Ogaden
Ogaden is one of the historical names used for the modern Somali Region. It is also natively referred to as Soomaali Galbeed. The region forms the eastern portion of Ethiopia and borders Somalia.
The Ogaden is a vast plateau located to the south and southeast of the Ethiopian Highlands, and is overwhelmingly inhabited by Somali people. It represents the westernmost region inhabited by the Somalis in the Horn of Africa. It is largely a semi-arid region and encompasses the plains between the border of Somalia and Ethiopia, extending towards the southeastern highlands, where larger cities like Harar and Dire Dawa are located near. The Ogaden is known for its oil and gas reserves.
The Ogaden region has been defined by over a century of popular revolts and armed Somali self-determination movements following a process of annexation that began with the invasion of the region by the Ethiopian Empire in the 1890s and concluded with the final British handovers of the region in the mid-1950s. Prior to late 19th century Ethiopian expansion, the Ogaden was inhabited by organized Somali communities and remained independent of Ethiopian imperial rule. Ethiopia's legal claim to the region is predicated on the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1897, which the Somali Republic rejected as invalid following its independence in 1960.
Since the end of the 19th century, armed organizations such as the Dervish movement, Nasrallah, the Western Somali Liberation Front, Al-Itihaad Al-Islamiya, and most recently the Ogaden National Liberation Front have been at the forefront of the region's struggle for independence.
Etymology
The origins of the term Ogaden has been an elusive question. It is usually attributed to the Somali clan of the same name, referring only to their land originally, and eventually expanding to encompass most parts of the modern Somali Region of eastern Ethiopia. The Ogaden clan's name itself comes from their progenitor, Abdirahman Absame's nickname of Ogaadeen, which is a Somali term that means "He who takes care of another". An alternative etymology analyses the name as a combination of the Harari word ūga and Aden, a city in Yemen, supposedly deriving from an ancient caravan route through the region connecting Harar to the Arabian Peninsula.During the new region's founding conference, which was held in Dire Dawa in 1992, the naming of the region became a divisive issue, because almost 30 different ethnic Somali clans live in the region. The ONLF sought to name the region 'Ogadenia', whilst the non-Ogadeni Somali clans who live in the same region opposed this move. As noted by Abdul Majid Hussein, the naming of the region where there are several Somali clans as 'Ogadenia' following the name of a single clan would have been divisive. Finally, the region was named the Somali region.
Demographics
The inhabitants are predominantly ethnic Somalis, of almost 30 clans. The Ogaden clan of the Darod constitute the majority in the region, and were enlisted in the Ogaden National Liberation Movement, which is why the region is associated with the Ogaden clan. Other Somali clans in the region are Sheekhaal, Marehan, Isaaq, Geri Koombe Gadabuursi, Issa, Massare, Gabooye, Degodia, Jidle, as well as the Karanle clans of Hawiye.History
There are few historical texts written about the people who lived in what is known today as the Somali Region, sometimes referred to as "The Ogaden" region of Ethiopia. The vast majority of the inhabitants today are Muslim and ethnically homogenous. In its early history, the Ogaden was inhabited by Harla, a now extinct people. Harla are linked to the Harari and Somali Ogaden clan. The region became one of the earliest footholds for the spread of Islam into Africa. At the time, rivalries between the established Muslims in the Ogaden were recurring with those of the littoral in Zeila.The Ogaden region was part of the Ifat Sultanate in the 13th century and later the Adal Sultanate in the 15th century. The city of Harar, serving as the effective capital of Ogaden, became a key administrative center for Adal. In the first half of the 16th century, the Ethiopian–Adal War broke out. Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, the Imam of Adal, launched a jihad against Abyssinia in response to escalating Abyssinian incursions into Muslim territories. Repeated military expeditions from the highlands into the southeast over several decades prior significantly unified the Somali and other Muslim communities in the region, who then joined Imam Ahmed's jihad. Abyssinian attacks were frequent and intense during the 15th and 16th centuries, but they halted in the mid-17th century, not resuming until Emperor Menelik's expansions at the end of the 19th century. The regional successor of Ifat and Adal, the Ajuran Sultanate, governed its territories from Qalafo along the upper Shabelle River in eastern Ogaden until its decline in the 17th century.
