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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Wed Jan 05 2011 - 09:20:17 EST
Secession in Africa
>From the archive: Another country
Jan 5th 2011, 19:20 by C.H. | LONDON
With a <http://www.economist.com/node/17493375> referendum on the secession
of the southern part of Sudan scheduled for January 9th, the time seems
right for a trip into the archives (specifically, the leader pages in the
print edition of April 24th 1993), to reexamine what our thoughts were in
advance of Eritrea's vote for independence, and on the merits of secession
in Africa in general:
Africa should welcome Eritrea, not resist it
WITH referendums enjoying something of a vogue, the one taking place in a
remote corner of Africa this weekend may not grab many headlines. Between
April 23rd and 25th the inhabitants of Eritrea, a little wedge of territory
beside the Red Sea, will vote on whether to secede from Ethiopia. The place
is small, but the symbolic value of its vote is not. When Eritreans say Yes
to independence, as they surely will, they will deliver to Africa the first
country born through secession since decolonisation. Many fear that if
Eritrea splits off the entire African jigsaw will break up.
In a continent where frontiers and people are famously ill matched, such a
prospect is not altogether fanciful. Hence the principle so often cited:
African borders may be random lines drawn on colonists' maps, but any
attempt to alter them will only lead to more instability and fighting.
Africans have bitter memories of secessionist wars; Nigeria's Biafra, the
Congo's Katanga. They need only cast their eyes northwards to Bosnia to see
where the post-cold-war version can lead.
But Africans should relax. Eritrea's claim to independence is unusually
strong. And even where others have as good a case, that need not spell
disaster for the continent.
A chip, but not off the old block
The fear that Eritrea will start a trend is, not surprisingly, strongest in
Ethiopia. There is the worry that, once Eritrea has cut loose, other groups
in other parts of the ethnically mixed country will want to do the same.
They may, but their case will not be as strong as the Eritreans'.
Eritrea's claim to be special starts with its history. In colonial days,
Eritrea was never a part of Ethiopia. Whereas the Ethiopians drove the
Italians off their soil and escaped colonial rule (a brief spell under
Mussolini excepted), Eritrea was in the first half of this century an
outpost of the Italian empire. Not until 1952 was Eritrea handed over by the
British, who had been running it for the previous 11 years, to Ethiopia;
their reasons for doing so lay largely in their feelings of guilt about the
way Europe had allowed Mussolini to gobble up Ethiopia in the 1930s. Besides
spaghetti and cappuccino, Italy bequeathed to Eritreans a sense of national
identity which has only been strengthened by their forced cohabitation with
Ethiopia. Eritrea's independence will not draw new borders, but return the
country to its shape of 40 years ago.
Furthermore, the Eritreans fought almost every year of annexation by
Ethiopia. Their victory over the Ethiopian army in May 1991, which ended a
30-year war, led to the liberation of their country. Since then the Eritrean
People's Liberation Front has been running the place as a de facto
independent state. Eritreans are not breaking away so much as making their
separation formal. Above all, since the end of the war, Eritreans have gone
about their bid for secession in an orderly, peaceful way. They have waited
two years before holding a referendum, to allow their war-battered country
to recover. And they are on good terms with the government in Addis Ababa.
In time, other parts of African states may well press their claims more
forcefully. Few will have as strong a case as Eritrea. The world should be
especially wary of those areas that, being blessed with mineral or other
wealth, simply want to bolt with the loot. But some may deserve support.
British Somaliland, for example, the northern bit of (former Italian)
Somalia, has a similar historical case. Southern Sudan's long war with its
north might support a divorce on the ground of irreconcilable differences.
Some boundaries have, in fact, been changed in the past: western Togo, once
British Togoland, is now in Ghana; British South Cameroon is now part of
ex-French Cameroon, whereas British North Cameroon is part of Nigeria.
Not every would-be secessionist should be encouraged to follow Eritrea. But
it is time for Africans to bury a taboo.
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