MARRIAGE BANNS?
THE INDIAN OCEAN NEWSLETTER n°817 - 27/06/98)

Section : POLITICS
Country : DJIBOUTI/ETHIOPIA

Ismail Omar Gelleh, chef de cabinet to Djibouti head of state Hassan Gouled Aptidon and his nephew and probable successor, has confirmed the likelihood of a Djibouti-Ethiopian union in a recent interview for the Ethiopian pro-government Amharic-language magazine Efoyta. Gelleh was obviously looking for a godfather in the region, for he knows full well he has no friends-at-court in France. Born in Ethiopia, he speaks fluent Amharic and has always got on well with whatever regime was ruling in Addis Ababa, and is now clearly looking ahead to the prospect of becoming Djibouti's next president. Initially, the Ethiopian government was reported pretty circumspect in its attitude to relations with Djibouti - until the frontier conflict with Eritrea came along. This brutally cut access for the country's access for imports and exports to Eritrea's port of Assab and simultaneously hiked Djibouti's status as a maritime gateway. The border bust will certainly reinforce the geopolitical evolution under way.

Traumatized by the idea of seeing the current Mamassan-dominated (a Issa sub-clan) regime perpetuated thanks to a guarantee from Addis Ababa, Djibouti's political opposition naively imagined that sooner or later France would cry blue murder. Nothing is less sure. French chiefs of staff increasingly see their country's presence in Djibouti as mainly economically and financially inspired, a view dictated by the cold figures of military budget cuts: not only are nearly 800 French soldiers to be stood down in Djibouti by Year 2001 but increasing rotation of units will mean the 2,600 men and women who stay on will see their status modified: restrictions on serving men's families joining them, more posting of bachelors, and in particular a requirement to live on-base. French military (and their families) will gradually leave their off-base homes and pull back inside a North American Frontier-style security perimeter (France has had a vast building programme under way for the past two years preparing for this withdrawal onto base). Djibouti's national economy will of course suffer from the cuts in French military spending and the Djibouti authorities are seriously thinking of offsetting losses by charging rent for the military base. But this would be centralized at government budget level and wouldn't compensate for missing economic spinoffs, now fairly evenly spread across social levels, of French military presence in Djibouti.

When the Addis Ababa government contacted Paris for reactions to a possible Djibouti-Ethiopian union, France displayed great serenity which wasn't even upset by the first signs (in terms of security) of union when Front pour la Restauration de l'Unité et de la Démocratie (FRUD, Afar rebellion) political opponents arrested in Ethiopia (ION N°806) were extradited to Djibouti prisons. Perhaps because Ethiopia took care to let France know that it considers the current French military presence in Djibouti to be an element of regional stability which it was not questioning. However, neither Asmara nor Hargeisa can be expected to view the proposed union with the same tranquility. For Eritrea, it means Ethiopia has a way to shake free of dependence on the port of Assab; for Somaliland, it is a veiled annexation of Somali lands by Coptic Abyssinians. Neither Asmara nor Hargeisa have the military hardware to oppose any such development, but on the other hand they could make it difficult, costly, and in the long run dangerous.