Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa’s Questionable Expansion of Regional Political Organizations

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Africa is noted for cooperation among its many countries. All African states belong to the African Union (AU), although four are currently suspended due to recent military coups (Sudan, Mali, Burkina Faso, and Guinea). Owing in part to the AU, and its predecessor, the Organization of African Unity, Africa has few conflicts among is internationally recognized sovereign states, although it has many conflicts within them. The AU defines Africa broadly, seeking to promote solidarity and cohesion across both the continent and the nearby island countries of the Atlantic and Indians oceans.

The African Union also seeks to promote economic growth and cooperation among its member states, mainly through on its ambitious New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD). A cornerstone of NEPAD is the creation and strengthening of Regional Economic Communities (RECs), groups of neighboring countries designed to foster economic integration. In theory, such smaller organizations can cooperate more effectively than the union as a whole. The eight officially recognized RECs (mapped below) are described as the “building blocks” of the AU and its grand developmental vision. In addition, six other African political-economic blocks have not received official AU recognition. (Four of these unofficial groups are depicted in the final map in the series posted below; note that the Indian Ocean Commission also an includes France, which is not shown on the map, although two of its overseas departments, Mayotte and Réunion, are.)

Although economic cooperative among neighboring countries can help propel economic and social development, the utility of Africa’s RECs is questionable. Several of them continue to add new members, becoming unwieldly in the process. Overlap is now pronounced. Democratic Republic of Congo, a country that hardly manages to govern itself, now belongs to four of these “communities.” Barely functional Somalia belongs to three and has applied for membership in a fourth. Several of the RECs have expanded well beyond the regions that supposedly define them. Consider CEN-SAD: The Community of Sahel-Saharan States. As can be seen on the map posted below, its original members were all located in the Sahara-Sahel belt, a region faced with many similar environmental and economic challenges. But CEN-SAD now includes countries such as Liberia and Sierra Leone that are far removed from the hyper-arid Sahara and the semi-arid Sahel located immediately south of the great desert.

The main problem with Africa’s regional-political approach to economic development is that it is relatively expensive and requires a lot of attention from governmental officials who might be better off focusing on domestic issues. Such complications are noted in several relevant Wikipedia articles. The one on the RECs mentions that “multiple and confusing membership creates duplication and sometimes competition in activities, while placing additional burdens on already over-stretched foreign affairs staff to attend all the various summits and other meetings.” The article on the New Partnership for Africa’s Development has more pointed wording:

More recently, NEPAD has also been criticised by some of its initial backers, including notably Senegalese President Abdoulaya Wade who accused NEPAD of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars and achieving nothing. Like many other intergovernmental bodies, NEPAD suffers from slow decision-making, and a relatively poorly resourced and often cumbersome implementing framework. The great lack of information about the day-to-day activities of the NEPAD secretariat—the website is notably uninformative—does not help its case.

Creating such regional organizations is a tempting and understandable developmental strategy. Doing so makes it seem as if African leaders are deeply committed to peace, international cooperation, and economic betterment. But such a strategy can easily be overextended, with rapidly diminishing utility as the number of organizations and their geographical coverage increases. It would seem that such a situation has been reached in Africa.

The Cheetah: Vanishing from Africa but Returning to India

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In 2016, National Geographic announced that the cheetah is “racing toward extinction,” with its population expected to decline precipitously over the next 15 years. Only around 7,000 cheetahs, the world’s fastest mammal, live in the wild. Their remaining habitat is dispersed and disjunct, with roughly 77 percent of it falling outside of protected areas. A recent scientific study found that outside of protected areas, cheetah populations are highly vulnerable and declining. The Asiatic subspecies, now limited to Iran’s arid Dasht-e Kavir, is now functionally extinct, its population limited to an estimated 12 individuals, nine of which are male.

Several hundred years ago, Cheetahs inhabited a vast area extending across most of Africa and southwestern Asia. (The map posted below, however, exaggerates and misconstrues the historical range, as is common in maps of this sort; cheetahs never lived in the dense forests of far north-central Iran or in the driest parts of the Sahara, and their range did not abruptly terminate at the modern political border between Iran and Armenia and Azerbaijan.) In prehistoric times, cheetahs also lived in Europe, where, according to one theory, they died out due to competition with lions. But as cheetahs easily coexisted with lions in historical times across most of Africa and southwestern Asia, this thesis is unconvincing. Regardless of where they lived, cheetahs evidently came close to extinction twice, once around 100,000 years ago and again around 12,000 years ago. Due to these near misses, cheetahs have extremely low genetic diversity, making them highly vulnerable to infectious diseases.

But just as cheetahs are vanishing from Africa, they are getting a new lease on life in India. In September 2022, eight cheetahs were transferred from Namibia to Kuno National Park in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, where they were personally released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his 72nd anniversary. (One of these cats later came down with a kidney ailment is currently undergoing treatment.) On January 25, 2023, South Africa announced that it sill send more than 100 cheetahs to India. Whether Kuno is large enough to sustain a viable cheetah population is an open question, leading some biologists to express reservations about the entire initiative. In the future, they might also have to compete with lions. In the 1990s, Kuno was selected as the main site of the Asiatic Lion Reintroduction Project, which resulted in the removal 1,650 Adivasis (tribal people) from Kuno National Park. India’s – and indeed, Asia’s – only remaining lion population has long been restricted to Gir National Park in Gujarat, making it highly vulnerable to extinction. Gujarat, however, has successfully resisted the transfer of any of its lions to Kuno, even though its own population has overpopulated its restricted range.

Cheetahs have a celebrated history in India, where they were widely used by aristocrats as a semi-domesticated hunting animal. According to the Indian author Divyabhanusinh, the Mughal emperor Akbar the Great owned some 9,000 cheetahs over the course of his lifetime, although most experts think that this figure is greatly exaggerated. Regardless of numbers, tame Cheetahs figure prominently in Mughal art and were held in high esteem. But cheetahs were also killed in large numbers by elite Indian and British hunters. According to Wikipedia, “Three of India’s last cheetahs were shot by the Maharajah of Surguja in 1948. The same maharaja “has the notorious record of having shot and killed a total of 1,710 Bengal tigers, the highest known individual score.”

India was not the only place in which cheetahs were used extensively in hunting. Images from the third millennium BCE in both Mesopotamia and Egypt depict leashed cheetahs. According to the Indian blogger Rahultiwary, citing Wildcats of the World by Mel and Fiona Sunquist, “Later the cats were widely used in the Middle East, Afghanistan, southern Russia, Pakistan, India, and China. Tame cheetahs were used to hunt goitered [or black-tailed] gazelles, foxes, and hares in Russia and Mongolia, and the sport flourished during the middle ages in Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. In 1474, one Armenian ruler owned 100 hunting cheetahs.” In Central Asia and the Caucasus, cheetahs here evidently exterminated in the 1950s, and by the late 1970s they were hunted out of the Arabian Peninsula as well.

