     indhacaro | Monday, January 15, 2001 - 03:14 pm
if you where in doubt about the name of the country read this aritcle very carfully. and you have to know this article has been written by non-somali. you will see who wrote it anyways later on.i just wanted to tell these people kept saying its clan name that this is a recognized named all the over the world for this region . enjoy the reading bro/sis., and give me your feed back. here it is what you have been waiting for long time.
Reprinted by permission of the Scandinavian Institute of African Studies
from AndersHjort af Ornas and M.A.Mohamed Salih (eds.) " Ecology and Politics - Environmental Stress and Security in Africa", pp.157-168 (Uppsala: Scandinavian Institute of African Studies, 1989)
by John Markakis
This article examines the fateful relationship between ecological stress and political conflict in a region of the Horn of Africa which comprises an economic unit fragmented by the Ethiopian-Somali border.
The Ogaden region is known as the Haud (Somali for 'south') and covers about 40,000 square kilometres. It lies inside the Ogaden alongside the boundary with northern Somalia. Called the 'waterless Haud', it has no permanent source of water, though it is crossed by two seasonal streams called Tug Jerer and Tug Fafan. A high undulating plateau with wide grass plains, the Haud's vegetation includes thorn bush and aloes and its plains are dotted with giant anthills. During the rainy season that comes twice a year, the Haud plains turn into seas of grass and provide the best and largest grazing area in that part of the Horn. At this time the Haud is visited by several Somali clans from both sides of the border. Feeding on green pasture, the herds of camels, sheep and goats need no water and the herders could stay up to three months each visit, before returning to their base areas and permanent water sources for the dry season. The absence of permanent water sources in the Haud is a blessing in disguise, because it rules out year round occupation and continuous grazing. This allowed its pastures to recover completely after each season and to preserve and regenerate their full potential.
The Haud lies inside the Ogaden, a vast sloping plain of about 200,000 square kilometres that extends from the southern reaches of the Harar plateau in the north to the Ethiopian Somali border in the east and south and the Webi Shebeli river in the west. The region takes its name, the Ogaden, from the dominant Somali clan that lives there. The Ogaden, like many of their kinsmen, are camel, sheep and goat herders. They reside entirely within the Ogaden and have no need to venture outside its borders to find pastures. The northeastern corner of the Ogaden, the Jijiga plain, where rainfed cultivation is possible, is inhabited by small clans, like the Bartire and the Gerri, many of whom practise agriculture.
Several other clans whose base areas are found outside the Ogaden visit it regularly for seasonal grazing, especially in the Haud. The Ishaq from the northeast, the Dolbahanda from the southeast, the Marehan and the Beidyhan from the south, share the prized pasture-land with the Ogaden. The congregation of these clans in one area naturally increased the incidence of mutual raising for animals, a traditional practice that led to occasional bloodshed and served to maintain a permanent state of tension between the different clans and clan families. This was the normal state of affairs in Somali pastoralist society, where a native poet complained that "Peace worsens the condition of my household''. (1) Traditional institutions designed to contain and resolve this type of conflict functioned effectively. The most important of these was the diya. a contractual group which paid and received blood compensation for injury done and sustained by its members. In the early 1950s, the standard rate of compensation for the killing of an adult male was one hundred camels. (2)
The Ishaq, the dominant clan family in northern Somalia across the border from the Ogaden, have always been the most dependent on the Haud. Without any rivers and an annual average rainfall of less than ten inches, northern Somalia's resources are insufficient for the needs of a population that is roughly double the population of the Ogaden and for an animal population of a comparable size. Predominantly camel, sheep and goat herders, the Ishaq are also intrepid traders and caravaneers who always controlled trade routes between the Ogaden, Hargeisa and the port of Berbera; a privilege that did not endear them to the Ogaden who have had to buy safe passage along those routes. The Ogaden retaliated by raiding Ishaq herds and flocks in the Haud. further embittering relations between them. Since neither of them developed centralised political structures, hostilities between them remained episodic and low key. Centralised state structures encapsulated the Somali nomads during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The imperialist scramble partitioned their lands among no less than five states. Four of these were European colonial creations belonging to Britain (Northern Somaliland, Northern Kenya). Italy (Southern Somalia). and France (Djibouti). The fifth was the expanding Abyssinian kingdom, henceforth to be known as the Ethiopian Empire which claimed the Ogaden and adjacent Somali lands west of the Webi Shebeli.
