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Democratizing the State in the Horn of Africa Now: Examining its Feasibility

Amanuel Nayr - 8/26/2011

In the Horn of Africa the state is twisted. Instead of protecting its people, it often attacks them or exposes them to attack. By its actions (and inaction), it often famishes, tortures, represses and kills them.

This is the story of Darfurians in the Sudan, Ethiopians whose voice has been stolen in fake elections, defenseless Somalis and many others. These disturbing actions of the state gives one the feeling that the state needs to be transformed through people’s power as in many Arab countries today for these actions contradict the purpose of the state itself. Yet when one sees these very crimes and abuses perpetrated by groups within the state but outside its control, one gets more disgusted.

The state in many parts of the region is weak; it is unable to subject many organized groups like middle men, smugglers, money launders to its control. For such groups, the state is simply a toothless lion that cannot effectively react to offenses against its own mandate. These groups, especially business ones, have come to outsmart the state and hence evade with ease any countering strategies initiated by the state. This capacity has encouraged them to commit crimes their whims command. For long time, such groups were confined to the peripheries beyond the reach of the state and hence acted in areas where the presence of the state is weak. But now, as the state power continuous to erode, these groups are increasingly taking the center stage in the region. As a result, in countries like the Republic of Sudan, groups of money launders, and smugglers and middle men (commonly known by their Arabic name Sematra) roam cities in the open, safe. The secretiveness that would have accompanied their illegal and immoral business practices is no more relevant because the state is weak. The most disgusting thing, they declare that they are in the business of smuggling and undertaking all illegal activities, to aggrandize their empires treating the state with contempt. In cities like Khartoum, for example, one finds places named after these illegal business men (locally called sematra squares). The state is silent, and often silenced by them.

The failure of various governments in the region to create a strong state that provides a conducive economic environment by ensuring social justice seems the major missing element which is responsible for most of the evils perpetuated by these organized groups. State weakness has brought about parallel weakening of the economies of the region. Since there is little room for improving peoples lives through formal production or distribution of goods, many people resorted to illegal businesses. In the absence of significant domestic production, Transnational corporations (TNCs) and international trade that benefits the ordinary people, many jobless young people from Eritrea, the Sudan and Ethiopia have established illegal and informal ‘TNCs’ for trafficking human beings and money, among others. Young men and women, have found illegal businesses attractive and hence accumulate ill-gotten wealth with less toil. And they employ every means to get money. They rape, torture and kill people. In short, they have silently declared a war against human dignity and have threatened to roll back human civilization by treating people as animals. They sell and resell their fellow human beings among themselves. And in every ‘market’, new and increased prices are tagged on them similar to the prices of slaves in their journey from Africa to the Americas in the old slave trade. In the trans-Sahara human-trafficking business of today, for example, prices increase as one goes from Horn of Africa to Israel or Egypt. Emigrants are exchanged among smugglers and samatra in exorbitant prices and sometimes taken to unintended destinations.

In the republic of Sudan Ethiopia and Somalia, the right to use coercive power is shared with organized groups. In these countries some smugglers possess unregistered guns. As a result, they launch similar attacks on innocent people like the weak state itself. During my visit to the Sudan, in the months of June and July of this year, I came across people who have experienced abuses of all sorts under groups of smugglers and middle men whose network spreads across the region and beyond. The stories narrated by young emigrants from Eritrea and Ethiopia who were kept hostage by smugglers and middle men are ugly, sometimes uglier than the stories told by people who have fallen prey to the state. Some of the victims pay their price (or buy themselves) in dollars ranging from 5,000 to 10,000 yet they are denied the right to live. Their relatives and friends incur all the costs and share the economic burden and psychological trauma with them.

What is the solution? In my opinion, the region at the moment needs a strong state that protects its citizens. ‘What about democracy’, one may ask. Democracy and a strong state do not contradict. In fact, they do reinforce one another. But in the event of lawlessness, a strong state is a necessity. What is the state and its procedures—elections, new laws…etc for the undefended citizens? The state is not a necessity for them because it is not a means of ensuring their fundamental right—the right to security.

These crimes and illegal activities are products of a weak state. Thus, the state should not be required to control or limit itself at this stage or under these circumstances. It is true, the state in the region has lagged far behind the state in other regions of the continent in democratizing itself, but worse, it is far behind in strengthening its control on its people. This disheartening reality obliges one to concede with James Madison who first wanted a state that controls its people and then itself in the formative years of the United States. This is what the region requires at this moment. The state in the Horn of Africa needs to first strengthen itself if democracy is to take root. It has to learn using its muscles against abusive illegal groups while protecting innocent civilians within is sovereign territory. This would ultimately clear the ground for a sustainable democratic development.