“IT IS GRATIFYING TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO LEARN WHAT YOUR SEEMINGLY FRIENDS THEN WERE DOING OR UPTO“, Ismail Warsame
Seyoum Mesfin, the late long-serving Ethiopian Minister for foreign affairs and Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China, and Abdeta Beyene, Executive Director of Ethiopia’s Center for Dialogue, Research and Cooperation (CDRD) and Director General of the same ministry, were people I knew and interacted with, as a member of the National Salvation Council (Sodare Group) 1996-1997, and as an official of Puntland Government (1998-2004). These two gentlemen authored an essay published in American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Daedalus) and called it “The Practicality of Living with Failed States“. The issue is mainly explaining Ethiopian foreign policy towards the “Failed State of Somalia”. The authors had extensively deliberated how Ethiopia has been infiltrating into and meddling in the internal affairs of Somalia, using the excuse of lack of capacity on the part of Somalia to maintain internal stability and security at its borders with other countries like Ethiopia and Kenya. The authors tried to broaden the concept of Ethiopian Foreign Policy intervention of “Buffer Zone” (areas of influence and proxies) establishment as an academic discourse worthy of publication in reputable journals.
What is particular interesting in this essay is the unexpected and frank exposure of Ethiopian Foreign Policy towards different state and non-state actors inside Somalia, some of which they had intentionally created and others so formed on their own to provide “Buffer Zone” for Ethiopia’s security against Alshabab and other extremist groups. In dealing with stateless Somalia, the terms of sovereignty and territorial intergrity had lost any constraints in the thinking of Ethiopian policy makers, and paradoxically suggest to the international community some lessons to learn from Ethiopian experiences outside the constructs of international law and relations. Because of the security threats to Ethiopia from Somali regions of Gedo, Bay and Bakool, through the use of extremists as launching areas for attacks against neighboring countries, they said Ethiopia had to occupy forcefully these regions and create proxies like Raxanweyn Resistance Army (RRA) and SNF, according to the paper by these men. In Mogadishu, they claimed that Ethiopian forces entered to wipe out Islamic Courts Union (ICU) after it had threatened Ethiopia, and to support the fledgling Transitional Federal Government of Somalia (TFG). They also claimed that Ethiopian authorities helped Somali regional federal state in Central Somalia and South West after Ethiopia had benefitted from the security and stability in Puntland and Somaliland. They said, after some delay, Ethiopia helped Sunna Wal-Jamaac Group in its fighting with Alshabab, and to reconcile the group with Galmudugh authorities, which was treated as a buffer zone for Ethiopia.
The overarching objective of this exposition was to explain why Ethiopia was interfering in the internal affairs of Somalia, regardless of the letter and spirit of the International Law. Finally, they also asserted that Kenya was creating its own buffer zones with Somalia too, but unlike Ethiopia, Kenya was using Somali local Ogaden politicians to invade Jubaland. However, corruption had weakened Kenya’s efforts to manage its buffer zones successfully.
I would say, as a long time observer of this policy, there is nothing new here other than the frankness of the authors of this essay, for Ethiopia has been historically hell-bent to weaken and isolate Somalia from Emeror Menelik, onwards. Somali armed opposition fronts of SSDF, SNM, USC and others in the 1980s, were part of the proxies Ethiopia has been using, although to the opposition, there was no other option, but to work with the devil in order to get rid of Barre’s oppressive Military Regime in Mogadishu then.
Warsame Policy & Media Network (WAPMEN) 