ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s three competing nationalisms have contested in the OromoSomali borderlands of southern Ethiopia. From the 1960s, Somali nationalism was
established around the idea of a ‘‘Greater Somalia’’, ‘‘a political and symbolic
construction’’1 aimed at unifying all Somali-inhabited territories of Northeast Africa
into one Somali national state.2 This Somali irredentism ‘‘celebrates cultural
particularities’’:3 cultural markers are considered more important features of the
Somali nation than are territorial borders. This challenged the Ethiopian defence of
the sovereignty of the old colonial borders of the region, and led inevitably to
conflict. While Somalia and Ethiopia clashed over their definitions of the nation,
Oromo nationalism emerged from within Ethiopia with a third concept of the nation
and its sovereignty, born out of resistance to Amhara domination.4 In 1973, the
Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) was founded, and it began a campaign of guerrilla
warfare in 1976 in the Charchar Mountains, eastern Ethiopia, in an area not far from
the OromoSomali borderlands.5 The OLF demanded the creation of an independent Republic of Oromia, comprising territory already claimed by both Ethiopia and
Somalia. Like Somali nationalism, Oromo nationalism celebrated cultural features,
while rejecting existing territorial boundaries. The emergence of OLF as a political actor, with a newly imagined map, therefore
collided with both the Ethiopian and the Somali nationalists in the 1970s. These
three nationalist bodies claimed overlapping territory around the OromoSomali borderlands, their struggles even transcending the international border into the
Somali and Oromo inhabited areas of northern Kenya (see Figure 1). While the
Somali and Oromo nationalists set out political programmes that aimed at
‘‘liberating their nations from the Ethiopian conquest’’, they also developed a
deep-rooted mistrust of one another. Sharing a definition of nationalism that
emphasized cultural factors, they nonetheless competed over the same territorial
claims, irrespective of ethnic boundaries.6 This ambiguity is exemplified by the
Djibouti E T H I O P I A
Addis Ababa Harar Jijiga'
Arss i Ogaadeen
Nagelle Marrehan Digodia
S O M A L I A
K E N Y A N
Somali proverb, ‘‘Wherever the camel goes, that is Somalia’’. This proverb was used
rhetorically by the Republic of Somalia to encompass its direct claim to huge swathes
of territory occupied by Oromo herders.
