Krieg am Horn von Afrika: Historische Aspekte von Gesellschaft, Rüstung und Verheerung

Few areas of the world, and especially on the continent of Africa, have been subjected to the scourge of war as often as the Horn. Dating back as far as written records go and at least to the fourteenth century, when interaction among most peoples of the Horn had become more manifest, one finds that wars have been the predominant pattern. Since then the Horn has witnessed alternating and at times overlapping waves of bloody quarrels, and the periods of relative peace have been few and far between. It is difficult to work out a typology of wars on the Horn because almost every conceivable form, except nuclear war, has taken place there. In this article the author Sketches out a historical account of the relation between war, arms and society in the Horn of Africa. For centuries, weapons and later on in the 19th Century especially fire arms have played a crucial wie in the politics of the Horn. In the second half of the 20th Century, especially after the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974, the Horn witnessed a massive new inflow of modern weapons both to the states of the region, and to the liberation movements which opposed them, weapons far more destructive and costly than those of the past. This introduced a massive disproportionality between the means of destruction concentrated in the hands of the states of the region and the needs and resources of the societies they governed. They also inserted the Horn into a constellation of international forces now radically transformed by the new Cold War. The author also discusses the effects of warfare in the history of the Horn from medieval times to this day. Especially the Ethiopian empire suffered from frequent warfare and the existence of large armies living on the lands through which they passed. The ravages of war, and of warring troops, led to immense destruction to life and property and created a general atmosphere of insecurity prejudicial to economic and social life. /// Il n'y a que peu de régions dans le monde, et surtout en Afrique, qui ont subi le fléau de la guerre aussi souvent que la Corne de l'Afrique. Lorsqu'on recule dans le temps aussi loin que des documents écrits existent, c'est-à-dire au moins jusqu'au quatorzième siècle, où les interactions entre la plupart des peuples de la Corne sont devenus plus manifestes, on s'aperçoit que les guerres ont constitué un élément prédominant. Depuis cette époque, la Corne a été témoin de différentes vagues de luttes sanglantes qui se sont suivies ou, en certa