While the scramble was on, European and Ethiopian claims overlapped extensively, and lengthy negotiations were required before the boundaries were demarkated. They roughly comprise today's boundary lines. Britain claimed a portion of the Ogaden, including the Haud, on the grounds that the Ogaden pastures were essential for its Somali subjects. Ethiopia claimed an analogous portion of British Somaliland on the grounds of prior conquest. Emperor Menelik's negotiating position was strong, for the Ethiopians had just defeated the Italians in 1896 at the battle of Adua. The British were involved in a war against the Madhist state in the Sudan, and were exceedingly apprehensive about the possibility of an Ethiopian-Sudanese alliance. Therefore, they chose compromise, and finally surrendered about one-third of the area of their Protectorate. The dividing line that placed the Haud within Ethiopia was drawn by Ras Makonnen, Haile Selassie's father the then Governor of Harar. The 1897 Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement included a clause safeguarding the rights of pastoralists, like the Ishaq, who found themselves under British rule, to use the Haud pastures across the border. This right was not interfered with for several decades. Ethiopia was still a feudal polity and showed little interest in the pastoralist lowlands where no easily exploitable source of wealth could be found. No attempt was made to police the Ogaden, and Ethiopian garrisons did not appear south of Jijiga until the 1930s, when the Italian menace appeared. Indeed, the border itself was not marked, and the nomads were scarcely aware that it existed. When an Anglo-Ethiopian Commission was demarkating the boundary in 1931, it was attacked by the Somali and one of its members was killed. The border was a serious obstacle to the pastoralists of the British colony because it impeded their entry to the Haud. The Ogaden, on the other hand, were increasingly resentful of such intrusions in what they had come to consider their own territory, and bemoaned Ethiopia's acquiescence to them. When Haile Selassie came to Harar in 1935 to rally the Somali against the impending Italian attack, he heard lengthy complaints from the Ogaden chiefs, including a denunciation of the agreement that allowed the nomads from across the border to enter the Ogaden. Makhtal Dahir, a youthful chief who was to lead the 1963 uprising, did not mince his words. "If it is wished that the Somali become sincere friends of the Abyssinians", he told the Emperor, "then the English subjects should be obliged to move out of the Ogaden immediately". (3)
The following year, the Italians invaded and occupied Ethiopia. In 1937, they concluded an agreement with the authorities of British Somaliland to allow the latter's subjects access to the Haud and the area between Jijiga and the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railway line which was called the Reserved Area. When the Italian East Africa Empire collapsed in 1941, and Ethiopia was liberated by British troops, the fate of the Ogaden hung in the balance. Claiming that it was essential for the prosecution of the war in the Far East, Britain retained control of the region, and forced an agreement to that effect on the reluctant Ethiopians; however, without prejudicing the latter's sovereign rights in the area. In fact, with Italy out of the Horn, Britain was planning to gather all the Somali under its wing. It seemed possible that Ethiopia could be compelled to trade the Ogaden for Eritrea, another former Italian colony and a far greater prize that was also under British rule at that time.
Throughout the 1940s, all the Somali lands, including the Northern Frontier District of Kenya, were under British rule. It was during this period that the Ishaq and other pastoralists from the British Protectorate in the north took advantage of colonial protection to make inroads into the Haud. They were driven by a worsening ecological situation, the first signs of which were noted at this time. The human population in the North was estimated at about 600,000, eighty-five percent of which were nomad pastoralists owning an estimated 1.2 million camels, 2.35 million sheep, 1.64 million goats and 223,000 cattle. (4) They were all served by deep wells. The area in the vicinity of the wells was denuded of vegetation and signs of degradation were evident elsewhere. One study found that the North had "a very high rate of overstocking", (5) and an official report in 1947 warned that "the soil and vegetation are on the brink of irreversible ruin" on account of congestion and overgrazing. (6) Congestion led to increased violence among the clans, and the Official Report for 1952-1953 cited a total of 80 deaths in disputes over grazing and watering rights. (7)
Under such ecological pressure, and with British forbearance, the nomads from the North moved en masse into the Haud and prolonged their stay there as long as possible. Fully half the population of the British colony with their animals came and stayed now up to nine months. (8) They nearly matched the human and animal population of the Ogaden itself. Lacking state protection, the latter were at a distinct disadvantage. Although Ethiopia recovered the Ogaden in 1948, Britain continued to hang on to the Haud and the Reserved Area, still hoping it might be possible to annex them.
