acted remains a contested matter. In the context of the negotiations
between the Freedom and Change forces and the military in August 2019, an amnesty for
the Rapid Support Force has been discussed and Hemeti has become a member of the New
Sovereign Council.)
There are two dimensions of this “militarization of agriculture” that deserve to be ex­
plored in the future. One is historical and one is contemporary. The first is the obvious
parallel with feudalism in Europe, which was based on the same principle, namely armed
groups acquiring agricultural lands, exploiting those who cooperate with them and killing
those who do not. What are the merits and what are the limits of this comparative perspec­
tive? The other one is migration to Europe. Resources in the rural sector are forcefully
appropriated by some people. In other words, those resources are taken from others who
are deprived of their livelihoods. Typically, those deprived of their rural livelihoods would
pursue as much education as they could get, move to a regional town or the capital city, fail
to find proper employment, engage in occasional labor or petty trade (like street hawkers),
and then try to migrate to Europe or North America. Migration to Europe started with rela­
tively well­to­do people, and it continues to be expensive and no option for the poorest of the
poor. It seems to be a phenomenon among those who believe in the promises of education,
progress, and development, having pursued these goals to some extent before being disap­
pointed by their failure to bring concrete improvements. The inexpensive areas of Khartoum
(not the slums and not the posh areas) are where one hears stories of friends and family who
have migrated and may encounter people paying condolences to the families that have lost
relatives in the Mediterranean.
The precise links between the militarization of agriculture (and rural injustice and mis­
management in general) and migration to Europe and elsewhere (labor migration to Saudi
Arabia is relatively well studied) remain to be explored. It may well be that with new forms
of connectivity, smartphones, and the internet, people may jump stages increasingly and
move directly from rural areas to Europe.
Migration is, of course, also a point of comparison between the historical and contem­
porary extensions of the militarized agriculture theme. A large segment of the American
population descends from those who fled feudalism in Europe. Much has changed since
then; the world has been impacted by colonialism, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise
and fall of empires. But some factors have remained. Possession and dispossession of land
played a role in the European migration to America just as it does in the African migration
to Europe now.

5.5 Identity Issues: Who Is the State and for Whom Does It Exist?

Governments often base some of their legitimacy on the claim that they act in the inter­
est of their people (Schlichte 2004, 150–151). The question of course is: whom do they
49 Conversation with Elhadi Ibrahim Osman, Abu Naʿama, December 7, 2017.
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 125

regard as their people and how do they produce the image of this representation? These
questions are difficult to answer and their responses can vary substantially from case to case
as illustrated in a comparison of compensation policies for agricultural landowners whose
properties are now submerged by water reservoirs following dam constructions. Around
1970, Lake Nasser in the north of Sudan and the adjacent areas in Egypt filled up due to the
construction of the Aswan High Dam, and the Nubian riverine gardens and irrigated fields
around Halfa were submerged. The Sudanese government then did the obvious and compen­
sated the displaced farmers with farmland elsewhere. New Halfa was subsequently founded
in eastern Sudan on irrigated land in the new Khashm al Girba scheme (Sørbø 1985). People
from Wadi Halfa were not used to the occasional rain and had to cope with malaria, but it
was still a form of compensation.
Agricultural lands, including prime land for flood recession cultivation, have now been
submerged in another area as well, with a ten­meter rise in the dam at Roseiris. The reser­
voir behind it has expanded accordingly, affecting a large area since it is located in a vast
alluvial plain. That this extended, shallow lake also has an enormous surface exposing it to
evaporation under a merciless sun is of no concern to the local people but might be an issue
to regions downstream, further north. Along the new shoreline and in the area below the
dam, where open range and rain­fed agricultural fields will be converted into irrigated land,
large portions have been and will be allocated to foreign investors. To the local farmers,
and now ex­farmers, this has been promoted as “development,” with the promise that they
will find jobs in large­scale agro­businesses. But will they? It is unclear how much labor is
actually needed in modern, mechanized farming. In one case, it was obvious that farmers
needed to be compensated with land to be able to remain farmers while, in the other case,
the demotion from being a farmer to being a laborer on someone else’s farm was presented
as a blessing for the affected people. We shall now explore the reason for this difference.
The explanation might be found through an analysis of identity. With whom does the
government identify? And who do they identify as the Sudanese people, the people they
represent? Does the “nation” include all citizens in the modern sense equally? There is
no doubt that the Nubians are real Sudanese. A substantial proportion of the ancestry of the
northern riverine Sudanese is Nubian, irrespective of the Arab genealogies tracing patrilineal
links back to the Qureysh, the tribe of the Prophet, which many of them have adopted.
Even those who claim to be Arab along patrilineal lines would often not deny that their
grandmothers were Nubian. But identity becomes more complicated south of Roseiris and
Damazin, the area affected by the heightened dam. This region is home to the Gumuz and
the Berta, who also live on the Ethiopian side of the border, the Hausa and the Fulbe, who
live in Nigeria and Niger as well, and the Ingessana, who have resisted Islamization locally
for a long time. Furthermore, there are representatives of many other smaller groups who
are descendants of slaves. Their ancestors were not regarded as citizens in any sense, rather
as resources, until just over a century ago. It does not seem to occur to the political class
that farmers who have lost their farmlands should at least be given the option of holding
land elsewhere. It instead appears to be rather a matter of course to them that they should
become laborers, and alternatives are not discussed in public.
While the Hausa and the Fulbe have their own traditions of statehood or have lived, like
many pastoral Fulbe, in the “gaps” between West African states (Diallo 2008), the Gumuz
in Ethiopia have been described by Gonzáles­Ruibal (2014) as marginal groups with a long
history of withdrawal from statehood or resistance against it. The same author describes
126 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

the Berta as a composite group with different identities. They trace their history to the Funj
kingdom that preceded the 1822 Egyptian conquest of the territory that makes up much of
modern­day Sudan. They link themselves to northern Sudanese traders (jallaba) and their
traditions of Islamic knowledge. But they are also Black, have pagan cultural traditions, and
inhabit borderlands. On the Ethiopian side, Islam helps the Berta to differentiate themselves
from other Ethiopians. In Sudan, Gumuz and Berta groups in villages along the Blue Nile
had long struggled to integrate themselves with their fellow villagers in the vicinity of the
state capital of Damazin. The fact that they were treated differently from the Nubians further
north may have to do with culturalist and racist discrimination.
In addition, one may wonder whether the advancement of ideas inaccurately called
neoliberal about large­scale agriculture in private hands does not play a role in explaining
why expropriated landowners in the 1970s were treated better than those expropriated in
recent years. Of course, there is nothing liberal about this sort of neoliberalism because it is
based on state intervention and forceful allocation of resources to some people at the expense
of other people. Land grabbing has become more and more common throughout Africa and
the threshold of shame of those who engage in it has become lower and lower. But evidence
that governments have the same level of high­handedness in their own ethnic constituencies
or in the areas culturally closer to them compared to geographically or culturally distant
areas is still missing. We shall come back to this point in connection with Ethiopia.
The expectation (or the pretense) was that the former farmers would become agricul­
tural laborers on what used to be their land. To date, however, the government or the new
owners of their former lands so far have not even provided employment for them. In Novem­
ber 2014, I saw a truckload of workers from one of the settlements built for those whose
villages had been flooded at Wad an Nayyal, over 100 kilometers to the north. They had
been hired as day laborers by the local owner of a rain­fed mechanized agricultural scheme.
This form of agriculture was called “semi­mechanized” by Ahmed (2008, 5) because only
plowing is done by tractor, and harvesting still requires substantial manual labor. As previ­
ously mentioned, labor over successive periods in Sudan has been performed by slaves, West
African migrants, and refugees from the war in South Sudan. Following the Comprehensive
Peace Agreement (2005), many southern Sudanese returned to southern Sudan or explored
other options in 2006 and 2007. Farmers suffered because of the rising costs of labor due to
these changes. The new inhabitants of these supposedly modern cities still encountered the
demand for cheaper labor in rural areas, although the ones we saw at Wad an Nayyal clearly
had not found work anywhere near home.
And what was the situation back at home, in and around the modern cities? This is
what one official source had to say:
Resettlement in Blue Nile Over, Karori 2012­11­13
Dams Implementation Unit (DIU), Social Affairs Commissioner Dr Ahmed Al
Karori confirmed that the resettlement process for all the citizens affected by
the heightening of Roseris Dam is over. ‘We have resettled 20,000 families in
12 modern cities equipped with all the necessary services’. Karori said adding
that these services include tarmac roads, bridges, schools, hospitals, mosques,
clubs and over 120,000 hectares of agricultural lands. On their part, the citizens
affected by the Roseires Dam heightening considered the new settlement towns
a good achievement.’ Citizens are satisfied with the resettlement process, which
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 127

was finalized smoothly and now citizens enjoy good services’ said Al Amin
Abd Al Gadir, Omda of Hamaj tribe that was affected by the heightening of the
dam. ‘This is the first time that we manage to access the various markets during
the rainy season’ said Ali Abaker, one of the resettled citizens adding that now
his kids get education in schools closer to their homes. It is to be noted that
the affected citizens formed cooperative societies to manage the agricultural
projects and DIU provided farmers with all machineries and other inputs.50

Reality, however, looked very different. The following paragraphs are based on my notes
from a conversation with Elhadi Ibrahim Osman in Damazin on November 13, 2014.
Since the heightening of the Roseiris dam was completed in 2012, the reservoir has ex­
panded and large areas have been flooded. The DIU had resettled people from the inundated
areas into numbered modern cities, Cities No. 1–12 (madiina waahid–madiina itna’ashr).
Numbers one to six are on the eastern bank, seven to twelve on the western bank.
Discontent rose in those cities for several reasons. First, the flooded areas were, at
times, either larger or smaller than expected. In some regions, officials underestimated how
much of the area would be submerged. Whole villages, who had lost their fields and homes,
spontaneously resettled in the modern cities, living with relatives or building improvised
sheds. They never received compensation of any sort.
Second, farmers in areas with less flooding than expected, where fields and villages
remained accessible, were not more fortunate. Their lands had been taken over by the DIU
(the right to live in a modern city was presented as compensation) and the DIU now appro­
priated the resources. Logging rights were sold and trees were felled. Some areas suitable
for irrigation were rented to farmers with investment capital. In other cases, the DIU just
harvested whichever crops, mainly mango, had grown and shared the returns with the prior
owners. Nominally they were to receive one half, and that just for a period of three years,
but they say they received only 10 percent of what they earned when they did the harvesting
themselves. It goes without saying that the costs and benefits of the DIU were not accounted
for and that they just paid “one half” of whatever amount they claimed to have earned.
Third, the situation of the modern city dwellers was further complicated by the military
confrontation between the Khartoum Government and the forces of the deposed governor of
Blue Nile. An armistice agreement with the SPLA­North (Malik Agar) guaranteed access
to merchandize for the city populations, but this agreement was broken by the Sudanese
government. Consequently, the cities were raided by the Ingessana, the ethnic group to
which Malik Agar belongs. Malik Agar had never pursued policies to favor this group at
the expense of others, but rightly or wrongly they were identified with the SPLM­N and had
to suffer the consequences. As they were cut off from the supply of consumer goods, they
regularly raided the markets of the modern cities. The resettled farmers, on one side, were
deprived of land by the expanding lake whereas the new land owners, on the other side, were
restricted in their activities by the security situation. No animals could be taken west of the
road from Damazin to Geisan. Ingessana would kill herders and drive away the animals.51
50 https://web.archive.org/web/20130708014105/http://www.roseiresdam.gov.sd/en/index.php/home_en/show/

62, accessed December 28, 2020. Also cited by Linke (2014, 89).
51 Suffering in the Blue Nile and Nuba Mountains regions is a major preoccupation in the international community

and negotiations are now (2017) under way to grant access to international aid organizations. Both sides fear if one
side has control of aid, they will use it to their own advantage. People are made hostage to armed groups. With the
break­up of the SPLM­N the situation has even become more difficult (John Young, personal communication).
128 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

Fourth, the fortunate former farmers were told that they would receive houses in a
modern city as compensation. But these houses turned out to be euphemisms for shacks.
Malik Agar, while still governor of Blue Nile, once perforated a wall of one of these so­
called houses by throwing a hammer at it in order to demonstrate the inadequacy of these
structures. The panels of the walls were made in China and some people attributed a new
fungus disease, which affects skin, to the unidentified fibrous substances compressed to form
them.
And fifth, the inhabitants of these structures, who either have received no compensation
for their former lands and houses or inadequate compensation of the kind just described, are
still responsible for utility fees. They pay for the electricity poles connecting them to the
supply and for electricity. In principle, there is nothing wrong in paying electricity bills,
but their source of income evaporated with their displacement, making such costs extremely
burdensome. They must also pay for waste disposal. When their shallow latrines have filled
up, they have to wait for enough neighboring latrines to fill to justify calling a truck from
Damazin to empty them. During the rainy season, the rain water spreads the waste from the
filled latrines evenly across the settlement.
If, in an informal context, one asks government officers about the living conditions of
the former farmers of the flooded lands and their entitlements, one gets answers like, “They
did not own anything anyhow”; “They are slaves”; “They are not real Sudanese.”
Sadly, Sudan fits into the wider political picture that reflects this kind of graded identifi­
cation between government and people. There are those who properly belong to the political
entity (who represent the image the government has of their people) and others whose mem­
bership is marginal or debatable. Ethiopia is conducting similar practices on a potentially
larger scale. Properties that belong to families who resisted incorporation into the Ethiopian
Empire a little over a hundred years ago and who were victims of slave raids are now in the
process of being emptied of people and leased at ridiculously low rates to big agribusinesses.
(The same argument is used: they will be much better off as a labor resource without land,
settled instead in planned villages, and waiting to be hired as laborers by the very agribusi­
nesses in possession of their former land.)52
In Sudan, the government policy to promote Arab­Islamic civilization, often rather in­
congruously, provides a basis for distinction between supposedly authentic and inauthentic
Sudanese. The discursive power exerted by governmental actors over the question of who is
Sudanese has led to a few paradoxes. Darfurians, with a long­established Islamic tradition,
are classified as Africans, as distinct from Arab Muslims (note the dissonant terminologies
juxtaposing color adjectives with religious affiliations). Other Darfurians, pastoralists with
little Islamic erudition and a similarly dark complexion, are classified as Arabs. On the other
hand, so­called Nile Arabs of all complexions depict themselves as prototypical Arabs and
Muslims53 even though many of them are descendants of the Christian populations of the
Nubian kingdoms that persisted well into the sixteenth century. But true or untrue, these
classifications have social effects. Darfurians were among the keenest supporters of the Na­
tional Islamic Front (NIF), until they belatedly realized they were not accepted by the Arab
Islamists.
In Ethiopia, a similar line is drawn between the densely populated highlands and the
lowlands. The core of the highlands is Semitic­speaking and Christian, but language fami­
52 Abbink et al. (2014).
53 de Waal (2004); Beck (2004); Watson and Schlee (2009, 12–15).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 129

lies no longer follow the geographical areas of altitude, nor do religions. Semitic languages
are also spoken by those who do not belong to the conquerors but to the conquered, like the
Gurage. Likewise, the Cushitic language family has representatives within the imperial core
of the highlands (Agaw, Oromo), among conquered highland people (Sidamo, other Oromo
groups), and in the lowlands (Somali, yet other Oromo, Arbore, Dasanech) to name but a few.
In religious terms, Monophysite Christianity was dominant in the highlands while Catholic
and Protestant missions, including Pentecostal missions, were only allowed in non­Christian
areas, which is where they made their converts. Islam and traditional forms of belief (those
which are not part of a world religion) are also more commonly found in the conquered high­
lands or in the lowlands, but there are exceptions to all these findings. More clearly than by
any linguistic or religious differences, the imperial core of the highlands is circumscribed
by a different type of land rights, where smallholders have recognized land property. There,
development aims at drawing landed farmers into the commercial sphere. But there are di­
visions even within these core lands. Since the seventh century, Muslims have been denied
land rights in the highlands (H. Ahmed 2006). In the lowlands, however, the lands of pas­
toralists, agropastoralists, and small­scale farmers are not recognized, and the state claims
ownership of all land. Meanwhile, foreign and northern Ethiopian investors can acquire
enormous amounts of land declared “uninhabited” for purely nominal fees (Makki 2014).
In fact, in spite of the prominence of foreign direct investment in the activist discourse,
many of these investors are locals. Most of the land especially in Benishangul­Gumuz and
Gambella was given to domestic investors. The term domestic is interesting, here. In 2010,
the researcher Fekadu Adugna acquired a list of 104 investors in Benishangul­ Gumuz and
found that only four of them were foreigners and the remaining were domestic. According to
an anonymous student researcher in 2015, one Gumuz man included in the list of investors
was the head of the Benishangul­Gumuz Regional State’s Investment Bureau. Estimates of
the proportion of Tigrayans among the investors in the lowland lay at 90 percent on the high
end while in Tigray itself there are no investments in land from outside the region. The dis­
content with this state of affairs was among the factors that led to the change of government
and the accession of Abiy, an Oromo, to the office of prime Minister in April 2018 and to
a violent escalation in 2020.54 Just as in Sudan, new economic dynamics, triggered by the
2007–2008 food crisis and the rush for land, have very diverging effects on proper citizens
54 According to Al­Jazeera, on Dec. 23, 2020, in the village of Bekoji in Bulen county in the Metekel

