The paper examines the changing shapes of territories in the Horn of Africa and the discourses which legitimise these different shapes. It starts with the ‘Horn’ itself, the different ways to delineate it, and the interests behind these. Then Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, and the de facto independent Somaliland are discussed and their justifications for being examined. These justifications are found not to follow the same pattern. The criteria for inclusion or exclusion of populations or territories differ and form a rich reservoir for future conflict. On a lower level, that of regional states comprised in a major unit, the Oromo of Ethiopia, the largest ethnic group in the Horn of Africa, are discussed in some detail. Accounts about how the Oromo have come to be and who is to be regarded as an Oromo are found to be mutually conflicting. In the last part, international and transnational relations in the Horn of Africa are looked at. Major groupings cross-cutting state boundaries are formed by states forming alliances with ethnic movements, opposition forces or warlords in neighbouring states or ex-states, against other states or spheres of power. Publicity of such alliances is kept low and few efforts seem to be made to give them an ideological basis or historical justifications. The logic followed in these cases seems to be simply that the enemy of an enemy is a potential friend.

This article examines the problematic relationship between Eritrea and Tigray as represented by the Eritrean and Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Fronts. The EPLF won independence for Eritrea in 1991, at the same time as the TPLF seized power in Ethiopia; the two movements had had a difficult relationship, beginning in the mid-1970s, during their respective armed struggles, and the issues which had caused disagreement remained unresolved as the movements made the transition to government. This paper examines the nature of those issues and the degree to which the war of 1998-2000 between the two countries can be seen to have reflected much older tensions and indeed contradictions in the Eritrean–Tigrayan/Ethiopian relationship. Thus, the paper begins with an overview of Eritrean opinion, during the recent war, about the relationship in question, and then moves back in time to the era of the liberation struggle. Here, the author attempts to explain the complexities of the respective Eritrean and Tigrayan revolutions insofar as each impinged on and influenced the other, with particular reference to the issues of frontiers, nationality and ethnicity, and sovereignty. The paper, finally, considers the apparent paradoxes in the perceptions which Eritreans have of Tigray and Ethiopia, and suggests that changes in attitude are necessary on both sides of the Mereb river border if the relationship is not to be defined by perpetual confrontation.

This article deals with the interrelationship of ethnic and national processes in a rural district in Wollega at the time of the Ethiopian revolution of 1974. It describes how the state policy of ‘official nationalism’ and Amharisation on the one hand, and the policy of land confiscation and land grants on the other, affected two different categories of Oromo: the small, educated elite, and the peasants. The government promoted Amharic as the language of state, whilst the Oromo language was banned from public contexts and not allowed in print. The government feared popular involvement in politics, and all political parties and organisations were banned. University students voiced demands for modernisation and land reform whilst the war in Eritrea raised the ‘question of nationalities’, but there was not yet any Oromo nationalist claim for statehood. Among the farmers, opposition to the state centred on land tenure and taxes and on the abuse of authority by the government. Most Oromo-speaking regions had been conquered and incorporated into the empire in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Land was confiscated and granted to warlords, or to local leaders who collaborated with the emperor. The original inhabitants became tribute-paying tenants under the new lords. As most landlords were immigrants to the area, ethnicity was an obvious aspect of property relations. In Wollega, however, local Oromo who had collaborated with the emperor were in control of much of the land and both landlords and share-croppers were Macha Oromo. They shared basic value-orientations by which performance is judged. Memories of the moral economy of an earlier time provided an alternative to the existing situation. Reference to history implied an active selection of elements in the formulation of a critical discourse on power and property that addressed the basic opposition between society and state. The last part of the article describes how educated and farmers met in a political meeting that was organised by the local authorities in 1976 to celebrate the revolution and its land reform. The occasion turned into an intense celebration of local values and, at least to some of the participants, this was a moment of new ethnic awareness and a call to revive gada, the Oromo ritual system. Threatened by ethnic identification, the state responded with brutal repression, and several people were murdered. Shortly after, some activists joined the Oromo Liberation Front to wage guerrilla war against the state.

The article brings together archival material, past ethnography, and memory on the one hand, and up-to-date eye-witness and newspaper reports on the other, to set current traumatic events in the very long view. The presentism of contemporary developmental and research approaches has precluded such perspectives. Thus the current disarmament programme being forced on the Karamojong of north-east Uganda by the Uganda People's Defence Force is no more unprecedented than the armed conflicts it is intended to resolve. The advent of colonial administration and memories of it are examined to illuminate the constraints of the present exercise. Events are not occurring solely in a local context, still less just on the national scene, but in the global context directed by world power. Thus the significance of cattle-raiding, the nature of which has not been drastically changed by firearms, has been exaggerated as part of a threat to world peace that must be tackled by international action. This has provided the rationale for repeating the brutality of the small wars of imperialism on a larger scale and with less prospect of an ensuing peace. The article proposes a rediscovery of African agency in Karamojong religious ceremonies that are not controlled by world orders.

As I write, the United States and the United Kingdom have begun their invasion of Iraq. Thus, the most developed forms of violence are being brought into relationship with some of the world's most complexly layered local identitites—all on global television. The unpredictability of this situation points, I believe, to one of the more profound aspects of the post-Cold War order.