As Alex de Waal notes, my analysis does not incorporate the aspirations of some notable leaders in the Horn of Africa, including Hassan al-Turabi of Sudan’s Muslim Brothers for an Islamic state, of John Garang of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) for a “New Sudan,” and of Meles Zenawi of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) for a “democratic developmental state.” Six major themes, including fragmentation of institutions of governance, governance deficit at the domestic and regional levels, crisis of state building, problems of diversity management and nation building, foreign intervention, and environmental crisis were used in explaining the complex chronic conflicts that plague the Horn of Africa.

Unlike the six themes I use to explain the region’s complex conflicts, the visions of these leaders, while noteworthy, did not, in my view, produce significant impacts on the trajectory of the region’s conflicts. Garang’s vision was cut short by his death before it could be implemented. It is also not likely that Meles’s developmental state vision was impactful or even workable given the entrenched nation-building problems the country faced, despite the institution of the federal arrangement. It is also unclear if Turabi’s vision of an Islamic state promoted or mitigated conflicts or if it was nation building or nation destroying. Yet compared to their successors, these leaders had notable stature and vision. Thus, de Waal is correct in asking what the current leadership vacuum means for the prospects for democratization and state building in the Horn of Africa. My argument is that the leadership deficit is a major obstacle.

I am also in agreement with de Waal that the federal arrangement that several of the countries of the Horn of Africa have instituted have been unsuccessful in advancing institutions of diversity management and thereby in promoting a peaceful process of nation building. The arrangement in Ethiopia has been denounced by some opposition groups for being largely ethnic based and for granting the country’s constituent ethnic groups the right to exercise self-determination, up to and including secession. Opponents argue that the arrangement has the potential to lead to the country’s disintegration along ethnic lines. Regardless, the federal arrangements in the region are unlikely to be implemented properly. The absence of strong mechanisms of checks and balances in the structures of the state, which results in the concentration of power in the executive branch of government and strong men, does not allow genuine devolution of power that a federal arrangement entails. Most of the countries of the region are also characterized by centralizing dominant parties. Given these two centralizing conditions, the federal arrangements in the region are more symbolic than genuine.

Unlike de Waal, however, I remain fearful that a combination of the failure to address the debilitating conflicts and the alarming rate of environmental degradation faced by the region can result in calamitous conditions. With frequent cycles of severe drought, the region’s traditional economic sectors of subsistent peasantry and pastoralism are becoming unsustainable. The modern economic sector is also not large enough or growing fast enough to absorb the large-scale rural–urban migration that can be unleashed by major rural crises. Ethiopia’s ability to avert large-scale starvation with major external aid gives de Waal reason for optimism. But it does not convince me that the country is on the path to addressing the possible crisis in the rural economy in any sustainable way.