The gradual disappearance of cheetahs from Africa, coupled with their reintroduction to India, has important lessons for conservation biology. Many environmentalists who warn about the impending “sixth wave of extinctions” also think that economic growth and development more generally are the root cause of the crisis. According to the noted Stanford biologist Paul Ehrlich, the primary drivers are “continued population growth, and overconsumption, especially by the rich” Continuing economic growth, such authors argue, entails the extraction of ever more resources, which will eventually – and quite soon in Ehrlich’s view – reach the point of exhaustion, resulting in a systemic collapse. Although their dire predictions have all failed thus far, eco-pessimists might be right in the long term , as only time can tell. But in the short term, they are almost certainly wrong. Rampant habitat loss and wildlife destruction is occurring primarily in the least developed parts of the world. Where economic development has reached an advanced stage, habitat is generally increasing and wildlife is rebounding. Economic development is also closely correlated with reduced human fertility; economically surging India now has a below-replacement-rate Total Fertility Rate of around 2.0, whereas in economically troubled Niger the figure stands at 6.6. To the extent that economic development is hindered in tropical Africa for environmental reasons, the destruction of nature can be expected to be intensified rather than reversed. Even in Europe, environmentally justified energy austerity programs are accompanied by increased environmental degradation. When people have difficulty affording power, trees can be quickly sacrificed for fuel, as is indeed occurring in some of Europe’s few remaining old growth forests.

India deserves credit for protecting and restoring wildlife and wild lands at a far higher level than might be expected on the basis on its raw developmental standing. Most of the world’s remaining wild tigers, for example, live in India, even though India accounts for a relatively small portion of the animal’s original range, and even though India is far poorer than most countries that had, or still have, viable tiger populations. The contrast in wildlife conservation between India and China is especially stark and has been apparent for hundreds if not thousands of years. The sad story of China’s long history of wildlife extirpation can be found in Mark Elvins’ well-researched book, The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China.

As a final note, North America had its own “cheetah” (Miracinonyx trumani) until the Pleistocene-Holocene Extinction Event circa 12,000 years ago, which wiped out roughly 85 percent of its large mammals. This large America cat was morphologically similar to the cheetah. It was likewise built for speed, as was its main prey, the pronghorn “antelope.” Recent genetic research, however, has shown that Miracinonyx trumani was much more closely related to the puma (cougar or mountain lion) than to the eastern hemisphere’s cheetah, and is therefore now properly deemed “the American cheetah-like cat.” It came to resemble the cheetah through convergent evolution, not from descent from a common ancestral species.

Pentecostalism, Fermented Milk, and Coffee in Ethiopia’s Sidama Region

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Several recent posts have mentioned the recent growth of Pentecostal Christianity in Ethiopia, noting that a significant portion of the Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, now follow the faith. Pentecostalism originated in Los Angeles, California in the early twentieth century and is now growing explosively in many parts of Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Most Ethiopian Pentecostals are members of smaller ethnolinguistic groups that are concentrated in the southern highlands. One of these is the Sidama, Ethiopia’s fifth largest group, numbering some four to five million. After a long period of lobbying and protests, the Sidama were finally granted their own semi-autonomous region in 2019. According to Ethiopia’s 1994 national census, 67 percent of the Sidama then followed Protestant Christianity, with the rest being divided among followers of traditional beliefs (15 percent), Islam (7.7 percent), Catholicism (4.6 percent), and Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (2.3 percent). The 2007 census, however, found that 84.4 percent of the people in the Sidama region were Protestants. The MapPorn map posted below indicates that over much of the Sidama Region the figure is over 90 percent.

Christianization of the Sidama people was a complicated process involving several missionary groups. It seems that the region’s different Protestant denominations have recently converged on the highly emotional (or spiritual) mode of worship associated with Pentecostalism. According to the Christian proselytizing organization called the Joshua Project:

The Sidama were evangelized in the early-mid 1900s by Kambata* Christians and later, by Norwegian and Danish Lutheran and SIM missionaries. The first Kambata missionaries were martyred by the Sidama, but the Kambata persevered and finally, a small group of Sidama Christians resulted. Now, Sidama is largely Christian including a number of Orthodox. Nearly a tenth are Muslim, non-Christian cults, and traditional religionists. The main churches, in order of size are: Mekane Yesus (Scandinavian Lutheran roots), Kale Hiwot (SIM, Baptist roots), Orthodox, Hiwot Birhan (Swedish/Finnish Pentacostal roots), Mulu Wengel (Full Gospel roots), and Catholic. Over the past 10-15 years, most Protestant churches have adopted a charismatic/pentecostal, style of worship. Youth choirs are influential in the church and keyboards are the choice of musical instruments of church worship.

The Sidama people are significant in other respects. Their land is one of the mostly densely populated parts of Ethiopia, yet they have not suffered much from famine or severe malnutrition, owing largely to their stable crop, enset (see the previous post on this crop). Fermented cow’s milk is another important part of the Sidama diet. Although fermented dairy products are often associated with Central Asia, they are also widespread in Africa, particularly Ethiopia. As one article on the subject notes, “In Ethiopia, a large proportion of milk is consumed in the fermented form through the application of traditional fermentation methods. The main fermented milk products include ergo (sour milk), ititu (milk curd), ayib (cottage cheese), neter kibe (spiced butter), kibe (traditional butter), aguat (whey) and arerra (sour defatted milk).” As most Ethiopians, like most Mongols. are lactose intolerant, fermentation is needed to make milk digestible.

The Sidama region is also noted for its fine arabica coffee, the main local cash crop. Coffee is Ethiopia’s most important export by a wide margin, and the Sidama Region produces over 40 percent of the marketed national crop. When global coffee prices drop, hardship comes to the Sidema people.

It is possible that the Sidama people were associated with the domestication of the coffee plant. The first commercial coffee plantations were probably located in Yemen, but the southern highlands of Ethiopia has the best claim to being the site of origination. One prominent but evidently apocryphal legend links coffee consumption to a ninth-century Ethiopian goatherd who noticed how frisky his animals became after eating the plant’s berries. Other stories connect coffee to the Oromo people. An Atlantic article on coffee domestication cites “a tradition of an Ethiopian tribe, the Galla, who regularly consume ‘energy balls’ made by blending animal fat and macerated coffee cherries” (“Galla” is an Amharic term for the Oromo, but is now avoided for its pejorative connotations). A Wikipedia article on the history of coffee claims that “according to one legend, ancestors of today’s Oromo people in the region of Jimma in Ethiopia were the first to recognize the energizing effect of the coffee plant.”

The main problem with these latter two accounts is the fact that the Oromo did not enter the Ethiopian highlands until the early modern period, whereas coffee was probably consumed and cultivated much earlier. The Sidama themselves had to flee from their original homeland, located further to the east, to avoid being assimilated by the Oromo in the sixteenth century (many of them probably were). Further to the west, the Jimma area, noted by Wikipedia as a possible locus of coffee domestication, was the site of the Kaffa Kingdom of the Kaffa people. This kingdom was partially overrun by the Oromo in the eighteenth century and then finally conquered by the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) Empire in the late nineteenth century. The Kaffa people, who now number a little less than a million, are also heavily dependent on coffee cultivation, and also suffer when global prices drop.

*The Kambata are another ethnic group of the Ethiopia’s southern highlands.

