Mohamed Mohamud Abdi’s “A History of the Ogaden (Western Somali) Struggle for Self-Determination” examines the history of the Somali people’s struggle for self-determination from Ethiopia and the reunification of all Somali lands (Kenya’s NFD, Ethiopia’s Ogaden, Djibouti, and Somalia).
Abdi, an economist by training and a refugee from the Ogaden, starts by providing a historical overview of the colonization and partition of Somali inhabited lands, from the Adal Sultanate’s struggle with the Ethiopia in the 14-15th centuries, the Scramble for Africa and Menelik II’s alliance with European colonialists, to post-WWII decolonization.
The rest of the book is mostly a history of the various liberation movements based in the Ogaden (the Western Somali Liberation Front, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, Al-Itihaad, etc.) combined with extremely weak and highly dubious political and legal analyses.
T. J. Petrowski 