zone of Benishangul­Gumuz, 207 civilians were murdered. The Ethiopian military claims to have killed 42
of the attackers in the following days. “Meanwhile, nearly 40,000 people have fled their homes due to the
fighting, Bulen county spokesman Kassahun Addisu said.” (https : / / www . aljazeera . com / news / 2020 / 12 /
25/death­toll­from­attack­in­western­ethiopia­reaches­222­red­cross, accessed December 28, 2020) While Al­
Jazeera refers to the attackers as unidentified gunmen, it is possible to delineate at least the general ethnic fault lines
(without attributing individual guilt): According to my email correspondence with Ethiopian friends the victims of
the massacre (“over 260”) were mostly Amhara, Agaw, Shinasha, and Oromo and the attackers were local Gumuz
militias. The background of these atrocities is described in the following way: Over the past two to three years,
the Ethiopian government was accusing TPLF of recruiting, training, equipping, and financing the local Gumuz to
destabilize the area. Tigray, Oromo, and Amhara have been in fierce competition with each other about land and
mineral resources, most importantly gold, in Benishangul­Gumuz. Since the coming to power of Abiy as prime min­
ister, the Tigray and their party, the TPLF found themselves in isolationand supported the local Gumuz, to defend
the investments of TPLF military leaders and other Tigray in land and gold mining in Beni Shangul­Gumuz. Also
foreign powers are suspected to be involved in destabilizing Ethiopia. The sole evidence for this is the interpretation
of their interests. Egypt perceives its water supply to be threatened by the Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, the Su­
dan has a border dispute with Ethiopia over a 250 km2 stretch of land on the border in eastern Gedaref, the Faqasha
area. (Email correspondence, 26/12/2020) The border dispute with Sudan, however, seems to be resolved by nego­
130 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

and on marginalized citizens. These recent developments in Sudan and Ethiopia prompt an
analysis on a larger scale, specifically through a look at how regional boundaries are drawn.
Governments often go far in accommodating local forces whom they wish to integrate
into their system of rule. In Ethiopia, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) ousted the
centralist government in a movement that supported self­determination. Since then, ethnic
federalism and the celebration of diversity have been the official line (Fiseha 2006, 131–
138).
For a period of its history, the TPLF went beyond self­determination within Ethiopia
and subscribed to secession in the 1976 “TPLF Manifesto.” The secession option was
dropped again in 1978. Apparently the TPLF wanted to underline its difference to the Er­
itrean People’s Liberation Front (Berhe 2008). According to Young’s (Young 1997b) “Peas­
ant Revolution in Ethiopia: TPLF 1975–1989,” the TPLF was never a separatist movement
but supported national self­determination within Ethiopia and also opposed Eritrean separa­
tion.
Be that as it may, both positions attribute a strong emphasis on nationalities and with that
emphasis in its ideology to the TPLF, making it effectively impossible for them to pursue
a centralist line openly when it found itself in power in 1991. With the TPLF at its core,
a wider organization was formed, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front
(EPRDF), which comprises many regional branches. The map of the country was redrawn
along ethnic lines, replacing earlier administrative units that followed geographical features
and lines of communication. There have been remarkable efforts to give local languages the
status of literary languages,55 often making use of the Latin alphabet, while earlier attempts
had used the Amharic syllabary (fidel).
Below the level of the regional states, the same patterns are reproduced for smaller
units. Ethnic subgroups and minority groups within these states have a special status with
separate administrations and cultural rights at the woreda (district) or even at the kebele (vil­
lage) level. Thus, all Ethiopians should now have, and many actually do, a territory where
they enjoy special cultural entitlements as guaranteed by the constitution56 (the limitations
of which shall be discussed shortly). Exceptions are those who migrated within Ethiopia,
as Mossa Hamid Wassie (n.d.) shows. But the situation is different in regards to material
uses of the land, such as the right to till. Here, the Ethiopian government has reverted to
remarkably strong centralism. As in Sudan (Umbadda 2014), most rural land is ultimately
government land and traditional rights are treated like grants that can be revoked any time,
which happens when well­connected private investors come in. In Ethiopia, regional states
can lease up to 5,000 hectares to foreign investors while all contracts involving larger chunks
of land are the prerogative of the MOARD (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development)
of the federal government (Rahmato 2011). This situation may have changed recently. Ac­
cording to Fekadu Adugna (personal communication) the question of who allocated the land
was more a question of the power relations between the different levels of government than
of the law. The late prime minister Meles Zenawi was in a position to assume the right to
make allocations of more than 5000 hectares for the federal government while his successor
(Hailemariam, in office until April 2018) was not in the same position. According to Ar­

tiation. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/12/22/sudan­ethiopia­hold­border­talks­one­week­after­clash/,
accessed December 28, 2020).
55 See Griefenow­Mewis (2009).
56 See Art. 39, 40 FDRE­Constitution.
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 131

ticle 52 (2) of the federal constitution, the basic land policy and laws are set at the federal
level and the mandate to administer land is given to the respective region, not to the federal
government. The prerogative to make such allocations reverted to the regional level after
the death of Meles Zenawi. Since 2016 land allocations are made again exclusively by the
regional level of government. Between 2010 and 2016, however, hundreds of thousands of
hectares of land have been given out by federal institutions, and the regional governments
now have inherited a lot of headaches to administer them.
Recent literature shows that, in a number of cases, large­scale agro­industrial land
yielded a significantly smaller output than the same land when it was previously used by
“traditional” smallholders (Catley, Lind, and Scoones (2013); Schlee (Schlee 2013). No­
madic pastoralism, which Markakis (Chapter 4) regards as obsolete, may also be taken as
an example. This seems to apply both to the state farms of the Derg period and to the huge
allocations to mostly foreign investors by the present government. Large­scale agriculture
may have its advantages in terms of labor efficiency through mechanization and marketable
surpluses, but these may vanish if we take into account the large amount of subsistence
production that had fed the people living on the land before reallocation. Furthermore, the
ecological impact of so­called oily agriculture is questionable, as it needs 12 kilocalories of
fossil fuels, mainly for agricultural machinery and the transport of both inputs and products,
for the production of one kilocalorie of nutrition. The fact that these government policies are
not in the overall interest of the people, of the state, or of the nation again raises the question
of identity in government. Governments clearly do not identify completely with the people
but rather with some sections of the people more than others. If the people is taken as the
reference point for cost­benefit analyses, then the explanation for these apparently irrational
policies needs to be sought within narrower identity constructs as well as sub­ and transna­
tional clientelistic networks. More specific definitions of identities may also help to explain
why some areas are chosen for land to be leased out while others are not.
One dimension of differentiation used to classify people, quite independently of their
cultural closeness or association to government personnel, is their usefulness. The govern­
ment may derive material benefits from certain sections of the population more than from
others. In this case, we would not say that the government identifies with the kinds of people
perceived as useful, because one can tax or exploit people regardless of their similarities or
differences. But the government nevertheless has an interest in protecting and maintaining
them. Governments try to keep taxpayers in their own territory, and they might even wel­
come the immigration of taxpayers from elsewhere. Ideally, they tax them in a sustainable
way, which allows them to survive, maintain their productivity, and pay tax next year. The
dependency of the government on the peoples’ usefulness gives taxpayers a voice. “No taxa­
tion without representation” was the war cry of the American revolution. Successful claims
to representation may lead to a democracy. History is rich in examples of how demos is
defined in a democracy. Women and slaves might not be included, or the right to vote might
be restricted to property owners, and different categories of people might not have the same
number of votes. Even modern democracies, which are theoretically based on “one person
one vote,” access to power varies radically for different categories of people according to
how constituencies are drawn, whether you need a university degree to stand for parliament
(Kenya), how much money you need for a successful campaign (USA), not to speak of uni­
versally illegal obstacles to democratic representation like rigged elections, post­election
132 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

violence,57 and pre­election violence.58 In spite of all these caveats, limitations, and short­
comings, one can say that democracy can lead to a kind of identification between the people
(or at least the majority of whomever manages to vote) and the state institutions. If people
do not vote for representatives who are like themselves, they at least vote for those who
reflect their dreams and ambitions. Whether or not elected representatives identify with all
taxpayers and vice versa depends on the treatment of minorities. General welfare rather than
the prioritization of the interests of citizens who voted for elected officials is the cornerstone
of this policy.59 This digression into taxes and democracy does not fully solve the problem
of “identification with the state and identification by the state” but leads back to it.
But the topic of taxes leads us to another question: if governments (contrary to their
own claims) do not identify with the people (at least not in the sense of an undifferentiated
whole), do they maybe identify with the state in a fiscal sense? Identification with the state
as an apparatus or an institution varies greatly across northeast Africa depending on how
established the state is and how long it has existed. Alex de Waal (2015b) reports that when
the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) moved into Addis Abeba in 1991, and the
Mengistu government fled, civil service salaries were due in three days. State employees
were told to come to work and to keep the institutions going. The salaries were paid on
time. Young (2012) explains that Sudan has a longer tradition of the bureaucratic state than
South Sudan. Effective taxation however, seems to be a problem everywhere. A successful
state in the fiscal sense would be one that offers good conditions for all branches of the
economy and is able to tax them all in a sustainable way. Such a state would strive to
gain the loyalty and cooperation of all taxpayers, a similarly broad identification like that
of the people as a whole. But an effective system of taxation that is conducive to such a
wider coherence appears to be missing. In marginal areas, the state (often a lower level
of administrative units) sets up road blocks. Militias and other counter forces to the state
might do the same. There, fees are collected for whichever state or anti­state organization
has manned the barrier or are turned into bribes for the collectors. This system is a far cry
from enhancing productivity and then taxing it.
A road block is a bottleneck. You tax people where they have to pass. Deriving revenue
from bottlenecks is characteristic of many African countries. You get money where you most
easily get hold of it, not where taxation has the best long­term effects. Charging a foreign
investor a fee for leasing a huge area of agricultural land is easier than taxing the hundreds
of peasants the investor will chase away. But it may be that the smaller­scale agriculture

57 There are numerous examples of African presidents who are voted out of office and simply do not go. They

stay on by force. Ultimately, they may agree to some internationally mediated “power sharing” deal, but such an
arrangement has little to do with the will of the electorate.
58 While large­scale post­election violence, like the 2007–2008 events in Kenya, has occasionally made it into the

international media, pre­election violence has received less attention although it is a regular feature of politics in
many places. It correlates to ethnic bloc voting. If one can anticipate election results on the basis of the numerical
balance of the members of different ethnic groups, the only way to change elections results is by changing this
balance. That is done by massacre, expulsion, or intimidation so that people do not register as voters or do not dare
to vote. Other frequent features of pre­election violence include the arrest of opposition candidates and interference
with the right to assembly (like firing into gatherings of people).
59 “The question of the relationship between public welfare and the interests of those in power and their clients to

the patron is exchanged for services and goods received by the clients. As a result, the line between the private
and the public spheres is so blurred that notions of the public good and of independent civil society are ultimately
absent” (Englebert and Tull 2008, 116f).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 133

would have had a higher overall productivity and the effort to tax the peasants effectively,
fairly, and sustainably would have paid out.
Another term prominent in the discussion of revenue in Africa is “rent.” Many African
states are “rentier states.” They get their budget (and private benefits of the state class) from
foreign mining companies. We have argued that paying taxes gives a voice to tax payers. In
a rentier system, foreign companies have that voice.60
Governments can also be sources of such rent. Governments in the global North pay
governments in Africa and Asia for assisting them in the so­called War on Terror. This may
have a paradox effect because the recipients of such rent are interested in a “non­zero level
of terrorism” (de Waal 2015b, 185). “Many in the jihadist camp will probably find it more
profitable to switch to the counter­terror business, and will find that they can organize an
optimal level of terrorist threat such that US counter­terror aid continues” (de Waal 2015b,
126).
To examine different forms of revenue and the incentives they provide to different kinds
of actors, we now move along the Blue Nile upstream into Ethiopia, into the area that used
to be western Wollega and is now divided between the Benishangul­Gumuz regional state
and Oromia. Recent research by Ameyu Godesso Roro (2017) sheds light on how ethnic
federalism works here, on the interplay between ethnicity, organized in a particular system
of ethnic federalism, and collective and individual material incentives, mostly connected
with land rights.
From Ameyu’s description of the history in and around western Wollega, it seems that
the Ethiopian state has historically played a role in the inception or escalation of ethnic
conflict and continues to do so today. The liberation movements that caused the downfall of
the Derg regime in 1991 also had an ethnic basis.
Some movements, most prominently the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), were banned
from contributing to the design of the new state, meaning the new policies were firmly
grounded in TPLF beliefs. Because of the exclusion of some of these parties, the new
regime was suspected of continuing the old Semitic61 dominance, with the Tigrayans now
replacing the Amhara as the senior partner in the Semitic core of the state.
In the shadow of this great dichotomy (Semitic core, non­Semitic fringe) we find the
local interethnic dyad of Oromo and Gumuz. From the beginning, this relationship was
not equal. The Oromo were the senior partners. Oromo clans hosted and protected Gumuz
groups, and there have been strong friendships between individuals in the two groups.
With the introduction of commercial agriculture, like cotton production, inequality in­
creased and developed into exploitation. It began under the local Oromo ruler who had
become a vassal of Menelik, and increased under Haile Selassie. But there has always been
interaction, not separation. Territorial separation, as carried out by the present regime in the
name of traditional ethnicity, has never been part of traditional ethnicity. In earlier times

60 Somaliland, in spite of the lack of international recognition has been found by many authors a rather well func­

tioning de­facto state. Somaliland is financed not only by port fees but by taxes paid by local telecommunication
companies, livestock traders, and many others. The relative stability of Somaliland may be due to the fact that it is
an “impecunious” non­rentier state, depending on local sources of taxation and a broad variety of these. This sit­
uation may change with international recognition followed by “development aid and mineral extraction” (de Waal
2015b, 140).
61 Political uses and misuses of the terms “Semitic” and “Semites” abound. In political polemics in Ethiopia, these

terms mostly refer to Tigray and Amhara, and not to the minority Gurage and Harrari who also speak Semitic
languages.
134 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

many of the nationalities of Ethiopia did not occupy mutually exclusive territories, but in­
termingled. “Ethnic unmixing,” a term made infamous by the Bosnian war in the 1990s, is
not a consequence of what ethnicity is and always has been all about, but it is a recent change
in the character of ethnicity. It is only since 1991 that each of the peoples of Ethiopia have
been told that they have exclusive rights to designated territories.
Far from idealizing the past, Ameyu also describes violent interaction, slavery, and
armed revolts by Gumuz. Conflicts were aggravated by imperial penetration and heavy tax­
ation. But he also describes forms of conflict resolution by councils of elders and different
forms of collective adoption, individual economic partnership, and ritualized forms of in­
terethnic friendship.
Discussing the present regime and the introduction of ethnic federalism, Ameyu ques­
tions the sincerity of this notion. Power was never really handed down to the local or the
ethnic level. The main problems people have are not with the new federal order but with its
absence, with malfunctioning state institutions and the instrumentalization of state institu­
tions by powerful groups and individuals.
In this setting, there was room for maneuver for ethnic entrepreneurs and for strate­
gizing and changing alliances. After an initial connection to the Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF), outlawed in 1992, the Gumuz politicians sided with the winner, the ruling EPRDF,
and the landscape of political parties was reshaped accordingly. The memories of the past
(or the communicated part of these memories) then started to attribute negative evaluations
of the shared history of Oromo and Gumuz and to leave out all positive elements.
The main contested issue is access to land at all levels. It is useful at this point to widen
the focus from Benishangul and to look at territorial rights and land ownership as described
by the Ethiopian constitution of 1994.
The constitution has a speaker: “We, the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of
Ethiopia.” This plural speaker or collective author than allocates sovereignty to an equally
plural entity, in fact to the same one. Article 8 reads: “(1) All sovereign power resides in
the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia, (2) This Constitution is an expression of
their sovereignty.”
Article 39 specifies the “Rights of Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples.” It focuses on
the right of self­determination including secession, and gives language a prominent place:
“(2) Every Nation, Nationality and People in Ethiopia has the right to speak, to write and to
develop its own language; to express, to develop and to promote its culture; and to preserve
its history.” It goes on to address the right to establish institutions of government. But the
actual relationship to the land of this entity, be it a nation, a nationality, or a people, is not
so clear. Do the natural resources of a territory belong to the local nation or nationality that
has a right to that land, do they belong to nations, nationalities, and peoples as a whole, at
the federal level?
Article 40 specifies that “(3) The right to ownership of rural and urban land, as well as
of all property of the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia and shall not be subject
to sale or to other means of exchange.” Upon first reading, it sounds as if the land in question
belongs to the respective nations, nationalities, and peoples, but a closer reading reveals that
it is their “common property.” The land belongs to all of them together. In other words, the
federal government, as made up by all the nations, nationalities, and peoples of Ethiopia,
owns the land.
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 135

What follows are two paragraphs that appear to reflect abstract norms rather than en­
forceable legal rights:

(4) Ethiopian peasants have the right to obtain land without payment and the
protection against eviction from their possession. The implementation of this
provision shall be specified by law.

