Regional Peace And Security In The Greater Horn Of African Region:the Case Analysis Of IGAD Since The End Of The Cold War Period

The Greater Horn of African region is the most unstable and conflict-ravaged area globally.Notably,the post-Cold War period showed both traditional and newly emerging security threats in the region.Due to the limited capacity of the states and the shared nature of security threats,the region requires collective responses through regionally established mechanisms.Though there are increasing numbers of studies in the region,the dynamics of the security community are not adequately addressed.Accordingly,this research mainly focuses on regional peace and security cooperation with the perspective of institutionalism.Particularly,the study scrutinized the major barriers of the security community represented by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development(IGAD)in the Greater Horn of the African region.Using the mainstream International relations theories,mainly an amalgamated approach of the Liberal school of thought and Social Constructivism,it analyzed the case study to show the regional security arrangement in the post-Cold War period.The major finding of this study is IGAD is at the nascent stage of the security community due to multiple factors.Originally,IGAD is externally driven arrangement and later became internalized.Since 1996,the organization revitalized itself to incorporate the major objective of fostering peace and security cooperation in the region.Within three decades the organization engaged itself mainly in three peace initiatives;1/in Somalia(1991-2016),IGAD played key role for the establishment of Transitional Federal Government in the country.2/in Sudan(19942011),it was the major actor for the adoption of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement(CPA)and the referendum to form a new country and 3/in South Sudan during the post-2013 conflict resolution process,IGAD played an important role to end the conflict with a power sharing agreement and the establishment of Transitional National Government of Unity(TNGU)in the country.Despite some of its achievements in these three selected cases,IGAD could not be robust security arrangement in the region due to various reasons.At the domestic level,member states faced governance problems economic underdevelopment and were challenged by the proliferation of intrastate and inter-communal conflicts,which negatively affected regional stability.This indicated that the ineffectiveness of the regional organization emanated from sub-systemic factors and this problem is directly linked to the regional and extra-regional factors.The weak internal governance situation created the incapability of the organization in the process of implementing decisions after they are decided by the member states.Besides,at the domestic level,deep poverty and economic underdevelopment caused increasing threat of social discontents;resource based conflicts and largely complicated the efforts of IGAD to bring peace and stability in the region.Regionally,the track records of IGAD asserted that there is a long-established culture of mistrust and rivalry among countries in the region.The subversive actions in proxy war,supporting militant groups in other countries and the regional hegemonic competition hampered the security community.In this regard,the regional security arrangement is being constructed among unequal,rival and hostile states.The degree of mistrust among the IGAD states couldn’t be alleviated due to the region’s lack of transparency and trust building activities.Besides,the relatively small states fear the other neighboring states and do not develop a sense of mutual vision for their interdependence,the level of their economic tie is shallow and mutual trust is low.Thus,the failure to flock together in an integrated approach significantly affected the regional mediation and conflict resolution activities.IGAD faced a lack of enforcement capacity and an inefficient structure at the institutional level.Mainly,the organization’s structure has hindered the progress in strengthening collective efforts to solve the regional security problem.The political commitment level of IGAD member states is very low.Due to the weak financial and logistics capacity,IGAD could not deploy regional peacekeeping forces in the conflict prone areas.Besides,the overlapping memberships created a lack of commitment and loyalty,unnecessary competition,duplication of efforts,inconsistency of policies and agreements and financial burden.This situation leads to competing interests between various regional arrangements rather than building viable security institution.The noncompliance to policies and practices hindered the implementation of various arrangements,mainly in peace mediation and reconciliation efforts.Partly,due to the overlapping membership,the IGAD member states have failed to pay regular membership fees to the organization.This situation created heavy dependence of IGAD on external funding and this lead to limitations of autonomy on its entire operations.Moreover,extra-regional actors further complicated the regional peace initiatives and intensified the already unstable situation by meddling in the domestic affairs of the IGAD member states.The intervention created a dichotomy of ally and non-ally states within the region,resulting in a divergence of interests in the peace process.The major reasons for the foreign powers intervention are the proliferation of terrorist actors,counter-piracy,economic interests and geostrategic interests.The selected cases showed that the heavy engagement of the external actors complicates IGAD from owing its own regional peace and security mechanisms and implements its own strategies with full sense of agreements between member states.The regional body has a weak influencing capacity on its own region because of the heavy presence of powerful external actors in the regional peace process.Generally,the sub-systemic and systemic factors are interconnected.Due to this interrelated nature,the earlier Euro-centric perspectives of regionalism couldn’t be applied mainly to the third-world studies and the African security arrangements need their own amalgamated approach.In the IGAD region where security cooperation is weaker,the limited state capacity,lesser regional cohesion,the region’s vulnerability to external powers and geo-political factors have cumulative impact for the development of security arrangement in the region.Thus,the multiple factors collectively contributed to the weak arrangement of IGAD as a regional security community in its three decades journey.