Conflict and Postcolonial Identities in East/the Horn of Africa

Introduction: Colonial Background Eastern Africa and the Horn of Africa refer to a zone of countries stretching from Eritrea and Djibouti in the north to Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, and Sudan in the west, Tanzania in the south and fragmented Somalia and Kenya on the east. Ethiopia is in the middle surrounded by Sudan, Eritrea, Somalia, and Kenya. All these countries were defined and shaped by European powers who had engaged in prolonged imperial ventures in which they had rewritten the past and created myths of their greatness that are still perpetuated in post-colonial Africa (MartinMarquez 2008:12-16; Bessis 2003:12-14). They had also produced an imperial offspring, the United States of America. Together, Europeans and the North Americans are the Euro-powers, for short. The Euro-powers were full of socioideological contradictions between the professed ideals of liberty for white men and the reality of enslaving Africans (Duffield 2007:228). Beginning in the later part of the 19th century, the Euro-powers considered Africa to be a rich source of needed raw materials and a potential market of last resort for manufactured goods that no one else wanted. This had led to the imperial urge for territorial colonization, and hence, the Euro-powers turned to Africa (Tuathail 1996:38) to create new empires. The English, the Italians, and the French led the way in eastern Africa in imposing colonialism through terror while claiming they were doing it for humanity and civilization (Cesaire 1970:9-12; Young 1994:165-166; Munene 1995:228