Religion, Ethnicity, and Conflict in Ethiopia and Eritrea

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Some journalists and scholars have tried to link conflicts in Ethiopia and Eritrea to religious divides that are either insignificant or nonexistent. The most egregious example was that of Samuel Huntington in this famous (infamous?) book, The Clash of Civilizations (1996). Huntington portrayed the war that was then being waged between Ethiopia and Eritrea as a religious/civilizational conflict, one pitting Christian Ethiopia against Muslim Eritrea. Maps based on Huntington’s work thus depict Eritrea as a Muslim country (see the figure below). Most actual assessments, however, find that Eritrea is roughly half Muslim and half Christians, although some sources claim that the country is roughly two-thirds Christian, with almost 58 percent of its people adhering to the Oriental Orthodox Tewahedo Church. But nothing is clear about Eritrean demography; figures for the country’s total population range from 3.6 to 6.7 million.

 

The current Tigray War in northern Ethiopia is based largely on ethnic politics but has little to do with religion. The Tigrayans are overwhelmingly Ethiopian Orthodox, but the Amhara, often regarded as their main opponents, mostly follow the same religion. To be sure, a sizable Muslim Amhara minority does exist, but this religious division does not play a role in the current conflict. Ethiopia’s Amharic-speaking Muslim population is concentrated in the South Wollo Zone, where almost three quarters of the population follows Islam. This Muslim Amhara area is easily seen on a fantastic map of religion in Ethiopia made by an anonymous cartographer and posted on the MapPorn section of Reddit. In the figure posted below, I have lightly edited this map to highlight the Tigray and Amhara regions.

The Oromo, forming Ethiopia’s largest ethnolinguistic group, have played a major role in the country’s recent political dramas. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, is Oromo, but the militant Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) has sided with the Tigrayan rebels against the government. Abiy seeks pan-Ethiopian civic nationalism, whereas the OLF champions Oromo self-determination and contains ethno-nationalist elements that would prefer independence. Despite such political divides, Oromo ethnic identity remains strong. Yet the Oromo are deeply split by faith. In the Oromo Region (Oromia), which is roughly 88 Oromo-speaking, 48 percent of the population follows Islam, 30 percent Ethiopian Orthodoxy, and 18 Protestant Christianity, mostly Pentecostalism (Abiy Ahmed is a devout Pentecostal). As the MapPorn religion map shows, different parts of Oromia have distinct religious complexions, with some zones heavily Muslim, others heavily Orthodox, others heavily Pentecostal, and others mixed. In the far south of the region, however, most people evidently follow Waaqeffanna, the indigenous Oromo faith. It is not coincidental that this area is commonly regarded as the original homeland of the Oromo people. As the Oromo moved north into the Ethiopian highland in the early modern period, they assimilated local populations into their ethnolinguistic group, but were themselves often religiously assimilated into the Muslim and Ethiopian Orthodox communities of the people that they were assimilating. (Pentecostalism came later.)

The Wikipedia article on Oromia claims that three percent of its people follow Waaqeffanna, the indigenous religion. Standard sources hold that only around a half a percent of Ethiopia’s total population adheres to “traditional” faiths of all varieties. I suspect that the actual figure is much higher. As the MapPorn map indicates, many of the peoples in the southern part of the highly diverse SNNPR Region (Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples) follow traditional religions. Pentecostalism Christianity, however, has been spreading rapidly here in recent years. Indigenous faiths might disappear, but revivals are always possible.

Famine in Ethiopia and the Enset Solution in the Southern Highlands

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Ethiopia is a notoriously drought and famine plagued country. Although the western highlands receive abundant precipitation, the densely populated eastern highlands are much drier. Almost all the precipitation that this area receives falls in a brief window during the summer. When summer rains are inadequate, as they frequently are, famine typically results. Ethiopia’s most densely populated areas are in the southern highlands, an ethnolinguistically diverse area that has long been both politically and economically marginalized. Despite its rapid economic growth since 2003, Ethiopia is still a very poor country, and the southern highlands is one of its poorer areas. One would therefore expect it to be particularly vulnerable to famine.

Yet despite all of these disadvantages, the southern highlands are much less prone to famine than Ethiopia’s core zone in the northern and central highlands. The answer to the seeming paradox is simple, found in the area’s staple crop. The people of the northern and central highlands subsist largely on grain, which is highly vulnerable to dry weather during the growing season. Those of the southern highlands, in contrast, subsist largely on enset, which is far more resilient. This crop, unique to Ethiopia, is a close relative of bananas and plantains. It is not cultivated for its fruit, however, but rather for its carbohydrate-rich leaf sheaths and corms.

            The advantages of enste are nicely explained in a recent article entitled “Enset in Ethiopia: A Poorly Characterized But Resilient Starch Staple.” As the authors write:

Enset has historically been ascribed as a ‘tree against hunger’ (Brandt et al., 1997), due to the domesticated plant having important attributes that support the food security of communities that cultivate it. These attributes were evident during the devastating famines of the 1980s, where enset-growing communities reported little-to-no food insecurity (Dessalegn, 1995). Most significant is the apparent ability of enset to withstand environmental stress, including periods of drought (Quinlan et al., 2015). Enset can also be harvested at any time of the year and at any stage over several years (including when it is immature), and enset-derived starch can also be stored for long periods (Birmeta, 2004). Enset also provides fibres, medicines, animal fodder and packaging material (Brandt et al., 1997). It stabilizes soils and microclimates (Abate et al., 1996) and is culturally significant (Kanshie, 2002; Negash and Niehof, 2004; Tewodros and Tesfaye, 2014). Enset has a complex management system supported by extensive ethnobotanical knowledge (Borrell et al., unpubl. res.). In a comparison of starch crops, enset has been reported to produce the highest yield per hectare in Ethiopia (Tsegaye and Struik, 2001; Kanshie, 2002) with relatively low inputs and management requirements. Enset therefore has the ability to support a larger population per unit area than regions relying on growing cereals (Yirgu, 2016). As a result of these qualities, enset farming provides a long-term, sustainable food supply capable of buffering not only seasonal and periodic food deficits, with minimum off-farm input, but also demonstrates potential that exceeds its current utilization in South-West Ethiopia.

Enset could be cultivated in many tropical areas. If it were to spread, food security could be significantly enhanced in some very poor and marginalized areas. Unfortunately, most international agricultural research has focused on a handful of crops, particularly wheat, rice, and corn (maize). If more attention could be given to highly productive minor crops such as enset, major benefits could probably be gained.

Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity is NOT Eastern Orthodox, But It Did Influence Protestantism

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Ethiopia is a predominantly Christian county, with around two-thirds of its people belonging to a Christian church. Roughly 44 percent follow Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity (the Tewahedo Church), and little over 20 percent belong to a Pentecostal denomination.

Many sources erroneously depict the Tewahedo Church as part of the Eastern Orthodox branch of Christianity, putting it in the same category as Greek Orthodoxy, Russian Orthodoxy, Serbian Orthodoxy, and so on. Even highly reputable publications such as the Pew Research Center make this error (see the figures posted below). In actuality, Eastern Orthodoxy is much more similar to, and historically intertwined with, Roman Catholicism than it is with Ethiopian Christianity. Eastern Orthodoxy did not split from Roman Catholicism until 1054 CE, and even then the divorce was more a political than a religious matter. (The main theological disagreement stemmed from a single Latin term, filioque.*) The Ethiopian Church spilt from the main Christian stem much earlier, in 451 CE. It did so as a result of theological decisions reached at the Council of Chalcedon. At issue was the relationship between the human and divine natures of Jesus. The council decreed that Jesus is one person in two natures, whereas the Ethiopian church insisted that Jesus is fully divine and fully human in one nature. Although this distinction now strikes most Christians and non-Christians alike as insignificant if not beside the point, such Christological controversies mattered a great deal in late antiquity.

