Horns of a dilemma?

Horns of a dilemma? A superpower's role in a pivotal region US Foreign Policy and the Horn of Africa By Peter Woodward £50.00 Ashgate ISBN 0-7546-3580-5

Once again, the world's TV screens are carrying images from the drought-stricken region of the Horn of Africa as politicians and humanitarian organisations warn of an impending humanitarian disaster unfolding in a great swathe of north-eastern Africa. That threat makes this book, a study of the US government's relations with the Horn of Africa, a timely study of a complex region.

Many of those in Washington concerned with analysing geopolitical realities consider the Horn one of the most important regions of the continent.

Originally, author Peter Woodward explains, the concept of 'the Horn' was not an indigenous idea, but the term entered common usage after WWII. At that time the term usually just described Somalia and Ethiopia, but from the time of the major war between these two states, in 1978-9, the term was broadened to include Sudan - perhaps because evidence emerged of Sudanese involvement with some opposition movements in Ethiopia.

This study takes as its starting point the end of the Cold War, although some background information is provided on the era immediately following the end of WWII hostilities.

For the purpose of this book, the Horn is now defined as comprising Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia (including what is now known as Somaliland), Sudan and, since 1993, Eritrea. Much of the book's focus is on Somalia and Sudan, perhaps because these two countries have caused the most dilemmas for the US.

Woodward makes a crucial observation regarding the conflicts that have occurred in the region. Their origin may appear to be national or sub-regional, he writes, but after the Cold War, increasingly, there was an emerging concern that they might be related to the Horn's Islamic dimensions as the population of Somalia is overwhelmingly Muslim as are the majority of Sudanese and a considerable part of the population of Ethiopia.

This debate regarding the Muslim population of the region developed after the end of the Cold War and not surprisingly intensified after the 9/11 terror attacks on the US. But Woodward, although acknowledging the centrality of this issue to the book's subject matter, also pursues other relevant themes. One such theme is the relationship between the US and international organisations - most notably the UN.

While US-UN relations in the Horn arise most frequently in response to humanitarian concerns, they are not confined to them. For example, by 2004 the US was even invoking the term genocide to describe certain developments in the region - and that had serious implications for the international community in general and the UN in particular.

Conflict resolution was another area that posed a particular problem for Washington policymakers as, post the Cold War, there appeared to be an increasing number of national and regional conflicts - although it must be noted that this trend was not confined to the Horn, nor to Africa in general.

Calls for action

Woodward argues that it was the combination of humanitarian and conflict issues that contributed to a growing number of voices in the US calling for action of various kinds in the Horn.

Throughout the 1990s, he says, US-based Christian groups in particular, whose concerns were also with Islamism, increasingly joined secular voices to warn of an apparently growing threat to the US. Whether this threat was real or imagined, it certainly did nothing to dispel the theory of an imminent 'clash of civilisations'.

But before the author examines US foreign policy towards the Horn he first looks at Washington's foreign policy-making with regard to Africa as a whole. Here he is forthright in claiming that the attention given to the continent by the different agencies of US government has been, historically, minimal. He implies that there was little specialist knowledge of Africa in Washington, and the question over who gets involved in decision making, as well as when and why, may be as crucial as anything else to understanding the policies pursued by the US and their eventual outcomes. Tellingly, he quotes the Africa Confidential newsletter that reported in September 1995 President Clinton saying: "When I became President, it seemed to me that our country didn't really have a policy towards Africa."

That lack of policy is surprising because of the strong argument of the geopolitical importance of the Horn. That is because, though in Africa, the Horn is not always of Africa.. It can be argued that its history and cultural affinities are as much linked to Arabia, including the influence of Islam, as Africa.

Woodward goes so far as to postulate that the broad context of US Middle East foreign policy including the Arab-Israeli dispute may be as relevant, or perhaps more so, to understanding US policy towards Ethiopia in particular as it is towards that country's role in Africa! He also makes an interesting historical observation - that Emperor Haile Selassie, as well as being the first chairman of the Organisation of African Unity, was also an important ally of Israel and the US.