Moyale is a vibrant cross-border town straddling the Kenya–Ethiopia border, with one side in northern Kenya’s Marsabit County and the other in Ethiopia’s Oromia Region. Moyale serves as an important commercial gateway and hub for cross-border trade, bringing together diverse cultures, languages, and communities from both countries. Moyale, Ethiopia is again at war with itself, and the usual description, a clash between the Borana and Garre pastoralist communities, hides more than it explains. The Borana are one of Ethiopia’s Oromo groups, and the Garre are one of Ethiopia’s Somali clans. Scholars of this frontier increasingly argue that the conflict is made by states, colonial borders and ethnic federalism.
The latest spark was a flag. When a Somali Region office opened and raised its flag on October 18, 2026, in Moyale’s Borana zone of Oromia, a 13-year-old ethnic Oromo girl named Diiqo Jaatani Aaga was killed. Some claimed she was killed in crossfire, while the Oromo side maintained that she was killed after she attempted to remove the hoisted flag. By October 22, the fighting had spread across seven districts, humanitarian officials counted more than a dozen dead, and nearly 50,000 had fled to Kenya.
The roots of the conflict lie deeper. Guyo Doyo Guyo, an Oromia government adviser, traces them to colonial border-setting that fragmented communities, and argues that ethnic federalism carried this legacy forward without resolving earlier conflicts. Scholar Asnake Kefale adds that after 1991, federalism forced groups straddling the Oromo and Somali categories to renegotiate their identity thus hardening rivalries.
The Oromia position, widely held, is that Moyale was Oromo Borana land before Ethiopia’s 2004 Referendum, which intended to resolve territorial disputes between Oromia and Somali regional states. The best evidence supports a documented Borana connection to the district, though not to the town alone. The tulaa wells, which research dates to at least five centuries, are the strongest material evidence of a Borana presence in the nearby Dirree and Liiban districts. Two of the nine wells, Eel Goof and Eel Lei, lie in kebeles (neighborhoods) that were annexed to the Somali Region (formerly Region 5) in the 1990s, after Borana were displaced from them. This dating rests on several oral history and climate corroboration rather than just hearsays, and this clearly shows Borana ownership and management of the wells before the final displacement of Borana communities.
After Ethiopia’s Derg regime fell in 1991, UNHCR-assisted returnees were settled across the district. Between December 1992 and July 1993, about 44,294 people from a camp population that included Borana, Garre, and Gabra peoples, were repatriated from Kenya’s Walda camp to places including Eel Goof and Eel Lei localities in Ethiopia. A plan to settle Garre refugees from Banissa camp, which targeted Chilanko water point, Eel Deer water point, Hudet district, and Waacille district in Ethiopia, was blocked by Borana pastoralists in 1993. Moyale district’s ‘returnees’ exceeded the residents by about 280%, and scholar Marco Bassi concludes many ‘returnees‘ were not originally from the district, since registration relied on self-declared identity. Scholars Boco Tache and Gufu Oba also conclude that this resettlement displaced the Borana from some areas initially theirs.
Scholar Kalemework Reda finds that sources of the conflict include drought, depleted rangelands, and eroding customary institutions. Scholar Katrin Sowa presents a new development: the Lamu Port and Lamu–Southern Sudan–Ethiopia Transport Corridor (LAPSSET) promises a trade hub, yet Moyale’s history, economic rivalries, and boundary dispute make it a dangerous setting, and locals often prefer smuggling routes. Oromia’s leaders call Moyale the gateway between the Horn of Africa and East Africa, so control of its administration is control of a prize. That is why a flag in one neighbourhood reads as a claim on the whole corridor, and why Somali Region’s 2025 restructuring drew protest from Oromo parties.
The cycle of this conflict is old: about 300 killed in 2008, 18 killed and 20,000 fleeing in 2012, and about 20 killed in December 2018. Each round ended through either exhaustion or troop deployment, never a binding settlement.
Building Peace in This Context
The first step to building lasting peace is for politicians to stop making incendiary remarks. Some have made emotional statements. Kenya’s Dadaab MP Farah Maalim condemned alleged Oromo expansion and urged Somalis to defend their land, while Senator Ali Roba posted that Moyale belongs to his Somali kin, not to expansionist ambitions.
Others have spoken for calm. Moyale MP Professor Guyo Waqo Jaldesa replied that the Ethiopian conflict should not be brought to Kenya, and Kenya’s Saku MP Col. (Rtd) Dido Ali Rasso called Maalim’s remarks reckless and likely to spill the conflict over. Marsabit Governor H.E. Mohamud Ali also urged leaders to stop dangerous, reckless and inflammatory remarks and called for an end to hostilities and a dialogue-based resolution. Marsabit women’s representative Hon. Naomi Jillo Waqo and Hon. Halkano Konso, an aspirant for the Moyale parliamentary seat, likewise condemned the remarks by Maalim and Roba and reaffirmed Borana ancestral ties to most of the contested areas around Moyale. Such restraint from leaders on both sides, and a focus on relief for the displaced, is what this border needs most for now.
In order to remedy the situation, neutral federal forces should separate the parties, the flags and new offices which spark these clashes be frozen. An independent investigation into the girl’s death needs to be conducted urgently, since impunity makes retaliation rational. Resettlement of the communities into contested areas should be minimized, and those affected should be compensated. Kenya too must discipline inflammatory rhetoric, including by its own legislators, protect all communities in Mandera, Marsabit and Wajir, and coordinate security with Ethiopia. Last but not the least, the use of the Borana and Garre elders, whose mediation predates modern borders, should be activated once again.
The current crisis must not pass without a lasting, comprehensive solution that resolves the underlying territorial disputes and strengthens cross-border peace. The true test of leadership is not managing recurring crises but confronting their root causes, so that future generations do not inherit the same conflicts.
Moyale’s tragedy is not that two communities cannot live together. These two communities share a language, a religion, and have traded together and intermarried widely. The real tragedy therefore is the fact that governments keep leaving unanswered the fundamental question of whose town this is, while the existence of firearms, porous borders, and federalism supply the answers by default. A child’s death over a flag is the price of that omission.
Keywords: Moyale, Ethiopia, Kenya, shooting, flag, Oromia, Oromo, Garre, Somali, Somali state, peace, conflict, conflict resolution
Bilinga is a Teacher & an Information Management Specialist from the Northern Kenya. He has a Master of Science in Information Science, a bachelor degree in the same field and several other Diploma and Certificates. He received Head of State Commendation and celebrated as one of the National Hero for his exceptional service on National Cohesion and Integration in 2023 and another Presidential Gold Awardin 2007 for his role in Youth & Women Empowerment. He has written and published several Analytical and Topical articles on Pastoralism, Governance, Climate Change, peaceful Coexistence & Gender Equality in different platforms and newspaper such as The Standard, African Arguments,The Star andThe Elephant.
