Ogaden, arid region of eastern Ethiopia. It occupies the barren plain between the Somalia-Ethiopia border and the Ethiopian Eastern Highlands (on which Harer and Dire Dawa are situated). The major river of the region is the Shebeli, fed by ephemeral streams. At the southwestern edge of the Ogaden are the headwaters of the Genale (Jubba) River.
The region is sparsely populated with Somali-speaking nomadic pastoralists. Their ancestors migrated there in the 16th century, displacing the Oromo (Galla) who previously lived there. The Ogaden has no large towns.
In the late 19th century the Ogaden was claimed by both Ethiopia and the Italian protectorate of Somaliland. The Ethiopian emperor Menilek II, having defeated the Italians at the Battle of Adwa in the north in 1896, forestalled them in the east by occupying the Ogaden with his army. Disagreement about the boundary remained, however. Italy occupied the Welwel (Walwal) oasis in the early 1930s and launched a full-scale invasion of the Ogaden from Somaliland in 1935. The next year Ethiopia, including the Ogaden, was proclaimed part of Italian East Africa. Although Ethiopia was liberated by Free French and British forces in 1941, the Ogaden remained under British administration until 1948.
Border conflict and internal unrest in the Ogaden resumed after Somalia became independent in 1960. The Western Somalia Liberation Front, spurred by Muktal Dahir, used guerrilla tactics to resist Ethiopian rule. The army of Somalia invaded and occupied the region in the second half of 1977, with encouragement from some of the indigenous Somali population. In February and March 1978 Ethiopia, helped by Cuba and the Soviet Union, drove the Somali army out and proceeded to bomb and strafe Ogaden villages as reprisal for their complicity in the invasion. Villagers fled, and by the early 1980s the number of refugees in Somalia from the Ogaden exceeded 1,500,000, most of them women and children. The region witnessed periodic unrest throughout the 1980s and ’90s, and the issue of effective control over the Ogaden remains unresolved.