(5) Ethiopian pastoralists have the right to free land for grazing and cultivation
as well as the right not to be displaced from their own lands. The implementa­
tion shall be specified by law.

The next paragraph demands a squaring of the circle:

(6) Without prejudice to the right of Ethiopian Nations, Nationalities, and Peo­
ples to the ownership of land, government shall ensure the right of private in­
vestors to the use of land on the basis of payment arrangements established by
law. Particulars shall be determined by law.

How the federal government can give land grants to private investors without prejudice to
the rights of individual nations, nationalities, and peoples is not specified.
Whereas the constitution typically refers to the “peoples” of Ethiopia, the “Economic
Objectives” (Article 89), curiously employs the term “people” in the singular. This distinc­
tion makes it clear that development and use of the land are primarily the prerogatives of
the federal government. “(5) Government has the duty to hold, on behalf of the People, land
and other natural resources and to deploy them for their [natural plural] common benefit and
development.”
In other words, every Ethiopian has the right to a piece of land where they can speak
their own language, but not necessarily to a piece of land where they can grow what they
want in the way they want. To whom the land is granted and along which lines it is to be
tilled and developed is decided by the federal government.
In spite of the federal and devolutionist language and the alternating use of people and
peoples, it is clear that the land in Ethiopia basically belongs to the rulers and that the higher­
level rulers ultimately rule over the lower level rulers.
Ameyu describes how this hierarchical understanding of land rights came about in
Benishangul­Gumuz and in former western Wollega in general. The history of land rights
in this region began as a method of seizing control of land by a conqueror. Since the six­
teenth century, the Oromo have divided up land and allotted it to their clans. When the
Gumuz joined the Oromo south of Blue Nile in the late nineteenth century, they had to join
an Oromo clan in order to be allocated land. Land allocations were also done as personal
gifts to leaders. The Oromo, in turn, had to submit to the Amhara conquest and became part
of the empire of Menelik.
The Komo, Gumuz, and other peoples had to seek arrangements with western Oromo
chiefs, like Jote Tulu and Moreda Bakare, or they had to withdraw from lands into remote
areas, not yet effectively controlled by either Ethiopia or the Sudan. These chiefs first lost
their independence and then gradually the autonomy they had been granted when they sub­
mitted. The tillers of the land could no longer use it as they or as their coethnic seniors
wished and the land was taxed. The situation continued until the end of the monarchy in
136 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

1974. The Derg was first to be perceived as liberating the peasants from the feudal econ­
omy and actively promoted this perception. At first, it enjoyed a high level of acceptance
within the peasantry. The new rule, however, was centralist and was soon perceived as
high­handed by many. Resettlement of impoverished peasants from the drought­stricken
northern highlands region, forced villagization, and collectivization of land alienated much
of the peasantry. The land now no longer belonged to feudal lords but to the people, but
with that change came a more distant government.
As the previously cited excerpt from the 1994 constitution shows, the EPRDF has main­
tained this form of ownership. Land ultimately belongs to the state, and the state can declare
land “unused” and lease it to big investors, many of whom are foreigners. Customary and
local authorities can allocate small parcels of land, and in some areas, there is a rush to do
so before higher levels of government lease land to others. Allocations to different people
by competing authorities at the same time are not uncommon under these conditions.
Land rights at a communal level have traditionally rested with clans. Under so­called
protective arrangements, the Gumuz were affiliated with Oromo clans, meaning the clan was
in effect an interethnic institution. This arrangement resulted in ethnically mixed groups oc­
cupying the same tracts of land. With a faulty claim to “tradition,” land rights at this level
have become ethnicized since 1991. Gumuz and Oromo have been said to traditionally oc­
cupy different territories, and even different ecological zones: the Gumuz the lowlands and
the Oromo the highlands. Expulsions in the name of ethnic unmixing were the consequence
of supposed tradition.
But the power of the state overrides ethnic rights. The Federal Republic of Ethiopia
tends to respect traditional land rights in the highlands, especially the Semitic core areas
of Ethiopia, where the land rights of peasants are relatively secure. Here, ethnic privileges
have and continue to play a certain role in protecting the rights of Semites from interference
by a government dominated by Semites. (Abiy, who became prime minister in April 2018,
has enacted many changes, but the long­term impact of his policies remains to be seen.
He is considered an Oromo (a speaker of a Cushitic language, although, in effect, he is a
polyglot). Conflict in Ethiopia is still violent and inconclusive.) Land­grabbing takes place
in the lowlands,62 but, there, it affects peasants and pastoralists of different ethnicities alike.
The real issue seems to be a class issue: the state class (with internal competition between
different levels of government) versus the rest. In all these areas one can say that the real
problem is not the rights of the peoples but the rights of the people.
This is illustrated by Amhara and Oromo settlers who were expelled from the lowlands,
which were wrongly but persistently described as the exclusive traditional habitat of the
Gumuz. But instead of taking over these lands, Gumuz were restricted to certain areas due
to the adverse effects their forms of use were said to have on the forest environment. In

62 However, there is significant displacement resulting from urban expansion and industries especially around

Addis Ababa. According to unofficial reports, 150,000 Oromo households have been displaced as a result of the
expansion of Addis Ababa, without compensation, of course, as the land belongs to the state (Fekadu Adugna,
personal communication). This land seizure is an exception in regional terms (highlands versus lowlands) but not
in ethno­linguistic terms. The Oromo, after all, are Cushites and not Semites. It is discontent with this policy which
led the EPRDF to install an Oromo, Abiy, as prime minister in April 2018. To some extent he was expected to play
the Oromo card to satisfy the Oromo opposition. He did not succeed in that. The current violent conflict (end 2020)
with the TPLF, in 2018 still the core element of the EPRDF coalition, shows that also the EPRDF (now abolished)
misjudged the situation in 2018 in other ways. Abiy not only failed to mollify the Oromo opposition but turned out
not to be their man either.
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 137

the end, large holdings were given to foreign investors (Roro 2017, 145 f). In cases like
this one, we hear much rhetoric about ethnic rights and the protection of minorities, but
what materially happens is interaction among elites—the Ethiopian state class and foreign
investors.
The resulting situation is far from peaceful. It generates territorial conflict on the in­
terethnic level. Ameyu, therefore, discusses at length the effect of the proliferation of guns
and the politics of disarmament on social order, starting with a history of the proliferation of
gun ownership in the region under different political regimes. As one of his main findings,
he describes the unbalanced way in which small arms control is carried out in the area. As
the main (perceived) rivals of the government are the Oromo, and in particular the outlawed
OLF, small arms control is vigorously enforced in Oromo areas while the Gumuz remain
well armed. (Ameyu argues that the election of an Oromo candidate for prime minister in
April 2018 can be seen as a major shift in the ethnic balance of the country. The effects of
this change on center­periphery relations in Ethiopia remain to be seen.) There are state­
sponsored peace initiatives, but their success is limited. Government politics or policies
are often the root causes of ethnic conflicts, but government­sponsored negotiations and
peacebuilding activities will hardly bring this to the fore. As to the role of state institutions,
they are found to exercise power top down and instrumentalize rather than solve interethnic
dissent.
This example may help us to answer some basic questions about ethnic federalism in
Ethiopia. Twenty­five years after the present power holders in Ethiopia started what they
called the liberation of the nations, nationalities, and peoples from oppressive centralist rule
and what political and social scientists call the introduction of ethnic federalism, the ethnic
dimension still looms large in the explanations of conflict in Ethiopia. The government is far
from having organized a peaceful system of different peoples living under one constitutional
system. It still has reason to feel threatened and the recurrent use of excessive brutality can
be seen as a symptom of its weakness.
Why is this so? The answers to this question can be sorted into two categories. These
two kinds of explanation diametrically contradict each other. One claims that ethnic federal­
ism is wrong because it creates rather than solves ethnic conflicts.63 The other explanation is
that ethnic federalism has not gone far enough or even that it has never been tried. Under the
guise of a federal institution and rhetoric of ethnic pluralism, the real power still emanates
from the center.
Both views are too simplistic. Both are based on a twofold model of identities: iden­
tities on a subnational level (nations in a narrower sense, nationalities and peoples in the
Ethiopian terminology, ethnic groups in sociological/ anthropological diction) and on the
national (pan­Ethiopian) level. The national level considers Ethiopia as a whole and as one
of the almost 200 “nation”­states that are members of the UN and make up the political
world according to common perception. Put simply, the model consists of particular iden­
tities within a shared identity and defines political entities at different levels. It is difficult
to concretely define the protocol for determining which kind of entity may be granted rights

63 Examples for this position are given by Hussein (2016, 344) who summarizes recent writings on ethnic feder­

alism as deploring its effects like: “the long standing resource­based competitions become, in general, ethnically
tainted. Even within a single regional state, the state restructuring ignited rivalry [over group representation […]
and contrary to the pledges in the constitution] the arrangement led to a gradual indigenization of conflict between
and within the regional states,” (numerous references omitted in this quote).
138 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

and political powers when the allocation of those rights and powers is at the expense of an­
other entity. These entities are transformed in the process of allocating or withholding rights
and powers. In other words, we are not dealing with fixed entities. When an ethnic group
or any other political entity defined by a collective identity is given political powers, legal
statues, or territorial rights, its nature is inevitably changed by such decisions.64
Ameyu calls this process “the transformation of ‘ethnic’ identities into political iden­
tities” (Roro 2017, 4), adding a twist to the Barthian perspective that ethnic identities form
and articulate themselves at the boundary with each other. If this interaction takes place in
a shared political space with its own institutions, a third element enters the system of binary
interaction. The state, the nation, or, more generally, some more encompassing political
entity comes in and changes the relation between the other two. Ameyu calls this “politi­
cization,” using the narrow understanding of the term politics to mean something that has to
do with states and formal institutions.
A further complication arises if we consider that an implicit assumption in this kind of
reasoning is that entities, such as ethnic groups, the federal state, states, and institutions, are
actors. The constitutional order provides them with different powers and they interact in con­
sideration of these powers. These entities are subjects (rather than objects) in the sense that
they grant powers to other such entities or acknowledge their powers The Ethiopian constitu­
tion, as previously mentioned, has “We, the Nations, Nationalities and Peoples of Ethiopia”
as a speaker, as an actor, and as the sovereign. This constitution (or any constitution for that
matter) hardly describes the political reality. Ameyu clarifies that “political entrepreneurs
make cultural identity politically relevant to their targeted interests. In this view, political
entrepreneurs […] are driven by predetermined instrumental rationality” (Roro 2017, 4).
As often as not, the Oromo, the Gumuz, or the government (or any collective defined by
identity constructs for that matter) are used selectively and instrumentally by other actors,
individuals, or smaller groups in pursuit of their own interests.
If ethnic federalism serves as a means to solve or contain ethnic conflicts, it is implied
that the ethnic conflicts existed before and that the state was introduced to resolve the issues.
The way in which ethnic federalism works in Ethiopia, however, often generates or escalates
problems.65 When issues remain unresolved, the current approach seems to be to invest
even more vigorously in the tenets of ethnic federalism and to fight the top­down power
of local and international political and economic elites. Historically, ethnicity in Ethiopia
never took the form of territorial exclusivity. Empowering people and empowering peoples
should mean giving everyone a voice, not unmixing people and putting them into separate
boxes.
According to an anecdote, Mahatma Gandhi, asked by an Englishman what he thought
of Western civilization, answered that he thought that it was a good idea (implying that there
had not been much of civilization in the West). In the same vein, one might qualify ethnic
federalism in Ethiopia as a good idea.
We find a similar contrast between local perceptions of territorial group rights and ad­
ministrative policies at a higher level of government in Sudan. There are intense contro­
versies about whose dar (homeland) a given territory is in tribal terms. Firstcomers have a

64 Cf. Woldeselassie (2017) discusses how the Gurage ethnic group was delineated, how the Siltie in their present

composition came into being, whether and in which sense the Siltie were a part of the Gurage, and how the Siltie
identity was affected by ethnic federalism.
65 Examples of this are also provided by the Ph.D. theses of Fekadu Adugna (2009) and Dejene Gemechu (2011).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 139

strong position and try to deny more recent arrivals any form of political representation in the
idaara ahaliyya (“Native Administration”). “Recent,” in this sense, can even be a hundred
years or so (Calkins 2014, 181). Fulbe and Hausa who arrived in Sudan after the conquest
of northern Nigeria by the British in the first decade of the twentieth century are precisely
such newcomers in the eyes of the longer established Arabs or Funj along the Blue Nile. As
the Arabs and Funj regard themselves as the owners of the land, they grant the Hausa and
Fulbe permission to reside there as guests in exchange for whatever they might demand. The
Hausa and Fulbe, unsurprisingly, do not accept their status as so­called guests, nor do they
acknowledge the authority of their self­proclaimed hosts. With varying degrees of success,
they have always claimed rights of their own that are not derived from concessions made by
the Arabs and Funj.66 All this may soon become obsolete as bigger economic issues take
prioritization. When land becomes more valuable, for example, after the expansion of irri­
gation, higher levels of government will become involved in its allocation. Lines of fission
between the central and regional governments have already become visible. Land allocation
will reflect the power games between these levels of governance.
The leading strata do not always identify with people who are most like themselves.
They may also have an ideal of the people, a vision of how the people should be, which
they themselves reflect only to a degree. In spite of intensified internal competition for land
in Sudan, the Sudanese government offered 10,000 acres of irrigable land to small­scale
Egyptian farmers according to a report by the Daily News Egypt, December 13, 2014.67 All
other sources reported that the area involved was 100,000 acres.68 The reasons given touted
unity and reflected the rhetoric of a rather distant past (“Sudan and Egypt are one country”)
and development (“the great [farming] experience of the Egyptian farmers”). But the role
of everyday ethnic nationalism and racism suggests that the farming scheme had a hidden
agenda to incorporate a more desirable lighter­skinned population into Sudan. Sudanese
people with dark skin encounter discrimination in the marriage market and in employment
opportunities, not to mention daily abusive language. Even relatively light­skinned Arab
Sudanese do not accept themselves as they are and do not necessarily act in favor of their
own people or people who are like themselves. Often, they would like to have lighter skin
and to be more Arab (ignoring the non­Arab origins of the Egyptians)69 and favor those who
correspond to that ideal.70
Land and the right to make land deals is the core of political competition across Sudan
and beyond. At the Darfur peace negotiations in Doha, the regional movements and the

66 Abu­Manga (1999, 2009); Diallo and Schlee (2000).

67 http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2014/12/13/10,000, retrieved December 14, 2014.
68 E.g. www.africareview.com/ News/ Sudan­offers­Egypt­farmland; www.news.sudanvisiondaily.com/ de­
tails.html?rsnpid243584 (both accessed December 24, 2014).
69 This argument is not meant to single out the Arab Sudanese as particularly racist. Racial discrimination between

Africans is an understudied phenomenon (but see O. A. Eno and M. A. Eno 2014; M. A. Eno 2017) because—
understandably—racism against Africans by people of European descent has been much more conspicuous and has
shaped a large proportion of anticolonial and postcolonial discourses. For understandable reasons, the critique of
White racism against non­Whites has occupied such a central place that, for many, the discussion of other kinds of
racism has become a kind of taboo. But, also within the region, one finds parallels to Sudanese racism in Ethiopia,
not to speak of Somalia.
70 Despite this somewhat paradoxical identity issue, the relationship between Sudan and Egypt is not free of ups

and downs. At the time of writing (2017) all the brotherly Arab rhetoric has ended. Sudan has stopped all imports
of Egyptian agricultural projects and accuses Cairo of arming Darfurian rebels. Sudan is now close to Ethiopia
(John Young, personal communication).
140 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

central government agreed upon one issue involving land. The open range would belong to
the state, and thus not to the tribes. Disagreement remains, however, on the point of which
state is, in fact, involved. The Darfurian movements would like a unified Darfur to be the
holder of these rights, while the Khartoum government views itself as the state.
In Ethiopia, such attitudes are not limited to the Semites. Gonzáles­Ruibal’s (2014)
research on marginalized groups in western Ethiopia emphasizes that the Oromo, famous
for their capacity and willingness to absorb other ethnic groups, do not consider people with
very dark skin to be fit for assimilation.
In other cases, most of which involve few natural resources to tempt governments to
assume direct control, devolution takes place. Following the logic of the aforementioned
Kenyan case, Darfur was subdivided into several internal states with a large number of dis­
tricts.71 This approach was clearly a matter of creating administrative posts and political
fiefs, and a way for the central government to purchase loyalty. The local demand for these
subdivisions is created by the aspirants to these posts.
And what of South Sudan? Does the region’s newest state also display some of the
tendencies found all around it? Much of rural South Sudan has been far away from any form
of modern statehood and the CPA sought to address this issue by bringing “decision­making
and budgeting closer to the people” (Rolandsen 2013, 37). This has triggered a process of
ongoing subdivision and the creation of more administrative units, even as there has not been
enough qualified staff to man the existing administration. Rolandsen identifies two driving
forces behind this process. In the absence of a functioning government that would provide
services, local government institutions provide nodal points for international networks with
missionaries, UN institutions, and NGOs. “Whether a local government office will be able
to carry out any of its formal duties is therefore seen as less important than its ability to
attract attention of other entities capable of doing so” (Rolandsen 2013, 38).
The other factor is that higher levels of government gain in importance in proportion to
the number of units subordinate to them. Salva Kiir introduced 28 states in breach of ARCSS
(the 2016 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan),
which was based on ten states and has since created a total of 32 states to increase Dinka
control and stop Nuer under Riek Machar from controlling the oil­rich states. Like in the case
of territorial policies in the administrative sphere, we also find similarities between South
Sudan and its neighboring countries in the case of land allocation for agricultural uses. To the
deep frustration of all those who had fought for separate statehood in order to have their own
land, by 2011 agricultural land amounting to 9 percent of the country’s territory had been
allocated to foreign governments, companies, or individual investors (Shanmugaratnam and
Lokuji 2012, 4). The ongoing war has stopped deals of this kind for the time being and
may make many of these allocations meaningless—maybe the only positive aspect of an
otherwise political disaster and humanitarian tragedy.

