<bold>Bloodshed at Galalu</bold> 23 March 2002: Dawn came that day to find a group of about thirty Afar warriors lying in ambush alongside the road to Djibouti. Newly re-surfaced, Ethiopia's sole link to the sea cuts a straight dark line through the desiccated Alligedhi plain. No vehicles were on the road at...

Nearly twenty years ago, the editorial of ROAPE's first special issue (No. 30, 1984) on the Horn of Africa opened with the sombre comment: ‘Manifold, violent social conflict is the hallmark of contemporary history in the Horn of Africa.’ Civil wars were raging then in Sudan, Ethiopia and...