"The conflict over the status of the Ogaden region in south-eastern Ethiopia has seen the active participation of a number of rebel groups with more or less diverging goals. It has also been closely entangled with the inter-state conflict between Ethiopia and Somalia, which concerned the same territory, to which the latter laid claim. The first rebel group to emerge was the Ogaden Liberation Front in 1963. Over a decade later WSLF (Western Somali Liberation Front) appeared and was subsequently followed by ONLF (Ogaden National Liberation Front) and AIAI (al-Itihad al-Islami: Islamic Union).

Since 2000 ONLF is the only group still pursuing the armed conflict. The low-intensity conflict escalated in 2007 after ONLF attacked a Chinese-run oil field and fighting has remained on a relatively high level ever since. In 2010 divisions within the rebel group surfaced, as a break-away faction under Salahdin Abdulrahman Ma’ow signed a peace agreement with the government in October. In 2012 a process towards the initiation of formal negotiations between the main body of the group and the government was initiated, but soon ran into trouble, and fighting continued on a low-intensity level. "

Source: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (Date of retrieval: 2013-07-27) UCDP Conflict Encyclopedia, Uppsala University