5.6 Conclusion

In northeast Africa, the light is brighter than in many other parts of the world, ranges in
temperature and altitude are wider, and the effects of rule and misrule are more extreme.
To be poor in Europe may mean inability to afford a vacation; in northeast Africa, it may
mean starvation. To lose power in Europe means to receive a pension or to wait for the next
71 Hadi (n.d.).
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 141

election on the opposition benches. In Africa, it may mean death or exile. Many aspects
of society across the African continent may be similar to other parts of the world, but more
extreme.
I do not think that we need a special kind of anthropology for northeast Africa or that
we need a special kind of political science to explain African politics.72 Human nature and
the nature of politics is the same there as in the rest of the world. Maybe we can rather see
the events that occur in Africa, which are applicable to humankind and their relationships
with each other as a whole, in a stronger light and in starker contrast.
Alex de Waal has entitled his recent book The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa
(2015b). It has its emphasis on material rewards and individual agency. He examines the
logic of action of political entrepreneurs on a political marketplace. Ethnic and religious
collective identities also find his interest, but mostly from an instrumentalist perspective.
Loyalty is basically bought, and political entrepreneurs need a personal budget (rather than
a state budget for which they are held accountable) in order to buy loyalty. “What is the
price of a militia in Darfur?” is a question which logically comes up in this perspective. For
de Waal, identities play a role in the negotiation of the price of loyalty. “Among the ways
of reducing loyalty spending are […] invoking popular solidarity by appeals to ethnicity,
nationalism or religion” (de Waal 2015b, 25). “Co­ethnicity is part of the bargain to min­
imize the risks of a payroll mutiny.” A payroll mutiny is the effect of underestimating the
price of loyalty and the effect of co­ethnicity is enhanced if you kill members of other ethnic
groups or tribes. The fear of retaliation will then strengthen the cohesion of an ethnically
defined fighting force and their loyalty to their leader. Ethnic identities are still relevant
even when the conflict has ended. “Darfurians say that ‘conflict defines origins,’ because
when disputes come to be settled and compensation paid, everyone must identify with their
tribal group which is responsible for paying blood­money” (de Waal 2015b, 54). The same
holds true for the Somali73 and others.
De Waal keeps the promise implied in the title of his book and everything he describes is
real. But is that all there is to be said about identity? Much of what is described in this chapter
can be analyzed in terms of payment for loyalty and individual material benefits. When the
president of Sudan wants to allocate land for the northern pastoralists expelled from South
Sudan, he wants to reward them for past loyalty and to secure their future loyalty. If the
governor of the local state does not follow his directions and keeps the land he is supposed
to give to the nomads for himself and his kin, his material benefit (and the support of the
network of the local state class turned farmers) is obviously closer to him than the national
level politics for which he is not held responsible. But how about the sincere conviction of
those who believe to be defending Islam (against the southern “infidels” or the West)? It is
difficult to measure the effect of such sincere convictions but it is equally difficult to deny
their existence.
This chapter has a broader perspective on political identification. It is not only an in­
strument; it also defines the beneficiaries. Identity broadens and complicates the self, so
that cost­benefit calculations are no longer purely individual but include others to varying

72 This is my general position. I also think that we do not need a postmodern sociology to explain postmodern

society, nor a postcolonial theory to explain postcolonial power relations nor a postsocialist theory to explain the
postsocialist world. I believe that we can only describe different things as different and explain their differences if
we look at them from the same theoretical vantage point.
73 Hagmann and Hoehne (2009); Schlee (2017).
142 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

degrees. Northern Sudanese favor northern Sudanese not only because they may be of imme­
diate use to them, but because this form of self­identification can be visualized as concentric
circles radiating from each individual. These concentric circles allow us to understand the
concept beyond pure instrumentalism. Instrumentalism answers the question of how politi­
cal aims are achieved. Our model also addresses the question of whom political successes
are meant to benefit. With the concentric circles, we can visualize that some potential ben­
eficiaries are closer to the decision maker than others and more likely to be included in the
cost­benefit analysis (like extensions of the self). In the outer circles people are less likely
to be included into these calculations or they are meant to benefit to a lesser degree. Beyond
the outer circles, criteria of identification are used in a way to find differences rather than
similarities and people are excluded from the benefits resulting from a decision.
The perspective on collective identities and the institutions associated with them (like
the people belonging to a state and the state serving the people or serving the nation) leads
us to dissolve larger categories into smaller ones. It also encourages smaller groups, who
actually share an interest and cooperate with one another, to question their associations with
institutions and to look at what institutions actually do rather than what they just claim to do.
It is fair to say that this perspective of the relationship between the people and the state is
akin to Marxism, which argues that the state does not identify with the interest of the entire
people but is the instrument of the ruling class. But again, this claim is overly simplified. A
Christian­Semitic bias in Ethiopian politics or a Nile­Arab Muslim bias in Sudanese politics
combines people of different economic classes, potentially linked to each other through a
relationship of exploitation. These broad categories do not stand for classes. Members
of these categories might carry out their struggles with each other in a more sportive or
more courteous ways while outsiders might suffer blatant human rights abuses and even be
dehumanized. But class is not what unites the insiders; they are united by religion, language,
real or fictive genealogy, regional origin, pigmentation, or the language of pigmentation.74
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” says The
Communist Manifesto. The following paragraph illustrates this claim: “Freeman and slave,
patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild­master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor
and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another.” (Marx and Engels 1848, 14)
This position cannot be easily dismissed as far as the driving forces of societal change are
concerned, but it does not hold true from a statistical view of the frequency of conflict. There
have been peasant wars (between “lord and serf”), yes, but there have been many more wars
between lords about the control of territory and the right to exploit the serfs inhabiting it.
The economic rival of a slave owner is the other slave owner who competes with him as a
cotton producer. Unless the slave owner is stupid and brutal (qualities admittedly frequently
found in such types), there is good reason to keep the slaves strong, healthy, and productive.
Visible conflict, therefore, occurs primarily within classes rather than between them.75

74 I recall a scene in which two of my visitors at the University of Bielefeld were standing next to each other. One

of my guests identified as Black Brazilian and produced Yoruba style Black art; the other one identified as Arab
Sudanese. Guess whose pigmentation was darker.
75 On this passage, I have received the following editorial comment: “It is argued that statistically more conflicts

happened between slave owners rather than between slaves and slave owners, and that ‘there is good reason to keep
slaves strong, healthy, and productive.’ It may indeed be true that there are more conflicts between land owners
than there are slave revolts. But it should, nevertheless be made clear that this does not erase the horrors of slavery”
I therefore hasten to assure that I am against slavery and do not deny its horrors. It is my mistake to have thought
that such assurances were no longer necessary in the 21st century. Here I did not want to make a moral or political
5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region 143

Let us shift from the examples laid out in The Communist Manifesto back to the Horn of
Africa. The Nubians, who received land as a compensation for their submerged properties,
and the Gumuz, who were in no way recompensed for their lost land further south, belong to
the same peasant class but were treated differently because they were racially or culturally
constructed as different. The government in Khartoum, the state government of Sennar, and
the Rufaʿa pastoralists were all composed, predominantly or entirely, of people belonging
to the same broad ethno­religious category: Arab Muslims. In another of the examples
discussed in this chapter, the government in Khartoum wanted land to be redistributed to the
Rufaʿa, but the Sennar government ignored that wish, and violence sprang up between the
Rufaʿa and the Sennar police. Here economic differences at various levels (individual, small
group, class) overrode ethno­religious sameness. We could go through the entire chapter in
this fashion, but the conclusion is clear already. Identity, economic interest, class, ethnicity,
and religion cannot be reduced into one collective category. Their individual aspects as well
as the many different ways these categories interact must be looked at separately. The use
of identity in this context may be instrumental, i.e. a means to maximize benefits, or it may
define benefits recipients.
This terminology is borrowed from economics or rational choice theory. The concept
of rationality we find here is a means­end relationship, which maximizes the ratio of benefits
and costs. If an action achieves its goal at reasonable cost, we call it rational. Many events
and decisions in Africa, such as failed states, are not described as rational by outside ob­
servers. In some cases, one group of people may benefit greatly from policies while another
group carries the cost. From the point of view of those who benefit, any actions taken to im­
plement policies appear quite rational even if the overall cost­benefit ratio looks disastrous.
Whom has a failed state failed if those who run it have become rich? Any cost­benefit cal­
culation needs to ask who is supposed to benefit. The answer is usually the decision maker,
but sometimes people act in the interest of others.
Far too often, analysts imply that states are designed for the people, although they know
this case is rarely true without some differentiation or is plainly wrong in other cases. Goals
and targets are attributed to unidentified entities. Failed states are classified as failed because
they are believed to have not met their goals. But they have not failed in the eyes of those
who became rich from them. Missing the target is often attributed to poor marksmanship.
But that assumption presupposes that we know who was aiming and what the target was.
International aid agencies react to “missed targets” or “missed development goals” with
“capacity building” and “human resource development” in order to overcome the incapacity
of African institutions to meet their aims. Such missions will have little impact if the failed
state’s decision makers are happy with the way the country works because their unstated
goals are met. From the perspective of who are blamed for the havoc in South Sudan, the

statement but to point to a more general finding of relevance to conflict theory. It is the similarity of social positions
and economic interests which generates competition and conflict. In the example at hand slaves might compete for
the favours of their masters, masters might compete for markets for the products of their slaves. Both are examples
for conflicts within classes rather than between classes. The phrase that people ‘fight out their differences’ is
misleading. More often they fight out their similarities. In the course of conflict, enemies even tend to become
more similar to each other by imitating each other’s strategies and symbols. Two book length studies (Schlee 2008,
Schlee and Horstmann 2018) abound with illustrations for this general principle. Another example is provided by
the Nuer/Dinka relationship (above). I think this is of interest here, because in the present context it diametrically
contradicts the central arguments of a classical text, The Communist Manifesto, and it is ‘counterintuitive’ in the
sense of diverging from popular parlance and thinking habits.
144 5. Borderlands and Transborder Processes in the Blue Nile Region

state has not failed; they have profited from the evolution of events there (de Waal 2015b,
109).
Technocrats ask “how” questions, and economists ask “what” questions in combination
with “how much” questions (“how much of what?”). To analyze human interaction (for
example, conflict, development, politics, and law) from a social scientific perspective, we
must focus on the “who” questions, which have long been understudied. Who identifies
with whom? Who acts in favor of whom and against whom? These “who” questions cannot
be limited to the biographies and psychoanalysis of individual leaders. They must address
collective identifications (Eidson et al. 2017).
Chapter 6
South Sudan: The Fractured State
John Young

6.1 Introduction

The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed between the government of Sudan and
the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) in 2005 claimed to end a twenty­
two­year­long civil war. It also ushered in a six­year SPLM/A­led transitional government
in the south, the Government of National Unity (GNU), national elections in 2010, and a
referendum on the secession of southern Sudan. The GNU barely functioned, and the 2010
elections were characterized by massive fraud and the effective division of the country be­
tween the SPLM­led south and the National Congress Party (NCP) north, which placed
South Sudan on a trajectory to independence (Young 2012). In the 2011 referendum, south­
ern Sudanese voted massively for an independent state, which was officially established with
much fanfare on July 9, 2011. But even during the six­year transitional period, and some
would argue long before that (Young 2012), the SPLM proved incapable of governing.
However much responsibility for endemic mal­governance, corruption, and abuse of
human rights lie with the SPLM, the international community, and specifically the Troika of
the US, Britain, and Norway, which sponsored the peace process and agreed to, and at times
even pressed for, the establishment of an independent nation­state in the clearly infertile
grounds of southern Sudan. The internationals also supported the handover of power to
what has not mistakenly been called the criminal SPLA by Professor Mahmood Mamdani,
a member of the African Union Commission of Inquiry in South Sudan that was established
in the wake of the 2013 civil war (Mamdani 2014). The CPA provided the new country
with wholly unsuitable Western institutions of governance as per modernization theory and
neoliberal precepts that were in free fall even before the country descended into civil war in
December 2013.
More than fifty years after the first wave of decolonization in Africa, the international
community oversaw the creation of another would­be nation­state patterned after the failures
of the past, and it did not take long for the South Sudanese elites to make clear they could
not function within this structure. South Sudan is a territory that encompasses large numbers
of Nilotic, Bantu, and other peoples, is divided by pastoralist and farming communities,
and is a seasonal destination for many nomads from Sudan. The people of South Sudan
largely live in preindustrial rural isolation and contact between them all too often results
in conflict. Some of these ethno­cultural groups like the Zande, Shilluk, and Anyaa have
a history of kingship and hierarchy, but most of the inhabitants of the country have never
established any system of permanent administration and instead traditional authorities are
easily and frequently changed. It is also one of the poorest, most undeveloped, and most
isolated territories on the planet. It is thus hard to imagine a more unlikely candidate for
146 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

the establishment of a Western modeled independent state and it could only be achieved by
forcing the extreme ethnic and cultural diversity of the territory’s people into the ill­fitting
box of a nation­state.

6.2 Constructing a State in Southern Sudan

Isolated and having little contact with the outside world beyond slave­traders and ivory
hunters (often the same people), the territory of southern Sudan only began to end its iso­
lation in the late nineteenth century when the Sudanese Mahdiya briefly exerted a measure
of control over some of its northern areas. With the overthrow of the Mahdiya in 1898, the
British steadily expanded their control, but it was not until 1930 that it could claim to have
defeated all resistance, and even then its administration was felt very lightly in most parts
of the territory.
With no strong religious traditions locally and a colonial administration under home
pressure to bring education and religion to the people for fear they would otherwise convert
to Islam, Christian missionaries from various denominations were given domains in differ­
ent parts of southern Sudan although their efforts, ironically, were largely paid for by Mus­
lim taxpayers in the north. Adding to the insult, the colonial authorities made the southern
and adjacent parts of the northern “closed districts” for northern Arabic­speaking Muslims,
mostly traders, thus further isolating southern Sudanese from their natural links to the north
and inculcating in them anti­Arab and anti­Muslim sentiments, which in turn were recipro­
cated by the northern Sudanese who looked upon them as primitives. The British built major
agricultural and irrigation schemes that formed the economic backbone of Sudan and gave
rise to a flourishing civil society but neglected the south until the eve of independence.
British administration thus exacerbated the differences between the Arabized and Is­
lamic north and an emerging African Christian elite in the south. This polarization came
to the fore when late in the day the British dropped plans for southern Sudan to join the
British colonies in East Africa and decided to link it with the north as a step towards inde­
pendence. However, the British made it clear to the northern elites that independence could
only be accomplished if they gained the approval of the largely traditional southern authori­
ties. The southern elites, in turn, agreed to independence within a united Sudan on condition
that federalism was accepted to ensure the inhabitants were protected from domination by
a politically and economically more advanced north. The northern Sudanese duly made the
required commitments, but they were not kept. Out of the 600 civil service positions that
were “Sudanized” with the departure of the British in 1956, only a tiny fraction was given to
southern Sudanese. The miniscule southern indigenous elite was not mistaken in concluding
they were exchanging one colonial administration for another.
With the end of the colonial era, northern military regimes attempted to overcome ethnic
and cultural diversity by pursuing socialism and developmentalism, but they failed because
the northern Sudanese elites looked to Islam and Arabism to integrate the polyglot of peo­
ples in the largest country in Africa and this was resisted in the south, most of whom were
neither Muslims or Arabs. Meanwhile, the demand for federalism was rejected by succes­
sive northern governments because it was viewed as a way station on the road to secession.
The ingredients were thus in place for rebellion in the south and there were isolated cases
of armed resistance even on the eve of independence. These actions became increasingly
widespread in the 1960s when Joseph Lagu formed and led the South Sudan Liberation
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 147

Army (SSLA), or Anyanya, which held Sudan’s two units to be incompatible and called for
an independent southern state.
Gaining military support from countries in the region and from Israel, always anxious
to undermine its Arab neighbors, the SSLA carried out an increasingly effective insurgency
that helped precipitate the military coup of Jafaar Nimeiri in 1969. Upon concluding that
the rebels could not be defeated, Nimeiri supported a peaceful settlement of the conflict that
took the form of the Addis Ababa Agreement of 1972. This agreement rejected secession
but accepted southern autonomy even while the north maintained a unitary structure under
military rule.
The grant of autonomy ended southern unity based on opposition to the north and inter­
nal conflicts increasingly came to the fore. Korkora, meaning a separation into parts, became
the demand of Equatorians upset at the domination of the southern state by the Dinka, the
territory’s largest tribe. Anxious to weaken the south and respond to the opposition of north­
ern political parties to the Addis Ababa Agreement, Nimeiri agreed to the demands of the
Equatorians and gave them their own territory. But korkora constituted an abrogation of the
peace agreement and caused lasting bitterness between Equatorians and Dinka. Furthermore,
it led to fears by the Dinka that Equatorian demands for federalism were code for secession,
a position analogous to northern fears of southern demands for federalism. Korkora also
revealed the contentious relations between the various peoples inhabiting southern Sudan,
the difficulty of arbitrarily and forcefully placing them under one administration, and the
domineering tendencies of the Dinka elite.

