Ethiopia should not go back to war with Eritrea

Written by Mammo Muchie - Business Daily Africa

13 November, 2007

November 13, 2007: Ethiopia as a nation of nearly 80 million people makes it amongst the three most populous countries in Africa. Peace and political and ideological stability is not only critical for Ethiopia, it is also even more critical to all the peoples, states and regions of the wider Horn of Africa and indeed Africa in general.

Any project to break this country is fraught with the danger that 80 million people will be dispersed throughout the world. That is not acceptable to any one. Look at what is happening in Somalia. The citizens have been dispersed and they are suffering everywhere away from home .

Breaking and blackmailing the national framework and creating ethnically and vernacularly organised states will be difficult to sustain in Ethiopia in the long run.

Imagine how difficult it has been and indeed a nightmare it still is to construct a security community after Eritrea broke away. We had war five years after Eritrea’s referendum in 1993. There is now a talk that another war is brewing.

Although the Ethiopian Government swears it has no intention to go to war, the Eritrean Government has produced statements after statements accusing Ethiopia and foreign powers of being behind Ethiopia and are plotting to start another conflagration.

Given Ethiopia’s involvement in Somalia, it would be truly foolhardy to open another war front. Why the drums of war threats are hovering over the region is beyond anything one can comprehend.

The problem is that often we do not know who is lying and who is telling the truth. All we can say is that there is remotely no good reason for one to attack the other .

However exasperating and confounding, what happens between the elites in Eritrea and Ethiopia, the fact remains that the separation they promoted without clear appreciation of the consequences did not resolve the problem by silencing the guns or stop war and violence from recurring.

What this means is that any effort to break Ethiopia by following the Eritrean example is likely to create more problems than bring solutions for stabilising the region .

Any war that the elite in Eritrea has been warning will break out will be indeed a monumental crime if it breaks out, as the alternative to negotiate and solve amicably any problem is open except for the intransigence and bellicosity of the elite that rule Ethiopia and Eritrea by splitting the country into two.

Prof Muchie is the Director of Development, Innovation and International Political economy, Aalborg University, Denmark.