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Ethiopia The Ogaden and the Haud
Ethiopia's entry into the Somali region in modern times
dated from Menelik's conquest of Harer in the late 1890s,
the emperor basing his actions on old claims of Ethiopian
sovereignty. In 1945 Haile Selassie, fearing the possibility
of British support for a separate Somali state that would
include the Ogaden, claimed Italian Somaliland as a "lost
province." In Italian Somaliland, the Somali Youth League
(SYL) resisted this claim and in its turn demanded
unification of all Somali areas, including those in
Ethiopia.
After the British evacuated the Ogaden in 1948, Ethiopian
officers took over administration in the city of Jijiga, at
one point suppressing a demonstration led by the SYL, which
the government subsequently outlawed. At the same time,
Ethiopia renounced its claim to Italian Somaliland in
deference to UN calls for self-determination. The
Ethiopians, however, maintained that self-determination was
not incompatible with eventual union.
Immediately upon the birth of the Republic of Somalia in
1960, which followed the merger of British Somaliland and
Italian Somaliland, the new country proclaimed an
irredentist policy. Somalia laid claim to Somali-populated
regions of French Somaliland (later called the French
Territory of the Afars and Issas, and Djibouti after
independence in 1977), the northeastern corner of Kenya, and
the Ogaden, a vast, ill-defined region occupied by Somali
nomads extending southeast from Ethiopia's southern
highlands that includes a separate region east of Harer
known as the Haud. The uncertainty over the precise location
of the frontier between Ethiopia and the former Italian
possessions in Somalia further complicated these claims.
Despite UN efforts to promote an agreement, none was made in
the colonial or the Italian trusteeship period.
In the northeast, an Anglo-Ethiopian treaty determined the
frontier's official location. However, Somalia contended
that it was unfairly placed so as to exclude the herders
resident in Somalia from vital seasonal grazing lands in the
Haud. The British had administered the Haud as an integral
part of British Somaliland, although Ethiopian sovereignty
had been recognized there. After it was disbanded in the
rest of Ethiopia, the British military administration
continued to supervise the area from Harer eastward and did
not withdraw from the Haud until 1955. Even then, the
British stressed the region's importance to Somalia by
requiring the Ethiopians to guarantee the Somali free access
to grazing lands.
Somalia refused to recognize any pre-1960 treaties defining
the Somali-Ethiopian borders because colonial governments
had concluded the agreements. Despite the need for access to
pasturage for local herds, the Somali government even
refused to acknowledge the British treaty guaranteeing
Somali grazing rights in the Haud because it would have
indirectly recognized Ethiopian sovereignty over the area.
Within six months after Somali independence, military
incidents occurred between Ethiopian and Somali forces along
their mutual border. Confrontations escalated again in 1964,
when the Ethiopian air force raided Somali villages and
encampments inside the Somali border. Hostilities were ended
through mediation by the OAU and Sudan. However, Somalia
continued to promote irredentism by supporting the Western
Somali Liberation Front (WSLF), which was active in the
Ogaden. Claims of oil discoveries prompted the resurgence of
fighting in 1973.
Data as of 1991
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