Guns are silent, but war lingers for Ogaden’s former women rebel fighters

Rebels from Ethiopia’s Somali region have had a rocky transition to civilian life, even years after the 2018 peace deal.

Mogadishu, Somalia – Hinda Aden and her fellow rebel fighters were trekking through the grasslands of Ethiopia’s Ogaden region under the cover of night, to avoid the enemy’s gaze, when they saw headlights approaching in the distance.

“We knew who it was – that’s when we started running,” Hinda says about that fateful August 2006 night – the first time she found herself on the front lines of a decades-long war that had raged in Ethiopia’s far east.

With each step, the then-22-year-old ventured deeper into the bush, as Ethiopian military vehicles pursued her team of Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels through the dark.

The ONLF, which formed in 1984, was a social and political movement that transitioned into an armed group in the 1990s, as it battled against the Ethiopian army with the goal of achieving self-determination for ethnic Somalis living in Ogaden.

Hinda joined the rebellion in 2002 at age 18. Four years later she was pushing through the grassland, gun in hand, while the Ethiopian army pursued the ONLF by land and air.