The Greater Horn of Africa, Causes and Conflicts

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The Greater Horn of Africa, Causes and Conflicts

The Horn of Africa, Northeast Africa and sometimes Somali Peninsula, is a peninsula in East Africa that protrudes hundreds of kilometers’ into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. The countries of Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Somalia encompass the Horn of Africa (Wikipedia, 2011). Why is there so much conflict in the Horn of Africa, what are the causes these conflicts, what are the costs involved, and how does this affect the interest of the United States of America?

The causes of armed conflict in the Greater Horn of Africa are numerous and range from individuals to groups to structural inequality and injustice. The quality of governance within a few states in the Greater Horn of Africa has improved in the last decade; however, state structures are eroding. The geopolitical map is being rearranged in the Horn of Africa as new states are formed; Enitrea has won independence, Somaliland has declared it, and southern Sudanese rebels seek it. The power within the Greater Horn of Africa is being redistributed to the point where group power relationships are far more stable. Some systematic causes of conflict are structural conditions which include external factors as the legacies of colonial and Cold War policies and internal factors as geophysical conditions, resource scarcity, poverty, socio-economic inequalities, and ethnic divisions (“Costs and Causes,” n.d.). The primary cause for conflict in the Greater Horn of Africa is competition over declining resources. Resource scarcity is the fundamental economic problem of having humans who have unlimited wants and needs in a world with limited resources (Wikipedia, 2011). In the Northern ...

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... 2011, from http://www.state.gov/p/af/rt/hornofafrica/index.htm

Fusato, M. (n.d.). Preventive Diplomacy and International Violence Prevention. Beyond Intractability - More Constructive Approaches to Destructive Conflict. Retrieved November 6, 2011, from http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/violence_prevention/

Horn of Africa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_of_Africa

Operation Enduring Freedom – Horn of Africa - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 6, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Enduring_Freedom_-_Horn_of_Africa

Scarcity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 5, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity

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