Ethiopia’s Withdrawal: A Vacuum or a Plenum?

By Said Shiiq, Ph.D
Tuesday, June 03, 2008

 

A handful of Western diplomats in the Horn of Africa, alarmed by the recent upheaval of violence in Somalia, and bent on finding possible solutions, recently asked me “What is the approval rating of Ethiopian presence in Somalia?”

 

Aghast, I challenged the premise of their question. “The appropriate question to ask,” I sputtered, “is: What is the disapproval rating of the Ethiopian occupation in Somalia?”

 

After a long—and sometimes heated discussion—we agreed on the basics: That the disapproval rating of Ethiopia’s aggression, manifested in the ever-brewing insurgency and the Transitional Federal Government’s (TFG) dismal performance over the last four years, is hovering in the upper 90s. Moreover, we mutually recognized that Ethiopia occupied Somalia illegally, and in defiance of United Nations recommendations.

 

Then came the V word: “Who will fill the vacuum,” asked the diplomats, “if Ethiopians were to be withdrawn out of Somalia today?”

 

The history of the V word

 

Historically, the V word has been demagogically used as an alibi to continue illegal occupation or intervention. In Vietnam, the Americans routinely purported that, if they withdrew from there, an unspecified catastrophe will transpire, including, among other things, genocide. Rivers of bloodbath would be created, the Americans claimed.

 

But when the Americans finally withdrew—disgracefully, I might add—none of the impending disaster occurred. The plenum they vacated was filled by the rightful owners of the land: the Vietnamese people. Vietnam went on to become a functioning state, undeterred by the illegal American occupation.

 

Ditto in Iraq. The Bush Administration and its cabal make the same claim. If we were to redeploy our troops, they insist, Shiites and will slaughter Sunnis and the Kurdish region will cede, sparking an unforeseen disaster in the Middle East.

 

This claim is fundamentally fraud, as most analysts will now admit. Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds lived side-by-side, and mostly in peace and harmony for centuries.

 

A Fig Leaf or a Vacuum?

 

Taking a page from the colonial West, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia invoked the “vacuum” myth in a recent interview with Newsweek. If our soldiers leave Somalia today, he fraudulently asserted, there will be a “vacuum,” leaving Somalia at the mercy of what he calls “terrorists,”--- the legitimate resistance that most Somalis support.

 

Zenawi is not alone in his assertion. The Americans and some Europeans are on board. But as I explained to the skeptical Western diplomats that quizzed me about the “V” word, the vacuum claim is a fig leaf for Ethiopia’s fiasco in the Horn of Africa.

 

Moreover, President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed of the TFG invoked the V word in his plea before the inordinate meeting of the United Nation’s Security Council in Djibouti this week.

 

But he inadvertently revealed his inner fear: If Ethiopia redeploys its troops, he implied, the increasingly potent insurgency will overrun our cities—just as they did in Jowhar, Bule Burde, Beledweyn and Baydhabo in recent weeks.

 

I told the Western diplomats that in addition to fanning vitriolic anti-Ethiopian and by extension anti-Western sentiments in Somalia, Ethiopia’s naked occupation worsened the situation in Somalia by all measures.

 

Vacating the plenum it created, therefore, shouldn’t be a prerequisite to any post-invasion nation-building, I told the Western diplomats.

 

Like Vietnam, Somalia will do just fine if Ethiopia withdraws its troops. For all intentions and purposes, Ethiopia resuscitated Mogadishu warlords as governors, mayors, police chiefs, and members of parliament, only after the people of Mogadishu took matters on their own hands in 2006.

 

It also rejuvenated Abdullahi Yusuf’s warlord-infested TFG from oblivion.

 

But the illegal Ethiopian occupation, notwithstanding its horrendous human rights violations, failed to accomplish one major goal: to neutralize or break the spirit of Somali nationalism, as Zenawi falsely claimed his Newsweek interview.

 

Never have I seen a unified Somali front bent on rolling back the illegal occupation as much as there is now. The occupation practically unified secular scholars, civil society groups and ardently religious figures.

 

If and when the unsparing occupation ends—and it will end at some point—Somalis would have learned a dear lesson to cling to their nation.

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Said Shiiq, Ph.D., is an independent researcher and consultant for international organizations. He can be reached at [email protected]