9 - Trans-local Dynamics: The Bale Insurgency in the Context of the Horn

Summary

The chapter continues the previous chapter’s discussion of the role of Christianity as part of the national narrative and the Ethiopian state’s expansionism, elucidating how the people in the southeast responded to this. In arguing that this heightened the religious dimension of antagonistic relations, the chapter underscores that acknowledging the religious dimension is imperative for the understanding of conflictual landscapes in the Horn. The chapter analyzes how the physical environment of the lowlanders was crucial for the insurgency, wherein their mobility exposed them to different currents of resistance emerging in the Horn of Africa in the 1960s. It subsequently discusses the content and nature of these currents, focusing in particular on the role of the nascent independent Somali state and Somali insurgencies having direct and indirect impacts on the Bale insurgency. A main argument in the chapter is that while the Bale insurgency and others were not directly controlled by the Somalis, the latter played an important role by presenting themselves as liberators of fellow Muslims groups across the Horn.