Negotiation and Reconciliation over Futile Military Action: Lessons for Ethiopia from Somalia
This piece focuses on the internal security crisis and inefficient governmental interventions in East Africa, with a particular emphasis on Somalia and Ethiopia. The piece analyzes the failures of solving the insecurity crisis through military action in Somalia and Ethiopia. In addition, it argues that that Ethiopia can yet save itself by learning from Somalia. The piece conceptualizes security and ineffective military intervention, utilizing the theory of militarization as the starting point for writing. Thereby, the piece can open academic dialogues for stakeholders to think about their role in negotiating and reconciling toward a solution to Ethiopia’s current security problem before Ethiopia suffers the same fate as Somalia.
Conceptualization of security
Security has remained contested and has not been universally accepted due to its various sides arising from locus analysis, ideology, and approach. However, relied on internal security dimension and human security approach, security can be understand as making peoples to be free from threat, violence, and conflict after creating political, social, environmental, economic, and cultural systems that enable peoples to enjoy their rights, to live in free and dignity.
Standing on this concept, this writing argues that most East African countries, except Kenya, have been in political and economic crises, and they have been trying to solve their home problems through oppression and military intervention, but the military intervention causes more crises, leading Somalia to collapse and Ethiopia to the possibility of collapse if Ethiopia could not take lessons from Somalia early.
Conceptualizing ineffective military intervention
For the purpose of this writing, ineffective military intervention refers to failure to save lives, restore peace, establish security, achieve political stability, or resolve conflicts. Various local and international reports showed that the political and security structures of East African countries like Somalia have been collapsing, and Ethiopia is on the same path after governments tried to solve their internal security crisis through military intervention.
Concerning this, after governmental military intervention to bring security, the state apparatus of Somalia has collapsed, and people have been able to survive with the support of foreign security organizations, while Ethiopia has been in fragility with a critical civil war. In these countries, millions of innocents have been either vulnerable to violence or victims of violence.
Theory of militarization
The theory of militarization refers to the process through which a state increasingly relies on or emphasizes military solutions and institutions to bring security rather than negotiation and discussion. Based on this theory, this piece argues that solving the security crisis through military intervention complicated the Somalia problem and enabled the Somalia political apparatus to be dysfunctional.
In a similar way, the Ethiopian government has been trying to solve the security crisis, which is caused by intertwined ethnic politics and the political narrative of dominator and dominant, through military intervention. This led the country into a political crisis. If Ethiopia cannot solve the security crisis through negotiation and reconciliation early, it will face the same scenario as Somalia did.
Security crisis and ineffective governmental military intervention
The piece begins with a few cases from African countries to illustrate how governmental military intervention has been tailored by African countries and the obstacles they face in restoring security, before moving on to the security crisis and the failures of such interventions in Somalia and Ethiopia in East Africa.
It was usual for African countries to solve insecurity by military force rather than relying on indigenous conflict resolution mechanisms, mediation, and negotiation. As Kisangani (2012), Taiwo and Oja, and Fofack (2022) stated, the use of military force in domestic security affairs has been a continuous issue in Africa. In different times, the African government has been trying to solve local conflict issues through military intervention and operations; however, this has not been achieved easily and has caused more crises.
For instance, Nigeria is presently enmeshed in a rising insecurity that endangers the coexistence of peoples. Scholars argued that lack of trust among ethnic groups, refusal to accept the diversity of religions, fear of domination, marginalization, control, and intolerance caused the various terrorist groups to act as insecurity makers.
Following this, the Nigerian government was applying various military operations to defend terror groups, including Boko Haram, Fulani Herdsmen, Bandits, Jihadists, and Kidnappers, but the success of the government’s military intervention is still under question. The terrorist group, like Boko Haram, has not been avoided, and the war has been continuing. The lives of thousands were left unprotected.
Since 1960, the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s governments have been the center of wars of secession, ethnic wars, rebellions, and mutinies. The governments of the Republic of Congo have been trying to restore peace through military operations, but still, Congo is the political landscape of civil war and conflict. The case was similar in Mali, Burukina Faso, and Niger. The governments tried to solve chaos and conflicts, which were sparked by insurgencies, but the conflict persisted and rebels survived.
East Africa is one of the most conflict-ridden areas in Africa. This area has experienced many security crises. In this area, every country has faced civil wars and conflicts. The civil war and the conflict revolved mostly around state formation, empire building, searching for resources, clan rivalries, ethnic rivalries, ideological disputes, and conspiratorial history narratives. Accordingly, states in the Horn of Africa have been trying to solve conflicts and civil wars by allowing the involvement of their governmental military force, even though this has not brought the last long solution.
Relating to this, by taking the internal security crisis and the failure of the government’s intervention into account, it is more preferable to forward the collapsed state of Somalia and the fragile state of Ethiopia.
Even though Somalia is the home of a homogenous ethnic group in terms of language, culture, and religion, since 1969, Somalia has been facing security crisis following the existence of clans completing resources and power, a repressive state, and the colonial legacy. Concerning with this, the governments of Somalia had been ignoring reconciliation and negotiation among clans and focused military measurements for restoring security.
However, this resulted in a multitude of problems for Somalia and ushered in the emergence of several rebel and terrorist factions, such as Al-Shabaab, which have been forming based on clan and religious affiliations. As a result, the governments of Somalia have become weaker, and it is too late to use negotiation and reconciliation to restore stability. Finally, Somalia made a request to the international community for security personnel. As a result, security forces such as AMISOM, UNSOM, and others have been working in Somalia to provide security, but despite this, Somalia has not prevented its collapse.
Ethiopia’s situation corresponds to Somalia’s. The sole difference here is that political grievances in Ethiopia are rooted in ethnic politics, whereas in Somalia they are rooted in clan politics. Conspiratorial history on ethnics, the emergence of an anti-Amhara narrative, state-building scenarios, ethnic competition for resources and power, repressive ethnic politics, and a feeling of marginalization have all contributed to conflict and security crises in Ethiopia since 1991. In light of this, Ethiopian governments have been attempting to resolve disputes through military action without taking into account the true nature of grievances, coming up with solutions for them, or placing a higher value on dialogue and reconciliation.
Way outs
Before Ethiopia faced the same end scenario as Somalia, the government could save the country by taking the position of facilitator of transitional government for reconciliation and negotiation among rebel groups like the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Fano, and Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and allowing the international community to take on the role of organizing and leading negotiations.