Ethiopia–Somalia border

Drawn by others

Britain took the northern Somali coast as a protectorate from 1884, while Italy claimed the Indian Ocean coast from 1889. Italy also claimed, under the Treaty of Wichale, to act for Ethiopia abroad, and in that role agreed a line with Britain in 1894 separating Ethiopia from British Somaliland. After fighting at Adwa in 1896 checked Italy’s advance, a peace treaty annulled Wichale, and in 1897 Britain agreed directly with Ethiopia to a line that left most of the Haud, a wet-season grazing plain, in Ethiopia, while guaranteeing herders the right to cross for grazing.^[1]

With Italy, the line was never pinned down. On 24 June 1897 Emperor Menelik drew a boundary on a map for an Italian envoy, and Italy accepted it by telegram, but no official texts were exchanged and the map has never been found. The two sides turned out to read it differently, leaving a large triangle of doubtful sovereignty. A 1908 convention set the line between Dolo and the Shebelle by tribal territories, but left the northern part as unclear as before.^[1]

“official texts of the delimitation were never exchanged, and copies of the map cannot be found”^[1]

A provisional line

Italy occupied Ethiopia in 1935–36 and joined the Ogaden to its Somali province. After British forces took over in 1941, the Ogaden was run from Mogadishu; when Britain withdrew in 1948, it left a provisional boundary that was “without prejudice” to the real frontier. Ethiopia and Italy, which ran Somalia as a UN trust territory, failed to agree a line in talks from 1955; an arbitration tribunal was appointed in 1958, but an adviser named in 1959 to settle its terms of reference failed to find agreement.^[1]

In December 1959 both sides agreed that the provisional line would stand until a final settlement. After independence on 1 July 1960, Somalia refused to recognise the 1897 Anglo-Ethiopian line and gave only de facto recognition to all its borders with Ethiopia. The US Geographer advised mapmakers to draw the sector from Dolo to 8° N, 48° E with a different symbol from an international boundary.^[1]

The Ogaden war

In the summer of 1977 Somalia, under Mohammed Siad Barre, invaded Ethiopia hoping to conquer the Ogaden, a region populated by ethnic Somalis. Somali forces at first advanced towards the region’s main Ethiopian cities, but that autumn a massive Soviet airlift of advisers and supplies, and Cuban troops, turned the tide for Ethiopia, which the Soviet Union had chosen to back over its former ally Somalia.^[2]