6.3 The US and South Sudan Independence

The US government took little interest in Sudan’s first civil war. This position only changed
after President Jaafar Nimeiri ended his affiliation with the Eastern bloc and decisively joined
the American camp at which point Sudan became a key component of the US­led Cold War
in Africa. Nimeiri was there to do the bidding of Washington, be it support for an isolated
Egypt in the wake of the Camp David peace accord with Israel, facilitation of the transit of
Ethiopian Falashas to Israel, support for US efforts to undermine the regime of Muammar
Gadaffi, or a counterweight to Eastern bloc support for the Ethiopian Derg. And the benefits
were clear. The regime’s human rights abuses were ignored as was its abrogation of the
Addis Ababa Agreement that led to a resumption of the southern war in 1983 under Dr. John
Garang’s SPLA. Furthermore, Sudan became the biggest recipient of US aid in sub­Saharan
Africa—USD 160 million of which 100 million was for military assistance (Petterson 1999,
9).
But US patronage could not save Nimeiri who was overthrown by a popular insur­
rection in Khartoum in 1985. The Transitional Military Council took power for one year
and organized national elections, which were won by Sadig Al­Mahdi who became prime
minister of a highly unstable coalition government. Preoccupied with Islamic politics and
unable to convince Dr. John Garang to stop the war and join the government, Sadig gained
the enmity of the US because he refused to support its Cold War objectives in the region,
particularly the overthrow of Gadaffi to whom he and his Umma Party were close and who
had to be convinced to stop supplying weapons to the SPLA.
Opposing the US had costs, however, and Washington suspended concessionary food
sales to Khartoum (African Rights 1997). Even before Sadig’s government was overthrown,
148 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

officials in Washington were quietly indicating they would not oppose a military coup.
Meanwhile, Sadig’s coalition with the Hassan Al­Turabi­led National Islamic Front (NIF)
collapsed after the opposing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) signed a framework for a
peace agreement with the SPLA in Ethiopia (the Koka Dam Agreement) and pressed the
government to accept it through popular mobilization and street demonstrations. The Sadig
government relented, the NIF left the coalition and was replaced by the DUP. The DUP­
SPLA agreement was scheduled to be accepted by the National Assembly when the NIF
carried out a coup, which the Egyptians and Americans initially understood it to be of a
nationalist character, similar to that carried out by Abdul Nasser.
The US tried to pursue a policy of “constructive engagement” with the NIF until it ap­
preciated that the Omar Al­Al­Bashir headed regime was more of a threat to its interests in
the region than the hapless Sadig government. Although the NIF pressed the SPLA up to the
Ugandan border, it failed to defeat the southern rebels. In the longer term, the characteriza­
tion of the war as a jihad and efforts to undermine US allies in the region was a lifesaver for
the rebels since it brought the US to the aid of the SPLA. As a result, Washington considered
the war to be a conflict between the demonic NIF and the SPLA under its heroic leader, Dr.
John Garang, a simplistic theme that would have a marked influence on US policy until the
overthrow of Al­Bashir in April 2019.
In the US, Garang’s supporters were largely successful in their public relations efforts
to transform him from being a brutal dictator and abuser of human rights supported by in­
ternational communism to a leader struggling to gain human rights for his aggrieved and
abused people and an “African hero.” Equally contrived was the contention that the SPLA
was conducting a united struggle of the southern Sudanese for national self­determination.
Garang was authoritarian, southern Sudan was deeply divided, and the SPLA was commit­
ted to a united New Sudan rather than a secessionist South Sudan until after his death. South
Sudan was divided along both ethnic and political lines. The notion that the SPLA was a uni­
fying force could only be maintained by refusing to acknowledge that much of the fighting
in southern Sudan was between southern Sudanese and that many of these fighting forces
were aligned with the northern army (Young 2012).
In the latter years of the war, fighting was primarily between a Dinka­dominated SPLA
and a Nuer­dominated South Sudan Defense Force (SSDF), an organization of comparable
size and which controlled as much territory as the SPLA (Young 2005). But the SSDF was
dismissed by the West and denied a place in the peace negotiations because of its alliance
with Khartoum even though agreements between southern and north groups have long been
common. The SPLA was itself a member of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), an
association of largely northern opposition groups headed by the DUP leader and ostensibly
Arab Osman Al­Mirghani, while Garang served as his deputy and was in charge of the mili­
tary wing. In contrast to the notion that southern Sudanese were united behind the SPLA in
a war with Khartoum, large and small ethnic­based armed groups across the territory spon­
taneously took up arms to defend themselves, not just against the northern Sudanese army
but equally against the SPLA. The West, and particularly the US, never understood that
probably most southern Sudanese viewed the SPLA as Dinka interlopers and it became the
cause of endless problems and grief.
Conflicts between peasants and Dinka pastoralists reached new heights during the war
after they followed the SPLA soldiers into the lands of the Equatorians in search of grazing
lands and water. Meanwhile, Sudan’s army provided weapons to those opposing the SPLA,
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 149

making them agents of Khartoum in the eyes of the SPLA and subject to attack. Northern
Sudanese labelled as Arabs also struggled against the Khartoum clique of Islamists from
the riverine core of the country, but their struggles did not fit the prevailing north­south
Arab­African narrative, and they were largely discounted in the West. Instead, what took
hold among Western, and particularly US legislators and their publics, was the persecution of
Africans—who constituted an emerging nation­state—by Arab Muslims, a conceptualization
that confused rather than explained the realities of Sudan’s multiple conflicts (Young 2019).
However, the SPLA could not overthrow the government in Khartoum despite
widespread opposition to the NCP regime in every corner of the country, the early support
of the Eastern bloc and the Ethiopian Derg, and (after the latter left the scene) support from
the region and the US. As well as material support, the Eritrean, Ethiopian, and Ugandan
armies trained the rebels, provided them with bases, and repeatedly captured territories
along their borders with Sudan and turned them over to the SPLA or its NDA allies.
Support also involved large components of the Eritrean and Ethiopian armies transiting East
Africa to the battle fields of southern Sudan where they and the Ugandan army captured
much of the liberated territory that the SPLA later claimed it had captured (Young 2004).
But even with regional support, US money for weaponry, and US food provided through
SPLA­friendly NGOs like Norwegian Peoples Aid (NPA), the Islamist government was not
overthrown. However, in 1998, just when these US supported collective efforts looked to be
on the verge of success, Eritrea and Ethiopia went to war, thus ending the regional attempt
to overthrow the Islamist government. In the wake of this failure, the US and its allies used
a Western established, funded, and directed organization, the Inter­Governmental Authority
on Development (IGAD), to launch a peace process.

6.4 International Peacemaking and the Creation of South Sudan

US support for John Garang was made possible by the end of the Cold War. At that time,
Eastern bloc and Derg support for the SPLA was being forgotten, American lobbyists pop­
ularized the cause of the SPLA, and new notions like the Responsibility to Protect (R2P)
and the US as the “indispensable nation” became the ideological underpinning for Ameri­
can leadership in both regime change and peacemaking.1 Secular lobbyists who moved in
and out of government and were infatuated with John Garang and demonized the Islamist
regime of al­Bashir held sway under the second Clinton presidency. When George Bush be­
came president, former officials such as Rice moved to the think tanks where they pumped
out the same message. They were replaced by evangelical Christians who were a critical
component of Bush’s political base and sang a similar tune but gave it a religious twist and
considered the war as a biblical struggle between Muslim overlords and Christian victims.

1 The notion that the US is the “indispensable nation” in the resolution of conflicts was first coined by Bill Clinton’s

secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in 1998. In justifying the US attack on Iraq, she said, “if we have to use force,
it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and see further than other countries
into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.” (See Madeleine Albright, NBC’s Today Show, February
19, 1988). This notion has since been widely used by American presidents, especially Barack Obama. R2P is a
quasi­legal doctrine approved by the AU in 2002 and the UN in 2006 and holds that national sovereignty can be
lost and foreign intervention approved if states fail to ensure the security of their citizens. While seemingly an
attractive notion, there is no agreement on when these conditions exist, who decides, and which agencies have the
right to intervene. These problems give powerful states, and notably the US, the right to justify their interventions
on R2P grounds.
150 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

The Bush administration threw its weight behind the IGAD peace process, but it was not
there to reap the political rewards of its apparent success with the signing of the CPA. When
President Barack Obama came into office, some of the same pro­SPLM officials like Susan
Rice returned, which ensured continuity of US policy on Sudan and South Sudan. Her views
were reinforced by Obama’s UN Envoy, Samantha Power, who had gained a reputation as
an academic for her espousal of notions like the R2P and was equally misinformed about
the realities in southern Sudan.
In the face of competing peace processes that needed US assistance to ensure their legit­
imacy, the Americans opted to support IGAD, which in turn subcontracted the peacemaking
to the Kenyan dictator, Daniel Arap Moi. He further pushed it down the chain to General
Lazarus Sumbeiywo who was trusted by the US because he had received his university ed­
ucation in the US, had close relations with the CIA while in charge of Kenyan security, and
had spent much of his later career devoted to keeping the aging dictator and key American
ally in the region, Moi, in power (Young 2012). But this was not enough: a Troika made up
of the US, the UK, and Norway was formed, which directly participated in all the IGAD­led
negotiations and an IGAD support group was established by Western countries to fund these
efforts.
There was a quick agreement between IGAD, the Troika, the NCP, and the SPLM to
restrict negotiations to the latter two parties, and that decision amounted to accepting that
the principal conflict afflicting Sudan was rooted in north­south, Arab­African, Muslim­
Christian contradictions not compatible with the desired nation­state. Once these contradic­
tions were resolved, the other conflicts in the country could readily be overcome using the
same model of peacemaking, or so it was argued by the army of diplomats. The negotia­
tions began with acceptance of a statement of principles—the Machakos Protocol—which
emphasized the goodwill of the parties and a commitment to a peaceful resolution of the
conflict, national unity, and democratic transformation. In practice, there was no goodwill
and both parties subsequently acknowledged that they had no intention of carrying out their
commitments.
The focus of the negotiations centered on power­sharing and security arrangements
and made little progress until the mediators arranged for Sudanese Vice­President Ali Osman
Taha and the SPLM leader, Dr. John Garang, to conduct their own secret negotiations. What
was privately decided between the two men will never be known because Garang died shortly
after signing the CPA in a helicopter crash and Ali Osman, who the mediators assumed to
be the strong man in Khartoum, did not actually have that power. He was subsequently
demoted and removed from office for putting his signature to the CPA.
The process based on a commitment to democratic transformation was itself central­
ized, secretive, and exclusive. It denied representation to civil society and other disaffected
groups, reaffirmed the power of an Islamist military dictatorship in Khartoum, and handed
over power to an armed, largely Dinka military cabal in the south. The US and its allies mis­
takenly concluded that these actions represented the will of the disparate peoples of southern
Sudan. The SPLA only controlled a small portion of the territory it was given to rule by the
international community’s peace agreement and was feared and hated by a large section of
the non­Dinka population. Like the Nuer, however, the Dinka can be considered a multi­
tribal nation. The various components are often in tense relations with one another and only
unite when they collectively face an existential threat. But by denying participation to the
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 151

SSDF in the negotiations and handing over monopoly power to the Dinka SPLA, the CPA
laid the basis for future conflict in the newly born state.
The death of Garang on July 30, 2005 only postponed that war because Salva needed
the Nuer of the SSDF to undermine Garang’s Bor domination of the SPLA and thus reached
an agreement in January 2006 with its leader, Paulino Matieb, to integrate his forces into the
SPLA. Salva’s agreement with Paulino—the Juba Declaration—not only secured Salva’s
hold on the presidency but crucially had the potential of bringing peace to much of the
country. In that light, the agreement was more important than the international community­
brokered CPA, which did not bring peace and instead raised the specter of an intensification
of the existing war between the SPLA and the SSDF. The primary focus of the Juba Dec­
laration was the integration of the SSDF into the SPLA, which was achieved without the
international peace brigade who view themselves as indispensable in the resolution of con­
flicts (Young 2006b).
For a brief period, the Dinka Salva was a hero to the Nuer of the SSDF who had wanted
to rejoin the SPLA after southern secession—which they nominally fought for even though
allied to Khartoum—but were refused by Garang and his supporters who feared they would
dominate the army. Indeed, the Juba Declaration challenged Dinka dominance in the army
and integration by giving the Nuer a numerical majority in the SPLA, even though they
constituted at most 25 percent of the South Sudanese population.
But if the Dinka, and particularly those from Bor, Garang’s home area, could not stop
the signing of the Juba Declaration, they could ensure that it was not fully implemented.
Dinka­Nuer tensions came to the fore again and ended Salva’s brief status as a hero among
the Nuer since he did little to protect his new allies. The Nuer officers were forced to take
unpaid retirements, denied training available to Dinka, were not equally promoted, and were
forced to assume unpleasant tasks. Because they were constantly made aware of the Dinka
character of the central state, they became increasingly radicalized. Deputy SPLA leader
and head of the then disbanded SSDF, Paulino Matiep, was guarded at his house in Juba by
1700 soldiers who were nominally in the SPLA but were almost all Nuer and only loyal to
him. Although Paulino was technically senior to the SPLA chief of staff, James Hoth, his
advanced years, poor health, inability to communicate in either Arabic or English, and failure
to make his power felt or serve the interests of the Nuer who followed him into the SPLA
significantly reduced his effectiveness. He was also bitterly resented by the Garangists who,
with the cooperation of Unity State governor, Taban Deng, burned down his house in Unity
and killed twelve of his guards. Following this incident, the UN flew the remaining guards
to Juba. Paulino’s death shortly thereafter left a void that was never filled. Increasingly, the
former SSDF officers lost their corporate identify, even if they did not lose their distrust of
the Dinka.
The fact that the Dinka­dominated state was little more than a heavily armed agency
for directing the considerable oil resources into the hands of Dinka politicians, generals, and
associates that had to be bought off to maintain a modicum of stability led the former SSDF
Nuer in the SPLA to demand that the Dinka be replaced by the Nuer as rulers. There was a
weakly constructed narrative that held the Nuer to be more democratic and less greedy, but
essentially the appeal was simply a claim that the Dinka had failed at government, so it was
the turn of the Nuer to rule.
The CPA was underpinned by three assumptions that would soon prove false. First,
the various peoples that made up southern Sudan constituted a nation for purposes of na­
152 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

