ABSTRACT
Much of the land is desert, and rainfall is uncertain, so that surviving even at subsistence level is difficult. Famine has stalked the region and claimed more than a million lives. Five million remained in danger in the early 1990s. Only Libya has reaped untold riches from below this desert, in the form of oil, but it fell under the maverick rule of Colonel Gaddafi, who properly used a part of these riches to benefit the Libyans but also fanned conflict among his neighbours and elsewhere in the world. Gaddafi remained unpredictable. Libya’s wealth did not help the whole region; indeed, its neighbours Chad and Somalia are among the poorest in Africa. Authoritarian regimes in Ethiopia and Somalia, characterised by corruption and economic mismanagement, added to the misery. But it was, above all, the tribal and civil wars of the region that were responsible for the sufferings of millions of helpless people. Precious resources and aid were used to pay for weapons to fight these wars. The West and East, when their priorities were dictated by the Cold War, supplied them. Yet these were the countries ‘liberated’ by the United Nations from European colonial rule, their independence intended to signal a new era for the suppressed peoples of the world. What went so dreadfully wrong?