The Ethiopians were not the only Christians to reject the decisions made at Chalcedon. The Armenian Apostolic Church and the Coptic Church of Egypt also maintained that Jesus has a single nature, as did several other eastern sects. Today these churches are grouped together under the category of “Oriental Orthodoxy” – not to be confused with Eastern Orthodoxy. More properly, they are described as constituting Miaphysite Christianity, a term that capture the crucial “one nature” aspect of their theology. The Ethiopian Tewahedo Church is most closely connected to the Coptic Church of Egypt, as both follow the Alexandrian Liturgical Rites (so too does the Eritrean Tewahedo Church, which split from that of Ethiopia in 1991 on geopolitical grounds.)

Arguably, the Tewahedo Church has closer ties with Protestant Christianity, especially Lutheranism, than it does with Eastern Orthodoxy. As the figure posted below shows, Martin Luther was influenced by Ethiopian Christianity, arguing that it adhered more closely to the original teachings than did Roman Catholicism. Luther evidently had close contacts with an Ethiopian cleric named Michael the Deacon, and they discovered that they agreed about many issues of religious belief and practice, if not on the nature of the Trinity.

 

Ethiopia has an unusual cultural/religious link to England, Catalonia, and the Republic of Georgia, as each polity has the same patron saint: George. Saint George is famed for killing a dragon in all four lands, but, unsurprisingly, he is given a very different physical appearance in Ethiopian religious art than in that of Western Europe.

*As is explained in the Wikipedia article on the term, “In the late 6th century, some Latin Churches  added the words “and from the Son” (Filioque) to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit, in what many Eastern Orthodox Christians have at a later stage argued is a violation of Canon VII.”

The Ethnic Roots of the War in Ethiopia and the Paradox of Tigrayan Ethnic Identity

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The horrific and under-reported Tigray War in Ethiopia hinges largely on tensions between ethnolinguistic identity and national solidarity. Under both the Ethiopian monarchy during the Haile Selassie era (1930-1974) and the communist Derg regime (1974-1991), the government foregrounded the minority (30%) Amhara ethnic group and its Amharic language, pushing a harsh “Amharaization” program in many areas. Partly as a result, ethnic militias proliferated and eventually prevailed, toppling the brutal Derg government in 1991. Leading the fight was the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which represented the minority Tigrayan people, constituting only around six percent of Ethiopia’s population. The TPLF had allied with other insurgent groups in an umbrella group called the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front (EPLF). After coming to power in 1991, this formerly Marxist-Leninist organization revised its political stance, dropping communism in favor of center-left ethnic federalism. Ethiopia’s old provinces were soon wiped off the map as the country was re-divided into semi-autonomous regions defined primarily on ethnolinguistic grounds.

Ethiopia’s new government performed well. By the early 2000s the country was booming, posting the world’s third highest gains in per capita GDP between 2000 and 2018. But ethnic problems continued to plague Ethiopia. Smaller ethnolinguistic groups, concentrated in the southwest, were unsettled by being amalgamated with other groups in composite regions. This was a particular problem in the linguistically fractured region called Southern Nations, Nationalities, and Peoples. Owing to such ethnic pressure, the Ethiopian government eventually created several new autonomous regions. Elsewhere, ethnic groups clashed over regional boundaries, and anger was provoked when the government tried to shift internal borders. Critics argued that Ethiopia was undermining itself by insistently politicizing ethnicity.

After coming to power 2018, prime minister Abiy Ahmed sought to reorient Ethiopia away from ethnic federalism and toward civic nationalism. In 2019 he disbanded the ruling multi-ethnic coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Front (EPLF), replacing it with the non-ethnic Prosperity Party, which currently holds 454 out of 547 parliamentary seats. The Tigrayans were not pleased by this maneuver. They were already angered by their loss of prominent positions within the government and they now feared that they would eventually lose their regional political autonomy. As a result, they rebelled against the government in 2020, precipitating the current war.

The Tigrayan rebellion thus shows the continuing power of ethnic identity in multiethnic Ethiopia, as well as the relatively weakness of national bonds in many parts of the country. But the current conflict also ironically shows the limits of ethnolinguistic identity and the potential power of national bonding to unravel ethnic ties. The Tigrinya linguistic community that has historically underpinned Tigrayan ethnicity has long been spilt on geopolitical grounds, divided between Ethiopia and Eritrea ever since Italy successfully colonized the latter region in the late 1800s. Although Tigrinya speakers form a relatively small portion of Ethiopia’s population, they constitute roughly half of that of Eritrea, arguably forming the country’s dominant ethnic group. Most Tigrinya speakers in both countries also follow the same “Oriental” Orthodox Christian religion, although it was split into Ethiopian and Eritrean branches in 1991. Despite such cross-border ethnic ties, in the current conflict Eritrea is closely allied with the Ethiopian government against Ethiopia’s Tigrinya-speaking population. Eritrea has militarily occupied a small slice of Ethiopia’s Tigray Region and has reportedly attacked local people with brutality. No evidence of any pan-Tigrinya-speaking ethnic solidarity is readily available. In this case, it would seem that national identity has easily trumped language-based ethnic identity.

It is perilous to make such a claim, however, precisely because little information is available. Eritrea is one of the world’s most repressive and militarily dominated countries, sometimes put in the same category as North Korea. Its government has worked hard to generate a solid sense of Eritrean national identity and has perhaps succeeded. Its quest to do so was facilitated by its long war of independence against Ethiopia (1961-1991), followed by periodic border conflicts with the same country. But it must also be noted that many Eritreans chafe under their brutal government, prompting vast numbers to flee. As of 2016, an estimated 321,000 Eritrean refugees were living in Europe, with another half million in Ethiopia and Sudan, out of a total national population of roughly six million. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to come to any solid conclusions about ethnic and national identity in Eritrea.

The Growing Commonwealth of Nations

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Unlike the Commonwealth Realms, the Commonwealth of Nations (formerly the British Commonwealth) is expanding, now counting 56 members. Almost all are former British colonies, and most former British colonies belong to the organization. If, as is expected, most Caribbean Commonwealth Realms drop the monarchy and become republics, they will almost certainly remain part of this international organization, mow headed by King Charles III.

The Commonwealth of Nations is not a particularly strong or effective organization, but it does play an important role in cultural, scientific, and intellectual exchange. Member states evidently value their membership. The only countries that have withdrawn are Ireland and Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe submitted an application to rejoin in 2018. Originally, only countries that had been directly under British authority, or were constitutionally linked to a country that had been, were eligible to join. In 1995, however, the former Portuguese colony of Mozambique was admitted. A more controversial admission was Rwanda, a former German-then-Belgian colony, which gained membership in 2009. In 2022, two additional former French colonies in Africa, Togo and Gabon, joined the organization.

