ABSTRACT
Introduction The Horn of Africa has been a meeting place of peoples and cultures since time immemorial, and as such the scene of continuing processes both of conflict and of assimilation. The two currently most salient conflicts in the area, the Eritrean problem and the Somali dispute, can as a result be understood only as parts of a pattern of interrelationships which are far more extensive both in space and time than the present conflicts themselves. These involve tensions within and between ethnic, religious and national groups, and they draw both on ancient rivalries and on competition for the control of modern political, economic and strategic resources. In this paper, I shall try to disentangle and relate the different elements involved, placing primary emphasis on the dynamics of group interaction in the area, and showing how these have been affected by the super-imposition first of local state structures and then of wider international rivalries.
