Peripheral vs. Center-Seeking Nationalisms and Center-Periphery Relations in Ethiopia

Afar, Gambella, Somali, and Benishangul-Gumuz regions constitute a typology within Ethiopia's heterogeneous peripheries. Yet no previous classifications attend to the factors of trans-border existence, ethnic demography, and peripheral ethno-nationalism as criteria. These three factors subject these borderland peripheries in Ethiopia to the encounters with multiple centers. This shapes their national-level political agency in ways that perpetuate their peripherality in post-1991 Ethiopia. The focus of this paper is on one of these factors of being a borderland periphery in Ethiopia: peripheral ethno-nationalism (Somali nationalism) vis-à-vis an inter-center contestation between the post-1991 Ethiopian state center, the TPLF (Tigran People Liberation Front) center, and its Oromo center-seeking nationalist counterpart. A historical-analytical design, qualitative data (collected through one-month-long interviews in Jigjiga town of the Somali region), and historical-interpretive analysis are used. The study finds that previous works on Somali-Oromo relations overlook Somali's peripheral nationalism. This is not only vis-à-vis successive Ethiopian government centers but also with Oromo center-seeking nationalism. This triangular dynamic, the paper shows, shaped the Somali region's entry into a peripherality-perpetuating asymmetrical 'reciprocity' with the TPLF center, the main dispenser behind the post-1991 ethno-federal framework. This 'reciprocity' allowed the pro-regime Somali elite to play a nationally consequential political agency of holding one ‘peripheral' end for the TPLF in its inter-center contestation with its Oromo center-seeking nationalism, while also entrenching a repressive regional despotism in the Somali region.