Nationalism Unbound: The Horn of Africa Revisited

NATIONALISM UNBOUND:________ THE HORN OF AFRICA REVISITED Marina Ottaway T1he politics ofthe Horn ofAfrica has been dominated for three decades by conflicting nationalisms. During the 1970s and early 1980s, however, the commitment to Marxism-Leninism of the Somali regime of Mohammed Siad Barre, the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in Ethiopia, and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) received more attention. To most Western countries the Soviet presence was worrisome, while conflicting nationalisms were seen as important only where they offered opportunities for Soviet penetration. Bound by the commitment of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) to respect the continent's colonial boundaries, most foreign governments did not believe that the territorial status quo should be modified. The Soviet Union also tended to consider nationalism as a phenomenon ofsecondary importance, which could be overridden by the common commitment to Marxism-Leninism of governments and political movements in the region. Relying on Fidel Castro as its emissary, the Soviet Union suggested in 1977 that the conflicts between Eritrea and Ethiopia and between Somalia and Ethiopia Marina Ottaway has taught at Addis Ababa University and other African universities as well as at the American University and SAIS. She has written many books and articles on the Horn ofAfrica, including Ethiopia: Empire in Revolution (1978), with David Ottaway, and Soviet and American Influence in the Horn of Africa (1982). She edited The Political Economy ofEthiopia (1990). Ill 112 SAISREVIEW could be solved simultaneously by the formation of a Red Sea federation of Marxist-Leninist states. The suggestion was rejected by all sides.1 Eventually, socialism faded away completely and nationalism triumphed . In January 1991, President Siad Barre was ousted and Somalia disintegrated into a chaos of warring clans and factions. In May, President Mengistu Haile Mariam fled the country after the Ethiopian army collapsed under the onslaught of not only the EPLF, but also of a much newer movement, the Tigrean People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and of lesser ethnic liberation movements allied with it. Furthermore, the demise ofthe communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union made it extremely unlikely that future governments in the Horn would turn to socialism again. Nationalism became the dominant ideology ofthe region, replacing Marxism-Leninism as the organizing principle of emerging political systems in Eritrea and Ethiopia, but leading to the virtual disappearance of the Somali state. The triumph of nationalism did not ensure a more peaceful or democratic future for the area. On the contrary, it risked leading to a new period of strife as destructive as the one that preceded it. The consequences of unchecked and escalating micronationalism were already manifest in Somalia. It was not a foregone conclusion that Ethiopia could avoid chaos and possibly disintegration, although the government had decided to tackle the problem of ethnic nationalism openly, rather than trying to suppress it as Mengistu had done. Eritrea, de facto independent although still nominally part of Ethiopia, was taking the opposite route. Following in the footsteps ofearlier Ethiopian and indeed ofmost African regimes, the EPLF insisted on an all-inclusive, Pan-Eritrean nationalism, refusing to accept the legitimacy of ethnic consciousness despite the pluralism of its population and despite the fact that for years it had done its best to encourage and support the development of ethnic movements in Ethiopia. Nationalism was central to the politics of the Horn, but it had very different meanings and different implications in each country—for simplicity's sake, and anticipating the probable final outcome, we will refer here to Eritrea as a country. Indeed, after the collapse ofthe former socialist regimes there were three conflicting nationalisms side by side in the Horn of Africa. One was the Pan-Eritrean nationalism of the EPLF, which embraced the entire former Italian colony despite the ethnic and religious differences that divided its population. The second was the government-supported ethnic nationalism favored by Ethiopia's new 1. See John Markakis, National and Class Conflict in tlie Horn ofAfrica (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 228-29; and Edmond Keller, Revolutionary Ethiopia: From. Empire to People's Republic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), p. 205. NATIONALISM UNBOUND 113 rulers. It had aspects both of...