The admission of Rwanda in 2009 was highly controversial, but not because the country lacked a historical connection with the British Empire. The issue here was Rwanda’s human-rights record. As was noted at the time in the “Report and Recommendations of the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative”:

Among the key Harare Principles [of the Commonwealth] are commitments to the protection of human rights and to democracy. The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative (CHRI) believes that overwhelming evidence, conveniently ignored by leading Commonwealth states, demonstrates that the government of Rwanda is not sufficiently committed to these values.

But it must also be recognized that most African members in the Commonwealth do not have well-consolidated democracies and often fail to protect human rights. Also significant is the fact that Rwanda has made significant strides in both human and economic development. The CHRI acknowledged this fact (“Rwanda has what appears to be a well-deserved reputation for governmental efficiency and for being less corrupt than a number of other countries”), but proceeded to dismiss it as largely disingenuous (“The Rwandan government has excellent public relations machinery. Its leaders are astute, and effectively play upon the conscience of the world…”) But whatever one makes of this controversy, Rwanda’s position in the Commonwealth is now secure. The Commonwealth Chair-In-Office, one of the organization’s key positions, is currently Paul Kagame, president of Rwanda since 2000.

The movement of French-speaking African countries into this English-using organization is based on several factors. One is a desire to forge closer connections with their Anglophone neighbors. Another is a wish for their people to gain more facility in the English language. Rwanda pioneered this path, switching most of its schools from instruction in French to instruction in English in 2007. English is widely seen as bringing more international advantages than French, both across the world and in Africa. Finally, many countries in western and central Africa are keen to move out of the French geopolitical orbit. The CFA Franc, a currency* backed by France and used by most former French colonies in Africa, is widely seen as benefitting the metropolitan core at the expense of local economies, which are not able to adjust the valuation of their currencies to match economic conditions. French military action in the Sahel, the zone just south of the Sahara, is also unpopular. It will be interesting to see if other Francophone African countries join the Commonwealth and move in an Anglophone direction.

* Actually it is two closely linked currencies, the West African CFA Franc and the Central African CFA Franc

Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recent Gains and Losses

Article-Grid, Atlas of Human Development, Human Development, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Several recent GeoCurrents posts have noted substantial improvements in human development over the past several decades, as measured by the human development index (HDI). As the first map posted here shows, some of the world’s least developed countries have experienced the largest gains. Only a few countries saw HDI values decline from 2010 to 2020 (Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela, Jordan, and Timor Leste).

 

 

Although sub-Saharan Africa registered impressive improvements, it still has the world’s lowest HDI figures, and by a substantial margin. A world map showing only countries in the World Bank’s “low human development” tier, posted here, includes just three countries outside of the region (Haiti, Yemen, and Afghanistan). Within sub-Saharan Africa, however, much of the west and most of the south are excluded.

The World Bank’s HDI tiers might not be the best way to the categorize human development standings. Are we really expected to believe that Papua New Guinea has a “medium” level of human development? (Admittedly, it just barely makes this category.) The thresholds for the categories seem might be too low to accurately represent public conceptualization of this issue. The index might also underestimate income levels, putting too much emphasis on education and health. Finally, the numbers used to generate the index are not necessarily always accurate – particularly in the poorer parts of the world.

One relatively easily measured metric clearly shows that sub-Saharan Africa, or at least its central-interior portion, is by far the least developed part of the world: electricity access. The numbers here are shocking. Whereas countries as poor as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have reached full electrification, Chad and Burundi still have electrification rates below 12 percent. In several areas, the situation has deteriorated since 2020. As a recent Brookings report notes:

In fact, in developing countries in Africa, the number of people without electricity increased in 2020 (after declining over the past six years) and basic electricity services are now unaffordable. Moreover, the cost of electricity services in sub-Saharan Africa remains among the highest in the world—and those who can afford electricity often face unreliable service. As poverty levels increase, countries will be forced to scale back to basic electricity access because citizens will not be able to afford formal electricity bundles.

 

Human Development in Sub-Saharan Africa: Recent Gains and Losses

Article-Grid, Atlas of Human Development, Human Development, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Several recent GeoCurrents posts have noted substantial improvements in human development over the past several decades, as measured by the human development index (HDI). As the first map posted here shows, some of the world’s least developed countries have experienced the largest gains. Only a few countries saw HDI values decline from 2010 to 2020 (Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Venezuela, Jordan, and Timor Leste).

 

 

Although sub-Saharan Africa registered impressive improvements, it still has the world’s lowest HDI figures, and by a substantial margin. A world map showing only countries in the World Bank’s “low human development” tier, posted here, includes just three countries outside of the region (Haiti, Yemen, and Afghanistan). Within sub-Saharan Africa, however, much of the west and most of the south are excluded.

The World Bank’s HDI tiers might not be the best way to the categorize human development standings. Are we really expected to believe that Papua New Guinea has a “medium” level of human development? (Admittedly, it just barely makes this category.) The thresholds for the categories seem be too low to accurately represent public conceptualization of this issue. The index might also underestimate income levels, putting too much emphasis on education and health. Finally, the numbers used to generate the index are not necessarily accurate – particularly in the poorer parts of the world.

One relatively easily measured metric clearly shows that sub-Saharan Africa, or at least its central-interior portion, is by far the least developed part of the world: electricity access. The numbers here are shocking. Whereas countries as poor as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have achieved full electrification, Chad and Burundi still had electrification rates below 12 percent in 2016. In several areas, the situation has deteriorated since 2020. As a recent Brookings report notes:

In fact, in developing countries in Africa, the number of people without electricity increased in 2020 (after declining over the past six years) and basic electricity services are now unaffordable. Moreover, the cost of electricity services in sub-Saharan Africa remains among the highest in the world—and those who can afford electricity often face unreliable service. As poverty levels increase, countries will be forced to scale back to basic electricity access because citizens will not be able to afford formal electricity bundles.

Total Fertility Rates by Country, 1950 and 2015

Article-Grid, Population Geography, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

(Note to readers: The distribution of free customizable base-maps will recommence later this week)

TFR 2010-2015 World MapI was recently asked to make a world map of the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) using World Bank data for the period 2010-2015. The same data sheet includes TFR figures for each five-year period starting in 1950. The contrast between fertility rates in 1950 and 2015 is so striking that I could not resist the temptation to make contrasting maps.

 

 

 

TFR 1950-1955 World MapAs can be seen, the overall drop in the human fertility rate has been pronounced. In countries ranging from China, to Iran, to Libya, to Brazil it has been nothing short of extraordinary.

TFR 1950-2015 World MapsTropical Africa, and especially the western portion of the region (“Middle Africa,” according to the World Bank), forms the major exception to this pattern. Here, several counties had higher TFR figures in 2010-2015 than they did in 1950-1955.   In DR Congo, for example, the respective numbers are 6.15 Gabon Fertility Graphand 5.98. Gabon also ended up in a higher category in the 2010-2015 map than on the 1950-1955 map, although the actual difference between its TFR in these two periods is not statistically significant: 4.00 and 3.99. As the graph shows, Gabon’s TFR did not stay the same during this period, but rather rose gradually and then began to decline gradually. Similar graphs can be found for other countries in “Middle Africa.”