tional self­determination and statehood. Second, the central contradiction afflicting Sudan,
and thus the cause of the war, was conflict between an Arab Muslim north and an African
and religiously heterogeneous south. And third, it assumed the SPLA—to whom the in­
ternational mediators handed over complete power in the fledgling state—was capable of
administering the territory.
The peacemakers’ conclusion that southern Sudan constituted a nation followed from
their conviction that the SPLA alone represented the collective will and interests of southern
Sudanese and that was reflected in their refusal to permit other groups to participate in the
CPA negotiations. It was also sometimes claimed that adding more participants would in­
crease the complexity of the negotiations and undermine the secrecy that the security­minded
General Sumbeiywo considered crucial. Without other voices heard in the negotiations, it
proved easy to deny they existed or had legitimacy. Indeed, it was the international commu­
nity and not South Sudanese who bestowed legitimacy on political and military actors. The
mediators concluded that the manifold conflicts in Sudan could be resolved by overcoming
the central conflict, which was held to be the result of a racial and religious divide. But con­
flicts were taking place all over Sudan that could not be explained in these terms because
most were between groups who were both Arab and Muslim. Indeed, it is likely that more
people died in the south due to conflicts between indigenous peoples than between southern
and northern Sudanese armed forces. Moreover, as noted, alliances between northern and
southern Sudanese to fight other northerners or southerners had long been the rule in Sudan,
not the exception.
What all the parties to the negotiations—IGAD, Troika, NCP, and SPLM—agreed upon
was the need to ensure that there would be no democratic participation in the process, which
might threaten the power that these armed groups wanted to monopolize. In the case of the
SPLM this even included their allies in the NDA, and they sided with the NCP to deny them
participation in the negotiations. This was a process restricted to elites recognized by the
international community and the entire exercise was designed to ensure that they, and not
the people of northern and southern Sudan, would be satisfied with the outcome.
The last assumption that the SPLA was capable of governing an independent state was
belied by a twenty­two­year history of the movement’s inability to administer its liberated
territories and its dependence on the international community for the provision of even the
most basic services. Against that record, it is impossible to believe that the same organization
could soon, if ever, acquire the ability to administer an independent state. The Western
backed peace process set the diverse peoples of southern Sudan on the path to a statehood
that could never meet their needs, and worse, was a recipe for disaster. If the internationals
did not know this, it was a result of willful ignorance or because the primary objective of
the peace process and the outcome was not about meeting the needs of the people of either
Sudan or southern Sudan, but of responding to the needs of constituencies in the West, IGAD
rulers, and the preselected indigenous elites.
On July 30, 2006, just before he was to become the president of South Sudan and vice
president of Sudan under the CPA, Garang died in a helicopter crash under circumstances
that have never been fully understood. Under Garang, the SPLA had fought for a united
reformed Sudan as affirmed in numerous statements and party resolutions, as well as in the
Machakos Protocol of the CPA. But his successor, Salva Kiir, and the SPLA leadership
then directed their followers to support secession, which was achieved in an internationally
supervised referendum on July 9, 2011. Secretary of State, John Kerry, was not mistaken
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 153

in claiming that the United States helped “midwife the birth of this new nation,” except that
people of South Sudan never constituted a nation and that would soon be made abundantly
clear.
Indeed, the CPA never met any of its stated objectives of a united Sudan, democratic
transformation, sustainable peace, or the later add­on (because of Thabo Mbeki’s AU me­
diation) of viable successor states after South Sudanese opted for independence in the 2011
referendum. The independence of South Sudan served as a powerful signal to intensify
fighting between the various peoples in the territory and their armed groups for control of
the state and its rich resources in the otherwise poverty­stricken country. Despite growing
evidence that the South Sudanese were not united under the SPLA, up until the eve of the
country’s civil war the US government claimed that the CPA and the establishment of the
independent state was a success, represented a major foreign policy achievement, and pro­
vided evidence that the US was indeed the exceptional nation needed for the resolution of
the conflict. But this would soon prove mistaken, and the US government’s involvement in
the tribal politics of South Sudan would negatively affect the country’s trajectory.
A cynic might conclude that the Western mediators could not have been so ignorant,
and their excessively loud applause for the “world’s newest nation” was to position them­
selves so that when the whole project came crashing down—and there was no shortage of
doom predictors at the time—that the failure could be attributed to the local actors and not
the altruistic West that had devoted so much time, political capital, and hard cash to the real­
ization of South Sudan’s independence. But it is also possible that the Americans believed
their own narrative. Perhaps the notion of the southern Sudanese collectively and bravely
struggling against incredible odds and finally—with US help—achieving success, reminded
Americans of their own history, or at least their idealized understanding of it.
The fantasy did not end with South Sudan’s independence and the Western­dominated
peacemakers went on to impose a whole set of institutions of governance transplanted from
the West without modification to the alien environment of South Sudan. Following the
script of an ideologically driven and Eurocentric modernization theory, the peacemakers
started from a model of the nation­state that evolved in the West over hundreds of years
and applied it to South Sudan. The European nation­state assumed a measure of ethnic
homogeneity that was absent in multi­ethnic South Sudan where ethnic identities figure more
prominently than the kind of individualism that characterizes Western societies, and there
was a complete absence of a supra­ethnic South Sudanese nationalism. Indeed, the Dinka­
led SPLA insurgency fostered ethnic fracturing, and the new state was more divided and
less prepared for self­governance than the state bequeathed by the Addis Ababa Agreement
almost four decades earlier.
And despite enormous economic and regional disparities, the CPA committed to a
democracy that—befitting the dominance of neoliberalism—did not include any notions of
economic justice or overcoming the inequalities that abounded in the country. It was as­
sumed (but never stated) that, to the extent these were matters of concern, they would be
resolved by the market, which South Sudanese leaders made a great show of endorsing to
impress the West with their ideological soundness. But apart from a handful of farmers in
Equatoria that produced for the market, most South Sudanese were largely self­sufficient
peasants, herders whose animals were raised to meet traditional needs, or were supported by
the international aid agencies or their relatives in the West. The market did not figure signif­
icantly in their lives and if the country was to develop, it needed an activist state. Yet, such
154 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

a state was not in the cards in an international context where the new economic orthodoxy
held states to be obstacles to development.
During the six­year transitional period stipulated by the CPA and the ensuing period
of independence the SPLM proved incapable of governing even with enormous financial
resources based on oil, considerable international good will, the support of countless aid
agencies, and the return of educated members of the diaspora. The SPLM began construct­
ing a state in the model of Khartoum that privileged an ethnic elite who looted the country’s
resources and used its party­army to contain the increasing revolts and lawlessness in the
peripheries, while its ruthless intelligence services identified rebels and suppressed any ex­
pressions of dissent that challenged official government narratives. With the exception of
the churches, civil society was largely a foreign construct and weak and with the 2010 elec­
tions, many church leaders joined the SPLM and were elected to office in the 2010 elections.
The marginalization of Sudan’s periphery that the SPLA and its foreign backers loudly com­
plained about during their war with Khartoum was soon replicated in South Sudan. Fifteen
years after the CPA was signed and despite the oil wealth, the only inter­city paved road in
the country was between Juba and Nimule. It had been paid for and constructed entirely
by USAID and had the chief function of providing the SPLM elite a link to Uganda, the
regime’s chief political supporter and the source of most of the goods that the country’s
urban population needed to survive.
The limited unity achieved during the SPLA­led war with Khartoum quickly broke
down and ethnic consciousness, rivalries, and conflict reached new heights. Continuing
their pre­independence struggle for dominance, the main conflict was initially between the
Dinka and Nuer elites. But conflicts between the government and its Dinka followers and
the Equatorians, whose city, Juba, had become a center for land­grabbing while its farming
lands were over­run by Dinka herders, ran a close second. Meanwhile, the Fertit peoples of
Western Bahr al Ghazel had resisted the SPLA during Sudan’s civil war, and they continued
to oppose the SPLA and the Dinka who came in their wake after independence.

6.5 South Sudanese State: Divided Against Itself

The only indigenous institution that functioned in the CPA­created fledgling state and was
not completely dependent on the international community was the SPLA, but it never oper­
ated as a national army (Young 2008). Its ranks were repeatedly supplemented by absorbing
ethnic based militias, which still retained loyalties to their particular leaders. Even Presi­
dent Salva Kiir and Vice President Riek Machar surrounded themselves with guards from
their own tribes. In the field, SPLA soldiers usually went to officers of their tribe to deal
with their problems, and army divisions frequently had four or more generals from different
tribes to ensure they could overcome internal conflicts. Instead of soldiers living in bar­
racks where they would mix with those from other tribes, they usually resided in their own
homes or settlements and thus identified with their families and hosts. Even when the bar­
racks were shared, Nuer and Dinka usually kept apart. Going into battle posed the threat of
disintegration if the tribal militia to be attacked had a large ethnic component in the ranks
of the SPLA. Targeted tribal cohorts were frequently provided with illicit SPLA weaponry
to defend themselves and sometimes defections to the “enemy” occured before battles took
place.
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 155

Corruption was endemic in the SPLA with salaries issued in cash to commanders who
grossly inflated the number of soldiers under them and creamed off the top. The problem
was so bad that repeated attempts to come up with the number of soldiers in the SPLA failed.
While 200,000 soldiers were on the books, as few as 100,000 were estimated to be capable of
fighting, and it was not unusual to find underfed soldiers without shoes going into battle. As
a result, soldiers often set up road barricades to extort tolls, sold their weapons, and carried
out brigandage to supplement their incomes (or to serve as their sole source of income).
Efforts by the UN to oversee an effective disarmament, demobilization and reintegration
(DDR) campaign were opposed by SPLA officers because it threatened their interests. The
UN was also bedeviled by corruption within its own ranks, which led to the dismissal of a
number of senior officials (Young 2010).
From its inception, the SPLA was designed to meet the needs of John Garang. It en­
sured that his Bor Dinka section dominated decision­making, and institution building was
deliberately undermined to maintain his personal power over the army. Although Salva
loyally served as Garang’s chief of defense staff, he admitted that the SPLA never oper­
ated under a formal military hierarchy and that Garang often directly controlled particular
officers. Defense officials in Eritrea and Ethiopia who trained SPLA units told the author
that the structures they created were deliberately destroyed by Garang to ensure his personal
control (Young 2012). After independence, the SPLA refused to accept southern officers
who had served in the Sudanese army because of a lack of trust. Retired lieutenant gen­
eral Joseph Lagu, former head of Anyanya and later a president of the autonomous southern
Sudan, said these officers were superior to their southern­trained counterparts in the SPLA
(Young 2010).2 But they were marginalized and embittered. Many Nuer would go on to
join the insurgency.
Government ministries were ethnically divided with each department or section bearing
the imprint of its senior official. In the country’s National Assembly, ethnic groups caucused
across party lines. These divisions emerged at all levels of the government. Salva barely
had contact with his own vice president, Riek Machar, and each had staff largely drawn from
their own tribes. In contradiction to this practice and in alignment with the latest Western
liberal values, the National Assembly implemented a quota that ensured 25 percent female
membership and established a gender ministry. But these provisions were subverted by male
politicians who ensured that their wives and female relatives took up the positions. There­
fore, male domination of the government and society was never truly challenged. Other
popular Western imports included a human rights commission that did nothing while the
government arrested people at random, shut down newspapers, arrested and killed journal­
ists, and viewed any public demonstration as a threat to the state and responded accordingly.
An anticorruption commission was staffed with highly educated young people who were
provided with the latest technology by Western countries, but despite endemic and blatant
corruption it never led to any convictions.
Juba had been the capital since British times, but the Dinka­dominated governments
from the first period of autonomy had made themselves so unwelcome by their bad behavior
and abuse of the local Equatorian inhabitants that Garang initially wanted Rumbek in the
Dinka heartland in the state of Lakes to serve as the capital. However, even that selection
was problematic because Rumbek has long had a reputation for violence between competing

2 Interview with retired Lt.­ General Joseph Lagu, September 10, 2010, Juba.
156 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

Dinka clans. In light of these circumstances, Garang reached an agreement with Major
General Clement Wani, leader of the powerful Mundari militia of cattle herders and a former
member of the SSDF. Clement Wani and his militia largely controlled the Juba area of
Central Equatoria and that made it possible for Juba to become the capital of the fledgling
state. There were, however, tensions that occasionally became violent between the Mundari
and the Bari speakers who were settled farmers and made up most of the residents of Juba.
But it did not take long for the Dinka officials in the new government, the Dinka domi­
nated SPLA officers and men who moved to the city, and all their camp followers to gain the
enmity of another generation of Juba inhabitants. Apart from resentment at what the locals
considered their crude rustic manners, the main area of conflict was over land­grabbing by
powerful Dinka generals and politicians. With the establishment of Juba as the capital of
an oil rich state—even if it turned out to only be for a short period—money flowed in and
a ready market developed in illegal land claims that saw purchases made sometimes at the
point of a gun. Ethnic tensions soared, but the local inhabitants were effectively powerless
before the Dinka who enjoyed considerable influence in the government and SPLA.
Overnight, the small town in the bush, long ignored by Khartoum, attracted thousands
of politically ambitious people who wanted to be close to the center of power. Many others
came to Juba to take up jobs as builders or workers in the rapidly expanding service industry.
And others just came to be near rich and powerful relatives. But the preindustrial South
Sudanese were ill­equipped to meet the needs of the rapidly developing modern town being
built on top of the largely tukul strewn village that constituted old Juba.
As a result, the South Sudanese usually stood aside while Ethiopians and especially
Eritreans fronting for powerful Dinka (or sometimes Nuer or another group) politicians and
generals built and staffed the luxury hotels and restaurants that blossomed throughout the
city. Kenyans moved into banking and operated at the high end of the financial industry.
They set up sales offices for SUVs and expensive vehicles that were increasingly in de­
mandby the elite. Ugandans controlled most of the petty trade, the transport industry, and
operated the boda bodas that served as taxis for the poor. They were also responsible for
most of the imports that came from near­by Ugandan cities. Somalis controlled the impor­
tant retail petroleum industry and, as in other East African countries, they owned important
currency exchanges. They also dominated the supply of water pumped from the Nile and
carried on trucks to the city’s inhabitants—reputedly the largest private industry in the coun­
try—since the government was never able to resurrect or replace the British colonial system.
As an aside, the Office of Transitional Initiatives (OTI), the explicitly political com­
ponent of USAID, approached the author to lead a team of engineers to Juba and get the
water and electricity system functioning quickly after the SPLM government established it­
self in 2005 so that it could reap the political capital. That proposal never worked out and
fifteen years later, as these words are being written, Juba’s water and electricity systems are
as inadequate as they were then. The South Sudanese were only in government, the security
services, small trade, and the low end of the building trades. Prostitutes flooded the city from
neighboring countries, while more traditionally minded South Sudanese women were slow
to move into this new market opportunity. But their numbers increased with the subsequent
decline in the economy.
Juba was a city of rich politicians and generals, mostly Dinka, fly­by­night East African
capitalists, poor Ugandans who hated the city and were frequently the subjects of attacks, and
a massive presence of UN and international NGO workers who provided most of the services.
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 157

What passed for civil society were Western created agencies needed as intermediaries in the
supply of goods, services, and programs. Soon a class of young, educated South Sudanese
emerged, speaking an international language of NGOs comprehensible only to themselves
and disconnected from their own society. In the evenings, four­wheel drives with an alphabet
soup of NGO initials competed for space on Juba’s few paved roads with the latest SUVs
driven by SPLM politicians and SPLA generals as they flocked to the hotels, night clubs,
bars, and upmarket restaurants to eat imported food, served by waiters and prepared by cooks
from East Africa.
The provision for good schools, clinics, and social services was not a major concern of
the government and military elites whose own families resided in East Africa, Europe, North
America, and Australia. These members of the military elite were only in the country to loot
the state and serve as patrons for their extended families, and multiple wives and girlfriends.
At the height of the oil boom, they stole USD 4 billion, according to President Salva Kiir
(Young 2012). The thefts were on such a scale that a leading member of the SPLM lobby
group in the US, Ted Dagne, left his position as director of research for the US Congress to
become a minister in Salva’s government. In that role, he penned a letter in the president’s
name, which was later leaked to the public) asking 75 present and former ministers to return
their ill­gotten gains to a secret bank account in Nairobi, after which their crimes would be
forgotten.3 Dagne, however, did not appreciate how dangerous the people whose praises
he had been singing in Washington for many years actually were, and he was forced to flee
the country in fear of his life. Indeed, appeals to decency or the seemingly sophisticated
anticorruption measures pressed on the government by the West did little to reduce the graft
and crime that only let up when the oil boondoggle crashed.
The state capitals, particularly those of Greater Upper Nile, experienced similar con­
tradictory problems that beset Juba, but each reflected their distinct ethnic compositions.
Thus, Bor was the largely Dinka inhabited capital of the Nuer majority state of Jonglei.
Nuer felt reasonably secure in the town (until the 2013 civil war broke out) albeit aggrieved
that the capital was in the area of the minority Bor Dinka with whom they had long com­
peted. Although from an area near Bor, the Murle had tense relations with both the Nuer
and especially the Dinka. They largely avoided the city and played a minimal role in the
state government. Malakal, the capital of Upper Nile, was a center of ethnic competition
and conflict between the three tribes that inhabited the city—Dinka, Shilluk, and Nuer—and
the first two were equally vehement in claiming possession. On the eve of independence,
and in the presence of President Salva Kiir and President Omar al­Bashir, these rivalries
broke out between Dinka and Shilluk dancing groups, resulting in citywide rioting in which
a dozen people were killed. Malakal would remain a major point of contestation during the
civil war between the Shilluk and the Dinka Padang. Bentiu was the capital of Unity with
70 percent of its population belonging to the Nuer, but it too was divided, mostly between
the Nuer clans and the different political alliances they formed. Some of the most vicious
fighting of the entire civil war took place in Bentiu and vicinity.
Collectively these Upper Nile capitals formed a powder keg, and when war broke out in
December 2013 they exploded in repeated rounds of ethnic slaughter. The legendary Nuer
militia leader, Peter Gadet, concluded that the north­south fighting of Sudan’s civil war was
never as destructive as that between South Sudanese, often between members of the same

3 Alan Boswell (2012). No money was ever reported to be deposited in the Nairobi account.
158 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

tribe.4 Not only was this an indictment of those who carried out the killings but also of those
who created the political circumstances under which such people were in a position to carry
out these deeds.
Tribal sensitivities may have been only marginally more acute in South Sudan than
in other African countries (until the civil war broke out), but in those countries the ruling
parties usually endeavored to dampen ethnic divisions and make some concessions to their
countries’ ethnic diversity, particularly if the ruling parties rose to power in the context of
armed struggles. That was not the case with the SPLA in South Sudan and indeed ethnic
based conflicts intensified with independence and fostered endemic corruption and kleptoc­
racy that became enduring characteristics of the fledgling state. As a result, well before
the civil war broke out the party had ceased to function as an instrument of governance in
large parts of the country. What passed for civil administration was in practice an extension
of the security apparatus. It was rare for state governors or county commissioners not to
also hold an army or police rank and collect salaries from both positions. As befitting their
backgrounds, these officials were not concerned with developing the country, providing ser­
vices, dispensing justice, or engaging in what could be called nation­building. Instead, they
had been appointed to ensure security, and in practice they usually spent most of their time
pursuing private interests. In South Sudan, however, the greater the emphasis on security,
the more insecurity became endemic because the security organs were the principal cause
of violence, social dislocation, and ethnic tensions.