A riot broke out in Jijiga when the flag of the Somali Youth League was lowered in July 1948, marking the restoration of Ethiopian rule. This was the first sign of militant Somali nationalism. The Somali Youth League was the first and foremost nationalist organisation, with an ethnic constituency that was predominantly Darod, the largest and most widespread Somali clan family. The Youth League was able to organise branches in all Somali regions, including the Ogaden, whose dominant clan belong to the Darod family. The Youth League was weakest in the British colony in the North. There, the Ishaq supported a rival nationalist organisation, the Somali National League, whose following was limited to this region. In this way, the Ishaq-Ogaden dispute was overlaid with a first layer of political antagonism that was not of their own making and was largely irrelevant to the material issue that was the core of their dispute. Both leagues had identical nationalist goals seeking independence and unity of all Somali territories. Significantly, the National League made no attempt to extend its activities across the border into the Ogaden, and there is no record of any protest by it when that region was returned to Ethiopia.
By contrast, there was a storm of protest in the North, orchestrated by the National League. when the Haud and the Reserved Area were finally handed back to Ethiopia in 1954. The British by now had given up hope of creating a pan-Somali Protectorate, partly because Italy had been granted a United Nations trusteeship over its former colony in the south in 1950, but mainly because the Somali nationalist organisations had expressed a clear preference for independence rather than any form of British tutelage. Both leagues organised protests against the return of the Haud and the Reserved Area to Ethiopia. The greatest exertion was made in the north where, inter alia, funds were collected to despatch two delegations of notables to carry the protest to the British government in London and the United Nations in New York.
To soften the blow, Britain secured an agreement with Ethiopia guaranteeing access to the Haud for its subjects for another fifteen years. Its implementation was to be supervised by liaison officers from the Protectorate, with the help of three hundred native police. Disputes between British subjects inside the Haud were to be adjudicated in the Protectorate, and various other provisions were included to safeguard the Ishaq and other northerners when they ventured into Ethiopian territory. The arrangement, in the words of the chief liaison officer, proved a 'fiasco'. (9) Understandably worried that it might serve as precedent for future Somali irredentist claims, the Ethiopians were concerned to limit the scope of the arrangement. Insisting that it applied only to nomads who stayed in the Haud for no more than six months per year, they refused to recognise as British protected subjects those who stayed longer or tried to cultivate grain as well. They also insisted on dealing with clans rather then individuals, and sought to persuade clan chiefs to opt for Ethiopian nationality, which was then held to apply to all the members of the clan. The Habr Awal, the largest Ishaq clan, some sections of which straddle the border, came under great Ethiopian pressure, and the tension was such that a journalist who visited the Haud at this time reported that "a state of war exists here''. (10) Large-scale animal raiding contributed to the tension. The Ogaden now had the advantage, because the Ethiopian authorities saw to it that animals stolen from them were returned, but did not force the Ogaden to return animals they stole from the Ishaq. Finally, following a violent clash at Danod at the end of 1960, when the Ethiopians refused to allow herders from the British colony to draw water, Ethiopia abrogated the agreement.
A new element was introduced into this volatile situation in the mid1950s. This was the spectacular growth of the export market for animals in the oil rich Arab market across the narrow sea. Such exports had began in a modest way half a century earlier, when northern Somalia became the provider of meat for the British garrison at Aden. This was a minor item compared with the traditional export trade in hides, skins, ghee, gum arabic, myrrh and ivory. The expansion that occurs now is shown in Table no.1.