File:Abyssinia, Shoa, Harar.jpg|thumb|1873 cartography by John Bartholomew designating "Ugaden" east of Harar|260x260pxBeginning in the seventeenth century, the Ogaden region served as a vital conduit for the slave trade. Primarily from the Arsi, slaves would eventually find their way to Berbera to be sold to international slave dealers. Historian Ali Abdirahman Hersi, who specializes in Somali history, indicates that the Emirate of Harar continued to engage in trade, albeit at a reduced scale, and established settlements in the Ogaden region after the fall of the Adal Sultanate. The residents of these settlements encountered simultaneous assaults from both the Oromo and Somali, compelling them to construct a defensive wall.
During the pre-colonial era the Ogaden was neither under Ethiopian rule, nor Terra nullius, as it was occupied by organized Somali communities. Independent historical accounts are unanimous that previous to the penetration into the region in the late 1880s, Somali clans were free of Ethiopian and Shewan control. It has been observed that geographers mapping out the continent of Africa for the British government in the mid to late 1800s made no reference of any Ethiopians in the Ogaden, and maps from before 1884 drew the Ethiopian Empire's domain as confined by the River Awash.
Menelik's invasions and Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty (1887–1897)
In 1887, Ethiopian Emperor Menelik II conquered the city of Harar during his efforts to expand the empire and in 1891, announced a programme of ambitious colonialism to the European powers. This marked the start of a tentative yet violent invasion into the Ogaden region. In the first phase of Ethiopian penetration into the region, Menelik dispatched his troops from occupied Harar on frequent raids that terrorized the region. Indiscriminate killing and looting was commonplace before the raiding soldiers returned to their bases with stolen livestock. Repeatedly between 1890 and 1900, Ethiopian raiding parties into the Ogaden caused devastation. Imperial military expeditions dispatched into the Ogaden engaged in the torching of Somali settlements, and foreign travelers in the region widely reported countless stories of suffering at the hands of the Abyssinian invaders.Menelik's expansion into Somali inhabited territory coincided with the European colonial advances in the Horn of Africa, during which the Ethiopian Empire imported a significant amount of arms from European powers. The large scale importation of European arms completely upset the balance of power between the Somalis and the Ethiopian Empire, as the colonial powers blocked Somalis from receiving firearms. However the Ethiopians were also defeated numerous times by poorly armed Somalis such as in 1890 near Imi where Makonnen's troops had suffered a large defeat to Somali warriors. A British hunter Colonel Swayne, who visited Imi in February 1893, was shown "the remains of the bivouac of an enormous Abyssinian army which had been defeated some two or three years before."
Before the emergence of the anti-colonial Dervish movement in the 20th century, Somalis had limited access to firearms. When European colonial powers began to exert influence in the Horn of Africa, the Brussels Conference Act of 1890 imposed an arms embargo on the Somali population. During the same period Ethiopian Emperor Menelik, who was legally armed with rifles by European powers through the port cities of Djibouti and Massawa, began expanding into Somali inhabited territories. British colonial administrator Francis Barrow Pearce writes the following concerning the Ethiopian raids into the Ogaden:
The Somalis, although good and brave fighting men, cannot help themselves. They have no weapons except the hide shield and spear, while their oppressors are, as has already been recorded, armed with modern rifles, and they are by no means scrupulous concerning the use of them in asserting their authority...The Abyssinians themselves have no more claim to dominate the wells than a Fiji Islander would have to interfere with a London waterworks company.In 1897 in order to appease Menelik's expansionist policy Britain ceded almost half of the British Somaliland protectorate to Ethiopia in the Anglo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1897. Ethiopian authorities have since then based their claims to the Ogaden upon the treaty and the exchange of letters which followed it. International law professor W. Michael Reisman, observed that, "as a matter of law and fact, the 1897 treaty was void because it presumed an authority which the Somalis had never accorded to Great Britain." The Somalis, he notes, had given no authority to the British to transfer Somali territory to another state. In fact, the British had committed to protecting Somali territory, the primary reason for the Protectorate, and in attempting to transfer the land to Ethiopia, they were acting without competence, exceeding their jurisdiction, and concluding an agreement without the participation of the central party. Furthermore, Reisman notes that even had treaty originally been valid, it would have been invalidated by Ethiopia's failure to commit to key legal obligations.