6.6 Count­Down to War

On the eve of the secession referendum and out of a desire to build unity, the SPLM promised
the opposition parties a major role in the formulation of the transitional constitution and
post­referendum government. Significantly, however, this did not apply to southern Su­
danese living in the north and fearing NCP manipulation the SPLM pressed to deny them
a vote (Young 2012). The fact that the SPLM endorsement of separation amounted to a
refutation of its long­held commitment to a united reformed Sudan was of little concern in
a party where ideological issues were never a major interest. In an indicative example, the
SPLM passed almost seamlessly from parroting the slogans of Soviet state socialism to the
liberal democratic rhetoric of its new American patrons and the powerful lobbyists linked to
the Clinton and Obama presidencies. Under the Derg, SPLM leaders were atheists but be­
came devout Christians as a means to reach out to the evangelicals that formed an important
component of President George Bush’s constituency.
The massive vote in favor of South Sudanese secession was considered by observers to
be evidence that the people had overcome their many ethnic divides and were constructing
a nation­state. They also saw it as an endorsement of the SPLM. Both conclusions were
mistaken. The vote was an affirmation of the people’s African character in a Sudanese state
that gave primacy to Arabism. But in no way did the vote represent any overcoming of
ethnic identities. Indeed, the SPLM remained an object of hatred in much of the non­Dinka
inhabited areas of the country and it only made common cause with the masses over the issue
of secession. If the SPLM could have fulfilled the people’s aspirations, then attitudes might
have changed. But the leopard could not change its spots. In any case, it is highly unlikely
the ruling party could have constructed a viable state in the hostile environment of South
4 Author interview with Lt.­Gen. Peter Gadet, Khartoum, May 23, 2017.
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 159

Sudan. Instead of establishing a liberal democratic state, the SPLM set about constructing a
Dinka ethnocracy.
This development was not a surprise to scholars of the SPLA and those familiar with
conditions in South Sudan, but it was a shock to the American sponsors of the project who
imagined a liberal democratic regime taking form in a preindustrial society rife with ethnic
based conflicts and overseen by the SPLA. Likewise, Salva’s use of tribalism to maintain
power cannot be a surprise since what passed for politics in southern Sudan was always
tribal and survival depended on how well the game was played. The game did not suddenly
conform to Western precepts and values just because politicians made lofty commitments to
democracy and introduced Western institutions of governance. Although not a highly edu­
cated man, Salva was better at tribal politics than his opponent, Riek Machar, who held a
Western PhD and would eventually become the opposition leader. While Riek could never
decide whether he was a tribal chief or a politician in the Western sense, a model that could
never fit in South Sudan, Salva garnered much support through his adeptness in tribal poli­
tics.
The experience bears comparison with Eritrea where, fourteen years earlier, Western
supporters celebrated what they assumed to be the emergence of a liberal democratic gov­
ernment and an “African Singapore.” However, the authoritarian tendencies of the ruling
Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) were evident long before it assumed power (in­
deed, the highly effective EPLF security organization had eliminated any potential dissidents
before Asmara was opened to the international community) and liberalism was hardly the
byword upon which the ruling party hung its legitimacy. No matter, Western liberals are
always looking for African heroes and applauded the election of EPLF champion Isias Afer­
worki in the wake of the 99.99 percent vote for secession in 1993, as witnessed by the author.
Although neither Singapore nor liberal democracy were on Eritrea’s horizon, the EPLF came
to power with significant advantages: it had gained valuable experience in administration
during the long insurgency, Eritrea had acquired many material advances from Italian and
British colonialism, it had a rudimentary infrastructure and some industrialization, and the
EPLF had carried out wide­ranging mobilization. South Sudan had none of the advantages
of Eritrea and all its disadvantages. Its experience of colonialism was one of benign ne­
glect and there was almost no infrastructure or industrial development, even in the capital
Juba. What passed for mobilization under the SPLA served to intensify ethnic conflicts. The
SPLA was authoritarian and focused on military pursuits and left matters of administration
to the international community, thus ensuring its incompetence once it was catapulted into
power by the international community.
South Sudan also had another major disadvantage: oil. Eritrea did not have a valu­
able commodity over which its politicians and generals could fight and corrupt themselves.
Instead, Eritrea extracted capital from the meager surplus of the peasants through close ad­
ministration, the use of army conscripts as a party labor force, and taxing their nationals
abroad. In South Sudan, the ruling elite saw the demand for development and services as
an obstacle to pocketing oil rents upon which the state depended for 95 percent of its rev­
enues. With few in the country participating in a modern economy, the only people who
could be taxed were the wealthy urban elite and as friends of the government or members
of the government they were ignored. Party leaders and generals concentrated on looting
the state, filling government positions with relatives and tribesmen, and directing the rest
160 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

of the country’s surplus to the security services to protect their ill­gotten gains, fight other
rent­seekers, and keep the country in a high state of alert for fear of an invasion from Sudan.
The collapse of the state into warring factions broadly corresponded with the decline
of the international oil market although the trend toward war was evident long before. It
was even precipitated by the decision to stop oil production to pressure Khartoum to reduce
the transit fees. That gambit failed, Juba backed down, and its limited reserves were all
but depleted. In the face of the country’s impending collapse, the foreign backers of the
SPLM launched a campaign to shift the blame to the US, which was accused of not provid­
ing sufficient support to the government. In fact, the state was nothing more than a shell
bequeathed by the international community and even the powerful United States did not
have the capacity to stop the belligerents from going to war or, as events would prove, end
the self­destructive conflict.
It was not a surprise that the state split on ethnic lines between the Dinka and Nuer, but
it was a surprise that the Dinka leadership would use the crisis to launch an attack on the
Nuer civilian population of Juba. This attack, carried out between December 15–18, 2013,
precipitated the insurgency by Nuer youth. It was not merely a competition of elites that
the international peacemakers claimed was the cause. Instead of standing above the fray,
closely analyzing conditions in the country and recognizing that the conflict had its origins
in granting the disparate peoples of southern Sudan national self­determination, some of the
IGAD peacemakers became active participants. Meanwhile, the organization exacerbated
the conflict by assuming it could be resolved by ignoring the structural contradictions and
concentrating on elite power­sharing. This approach served to increase elite demands in a
zero­sum context. It also encouraged other ethnic communities who feared a carve up of the
state between the Dinka and Nuer to launch their own insurgencies as they understood that
an uprising would be the only way to gain a place at the negotiating table.
While the international community regularly preached that war was not the answer to
South Sudan’s problems, not taking up arms was a sure way to be ignored. In any case, for
the martially minded leaders of the Dinka and Nuer the first response to political grievances
was war and that produced tit­for­tat ethnic killings in Greater Upper Nile that were later to
be replicated in Equatoria and Western Bahr al Ghazal. But despite their considerably larger
numbers, the Dinka government might well have fallen to the Nuer were it not for the timely
arrival of the Ugandan People’s Defense Force (UPDF) of President Yoweri Museveni, al­
most certainly with the approval of his patron, the US.
Museveni did not like either Salva or Riek, but the latter—as per the narrative ascribed
to by the Americans as well—was the cat’s paw for his Islamist enemies in Khartoum. He
was further accused of aiding the Lord’s Resistance Army, when he oversaw a process that
had the objective of reconciling the LRA and the Ugandan government. The governments of
Museveni and Salva were also the funders of armed groups in Sudan, the SPLA­North and
the Justice and Equality Movement, who were likewise employed to fight the rebel SPLM­
IO (In Opposition) of Dr. Riek Machar. But with the defection of more than half of the SPLA
soldiers to the rebels, Salva and his chief of defense staff, Paul Malong, also developed and
utilized tribal militias from their home areas. While better at abusing civilians and looting
than actually fighting, they nonetheless had the advantage of loyalty.
Meanwhile, Riek was initially dependent on a Nuer youth white army over which he had
little control. Furthermore, he did not want to be closely associated with them because they
abused Dinka civilians. Although SSDF generals and their forces aligned with the SPLM­
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 161

IO distrusted him and strongly opposed the SPLM which Riek still claimed to be loyal. He
might still have excelled if he had a ready supply of weapons, but almost his only source
was Khartoum and it just provided enough to ensure he was not defeated. While the US
permitted the UPDF to serve as the backbone for the weak government in Juba, Khartoum
suffered sanctions from Washington. Given the weak state of the Sudanese economy, made
weaker by the substantial allocation of the national budget to security, it was only permitted
to provide the most meager support for the rebels.5 Meanwhile, Riek had limited political
abilities and the only thing that saved the SPLM­IO from total defeat was the growing dissent
in the country with the government’s brutality and opposition to Dinka hegemony.
But the government’s conclusion that it stood to gain more from war than a peace agree­
ment meant that while it was pressured to sign the Agreement on the Resolution of the Con­
flict in South Sudan (ARCSS) in August 2015, it had no intention of implementing the agree­
ment. Shortly thereafter, they realized the peacemakers lacked any force to implement it.
Instead, the US pressured Riek to return to Juba and assume his peace agreement designated
position as first vice president even though the government was in flagrant violation of the
security arrangements of the agreement, did not accept the ten state arrangement provided
in the agreement and the entire process was only one small spark away from an explosion
and collapse. These efforts were thoroughly endorsed by the US, particularly Secretary of
State John Kerry, who told Riek he would be taken before the International Criminal Court
if he did not return to Juba. The imminent explosion occurred when Salva and Riek met in
the Presidential Palace on July 8, 2016, to discuss the growing number of their respective
soldiers killed at SPLA check points in the capital. As was the case in December 2013, the
SPLA and militia forces loyal to Salva attacked Nuer civilians and forced the vastly out­
numbered SPLM­IO forces to leave the city. They continued to attack them over the next
month as they fled to sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
To any rational observer, these events marked the collapse of the peace process, but
the international community pretended otherwise. Under the influence of the US, they rec­
ognized the bogus election of Riek’s dissident lieutenant, Taban Deng Gai, as leader of the
SPLM­IO and his subsequent appointment by Salva as the country’s first vice president to
replace Riek. By blackmailing Khartoum with promises to ease Washington’s sanctions and
bringing pressure to bear on Ethiopia, the US managed to keep him out of the region. Mean­
while, after visiting South Africa for health reasons Riek was placed under house detention,
apparently in the belief that his marginalization would bring peace to South Sudan. Suffice
to say, that assumption proved false, the war spread, famine developed, fear was increas­
ingly expressed that much of the country’s population might become refugees in neighboring
states. Meanwhile, Taban never gained national legitimacy and Riek continued to serve as
leader of the SPLM­IO, which remained the premier rebel force in the country. Although
the US took the initiative in accepting Taban’s appointment and marginalizing Riek, the
Obama administration took no further action and the incoming Trump administration took
little interest in South Sudan and its deepening humanitarian crisis.

5 In the final days of his presidency in 2017, Barack Obama issued a presidential order to end economic sanctions

against Sudan in six months, but did not end Sudan’s designation as a terrorist state. He insisted, however, that
Sudan continue to cooperate with the US in fighting terrorism as defined by the US and that it not support South
Sudanese rebels. Having bent over backwards for many years to end US sanctions, the regime of President Omar
Al­Bashir quickly ended its limited support for the rebels.
162 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

6.7 Conclusion

US interest in Sudan developed in the context of the Cold War. It counted on Jafaar Nimeiri
to do its bidding in the region, support Israel, and stand up to the Derg, as well as assist in
efforts to overthrow the Gadaffi regime, which it eventually accomplished in 2014. There
was little concern with the welfare of the southern Sudanese who would later garner con­
siderable attention of three American presidents. The democratically elected government of
Sadig Al­Mahdi was viewed as an obstacle to the pursuit of US Cold War interests and thus
Washington indicated it would not oppose a military coup. This facilitated the rise to power
of the NCP, which became a thorn in the side of the US for the next three decades.
The end of the Cold War, US triumphalism, and the conviction that the US had the
responsibility and even right to intervene in the affairs of virtually all countries that did not
have the capacity to protect themselves, together with a hypocritical moral high­mindedness
that has always figured in American foreign policy, laid the basis for the deepening and
destructive engagement in Sudan and later South Sudan by presidents Clinton, Bush, and
Obama. This engagement led to the conviction that southern Sudan could only overcome
its problem by the establishment of an independent nation­state in similar fashion and with
a similar design as that of the West. But the state bequeathed to the peoples of South Sudan
could never meet their needs and instead set them on a path to destruction. Moreover, the
political party the Americans placed its faith in—the SPLM—never corresponded to their
unrealistic and saintly­like conceptions.
A consideration of solutions for the South Sudan tragedy is beyond the scope of this
chapter, but they must begin with the people of the country in whose name the state was
created and for whom the peace processes were conducted. The views of the people were
never determined and never figured in the decision­making of either the domestic or inter­
national power brokers. An initial and admittedly cursory attempt to determine the views
of a small sample of eastern Nuer civilian residents and refugees in Gambella, Ethiopia, in
December 2016 on issues such as war, peace, and leadership reached the conclusion that
in the wake of its failures at peacemaking and peace implementation the stature of the in­
ternational community has been radically diminished. Although there was no consensus on
the way forward or how South Sudan should be administered, the people interviewed were
clear that they did not want those decisions to again be made by outsiders or unaccountable
indigenous elites. Western engagement in countries like South Sudan proceeded from the
assumed lack of agency of Africans, but the cooperation almost exclusively with elites by
Western­led peacemakers ensured that the voices of ordinary people were not heard and their
interests not represented directly.
The peacemakers’ response to the collapse of their peace process was to conclude that
it was not due to any fault of the peace agreement, the exclusion of the South Sudanese from
the peace process, or the fact that South Sudan could not be expected to conform to the stip­
ulations of a peace process designed for a functioning nation­state, which it was clearly not.
Instead, the peacemakers concluded that the failures were due to a lack of pressure brought
to bear on the belligerents. And thus, the number of international mediators was vastly in­
creased. Because the war had spread, more rebel groups were brought to the table, largely
at the expense of the SPLM­IO. These efforts proved successful, if success is understood to
mean the acceptance of the agreement by the government in 2018. By late 2019, the conflict
had dissipated, yet Riek Machar had not returned to Juba to take up his position as first vice
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 163