It is quite significant that extremely high fertility figures are now mostly confined to tropical Africa, with only a few exceptions (such as Afghanistan and East Timor). It also seem to me that this phenomenon has been under-reported. Certainly most of my own students come into class with the impression that high fertility rates characterize most of the word’s less-developed countries.

 

Free Customizable Maps of Africa for Download

Article-Grid, Cartography, Geographical Education, Site News, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

Over the past few years, I have created a number of customizable base maps that I subsequently used to make the original GeoCurrents thematic maps that have been posted on this site (which are themselves now searchable by country and by topic). These customizable base maps were initially created by hand in Keynote, the Apple presentation program that competes with PowerPoint. Over the next several weeks, I will be fine-tuning all of these maps and then releasing them for downloading on this site in both Keynote and PowerPoint formats. Please free to use these customizable maps as you like. All that I would ask is that you retain the source note on the maps: GeoCurrents Customizable Base Map.

The customizable base maps were made by outlining the shapes of geopolitical units on basic maps held in the public domain. Once the outlines have been made, the resulting country- or province-shapes can be easily manipulated through a few simple clicks, allowing one to instantly change country color, boundary color and thickness, and so on. Keynote’s “shape” feature allows one to easily draw on the maps to show additional features. Shapes can also be dragged out of place and then placed back where they belong (to place shapes precisely, make sure that the “guidelines” in Keynote are turned off). Similar functionalities are available in the PowerPoint format, although I never personally use PowerPoint and hence I am a bit uncertain about what it actually allows. (But see these basic instructions How can these maps be manipulated in PowerPoint.)

Africa Per Capita GDP mapThese maps can be profitably used in the classroom. If students are provided with a customizable map of a particular part of the world along with a data list pertaining to the same place, they can make their own thematic map. One example would be a map of African countries along with a list of African countries by per capita GDP. This exercise will help students learn the locations and shapes of the units in question (the countries of Africa in this case), and will allow them to grasp the patterns that they are mapping much more effectively than by merely looking at a map that someone else has made. Such a process is also useful for teaching students about selecting appropriate breaks in the data for effective map visualization, the use of different color schemes in mapping, and so on. One can also scatter the country shapes and then ask students to reassemble the map as a sort of game. Unfortunately, the shapes will not “click” into place, but the process still works well enough.

Africa Customizable Map 1I am beginning this project by releasing a single map, that of the countries of Africa. Several different versions of this map are available in the PowerPoint and Keynote files provided below this text. The first is a simple outline map of the conventional countries of the region (although some insular African countries are excluded: Cape Verde, Seychelles, and Mauritius, as well as the French department of Reunion). Boxes with the Africa Customizable Map 2word “text” next to them can be used to construct a map key. The second is the same map but with the addition of country names. As the maps are all customizable, these names can be easily removed to (re)create the initial map. The third map includes two de facto changes to the basic political map that have not Africa Customizable Map 3been recognized by the international community: the effective independence of Somaliland, and the extension of Morocco over most of Western Sahara, along with the virtual independence of the so-called Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic in the remaining territory. The essentially collapsed states of Libya and (the rest of) Somalia still appear on this map as regular countries, but that could easily be changed by the user (such as by turning them to a darker shade of grey). The final map includes the base map that was used to create the customizable map, which is a physical map of Africa. This version of the map can be used in a variety of ways. If one wants to include rivers or certain other physical features on one’s own map, just click on the relevant countries, turn their “opacity” Africa Customizable map 4settings to zero, trace in the feature in question, and then click on the countries again and reset the opacity to 100 percent.

Please note that these maps have limited resolution. Small features, such as many of the islands on the Africa map, were by necessity reproduced as mere ovals or triangles. Boundary lines between countries, moreover, have not been perfectly traced out: as a result, boundary thickness is somewhat uneven. I personally find the end result aesthetically pleasing, as it gives these maps a somewhat soft appearance. Other users, however, may disagree. Users could, however, manually adjust the boundary lines to make them fit more precisely. I have done a lot of that work myself, but eventually Africa Customizable Map 5I give up and decide that the map in question is good enough.

Also note that the physical base map was made before South Sudan gained independence. As a result, South Sudan appears as a layer placed over pre-2011 Sudan in my customizable maps. On the map (with rivers added) posted here, I somehow neglected to restore South Sudan. Other customizable maps that I will post later will not have such problems.

As this might be confusing, I would be happy to answer any questions in the discussion forum.

Many more customizable maps will be released over the next few weeks. Additional maps can be found here: http://www.geocurrents.info/customizable-base-maps

 

For Keynote Download, click here: Customizable Africa Maps

For PowerPoint Download, click here: Customizable Africa Maps

Third Africa-India Forum Summit: Meeting of the Lions

Article-Grid, Geopolitics, South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

India-Africa Summit LogoAlthough I will continue writing on Scolbert08’s map of world religion next week, I can’t resist taking a brief detour to consider the Third Africa-India Forum Summit, which is coming to an end today in New Delhi. Regarded as India’s largest diplomatic endeavor in its history, the summit was attended by 40 leaders of African states. I am particularly struck by its logo, which entails some interesting cartographic imagery. (Several of the islands on the map, however, are greatly exaggerated in size, and a few do not actually exist.) As noted in the Wikipedia:

The logo depicts a Lion with one half of an African lion and another half of an Indian lion. The official website mentioned about the logo: “Proud, Courageous, Bold and on the Prowl, ready to take on the future and seize every opportunity”. In the background African map overlapping merges with Indian map in a reference to ancient Gondwanaland when Indian subcontinent used to be part of today’s Africa’s continental landmass millions of years ago. The India Gate, one of the iconic land mark of Delhi, the host city will be illuminated with 3D laser projection showing India-Africa shared heritage and India’s contribution in African peace and prosperity, through out the summit week.

Lion Range MapAlthough the Indian (or Asiatic) lion is confined to one wildlife refuge in the state of Gujarat and numbers only around 500 individuals, the animal is symbolically important across South Asia. The Emblem of India, for example, depicts lions. The Asiatic lion has also made an impressive comeback, as it was on the verge of extinction a few decades ago. In early Emblem of Indiahistorical times, its rage extended all the way to the Balkan Peninsula.

Some Indian leaders hope that the summit will encourage African leaders to support India’s bit for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council. Most of the discussions, however, seem to have focused on India’s potential role in boosting economic development in Africa. As noted in The Hindu:

During his address, PM Modi outlined India’s vision and desire to assist Africa with infrastructure building from “Cairo to Cape Town, Marrakesh to Mombassa”. He announced credit at concessional rates of $10 billion over 5 years, in addition to about $7.4 billion that India has already pledged since 2008. “We will also offer a grant assistance of 600 million U.S. dollars. This will include an India-Africa Development Fund of 100 million U.S. dollars and an India-Africa Health Fund of 10 million U.S. dollars,” the PM said, adding that 50,000 scholarships will be given to African students, whom he called the “new links” between India and the African continent.

