They say Africa is splitting along the Great East African Rift valley. The ongoing volcanic activities in the Afar region of Ethiopia is said to be but a precursor of more to come, and this may perhaps create the sea for which Ethiopia has recently been bothering all the neighbouring coastal countries. 

Ethiopia’s continuing talk of access to a sea appears to have been putting a Hobbesian fear in all the countries around it, not that it will be able to achieve, but that it will cause more damage to the region, economically, politically, and even socially, without achieving any of the illusive goals of the current Ethiopian administration. But worse will be how far it makes the people of the region drift from each other apart and hate each other for no other reason other than the grandiose madness of a leader, who knows no peace and appears to have no intention of creating peace despite being a Nobel Laureate.

Perhaps this is God’s design to keep the imperial pretenders of current day Ethiopia from the rest of the Horn of Africa States people, putting in between actual Abyssinia and hence Ethiopia and the Somali country including the part in Ethiopia, a major sea barrier. Who knows? God’s works manifest themselves in many ways! 

The process of the Somali plate drifting away from the Nubian plate and the Arabian plate has been going for many millions of years and the completion may also probably take many millions more, should the world still continue to exist or maybe shorter, in our current lifetime. 

A great part of the Afar region of Ethiopia, known as the Danakil Depression, is already below sea level and this may be submerged by floods from the Red sea to create a sea barrier between Somalia and Ethiopia, two countries that could have been friends but where such friendship is always made impossible by the desire of Ethiopia to take over Somali lands. 

Abyssinia has already taken a large portion of the Somali lands in the Horn of Africa, with the connivance of European colonial powers towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the small king of Shoa, Menelik II, rose to become an emperor of Abyssinia through forceful acquisition of many nations into his empire. This was further consolidated through a change of name to Ethiopia in 1932 by the then Emperor Haile Selassie, Ex- Ras Tafari, son of Ras Makonnen, a Chief Advisor to Emperor Menelik II. With a sea barrier separating the two countries, Abyssinia and Somalia may then become friends after all! 

However, one thing most pundits ignore, is the fact that there are people who live in the region affected by the volcanic activity today – the Afar people. One does not see many discussing the difficulties these people face, including their own government, which is busy threatening not only its own other nationalities (the Amhara, the Tigrayans, the Benishangul, the Somalis, and others), but also its neighbours.

The Afar population is some three million souls, and they would need to move on to other parts of Ethiopia. The Afar State is one of the driest and hottest regions of Ethiopia and continues to affect the lives of many of the population of the region, and the current flare up of the volcanic activity would only cause more problems and difficulties for the population.

It is where solidarity among the people of the Horn of Africa States is important and needed beyond the unnecessary antagonistic competition of the governments of the region, where each one is working hard to undermine the other. It is, indeed, one area they could all work together to ease the pains of the Afar people, who face a great disaster, even well-equipped countries would find difficulties managing them. The current fires in the Unites States is but an example where natural disasters can devastate large territories where people lived in peace.

It is high time, perhaps, the governments of the Horn of Africa States region dealt with this Hobbesian fear of each other and worked together when natural disasters strike in any part of the region. This would have brought people of the region closer together in the place of worrying that each country is out to get the other, as is going on today between Ethiopia and Somalia. There is a need for a new social contract in the region, just as the United Nations Organization was founded, to address fear of another great war.

A Horn of Africa States platform organized as a regional economic block would have addressed many of the contention issues including sovereignty, integrity and unity of each country, without one country taking over or threatening to take over the territory of another. A regional platform would have allowed economic cooperation, development of rail and road connections, airports and seaports to attend the needs of the region both in terms of internal trade and external trade and in investments and attracting more capital to the region from other parts of the world.

This would have also allowed the exploitation of the resources of the region in terms of both sub-soil and above soil wealth. The location of the region alone would have attracted many millions of mobile populations to add on to the already bulging population of the region of some 170 million people – a sizeable market and a source of youthful labor force.

A concerted effort from the countries and nations of the region to extend help to the Afar people, in their hour of need today, would be a great opener for such closer relations among the countries of the region. By Dr. Suleiman Walhad, Eurasia