The northern region provided around eighty-five percent of the animals exported. It is estimated that the Ogaden provided between twenty and forty percent of the animals exported through Berbera, the main northern port.
The pull of the market led to an appreciable increase in the size of the herds and flocks, especially sheep, the prime export item. To cope with the overload, cement water tanks called birket appeared in large numbers throughout Somalia. The idea, as well as the money to build them, came from Aden where many Somali find work. Equipped with petrol pumps, they rely mainly on stored rainwater, though sometimes they are filled with water brought by lorry. The first birket appeared in the Haud in 1956. By 1971, there were at least one thousand between Dibileh and Awareh. Nearly all were owned by Ogaden families. The Ishaq owned none and were obliged to buy water from the Ogaden in order to prolong their stay in the Haud. More of them began to stay all year clustered around the birkets, and the result of such congestion threatened to upset the delicate balance between land, water and animals that sustains traditional production. Congestion also led to a further increase in clashes among the clans frequenting the Haud. In December 1957, a dispute between Dolbahanda and Beidyhan left about one hundred and forty dead.
As noted above, the Ogaden were themselves involved in livestock export trade through northern Somalia. The attraction of that market, in contrast to Ethiopian interior, was a large difference in prices, with prices in Hargeisa being double those offered in Jijiga. (ll) To reach its destination the Ogaden trade had to cross Ishaq territory, and the latter exacted heavy tolls to allow passage. In this way, the Ishaq compensated themselves for the price they paid to the Ogaden for water in the Haud.
The two former colonies merged in 1960 to form the independent Somali Republic. Three other Somali clans which inhabited territories - Ogaden, Djibouti, and the Northern Frontier District of Kenya remained outside the fold to become a source of perennial anguish and the apple of discord in the Horn. The merger of North and South has not produced a perfect union. With less than half the population of the South, and no sign of modern economic activity, northern Somalia became a junior partner in the state, a position it has found hard to accept. Resentment was initially manifested when the North rejected the proposed unitary constitution in the 1961 referendum. After the constitution was adopted with a large vote of support in the South, a group of junior officers in the North staged an abortive coup d'etat. Since then the North has been a hotbed of political dissidence, spawning countless rebellions against the central government in Mogadisho. The Ishaq have been centrally involved in most of them.
By contrast, and despite the fact that they remained under Ethiopian rule, the Ogaden became closely linked with the ruling class in Somalia. The recovery of the Ogaden became a nationalist imperative binding on all Somali governments. It was put to a test in 1963, when a spontaneous uprising broke out in that region. The Somali army provided weapons, and the government in Mogadisho raised a diplomatic hue and cry on behalf of the rebels. Ethiopia's response was to attack Somali border posts, and the two countries drifted towards an undeclared war that lasted a few months. Somalia was soon forced to back down and cease its support for the rebels. When the uprising collapsed as a result, the Ogaden leadership and thousands of their followers sought refuge in the South, There they waited for another opportunity to challenge Ethiopia. Many joined the Somali army, where the Ogaden are well represented in the officer corps.
In 1969, a successful military coup d'etat, led by General Mohammed Siad Barre, ended civilian rule in the Somali Republic. After an initial period of self-consolidation, the new regime resumed the quest for the recovery of lost Somali territories. The refugees from, Ethiopian-held lands were regrouped in new organisations, some were sent to North Korea for guerrilla warfare training, and others were trained in Somali camps. As Ethiopia entered a period of political turmoil with the overthrow of Haile Selassie in September 1974, the temptation to wrest the Ogaden away from alien rule became irresistible. The organisation of Ogaden refugees was renamed the Western Somali Liberation Front, and its guerrilla units crossed into Ethiopia at the start of 1976, led by Ogaden officers of the Somali army.