The Hindu article also notes that the leaders of India’s oppositional Congress Party declined to participate, based partly on issues of historical symbolism:

Interestingly, according to reports the Congress leadership has decided to boycott the African summit, to protest its exclusion from all consultations and the lack of reference to Jawaharlal Nehru, the “architect of Africa-India ties”. While denying any official boycott, Congress Leader Anand Sharma told The Hindu that the India-Africa summit’s focus on bringing all leaders together was “condescending”, and said he was “disappointed” that the NDA government had chosen to ignore the contribution of Nehru, adding that even at the anniversary of the Afro-Asian Bandung conference, EAM Sushma Swaraj had made no reference to him.

 

 

GeoCurrents Editorial: Recognition for Iraqi Kurdistan and Somaliland

Article-Grid, Borders, Editorial, Geopolitics, Insurgencies, Myth of the Nation-State, Nationalism, Southwest Asia and North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa / By

(Note: GeoCurrents is a non-partisan blog devoted to providing geographical information, particularly in reference to current global events. On rare occasions, however, opinion pieces are posted on the site. This is one of those occasions. As I regard this issue as extremely important, this post will remain at the top of the GeoCurrents page for at least the next week.)

Now that Joe Biden is a possible candidate for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attention is again falling on a 2006 editorial in which he and Leslie Gelb advocated dividing Iraq into three ethnically based regions. At the time of its publication, the Biden-Gelb essay was widely misinterpreted as a call for dismantling Iraq altogether and replacing it with independent Sunni Arab, Shia Arab, and Kurdish states. But Biden, Gelb and their defenders were quick to insist that their intention was actually that of saving Iraq by restructuring it as a federation, giving substantial autonomy but not outright independence to these three regions.

 

As this controversy made clear, any proposal for the actual dismemberment of Iraq was essentially unthinkable at the time for the U.S. foreign-policy establishment. The existing geopolitical order had to be maintained, such thinking had it, in order to preserve stability. If the Kurds of Iraq were to acquire their own country, what would prevent countless other disgruntled ethnic groups from demanding the same? If the international community were to consent to Kurdish desires and recognize their independence, anarchy could spread across the region and eventually, perhaps, the entire world. As a result, the mere mention of partition was generally dismissed out if hand.

Kurdistan Independence InevitableMore recently, this inflexible consensus seems to be yielding, although in an understated manner, with little discussion of underlying principles. Major media sources are now wondering whether the independence of Iraqi Kurdistan is not inevitable, regardless of the warnings of international-relations experts. Some writers have taken a step further, advocating the immediate recognition of Kurdish sovereignty in northern Iraq. Consider for example, Andrew Stuttaford’s offhand remark in a recent National Review essay on the ISIS threat: “The Kurds (independence and enhanced military support for them already, please) are the only benign, and reasonably effective, fighting forces in the region, but they are unlikely to want to stray too far from Kurdish territory.”

But despite such rumblings, most foreign-policy analysts still shudder at the thought of breaking up Iraq. Certainly the current U.S. administration remains committed to the country’s unity. As the indispensable Kurdish news agency Rudaw reported on August 1, 2015: “The White House has reconfirmed its position on maintaining a unified Iraq in a firm rebuttal to a 100,000-strong petition asking the United States to support Kurdish independence Tuesday.”

http://rudaw.net/english/world/01082015

geopolitical anomalies map 10Fusing Iraq back together would require considerable force and would probably result in massive bloodshed, as well as the suspension of the dream of democratic governance. Can we reasonably imagine that the Peshmerga would be willingly folded into the Iraqi military, as would be demanded if a truly unified state were to reemerge? Does anyone who understands the actual situation think that the Iraqi Kurds would voluntarily submit to Baghdad and allow the dismantling of the essentially sovereign state that they have struggled so hard to create? By the same token, is it reasonable to assume that the Sunni Arabs of the northwest would acquiesce to a united, democratic Iraq in which the Shia majority holds electoral sway? The events of the past 12 years certainly indicate otherwise. I, for one, would be willing to bet a considerable amount of money, and at unfavorable odds, that Iraqi unification will not occur within the next 10 years — or any other time period that one might specify.

The Bosnia & Herzegovina Option

Bosnia and Herzegovina MapThe best hope for rebuilding some kind of state within Iraqi’s recognized boundaries would be something on the order of the Biden-Gelb plan, allowing the three main regions to enjoy de facto but not de jure sovereignty, sharing little more than membership in international organizations. The result would be a largely fictional country, similar to Bosnia and Herzegovina, in which the main groups maintain largely peaceful relations mostly by limiting their interactions. But any such arrangement would be viewed by most Iraqi Kurds as a temporary expedient, a mere a way-station on the route to actual independence.

Bosnia and Herzegovina, moreover, does not make a good exemplar, as it is more a sliced-up protectorate than a real country. As GeoCurrents reader Vatroslav Herceg writes, “In Bosnia and Herzegovina you have coffee bars that are for Croats, coffee bars that are for Bosnians, and coffee bars that are for Serbs in the same city.” Given this situation, Herceg foresees the return of political violence:

I am not a nationalist, but if Bosnia and Herzegovina is left like this there will be another war in the Balkans. I don’t want another war, my family already suffered in the 1990s war. Just look at the artificial flag* of Bosnia and Herzegovina, [which] shows that this entity is a EU and USA protectorate.

 

Put differently, the diplomatic charade embodied in the creation of an artificial federation that forces mutually hostile groups into the same “country” might buy time, but it will not solve the underlying issues. This is not to argue, it is essential to note, that there was anything historically inevitable about the mutual antipathy found among Croats, Serbs, and Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina (or, for that matter, among Iraq’s Sunnis Arabs, Shia Arabs, and Kurds.) Given different historical circumstances, a sense of Yugoslav identity might have prevailed, leading to the perpetuation of Yugoslavia. But that did not happen, and the events of the past quarter-century cannot be wished away. Yugoslavia is gone for good, and Bosnia and Herzegovina appears to be headed in the same direction. A curiously vegetative state, Bosnia and Herzegovina is kept alive only by the artificial life-support system of the international community. Should we wish the same for Iraq?

The Delusion of Reunification

Iraq and Syria Political Situation MapThe insistence on maintaining the superficially existing geopolitical framework flows from an exhausted doctrine that has itself become a major obstacle to peace. Recent events have made a mockery of the idea that the partition of Iraq could be dangerously destabilizing, as complete destabilization—and far worse—has already occurred. The terror state of ISIS that has spread its tentacles over a vast swath of Syria and Iraq draws much of its strength from the international community’s insistence that these imperially imposed entities remain inviolate regardless of the desires of their residents or the realities on the ground. The break-away state of Iraqi Kurdistan, on the other hand, is a refuge of stability and effective governance, not the font of insecurity imagined by those who sanctify preexisting borders. The idea that rewarding such success with diplomatic recognition would somehow prove disruptive to some imaginary Iraqi peace process is laughable.

