The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa: Money, War and the Business of Power

by Alex de Waal

"The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa" delves into the business of politics in the turbulent, war-torn countries of north-east Africa. It is a contemporary history of how politicians, generals and insurgents bargain over money and power, and use of war to achieve their goals.

Drawing on a thirty-year career in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia, including experience as a participant in high-level peace talks, Alex de Waal provides a unique and compelling account of how these countries leaders run their governments, conduct their business, fight their wars and, occasionally, make peace. De Waal shows how leaders operate on a business model, securing funds for their political budgets which they use to rent the provisional allegiances of army officers, militia commanders, tribal chiefs and party officials at the going rate. This political marketplace is eroding the institutions of government and reversing statebuilding and it is fuelled in large part by oil exports, aid funds and western military assistance for counter-terrorism and peacekeeping.

"The Real Politics of the Horn of Africa" is a sharp and disturbing book with profound implications for international relations, development and peacemaking in the Horn of Africa and beyond.

Genres: Africa, Politics, Nonfiction, History, Eastern Africa, Ethiopia, Current Affairs

220 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2015

Reviews

[Ed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex de Waal has been a respected interlocutor and occasional mediator for heads of state, rebel leaders and warlords in Northeast Africa for over 30 years. He is a profound student of the region and has written more articles and contributed to more books on the Horn of Africa than most people have read. For decades he’s been both observer and participant in what he calls “the Horn of Africa’s cornucopia of violence and destruction”; he’s been in the room during the big peace talks, interviewing and befriending the region’s Big Men and ridden in the backs of trucks under cover of darkness with guerrillas. He did his D. Phil thesis on Darfur and twice served as senior adviser to the African Union High-Level Implementation Panel for Sudan. He knows his stuff.

The Horn of Africa formerly consisted of 4 countries: Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia plus the enclave of Djibouti. Now it is seven. Eritrea broke away from Ethiopia and South Sudan from Sudan. Somaliland isn’t recognized internationally (nor by Somalia) but is a functioning state with a government that delivers services to its citizens, which Somalia is not. There are case studies of each of the countries mentioned except Djibouti plus an additional one on Darfur.The Horn is an inhospitable part of the world with little transportation infrastructure, endless spaces and a harsh climate much affected by global warming but with a surprisingly globalized and cosmopolitan political ecosystem.

The book investigates and describes how decisions are made in the Horn, the ‘political circuitry’ that exists there, how power is accumulated and lost and the use of violence and cash in the real political life of the region. De Waal shows that the that politics in the Horn is best understood as a marketplace, where the currency is money and the ability to wage war. States are largely imaginary constructs; what matters in politics is accumulating as large a ‘political budget’ as possible – the discretionary funds that any leader can spend on buying support, both in votes and guns.

Two examples of how political budgets work are revenue from oil or other large scale industrial extractive operations and artisanal mining of alluvial gold, diamonds or near-surface coltan. Oil in Sudan or copper in Eritrea are part of international commodity economics dominated by a few companies and based on payments flowing from these companies to the treasuries of central governments. These payments are diverted from the provision of public goods or state building to political funding with secondary investments in construction, real estate, energy and transport that generates crony capitalism and more corruption. Small scale mining--smaller even than that run by foreign militaries in the eastern Congo--finance local political entrepreneurs who can control the simple, labor intensive technology for diamonds and riverine gold and exported using trucks or light aircraft. Provincial elites such as rebel commanders, local chiefs and army officers use these funds for their own political budgets, including bribery, payments to unofficial recruits and weapons procurement. In both cases the funds extracted never benefit the residents of the areas affected and are often used to their detriment.

De Waal sees little good news coming from the Horn of Africa anytime soon. The countries there have proved to be politically unstable for decades with more of the same to come.

[Hussam Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

The author describes this book as an ethnography of the horn’s political elite. Interestingly, the politics of this region is far better described by business terminology like capital, supply and demand, making it a near perfect market!
The book has so much to unpack to anyone interested in the region. Like a tragic play, the book divides the horn’s modern history into 3 main acts and a prologue. Many of the horn’s problems such as concentration of development at the metropolis and gross lack of it at the periphery can be traced back to the colonial period i.e. the prologue of this play. Act 1 features leaders contemporary to the cold war era such as Sudan’s Nimeiry, Ethiopia’s Mengistu and Somalia’s Barre. They all exploited the American Soviet rivalry by aligning themselves with either side and acting as their proxy, while receiving rents that represented the core of their political capital which they used to repress opposition and sponsor rebels in neighboring countries. As the cold war ended, the rents were drying up and those regimes were starting to fall one after the other. Sudan emerged top of that shaky hierarchy given that its support of Ethiopian opposition paid off when the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) overthrew Mengistu in 1991.
The 1990s represented Act 2 of the drama, which was characterized by chaos. The Islamist regime in Khartoum was overextending trying to act not only as the leader of the pack, but rather as the ideological center, exporting Islamic fundamentalism to its neighbors who were mostly of leftist leanings. That led to the faceoff between Sudan and the Axis of Liberators (Ethiopia, Eritrea & Uganda; later joined by Rwanda). The axis was about to overthrow the regime in Khartoum just like they did in Zaire, however Sudan was spared when Ethiopia and Eretria went to war in 1998 in another demonstration of the incessant competition to ascend the horn’s hierarchy.
With the turn of the millennium (Act 3) new sources of rent funded by newly discovered oil and security cooperation pacts with the west were evolving and fueling some of the worst atrocities in places like Darfur. The book then it goes further dedicating a chapter for each country. Despite the uniqueness of each country, you can’t help but notice the universalism of market principles at play with violence being the currency of exchange and barriers to entry being almost nonexistent. Another interesting observation is the fractal nature of hierarchy and how similar patron-client relationships are repeated at multiple levels. Towards the end of the book, the author examines the interplay between the horn of Africa and the wider world highlighting that with all its ugliness, that ecosystem wouldn’t have developed if it was not for the involvement of external actors. All in all, a highly recommended read as a primer to anyone interested in Sudan or East Africa in general.

[Yaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

الكتاب عبارة عن نظرية تفسيرية لديناميكيات الممارسة السياسية في القرن الأفريقي. يحاول الكاتب من خلال نظرية السوق السياسي تفسير قواعد القوى في اللعبة السياسية في السودان و الصومال و ارتريا . النظرية تعتمد أساسا على راس المال السياسي و تسعير السياسيين حسب تأثيرهم و قدرتهم على التغيير. الكتاب ثري جدا بمعلومات مفيدة عن دول القرن و الممارسة السياسية فيها ، وقد نجح نموذج الكاتب التفسيري الى حد كبير في تفسير ممارسات الصراع السياسي في السودان وو الصومال لكنه لم ينجح في تعنيم النموذج التفسيري على اثيوبيا و ارتريا

[I Read, Therefore I Blog · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alex de Waal is Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation and a Research Professor at Tufts University and in this thought-provoking but depressing book, he analyses the political factors at play in the countries comprising the Horn of Africa through the prism of a rentier political marketplace where loyalties are bought and sold in a high-stakes game that prevents genuine state-building and undermines democratic convention.

[Soeren]

Very interesting book that discusses recent history in the horn of Africa. The main theory is that politics is organized via a political marketplace. Alliances and support are subject to supply and demand and require payment. Violence is just one way to operate in this market. The author was very embedded in Sudan and Ethiopia in the 90s and 00s. Made me reconsider the vibrancy of academia in Africa and potential for a career there.

[Jared Donis · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is just exceptionally chilling! Alex de Waal has undressed the politics of the region and shown it for what it truly is. The book distills decades of scholarship and direct expereince Alex possesses. I learned so much!

I can't help but feel pessimistic about the fate of this volatile region, now that he has helped me to see the real demon at work here: just plain greed! God help us...

[Sheri Fresonke Harper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author explains rentier politics using examples from the countries in the Horn or Africa. He provides a characterization of the politics in each of the countries and explains how the political situation is facilitated by funding for military and counter-military efforts and by clan or personal connections and by technology. The close up view of African countries is enlightening.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating theory, which preferences the "political marketplace" over traditional lenses of ethnic, religious, or nationalist conflict. The author's histories are readable and ties clearly to his main argument, which is persuasive but may not be as all-encompassing as advertised.

[Robin Mydlak · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wish I had read this much, much sooner.

[Ben P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Having some basic knowledge of the Horn of Africa and an interest in current events, this book had more academic window dressing than I was looking for, but I found that it still gave a lot of insight through the framing of a “political marketplace.”

Much has changed since the book was published in 2015 but quite a few current events stem from trajectories it explores. I found the description of “rentier rebellions” in Sudan, where uprisings are used to elicit compensation, useful in understanding the current crisis. Hemedti is introduced as a rentier rebel leader from his time in Darfur, which he used to parley himself into leading the RSF that now fight through the streets of Khartoum.

De Waal also provides a lot of insight into Ethiopia especially through his personal connections with rebel leader turned president Meles Zenawi. A Putinesque political operator, the careful stability which expired with Zenawi’s death contrasts sharply with the horrific conflict in Tigray that Abiy Ahmed has overseen.

Overall, engaging book which provides good background into the modern history of the Horn alongside some not-too-inaccessible theoretical discussion of how “marketplace-style” governance works.

[Philip · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bewildering book, excellent and insightful analysis about Somalia, Darfur, Sudan and Eritrea etc contrasting with sycophantic treatment of Meles Zenawi and his TPLF leadership and a consequently very weak analysis of the dynamics of power in Ethiopia. One can only wonder at how the author views the emerging insights into the systematic corruption, rent taking and personal enrichment by the TPLF elite under Meles's leadership who despite a massive concentration of power and privilege in the Tigray region lefts it's people desperately poor and now increasingly marginalised from power. If the author's accounts of the deliberations amongst the TPLF leadership about rentier corruption and misappropriation of revenues, and the dangers of direct involvement by the generals in the market of power and patronage are accurate then this raises important questions about the very nature of the TPLF led state and it's apologists.

[Ayaanle Hori areh · Rating 4 out of 5]

For those who want to understand the 'real' politics of the Horn through the prism of one causation, ' the logic of political-market place', this books is indispensable though the chapter on Somalia is poorly analysed and, in some ways, hardly to go in tandem with the contextualization of theme of the book.

[Paul Harper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very good book if you are interested in Sudan, South Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia.

[Mills College Library]

306.20963 D5152 2015

[Sarah Logan · Rating 3 out of 5]

De Waal's political marketplace analysis not sufficiently comprehensive to explain all that is seen in the Horn, particularly in South Sudan. Interesting nonetheless.

[Eric Randolph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent, original and brutally materialistic.