The Western Somali Liberation Front recruited and armed Ogaden nomads, and commenced attacking Ethiopian outposts. Its ranks expanded quickly, and by the following spring they were besieging the region's administrative centres. The Ethiopian response was feeble. The army had become demoralised and disorganised by the widespread purges carried out by the embattled military junta in Addis Ababa. The United States had suspended military assistance to Ethiopia, and the army was confronted with a serious shortage of ammunition and replacement parts for its entirely American made weaponry. The Ethiopians had recently concluded an agreement with the Soviet Union that included military assistance. Until now Somalia's patron, the Soviet Union has now switched sides, with ominous consequences for Somalia. The latter's military rulers were confronted with a hard choice. Ethiopia's political turmoil and the poor performance of its army in the Ogaden presented a rare opportunity to reach for the primary nationalist goal, i.e., the Ogaden. That opportunity had to be grasped immediately, before the Ethiopians had time to obtain and integrate the promised Soviet weaponry. Bowing to the imperative of Somali nationalism, the regime in Mogadisho committed its regular forces to an invasion of the Ogaden in the summer of 1977. They cleared the Ethiopian forces out of the region easily, and by early autumn they had laid siege to the town of Harar. The Ethiopian counter attack came in the early spring of 1978. Well supplied by the Russians and spearheaded by Cuban combat units, it quickly routed the Somali forces. In March, as the Ethiopian forces stood poising threat on the border, the Somali government sued for peace by declaring that its forces had withdrawn from the Ogaden. The Western Somali Liberation Front vowed to carry on the struggle, and it succeeded in maintaining scattered guerrilla units in the Ogaden, forcing the Cubans to mount a permanent guard.
These were hard years for the Ishaq. They were at odds with the military regime in Mogadisho from the outset. Ibrahim Egal, the Prime Minister removed by the coup d'etat, was the first northerner to hold that post. The man who took over the reins of government, General Siad Barre, belongs to the Marehan clan, a branch of the Darod clan family, and his mother is an Ogaden. His response to the customary manifestations of political dissidence in the North was harsh, further alienating the people of that restless region. Moreover, the North was hit by drought in 1973-1975 and suffered heavy livestock losses. About one hundred thousand nomads had to be evacuated from the region, and many of them were resettled in other parts of the country.
The conflict in the Ogaden was another blow. The arming of the Ogaden nomads put the Ishaq of the Haud at great peril. They lost many lives and large number of animals. They blamed the Western Somali Liberation Front for siding with the Ogaden in herder disputes, and suspected that the Front encouraged its kinsmen in their efforts to evict the Ishaq from the Haud. On the national political scene, the Ogaden came to be regarded as one of the pillars of the military regime. Hostile clans, especially the Ishaq, derided the Western Somali Liberation Front as 'Siad's mercenaries'. Thus another layer of political antagonism was added to the old dispute between the Ishaq and the Ogaden, though this time it was not irrelevant to the material issue in the dispute.
Opposition to the military regime began to multiply and harden following their defeat in the Ogaden. Military morale was badly shaken and a series of mutinies and coups d'etat were launched unsuccessfully in the years that followed. The survivors fled abroad, where they joined the crowd of political refugees produced by repression at home. In the late 1970s, two organizations were formed abroad to oppose the regime in Mogadisho. Typically, these had different regional and clan bases. The Somali National Movement represented mainly Ishaq dissidence in the North, and the Somali Salvation Democratic Front represented opposition in the South, especially among the Mijertein, a formerly prominent clan whose political fortunes suffered under military rule.
Ironically, both organizations solicited Ethiopian assistance, presenting the regime in Addis Ababa with an unhoped for opportunity to unravel the legend of Somali nationalism. Both groups set up bases near the border and armed by the Ethiopians they began to raid Somali border posts and villages. The Somali National Movement has bases in the northern Ogaden, and its incursions are directed into northern Somalia. With local support there, its raids became bolder and went deeper into the North, and the insurgents were able to hold their own ground against the government forces. In the summer of 1988, the Somali National Movement forces were battling government troops for control of Hargeisa, the country's second largest town and capital of the North.
While battling the Somali regime, the rebels also waged another war against the Western Somali Liberation Front in the Ogaden, which they considered a tool of Siad Barre's regime. The Somali National Movement was in a position to intercept the Front's movements to and from Somalia, cutting off its supplies and communications. To the gratification of the Ethiopians, the Somali National Movement was able to do a much better job than they could in pursuing the scattered bands of nationalist guerrillas, and by the mid-1980s the Western Somali Liberation Front had no meaningful presence in the Ogaden.