Somalia Political Situation MapNor is Iraq the only country in the larger region that has collapsed beyond the point of reconstitution. Yemen and Libya might remerge as coherent states, as their fall was recent, but I would not count on it. Syrian reunification is even more of a long shot, as its national unity is too weak and its mutual antipathies too entrenched. And what of Somalia? Like Iraq, Somalia ceased functioning as real country nearly a quarter-century ago. Since then, its geopolitical contours have remained in flux, with territories passing among its weak provisional government, Islamist forces, and autonomous warlords. But Somalia also contains, like Iraq, one relatively well-run, stable government that acts as a sovereign power despite its lack of international recognition: Somaliland. The reunification of Somalia, difficult as that is to imagine, would probably require the crushing of Somaliland, as Hargeisa (Somaliland’s capital) would be no more willing to submit to Mogadishu than Erbil (Hewler, in Kurdish) would be willing to give in to Baghdad. Attempting to revive the moribund states of Iraq and Somalia would, in all likelihood, prove far more disruptive than acknowledging the functioning states of Iraqi Kurdistan and Somaliland.

World Political Map ProblemsIn the end, I cannot avoid the conclusion that the dream of reunifying Iraq and Somalia is deadly delusion, a mirage generated by viewing global political geography not as it actually is, but rather as the diplomatic establishment thinks it should be. Such a blinkered worldview is unfortunately ubiquitous, encoded in our basic world-political maps. In the United States, these ideologically laden documents not only show a country that collapsed decades ago (Somalia), but even depict a country that has never existed, other than in the imaginations of diplomats and insurgents (Western Sahara). How many years—how many decades—have to pass before we can acknowledge reality and drop our geopolitical illusions? Abandoning pretense and facing the truth is a necessary precondition for achieving peace and stability.

The Matter of Precedent

Those who fear the recognition of Somaliland and Iraqi Kurdistan usually invoke precedent. If a precedent is set by the division of officially recognized countries, they ask, where will the process end? As dozens of countries are plagued by secession movements, they dread the opening of a veritable Pandora’s box of anarchy and rebellion.

The precedent argument, however, fails from the outset. It greatly exaggerates the power of the international order while ignoring key events of the past thirty years. In that period, newly independent countries have sprouted over much of the world, while a number of states dissolved completely when their constituent divisions all gained independence. The USSR, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia no longer exist; Eritrea, East Timor, Kosovo, and South Sudan have successfully detached themselves from the countries to which they formerly belonged. Other new states could easily emerge in the near future; as has been made clear, both Scotland and Quebec will be allowed to gain sovereignty if a majority of their voters so decide. If these occurrences somehow inspired militant secession movements, resulting in an uptick of violence and anarchy across the globe, it somehow escaped notice.

Yet as it so happens, a precedent has been established: the partition of countries is perfectly acceptable provided that it occurs in a certain manner. The general conditions are that the government of the country slated for losing a particular territory must agree to it, while the people of the seceding region must voice their support, preferably through the ballot box.** But as South Sudan clearly shows, violent resistance to the existing geopolitical framework can be the precipitating process. South Sudan gained independence largely though warfare, grinding down resistance in both Khartoum and the international community through decades of struggle. Gaining sovereignty in such a manner may have set a bad precedent, but set it was, with no way of being erased. That precedent, moreover, was largely created by the same foreign-policy establishment of the United States that vigorously opposes the independence of Somaliland and Iraqi Kurdistan. As The New York Times reported in 2014, “South Sudan is in many ways an American creation, carved out of war-torn Sudan in a referendum largely orchestrated by the United States, its fragile institutions nurtured with billions of dollars in American aid.”

 

But South Sudan makes a fraught example, as its independence has hardly been successful. Indeed, the Fund for Peace currently ranks South Sudan as the world’s most “fragile state,” considerably more fragile than even Syria. Although this particular claim is difficult to take seriously, given that Syria has been shattered beyond recognition, it does indicate the severity of South Sudan’s challenges. One might therefore conclude that independence was a major mistake, and perhaps even extrapolate this insight to the rest of the world, reckoning that it is best to maintain the world political map exactly as it is, discounting any possible benefits that might result from the partition of failed states.

Many solid reasons, however, can be found for dismissing any conclusions drawn from the debacle of South Sudan. I retain some hope that the “world’s youngest country” can repair its cleavages and begin to heal and develop. I am also relieved that its unfortunate people are no longer under the thumb of the Khartoum government, unlike those of Darfur and South Kordofan (the Nuba Hills), who still suffer attacks of almost genocidal intensity. But regardless of its dire predicament, South Sudan makes a poor comparison with either Somaliland or Iraqi Kurdistan. The people of South Sudan made their case for independence on the basis of the oppression that they had long endured along with their tenacious military resistance. They had no experience, however, in running an effective government, holding elections, establishing an independent judiciary, and so on, all of which have been accomplished with some success by both Somaliland and Iraqi Kurdistan. Both of these entities have successfully built their own states over the past several decades, doing so in a chaotic regional environment and with little help from international developmental agencies. In the case of Somaliland, Peter J. Schraeder, persuasively argued years ago that such accomplishments merited the recognition of sovereignty. In the intervening years, little has changed.

Problems Behind, Problems Ahead

1995 Divided Iraqi Kurdistan MapIn constructing their own unrecognized state, the people of Iraqi Kurdistan have had to overcome deep divisions within their own society. In the mid-1990s, the region’s two main political groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), mostly representing the Kurmanji-speaking north, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), mostly representing the Sorani-speaking south, fought a brief war. But although regional tensions in Iraqi Kurdistan persist, civil strife is no longer a threat. On both sides of the linguistic/political divide, most people have concluded that Kurdish identity and secular governance trump more parochial considerations. In the intervening years, the Kurdish Regional Government has managed to construct a reasonably united, secure, and democratic order. Much the same, moreover, can be said of the government of Somaliland. Such achievements deserve acknowledgment, ideally by the recognition of full independence.

The recognition Somaliland and Iraqi Kurdistan would, of course, generate its own diplomatic complications. The African Union would take quick offense at any country offering formal ties with Somaliland, while Turkey would be furious at any state proposing to do the same with Iraqi Kurdistan. If such a newly independent country were to include any of the Kurdish territories of northern Syria (Rojava), Turkey might even threaten war. But no major foreign-policy initiatives are ever risk free, and all necessarily generate irritation and anger among some interested parties. Considering the horrific and seemingly interminable conflict that has chewed up Iraq, Syria, and much of the Horn of Africa—generating a refugee crisis of global scope—a new approach is required, even if it carries risks of its own. I would suggest that such a new policy begin by abandoning the fantasy map of the foreign-policy establishment and instead recognize the global geopolitical framework as it actually is. Unlike the internationally recognized but non-functional country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Somaliland and Iraqi Kurdistan are genuine states, taking orders from no other power and running their own affairs as they see fit — and doing so with more capability and liberality than most of their neighbors. As such, they deserve immediate recognition.

Flag of Bosnia*As noted in the Wikipedia article on the flag: “The three points of the triangle are understood to stand for the three constituent peoples of Bosnia and Herzegovina: Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs.[2] It is also seen to represent the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is shaped like a triangle. The stars, representing Europe, are meant to be infinite in number and thus they continue from top to bottom. The flag features colors often associated with neutrality and peace – white, blue, and yellow. The colors yellow and blue are also seen to be taken from the flag of Europe; the color blue was originally based on the flag of the United Nations. The present scheme is being used by both the Council of Europe which owns the flag and the European Union which adopted the Council of Europe’s flag in 1985.”

** Exceptions exist, as the first condition was not met in the case of Kosovo. As a result, many countries do not recognize the Kosovo’s independence.