Two hundred million people live in the six countries of the Horn of Africa: Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. In thirty years these numbers will double. None of the aforementioned countries has the governance infrastructure to manage such rising numbers, even less the faster-rising expectations of their young people. On the current trajectory, we are approaching region wide state collapse, driven by wars in Sudan and Ethiopia.
Sudan has advanced furthest down this path. The country has fragmented into different zones of control and the institutions of government.
The Rapid Support Forces (RSF) headed by Gen. Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as ‘Hemedti’, and his brother Abdel Rahim Dagalo are a family-owned transnational mercenary-commercial conglomerate. If they win, the Sudanese state will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of this enterprise. The RSF thrives on the spoils of war. It is a machine for pillage, ethnic cleansing and the subjugation of conquered people. It can rule; it cannot govern.
Despite the ambitions and rhetoric of the Dagalo brothers, the RSF repeatedly shows its origins in the Janjaweed militia, drawn from the Arab tribes in Darfur and Chad, notorious for their role in massacres twenty years ago. The next generation Janjaweed appear intent on dominating lands customarily occupied by non-Arab groups, such as the Masalit and Fur, as well as comprehensively looting the capital Khartoum and other cities. The RSF controls most of Sudan west of the Nile and may succeed in overrunning the remaining bases still held by the regular army in Khartoum. Whether the Dagalo brothers will then be satisfied with a de facto division of the country, is not clear.
The Sudan Armed Forces, headed by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, consist of a quarrelsome cabal of kleptocrats and Islamists, incapable of doing more than destroying infrastructure to slow down the RSF advance. The SAF may succeed in consolidating control over those parts of Sudan east of the River Nile, setting up an alternative capital in Port Sudan. Or SAF may disintegrate after military setbacks with some generals enticed to switch sides for monetary inducement.
What is sadly certain is that food insecurity and famine will deepen in Sudan in 2024. The national economy is shrinking fast and food production is uncertain, especially on mechanized farms that rely on fertilizer, fuel and bank credit, for the next season. Employment in the public and private sector is collapsing. Both warring parties are using starvation as a weapon, besieging cities, cutting supply lines and destroying essential infrastructure. Already, half of the country’s population of 45 million is in need of humanitarian assistance, and that number is destined to grow.
If efforts to secure a ceasefire and humanitarian access are to succeed, the key international actors will need to unify their efforts—something conspicuously lacking until now. The Israel-Palestine conflict simultaneously elevates the strategic importance of the Horn—the Red Sea is Israel’s back door for maritime trade—but also consumes the energies of major international powers such as the United States.
Ethiopia, once the anchor for peace and security in the Horn of Africa, is becoming a rogue state.
Six years ago, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed inherited a set of functioning institutions and a fast-growing economy, along with a discredited ruling party and a cauldron of resentments. He raised expectations for democracy and prosperity sky high, but had no strategy for scaling them back when he could not deliver. Instead, Abiy adopted populist slogans and divide-and-rule bargaining with members of the political elite, becoming a ‘big man’ who keeps himself in power by keeping everyone else off balance.
Abiy has grandiose visions of his own historic role as a warrior king who restores Ethiopian greatness. He has started three wars thus far—against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Amhara militia, known as Fano. Fighting in Tigray ended in November 2022 with a ‘Permanent Cessation of Hostilities’ between the Federal Government and the TPLF. It is a truce rather than a comprehensive political settlement, leaving many issues unresolved. The ceasefire holds only because each side knows the calamity that would follow large-scale fighting. The prospects for similar agreements with the OLA and Fano are dim, in part because the insurgents do not possess sufficient cohesion to negotiate a deal but are nonetheless militarily resilient.
The Ethiopian capital city Addis Ababa maintains a semblance of normality, even a superficial prosperity. But governmental institutions are so eviscerated that in much of the country, the state performs shows of power instead of delivering governance functions. There’s stability only insofar as there is continuity of leadership, but Abiy is piling up problems which lead inexorably towards state failure.
Abiy is rattling his saber and saying that Ethiopia, a landlocked country, is entitled to access to the sea, and will do so by force of arms, if necessary. Abiy’s threat needs to be taken seriously. He is undeterred by the possibility of censure at the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa and whose Chairperson Moussa Faki has been willing to do his host’s bidding. The neighbouring countries of Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia are alarmed at the prospect of an invasion.
A regional war in the Horn may happen in 2024, unleashing turmoil, hunger and mass migration on a vast scale.
Whether or not the calamitous scenarios unfold in Sudan and Ethiopia depends on international responses. Currently, the main supplier of weapons and funds to the RSF and Ethiopia is the United Arab Emirates. Russia is also active, seeking to control almost the entire Sahelian region. Egypt is caught between its longstanding policy of keeping Ethiopia weak, so as to control the waters of the Nile, and its fear of chaos in the Nile Valley and along the shores of the Red Sea. Meanwhile, Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti are trying to construct an alliance for stabilizing the region, but need the financial resources and political backing to make it a realistic prospect.
Source link : https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/crisis-to-watch-sudan-and-the-horn-of-africa-157927
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Publish date : 2023-12-21 08:00:00
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