Ogaden (clan)

Somali clan
the ethnic group

The Ogaden (, أوغادين) is one of the major Somali clans.

Members of the Ogaden clan primarily live in the central Ogaden plateau of Ethiopia (Somali Region), the North Eastern Province of Kenya, and the Jubaland region of Southern Somalia. According to Human Rights Watch in 2008, the Ogaden is the largest Darod clan in Ethiopia's Somali Region, and may account for 40 to 50 percent of the Somali population in Ethiopia. The Ogaden clan "constitutes the backbone of the ONLF". In particular, the ONLF operates in Ogaden areas.

The Ogaden were the principal force behind a series of Somali expansions that led to expulsion of the Wardey clan from west of the Jubba river and displacing Borana in parts of the North Eastern Province in the 19th century. Frank Linsly James, one of the first Europeans to travel deep into Ogaden territory while being accompanied by Lord Philips and armed with Martini Enfield rifles, describes his first encounter with Ogadens in 1884. After marching for six hours, we were joined by two Ogadayn natives, who said they would show us the wells, which were close at hand. They pointed to our guns and asked their use. When we said, "for killing men and beasts," they laughed, and replied " they would be no use against sticks, let alone swords and spears." A Hornbill was sitting on a tree listening to this conversation, and echoed the natives' laugh with an assenting croak of scorn. Lord Phillips raised his despised firearm, and down fell the lifeless hornbill. Down, too, fell the Ogadayn natives, and remained for some time with their faces pressed against the ground, invoking the protection of the great Allah.

The Huwan era constitutes the period of the Scramble for Africa when the Ogaden area and people (also known as kilinka shanaad or Somali Galbeed) were known as the Huwan. The easternmost parts of the Huwan had negligible to no influence by emperor Menelik II's or by Zewditu, depending on time period. Somali literature also refers to the territory subjected to Abyssinian expansionism, i. e. the Ogaden, contemporaneously and traditionally known as the Huwan:

In the subsequent period, during and after the second World War, the area of the Huwan region began to be referred to as Ogaden by the British, or simply British Ogaden in the aftermath of the East African Campaign in 1941.