Wednesday, June 02, 2010
By Dan Simpson, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
When Djibouti President Ismail Omar Guelleh met with Vice President Joe Biden at the White House May 21, he carried with him the significance of representing the only successful partnership the United States has with a nation in the crucial Horn of Africa.
Mr. Guelleh was in the United States to attend his daughter's graduation from Columbia University but passed through Washington for high-level meetings. He met with Mr. Biden instead of President Barack Obama, who was preoccupied with the oil spill.
Djibouti's assets, by contrast with other Horn of Africa states — Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia — include a stable, reasonably democratic government; an economy based on an important port and railroad; a population of 850,000, small enough to live off what it has; and an important formerly French military base that hosts U.S. troops and aircraft. The base is the only property of the U.S. Africa Command on African soil.
Mr. Guelleh has been able, through adroit statesmanship, to maintain excellent relations for Djibouti not only with sometime Africa rivals America and France, but also with regional power Iran and other business partners. His second six-year term expires soon. What comes next, including a possible third term, remains unclear. He ran unopposed, backed by several parties, in 2005.
Djibouti lives in a dangerous place, with a virtual adventure park of aggressive, venomous neighbors. The largest is Ethiopia, with a population of 80 million and military forces numbering an estimated 200,000, having just completed what were considered to be very doubtful elections.
The United States has traditionally given more or less unflinching support to Ethiopia's prime minister, Meles Zenawi, and his "victorious" Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, including intelligence and air support for Ethiopia's most recent invasion and occupation of neighboring Somalia in 2006. Those two have been fighting each other since the 1970s, when their conflicts had Cold War implications. Now U.S. involvement turns on shadowy suggestions of potential terrorism in Somalia. Ethiopia describes itself for American consumption as a Christian country.
Ethiopia receives substantial U.S. humanitarian and military aid, $863 million last year. An estimated 8 percent of its population requires food aid. It is hard to say what Ethiopia's economic situation would be if it did not spend a large amount of its wealth on military endeavors. Reports recur of fungible humanitarian aid being diverted to military purposes.
Another Horn charmer is Eritrea, the only "successful" African state created by secession from another, in this case, Ethiopia, in 1993. Partly because of America's perceived close relationship with Eritrea's enemy, Ethiopia, and partly out of Eritrea's general cussedness, U.S. relations with the country have deteriorated since it was considered a potential African star during the Clinton administration.
Eritrea and Ethiopia have conducted what can only be described as a turf war on their border — since few economic resources are involved — in an area called Badme. (It's not a pun.) An estimated 70,000 casualties have been incurred. Both countries are very poor. Ethiopia has 16 times as many people as Eritrea, but that didn't stop Eritrea from attacking its large neighbor in 1998.
A boundary commission said Badme belongs to Eritrea, but Ethiopia continues to occupy it. Peace efforts haven't worked. The United States claims that Eritrea sends arms to Islamic extremists in Somalia. Who knows? Why do we care?
Somalia, not ruled by a coherent government since January 1991, is easily the most chaotic and dangerous country in the Horn. It is so badly fragmented after nearly two decades of fighting, economic disintegration, humanitarian degradation and failed international efforts to revive it that it is no longer even close to accurate to describe it as a state. It is a geographic area.
Somalia is divided into political fiefdoms, sort of, although that is to suggest a level of order that does not exist. There is the internationally constructed provisional government, which, with help from international "peacekeepers," clings to the presidential palace and a few blocks of the capital, Mogadishu. Many — probably most — of its "officials" reside abroad.
There is Somaliland, the former, pre-1960 British colonial portion of Somalia. There is Puntland, up the coast from Mogadishu, the base of many of the pirates whom some 40 ships from world navies chase with very limited success.
On piracy, it is clear to anyone with half a brain that, given the size of the area of the Red Sea, Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean that would have to be patrolled effectively to bring the pesky Somali entrepreneurs under control by force, the only way to resolve the problem is through establishing effective government on the Somali shore.
As a problem to be resolved, this is the international equivalent of scooping up all the oil that BP is bubbling into the Gulf of Mexico.
So why is the United States involved?
If we retain our pretensions to world dominance and see Mr. Obama's cautions about the area in the newly released National Security Strategy as an effort on his part to mount up for a showy charge to satisfy the U.S. military's and defense contractors' appetite for taxpayer money, U.S. involvement in the Horn of Africa is likely to continue in spite of its arid results. The rationale will be strategic: look at the map, see the nearby oil producers, imagine al-Qaida mobilizing in the Somali desert to attack Delaware, etc.
It is hard to find a rationale for U.S. involvement in the Horn of Africa beyond the diplomatic in light of our spreading national problems, growing budget deficit and soaring national debt. There is no reason for us to be there.
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a Post-Gazette associate editor
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