While the dream of Somali nationalism was being shattered by a fractious ruling class, the pastoralists pursued their own feud single-mindedly. This time the Ishaq had the advantage, because the Somali National Movement recruited among them and put modern weapons in their hands. Not surprisingly, the weapons were turned against the Ogaden, who no longer had the protection of the Western Somali Liberation Front. Ogaden trade with Hargeisa and Berbera was disrupted also. Even travel there became hazardous, after a group of students returning to the Ogaden were killed by the Habr Yoonis section of the Ishaq in November 1982. The clan war that erupted then continues intermittently to this day. The Ogaden was devastated as a result. Squeezed between the Ethiopians on one side, and the Ishaq on the other, and menaced by recurrent drought, its people are drifting away from their homeland. Some are heading south to Somalia, others north to the settled areas of the Harar plateau. In either case, refugee camps are the final destination of the once proud and self-sufficient nomads.
The Ishaq-Ogaden conflict illustrates the persistence of age old material imperatives in the pastoralist world. This is not surprising, in view of the fact that the mode of production in this world has not changed, and the twin imperatives of extensive use of land and freedom of movement remain as valid as ever. Widespread participation in the market has affected pastoralist society in various ways, but it has not affected yet the traditional production technique; except in the case of the use of water tanks.
Defending these material imperatives has become increasingly difficult in the era of the modern state, and the pastoralists are often at odds with the states that claim them 'subjects'. In the Horn of Africa, the situation is further complicated by the intervention of various political movements fighting for sundry causes. The pastoralists are often entangled in such conflicts and appear to be fighting in tandem with other social groups for sentimental notions such as nationalism and religion and alien institutions like political parties and the state. Appearances are often deceiving. The commitment of pastoralists to such causes and the movements that represent them is normally conditioned by expediency. This might be as simple as an opportunity to obtain modern arms for the defense of their herds and territory, or a more complex yet easily understandable impulse to weaken the all encompassing authority of the modern state. Pastoralists in the Horn have proved enthusiastic recruits for movements whose goal is to break up the present state structures in the region. (l2)
NOTES
Cited in Said Samatar, 1982: Oral Poetry and Somali Nationalism. Cambridge University Press, p. 19.
Lewis. I.M. 1969: Peoples of the Horn of Africa. London, International African Institute, p. 107.
Lessona, A.1939: Verso l'lmpero. Firenze, p.100.
Silberman, L. 1959: "Somali Nomads" in International Sociological Science journal, 11,4 p. 571.
Gililand, H.B. 1952: "The Vegetation of Eastern British Somaliland". Journal of Ecology, 40,2, p. 94.
Cited in Geshekter, C.L. 1983: "Anti-Colonialism and Class Formation: The Horn of Africa". Paper presented to the Second International Congress of Somali Studies, Hamburg, p. 23.
Colonial Report, British Somaliland Protectorate 1952,1953, p. 3.
Drysdale, J. 1964: The Somali Dispute . London, Pall Mall Press, p. 79
Drysdale, 1964: chapter 7.
The Times . London. 27 October 1956.
Swift, J. 1979: "The Development of Livestock Trading in a Nomad pastoralist Society". In Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie des Societes pastorales, Pastoral Production and Society. Cambridge University Press, p.452.
Cossins, N. 1971: "Pastoralism Under Pressure: A Study of the Somali Clans of the Jijiga area of Ethiopia". Meat and Livestock Board, Addis Ababa, p. 90.
For a discussion of this phenomenon see Markakis, J. 1987: National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa. Cambridge University Press.
TABLES AND MAP
Table I. Somalia: Export of livestock
Type.......................................1950......1959.......1963.......1972
Sheep & Goats (in thousands)121......455.........829.........1,636
Camels (head)........................174....... 3,613......15,302....21,954
Cattle (in thousands)..............2.7.........14.2........40...........81.3
Source: Swift J. "The Development of Livestock Trading in a Nomad Pastoralist Society", in Equipe Ecologie et Anthropologie des Societes Pastorales, Pastoral Production and Society (Cambridge University Press, 1979) p. 452. |
