Almost simultaneously, clashes have resumed between the Ethiopian army and Tigray forces in the country’s north, following the stalling of the peace process and amid warnings of famine in Tigray after a devastating war that formally ended in 2022 but claimed the lives of nearly one million people. These parallel developments point to a fragile center struggling to contain multiple, interconnected crises.
Ogaden constitutes roughly one-third of Ethiopia’s territory and is inhabited predominantly by ethnic Somalis. Ethiopia occupied the region with British assistance in 1954, a move that later helped spark a brutal war with Somalia in the 1970s. Addis Ababa has consistently insisted that Ogaden is an integral part of Ethiopian territory, while Somali forces and political actors continue to regard it as occupied land.
Days ago, the Somali Popular Alliance issued a statement titled “The End of Restraint,” declaring what it described as the close of an era of futile negotiations with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
Prominent figures, including King Fawzi Diriyah Al-Warfawi, called for international recognition of the Kingdom of Western Somalia as an expression of the right to self-determination, invoking Article 39 of the Ethiopian constitution, which affirms the right of nations, nationalities, and peoples to determine their own destiny.
Many political actors in the region argue that Article 39 offers a peaceful constitutional exit from entrenched ethnic and national conflicts, and thus provides a legitimate basis for secession from Ethiopia’s federal system. From their perspective, separation is not rebellion but a lawful mechanism to address historic grievances and to redefine the relationship between the center and the peripheries.
They contend that the initiative to establish a “Kingdom of Western Somalia” in Ogaden enjoys broad popular support, claiming that symbolic steps such as signing an “independence document” and proclaiming King Fawzi Diriyah have been welcomed by around 90 percent of the region’s population. On this basis, they have urged the international community to form a supervisory commission to oversee the implementation of Article 39, as a means of ending seven decades of internal conflict in Ethiopia.
The most consequential implication of this declaration is that it paves the way for the revival of armed struggle by the Ogaden Liberation Front after years of relative calm, at a moment when Ethiopia’s federal army is already engaged in violent confrontations with separatist forces in Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and Benishangul-Gumuz. Each of these regions harbours strong currents demanding independence. The cumulative effect evokes the specter of a “Yugoslav scenario” unfolding inside Ethiopia and threatens to plunge the Horn of Africa into a dark and prolonged tunnel of fragmentation.
Ogaden’s wound has never healed since its incorporation into Ethiopia. The region is rich in oil, gas, and gold, yet its people endure chronic marginalization and systematic repression at the hands of the central authorities. This contradiction—abundance beneath the ground and deprivation above it—has turned Ogaden into a theatre of recurring abuses and violent reactions. When political channels are sealed, rifles inevitably speak. The people of Ogaden insist that no exploitation of their natural wealth should take place before the political and legal dispute over the region’s status and the rights of its inhabitants is resolved.
Here, Ogaden becomes the embodiment of an old proverb: whoever cooks poison must eventually taste it. Last year, Addis Ababa signed an agreement with Somaliland granting Ethiopia access to a port and a naval base in exchange for recognizing Somaliland’s secession from Somalia. Ethiopia did not object when Israel followed the same path. Tel Aviv and Addis Ababa have long acted as partners in fueling instability in both the Middle East and the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia would have been far wiser to uphold Somalia’s sovereignty, particularly since it itself sits atop a volcano of potential secessions. What Addis Ababa has sown by endorsing Somaliland’s separation—or by backing Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces against the Sudanese army—it is now reaping in Ogaden, Tigray, and beyond.
Ethiopian policymaking has habitually sought short-term gains from regional crises without reckoning with their long-term consequences. Abiy Ahmed has attempted tactical maneuvering, meeting with the presidents of Djibouti and Somalia to cool certain fronts while concentrating on Tigray, Eritrea, and Sudan. Yet the question of self-determination in Ogaden—and in Tigray—will ultimately shape the future of the Horn of Africa’s tangled landscape. Ethiopian ambitions, pursued in this manner, only prepare the ground for renewed civil wars, conflicts over water and ports, and the further rise of armed groups.
Unsurprisingly, Ethiopia’s neighbours view any talk of border revision with deep apprehension, just as they reject the exploitation of Ogaden’s resources before the issue of self-determination is settled. The Ogaden question is no longer merely an Ethiopian problem or a Somali cause; it has become a key to regional stability. The Horn of Africa is undergoing a broad reconfiguration of its security, political, and economic alliances. Amid these shifting equations, the greatest stake lies in pursuing peaceful solutions—through dialogue or legal frameworks—that spare the region another spiral of escalation.
The deeper dilemma is that since the eruption of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam crisis with Egypt and Sudan, Ethiopia has increasingly denied the validity of “inherited treaties” from the colonial era that define its borders with neighbours or regulate the flow of rivers from the Ethiopian highlands. The 1902 agreement, for example, bars Ethiopia from constructing projects that obstruct the Blue Nile’s flow to Sudan and Egypt in exchange for incorporating the Sudanese-Egyptian territory of Benishangul into Ethiopia. Today, Addis Ababa rejects such agreements, builds dams on the Nile, and simultaneously retains Benishangul instead of returning it to Sudan, despite local demands for separation. Benishangul is not alone: Tigray, Amhara, Oromia, and now Ogaden all testify to how Ethiopian policies are opening the door to centrifugal movements that could trigger a chain reaction of internal disintegration.
The solution, unmistakably, is neither repression nor endless crisis management. It begins with recognition, followed by the free choice of Ethiopia’s peoples in accordance with Article 39. No geopolitical transformation in the Horn of Africa can be sustainable without consensus. Nor can the unity of Somalia, Eritrea, or Sudan—or the security of Nile waters—be sacrificed at the expense of historical rights. Ethiopia must return to reason before it is finally forced to swallow the poison it has cooked.
*The writer is the General Managing Editor of Al-Ahram daily.
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