president, cantonment centers had not been established for the opposition forces, and there
was no settlement on the number of states as pursuant to the agreement. As a result, there
were increasing fears that this impasse could continue for a long time.
The first step in sorting out the conundrum that is South Sudan today must begin with
giving a voice to its citizens, and not just its elites. In both the Naivasha peace process that
resulted in the CPA and the Addis Ababa process to end the war in southern Sudan that
produced ARCSS, the primary focus was on gaining the approval of internationally selected
elites to various forms of power­sharing. This emphasis assumed that the problems of Sudan
and then South Sudan could be equated with the concerns of these elites who could then build
a peaceful nation­state. From the perspective of the international community, the highlight of
the Naivasha process, was the behind­closed­doors talks between SPLM leader John Garang
and Sudan’s Vice President Ali Osman Taha. Meanwhile, the backers of the South Sudan
peace process understood the conflict to be between opposition leader Dr. Riek Machar and
President Salva Kiir, and almost all the negotiations were concerned with how much power
each should hold in the post­conflict government. This assumed that not only were these two
individuals in complete control of their respective organizations, but also that they reflected
the interests of the principal groups in society and neither of those assumptions were true.
Riek did not organize, control, or lead the Nuer white army, which was the major armed
group in opposition to the government during the first phase of the war. Likewise, Salva did
not control the misnamed national army he claimed at crucial times, and as a result he relied
on tribal militias. Legitimizing elites and permitting them to dominate internationally led
peace negotiations or threatening to have them removed or marginalized when they do not
act according to the dictates of their sponsor—as was the case with Riek—demonstrates the
peace­makers’ power over the actors. However, even when the international community can
dictate the terms of the peace agreement—as they did in South Sudan—they cannot ensure
sustainable peace, much less make an ungovernable country governable.
As well as exerting their economic power through financial institutions and trade agree­
ments, war and the threat of war, peacemaking has become a favored instrument by which
the US led West ensures its interests are protected. These peace processes are informed by
neoliberal precepts and are sometimes led by the West, but more often are pursued through
regional development­security organizations that are funded, supplied, and dominated by
the West, such as IGAD, which was the West’s chosen vehicle to pursue peace processes in
Sudan and South Sudan.
However, instead of such institutions being instruments to realize African solutions to
African problems—as is claimed—they deepen the role of the West in the continent, under­
mine the sovereignty of the weak states of Africa, and increasingly make them dependent on
the West. And as the peacemaking efforts in Sudan and South Sudan demonstrate, they have
proven to be not only failures, but have exacerbated the conflicts. In Alejandro Bendaña’s
analyses of supposedly successful internationally led peace processes in Central America
(that is, they stopped the wars), the weak and disenfranchised majorities frequently gained
little and often lost significantly from processes that did not address, much less overcome,
the social injustices that produced the insurrections in the first place (Bendaña 2003). While
internationally sponsored peace agreements in Central America changed the forms in which
the poor experienced violence, they did not end the violence and instead produced states
better equipped to withstand demands from below. In Sudan and South Sudan, peace agree­
ments did not even end the overt forms of violence associated with negative peace. Instead,
164 6. South Sudan: The Fractured State

by affirming the rule of oppressive and dysfunctional elites the culmination of one peace
process produced the conditions for further violence and the need for more peacemaking.
While the West and its human rights advocates contend that weak or predatory African
states alone produce conditions that necessitate international interventions, it was precisely
the failures of the CPA that shaped South Sudan’s civil war, or as the subtitle of my book
on that peace process would have it—“consequences of a flawed peace process.” But in a
context where no lessons are learned from past failures, the failures themselves are held as
providing evidence of the need for further and intensified interventions.

6.8 Addendum, December 30, 2020

Under the 2005 CPA the international community handed over power to the SPLM and set
the stage for the establishment of the South Sudanese state in 2011 and the ensuing disasters.
Two years later that state was at war with itself and the international community responded
with more peace­making and the signing of a peace agreement in 2015. When that agree­
ment collapsed the international community oversaw a ‘revitalized’ peace agreement that
was signed by the government of Salva Kiir and most of the rebel groups in September
2018. More than two years later when this is being written the security situation in South
Sudan has marginally improved but fighting continues between the holdout National Sal­
vation Front and government forces in Central Equatoria while inter and intra­communal
fighting is endemic. The fact that communal conflicts are not addressed by the peace pro­
cess speaks powerfully of its inadequacy and the failure of the present forms of governance
that are a product of the peace process.
Since 1983 various components of the international community have been involved in
trying to bring peace, defined negatively as the absence of war, to the territory. But each
failed peace­making effort led to further peace­making by an ever­changing international
community on the one hand and local elites that showed remarkable continuity on the other.
The approach to peace­making and the models employed have not changed and nor has
there been any consideration whether the state that the international community and the
local elites are committed to can meet the needs of the people of South Sudan for security
and development.
The debate on whether South Sudan should be placed under a trusteeship has largely
withered. Not because state capacity has improved or because the government has demon­
strated an interest in the welfare of its people. But because the international community led
by the UN has moved beyond the provision of humanitarian assistance and is increasingly
delivering basic government services. A powerful argument against the imposition of an in­
ternational trusteeship was that it breached South Sudan’s sovereignty, but in daily practice
the UN and a host of other agencies do precisely that. Nonetheless, the West and the African
Union want to preserve the illusion that a dysfunctional South Sudan state is a sovereign
unit of the so­called international global order.
South Sudan was created to free itself from Sudanese overlordship and its SPLM gov­
ernment endeavored to replace its extensive ties with Sudan with those of its East African
neighbors. But the government is finding that the historical, cultural, linguistic, geograph­
ical, and familial links with Sudan are stronger than was imagined and in the wake of the
coming to power of the post­Al­Bashir transitional government in 2019 the establishment of
formal linkages between the two countries cannot be discounted. Also driving renewed ties
6. South Sudan: The Fractured State 165

to the motherland is the failure of the secessionist project and refusal of the Salva Kiir to de­
volve powers which has replicated the centralized administration that southern nationalists
fought against in the old Sudan.
Unlike other parts of Africa where wars of liberation sometimes served to unify the
various ethnic communities, in South Sudan the conflicts exacerbated existing antagonisms.
Likewise, the efforts of the international community over 37 years have not succeeded in
overcoming the divisions between the 80+ ethnic communities that reside in the territory.
To the frustration of the West the South Sudanese state remains not only a threat to the
security of its own people but endangers the security of client states in the region, and despite
an abundance of natural resources it has not become an investment destination for Western
capital. These were precisely the reasons the US and its allies first became involved in Sudan
peace­making. Constrained by the West’s neo­colonial and Eurocentric conviction that all
states must bend to its model of the nation­state, South Sudan continues to be dysfunctional,
only elites linked to the artificial state benefit, and its peoples suffer untold miseries.
Chapter 7
Conclusion
John Markakis, Günther Schlee, and John Young

The principal concern of this book has been the international factors and modes of engage­
ment that have shaped and distorted contemporary states in the Horn of Africa. In a region
in which scarcity, endemic poverty, uneven development, and the repeated involvement of
outside powers have produced and exacerbated a host of armed struggles, the establishment
of two independent states and with the outbreak of war in Tigray in November 2020 possibly
more in the offing, and the highest numbers of refugees and internally displaced people in
the world, it is important to emphasize the link between these problems and a failed model
of statehood adopted, imposed, and directed by the West.
Since its domination by the West in the nineteenth century, Africa has served as an
experimental laboratory for metropole notions of economic and political development from
imperialism through Keynesian notions of state­led development, neocolonialism, and ne­
oliberalism, but in each case power was ultimately held by people and organizations outside
the continent and aid projects were designed to meet their needs. The drive for independence
in the 1960s was a high point in the effort of Africans to control their destinies even if power
was turned over to a self­serving comprador elite who ensured that the interests of the for­
mer colonial powers were paramount. As pointed out by Frantz Fanon and Walter Rodney,
the ruling bourgeois classes in the West had gained economic power before gaining state
power, and thus could relinquish power through elections and be assured that their interests
would be protected. In contrast, the petty bourgeois rulers in Africa had their origins in the
state, had no independent economic basis, and clung to political power, which has regularly
precipitated conflict. Although basking in the legitimacy of self­proclaimed democracies,
Western policies in Africa over many years have been designed to separate the rulers from
the people, make these rulers accountable to the West and not their own people, and thus
preclude the possibility of democracy taking form in the continent.
The Cold War was a mixed blessing for Africans. On the one hand, it involved the
capitalist West and the socialist East demanding that its allies conform to their economic
and political conditionalities, while on the other it provided a measure of political space and
the possibility of playing off the two super­powers. In addition, the Cold War permitted a
proliferation of anti­imperialism, neo­colonialism, dependency, and world systems theories
that provided critiques of the state in the developing world and its relations to the developed
West.
While the West’s victory in the Cold War ended the great ideological confrontations
that loomed large in the Horn of Africa, it also gave rise to new demands that states follow
the dictates of the new international order, which further undermined African sovereignty. It
also reinforced the intellectual hegemony of the West and fostered an environment in which
the critical theories that informed much analysis are now only studied only at the margins
168 7. Conclusion

of universities and are rejected outright by mainstream economics and the powers that be.
However, such acts of theorizing remain building blocks to understanding the inability of
the African state to meet the needs of the people and the inequitable relationship of Africa to
the West. It is also key to bring Africans to their rightful role in the international community.
The transition of the OAU to the AU was supposedly based on the advance of African
states, but the new organization followed its predecessor and did the bidding of the West, in­
cluding implementing the precepts of neoliberalism and working to ensure the maintenance
of the Western­dominated global state architecture. By the end of the Cold War, hopes that
African and Asian states might collectively come together and avoid entanglement with
the superpowers and achieve autonomous development as aspired by the 1955 Non­Aligned
Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, had all but evaporated. The West has further constrained
the development of independent policies in Africa by establishing a formidable network of
economic and security institutions and treaties that bind the continent to the developed world.
IGAD was one such regional organization that was initially established under Western impe­
tus to pursue development objectives and serve as an interlocutor between the Horn of Africa
and Western donor states. Later, at the encouragement of the West it moved into peacemak­
ing, and were the region not so internally divided it would have assumed a security role as
well.
African governments have largely accepted the role of their states in the international
economy to be one of supplying raw materials to the West (i.e. their supposed comparative
advantage) and increasingly to China and other Asian powers. While China’s rapid de­
velopment served to undermine Africa’s fledgling manufacturing base, it is also providing
infrastructure that may eventually help the continent escape from its marginalized position
in the international economy. Furthermore, it gives developing countries opportunities for
realizing alternative approaches to development, and in the case of Ethiopia until recently
it was assisting in the rapid expansion of the country’s textile industry but even before the
2020 war internal strife had slowed the country’s economic boom.
While continuous Western efforts to impose neoliberalism is lowering living standards,
producing uneven development, fostering conflict between governments beholden to the
West and a welfare seeking population, societal tensions, and in some areas is providing an
environment in which jihadist and other extremist views can take hold, Africans are also
engaged in a growing global campaign of resistance. Given the present balance of interna­
tional power, it is unrealistic to imagine that Africa will assume a leading role in the fight
back. With this in mind, the case of Ethiopia is instructive.
The EPRDF was committed to a socialist transformationand it had the enormous ad­
vantage of coming to power without being beholden to foreign powers. Nevertheless, the
Front felt compelled to embrace capitalism, bend to the demands of the Bretton Woods agen­
cies, and align its foreign policy to that of the West. This decision came from the realistic
perspective that pursuing the EPRDF’s initial programs would likely be defeated by a rein­
vigorated and triumphalist West in 1991 and thus pose a threat to its existence. If the EPRDF
with its many advantages compared to other ruling parties in Africa at the time did not have
the capacity to pursue an independent program, there was little hope of success elsewhere
on the continent. Those states had already been captured by elites beholden to the West.
But that was then, and the present situation is very different. The uncontested Western
hegemony of 1991 is being undermined and challenged on multiple fronts. The most sig­
nificant event in turning around these realities may have been the economic crisis of 2008.
7. Conclusion 169

The implications are still felt, and include continuous but sluggish growth, historically high
rates of unemployment, and increasing inequality. Modern circumstances have also been
changed by the emergence of a politically and militarily confident Russia which is able to
block Western initiatives in various parts of the world, the growth of China as an economic
giant, and the inability of the West to escape from a never­ending GWOT. Hegemony is
also undermined by multiple cracks in the Western alliance that has served as the bedrock
of the global order since the end of World War II, in particular, the impending withdrawal
of the UK from the EU and growing tensions between the EU and the US. This division is
also manifest in the election of the American nationalist president, Donald Trump, and the
proliferation of right­wing parties in Europe on the one hand, versus the electoral successes
of Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, espousing socialist ideas thought
to have been relegated to history’s dustbin with the defeat of the Soviet Union on the other
hand.
As a result, the ideological environment is opening and the political space is expanding
so that countries on the periphery, or what used to be called the weak links to global capital­
ism, now have a measure of maneuverability that has not been the case since the height of
the Cold War. But the growing conflict between the US led West and China, and to a lesser
extent Russia, means that more pressure is being placed on African governments to fall in
line with their former colonial masters and the US. In both Sudan and Ethiopia one can also
observe the key role played by client states of the US in their internal affairs. Egypt, Saudi
Arabia, and the UAE both shaped the course of the popular uprising against the Al­Bashir
regime in 2019 and are continuing to influence the course of the transition. Meanwhile, the
UAE from its base in Assab, Eritrea has become a party to the war by Abiy Ahmed and Isias
Afwerki against the TPLF insurgency. In addition, Egypt is trying to use this conflict as a
means to press its demands regarding Ethiopia’s Renaissance Dam. And at the macro­level
countries in the Gulf and Turkey are increasingly militarizing the Red Sea.
African governments, which are typically more responsive to Western demands than
to those of their own constituents, cannot be expected to use this freedom to press for more
than marginal changes. But among the people of the Horn, new horizons are opening up and
nowhere is this more apparent than in South Sudan.
South Sudan owes its existence to the US. When it collapsed into civil war in December
2013, the US led the peace process and propped up the government. However, not only is US
state building now recognized as a failure, so are its peacemaking efforts, as is the mechanism
that the US and its Western allies used to pursue their efforts and which it created, funds,
and directs—IGAD. Moreover, the US­backed SPLM and its leader, Dr. John Garang, who
was publicized as an African hero, has been irrevocably tarnished by the ruling party’s mal­
administration, endemic corruption, and responsibility for sparking civil war in 2013. As a
result, the US, the West, and broadly the international community, which had been held in
high esteem by South Sudanese only a few years ago, are now viewed with distain by many
in the country.
Although conditions in South Sudan favor the emergence of political forces to challenge
the West’s inappropriate models of governance and the economy and alternatives have been
proposed, change is sadly not happening. Instead, both the government and rebels are cling­
ing to outworn models that their own experience proves do not work and are increasingly
subject to attack in the West. This also appears to be the case in other countries examined in
this study. Whether this represents a time lag in which new political formations will catch
170 7. Conclusion

up with new conditions is not known. Africa may be entering a stage described by Gramsci
a century ago when he wrote, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying
and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”
(Gramsci 1971).
White men have repeatedly promised to lead Africans to a better future and repeatedly
failed to do so, and it is not our intent to follow in those footsteps. The objective of this
book has been to expose the falsehoods, illusions, and sometimes outright lies upon which
the Western modeled state has been constructed in the Horn of Africa.
At the end of this exercise it might be good to come back to its beginning and to examine
what we have set out to do. Already the title of the book states that the nation­state is the
wrong model for the Horn of Africa. This statement can be read in two different ways,
depending on whether we understand “model” in a normative or in a descriptive way.
Evidence abounds, in this book and elsewhere, that the nation­state as a descriptive
model does not fit the Horn of Africa. It simply does not describe what we see there. Ac­
cording to the Weberian model of the nation­state, it should have a state territory that it fills
with its sovereign power. What we find in the northeast African reality is power at the cen­
ter that peters out as we move towards the margins. Instead of the monopoly of violence
held by the ideal nation­state, we find armed counter powers. Instead of or in addition to a
bureaucracy following rules, we find personalized forms of power, networks of patronage,
and markets of violence. Instead of universal citizens and a government at the service of
the entire citizenry who is responsible for its welfare, we find the expectation that leaders
help their own people first and the idea that a leader who does not first help his own people
cannot be a good leader.
Thus, the hypothesis expressed in the title, namely that the nation­state is a wrong
model for the Horn of Africa, has been corroborated beyond doubt if we understand model
as a descriptive model. What we find in Africa is at great variance with it. But how about
model in the normative sense? As a model for with an emphasis on the for (rather than a
model of )? Would the problems of the Horn of Africa be solved if we managed to establish
nation­states according to the Western model there?
In the preface, we vowed not to fall back into the old habit of telling Africans what to
do. This book therefore does not end with a list of explicit proposals, apart from the rec­
ommendation to listen to Africans and for students of African politics to work to expose
Eurocentrism. In several of the chapters we have noted the lack of inclusivity of peace pro­
cesses, of economic policies, of resource sharing, of politics in general. Western sponsored
post­conflict reconstruction programs (misnamed so because they often take place during
conflicts and sometimes are a cause of their prolongation) often “marginalize local institu­
tions and alienate local citizens from the state­building process” (Englebert and Tull 2008,
138).
By pointing out some incongruences, like the disjointedness between the nation­state
model and African realities, between what states pretend to be and what they really are, we
hope—in a small way and within our limited purview—to lift the veil and encourage the
emergence of an intellectual environment in which old and failed Western conceptions of
statehood can be challenged and new formulations developed.
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