ABSTRACT

The Ethiopian military intervention to remove the Union of Islamic Courts from Mogadishu in December 2006 has been interpreted in overlapping narratives of historical-religious conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, proxy war with Eritrea, and counter-terrorism. This article adds another: the Ethiopian government's own dominant narrative of danger at the time. Based on a discourse analysis of materials generated during a year of fieldwork in Addis Ababa, the article explores how Ethiopia's political leadership constructed developments in Somalia as an existential threat to the Ethiopian state. It argues that the language and actions of specific actors were presented as threatening the idea of the post-1991 Ethiopian state and, more specifically, the foundational narrative with which the EPRDF-led Ethiopian government sought ontological security for Ethiopia as a distinct political community and international actor. By focusing on the relationship between processes of collective identity formation and perceptions of (in)security, this article highlights the role of state identity narratives for understanding evolving threat perceptions and their political implications in the Horn of Africa.

摘要

埃塞俄比亚于2006年12月从摩加迪沙撤出伊斯兰法院联盟的军事干预被解释为埃塞俄比亚和索马里之间历史宗教冲突，与厄立特里亚的代理战争以及反恐的叙述重叠。本文还增加了另一篇文章：埃塞俄比亚政府自己当时关于危险的主要叙述。基于对在亚的斯亚贝巴进行的为期一年的田野调查所产生的资料的话语分析，本文探讨了埃塞俄比亚的政治领导层如何将索马里的事态发展作为对埃塞俄比亚国家的生存威胁。它认为，特定行为者的语言和行为被认为威胁了1991年后埃塞俄比亚国家的思想，更具体地说，EPRDF领导的埃塞俄比亚政府以此基础叙事寻求埃塞俄比亚作为一个独特的政治共同体和国际参与者的本体论安全性。通过关注集体身份形成过程与（不）安全知觉之间的关系，本文强调了国家身份叙事在理解不断演变的威胁知觉及其在非洲之角的政治影响中的作用。