Ogaden is one of the historical names given to the modern Somali Region,the territory comprising the eastern portion of Ethiopia formerly part of the Hararghe province. The other two names are the Haud and Reserved area.
The Western Somali Liberation Front was a separatist rebel group fighting in eastern Ethiopia to liberate the Somali region from Ethiopian control and rejoin Somalia. It played a major role in the Ogaden War of 1977-78 assisting the invading Somali Army.
The Ogaden War, or the Ethio-Somali War,was a military conflict fought between Somalia and Ethiopia from July 1977 to March 1978 over the Ethiopian region of Ogaden. Somalia's invasion of the region,precursor to the wider war,met with the Soviet Union's disapproval,leading the superpower to end its support of Somalia and support Ethiopia instead.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front is a social and political movement,founded in 1984 to campaign for the right to self-determination for Somalis in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Its armed wing,the Ogaden National Liberation Army (ONLA),waged a violent insurgency against the Ethiopian government from 1994 to 2018.
Lieutenant General Mohamed Ali Samatar.. Was a Somali National hero,Revolutionary,Military commander,Communist,politician,a former Commander-in-chief of the Somali National Army,former Minister of defense,former Vice president and a former Prime minister. He's the only officer who have ever reached the rank of Lieutenant general in the history of the Somali Armed Forces.
The Ethiopian Civil War was a civil war in Ethiopia and present-day Eritrea,fought between the Ethiopian military junta known as the Derg and Ethiopian-Eritrean anti-government rebels from 12 September 1974 to 28 May 1991.
Conflicts in the Horn of Africa have been occurring since the 17th century BCE. The Horn of Africa includes the nations of Djibouti,Eritrea,Ethiopia,and Somalia and the de facto independent nation of Somaliland.
The Somali Rebellion was the beginning of the civil war in Somalia that occurred in the 1980s and early 1990s. The rebellion started in 1978 when President Siad Barre began using his special forces,the "Red Berets",to attack clan-based dissident groups opposed to his regime. The dissidents had been becoming more powerful for nearly a decade following his abrupt switch of allegiance from the Soviet Union to the United States and the disastrous 1977-78 Ogaden War.
The raid on Abole oil exploration facility occurred in the early morning of April 24,2007,when gunmen of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) attacked the oil exploration facility of Zhongyuan Petroleum Exploration Bureau (ZPEB),a subsidiary of the China Petroleum &Chemical Corporation (Sinopec),in the town of Abole,30 km (19 mi) northwest of Degehabur,in the Somali Region of Ethiopia.
The Ogaden Basin is an area of Huwan that may hold significant reserves of crude oil and natural gas. The basin covers an area of some 350,000 square kilometres and is formed from sedimentary rocks up to 10,000 meters thick. It has geological similarities to other hydrocarbon-rich basins in the Middle East.
The 2007–2008 Ethiopian crackdown in Ogaden was a military campaign by the Ethiopian Army against the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). The crackdown against the guerrillas began after they killed 74 people in an attack on a Chinese-run oil exploration field in April 2007.
The Insurgency in Ogaden was an armed conflict that took place from 1994 to 2018. It was fought by separatists,the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF),against the Ethiopian government. The war began in 1994,when the ONLF tried to separate Ethiopia's Somali Region from Ethiopia. It ended in a peace agreement as part of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed's reforms.
Admiral Mohamed Omar Osman is a Somali admiral,war hero and the incumbent chairman of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF).
The military history of Somalia encompasses the major conventional wars,conflicts and skirmishes involving the historic empires,kingdoms and sultanates in the territory of present-day Somalia,through to modern times. It also covers the martial traditions,military architecture and hardware employed by Somali armies and their opponents.
The First Battle of Jijiga was part of the 1977 Somali invasion phase of the Ogaden War. For several weeks during August to September,Jijiga would become the site one of the war's largest battles.
Sheikh Mohamed Hikam Sheikh Abdirahman was an ethnic Somali Islamic scholar originating from the Somali region of Ethiopia. He was born around the 1920s in the district of Babile,which is around 76km east of the historical city of Harar. He was an Islamic scholar,community elder,reformer,poet,freedom fighter and formidable peace negotiator in the clan-dominated,lawless Somali region in the 1960s. He studied Islamic religion with a famous sheikh called Sheikh Abdiweli Gurgure at Belbeleyti area of Oromia region in the 1940s-50s.
Abdirahman Mahdi is one of the founders of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF),a political movement determined to allow the people of Ogaden to exercise their right to self-determination in the Horn of Africa and its current Chairman since November 12,2019. The ONLF is considered a terrorist organisation by the government of Ethiopia.
The Somali invasion of Ogadentook place in July 1977 when the Somali Army attacked in two formations. The main force had the aim of seizing Jijiga,Harar and Dire Dawa while a secondary force assaulted Dolo,Gode and Imi.
The 1995 Ethiopian Federal Constitution formalizes an ethnic federalism law aimed at undermining long-standing ethnic imperial rule,reducing ethnic tensions,promoting regional autonomy,and upholding unqualified rights to self-determination and secession in a state with more than 80 different ethnic groups. But the constitution is divisive,both among Ethiopian nationalists who believe it undermines centralized authority and fuels interethnic conflict,and among ethnic federalists who fear that the development of its vague components could lead to authoritarian centralization or even the maintenance of minority ethnic hegemony. Parliamentary elections since 1995 have taken place every five years since enactment. All but one of these have resulted in government by members of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) political coalition,under three prime ministers. The EPRDF was under the effective control of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF),which represents a small ethnic minority. In 2019 the EPRDF,under Abiy,was dissolved and he inaugurated the pan-ethnic Prosperity Party which won the 2021 Ethiopian Election,returning him as prime minister. But both political entities were different kinds of responses to the ongoing tension between constitutional ethnic federalism and the Ethiopian state's authority. Over the same period,and all administrations,a range of major conflicts with ethnic roots have occurred or continued,and the press and availability of information have been controlled. There has also been dramatic economic growth and liberalization,which has itself been attributed to,and used to justify,authoritarian state policy.
The following events detail foreign affairs dominated by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi from his presidency until his death in 2012.
