Badhan

History

Prior to the colonial period, the Badhan area was part of the Warsangali Sultanate in eastern Sanaag. During the Dervish movement in the 1910s, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan's forces established a military fort in Badhan. In 1933, a severe drought led the British protectorate administration to open a relief camp in Badhan, which housed between 2,500 and 3,000 people. Following Somali independence in 1960, Badhan was administered as an inland township of eastern Sanaag. In the 1970s, heavy rains caused severe flooding in the interior, prompting the government of Siad Barre to relocate the population of Xubeera to Badhan. The 1974–1975 Abaartii Dabadheer drought also affected northern Somalia, leading to relief operations and population movements across Sanaag’s pastoral zones around Badhan. Through the 1980s, while conflict intensified elsewhere, districts inhabited by the Warsangeli in and around Badhan remained largely free from fighting up to the collapse of the central government in 1991. After the Republic of Somaliland's 1991 declaration of independence, authority in the far east of the claimed territory remained uneven. Through most of the 1990s, the Somaliland administration largely left the Dhulbahante and Warsangali areas of Sool and eastern Sanaag to local customary leadership and arrangements around Badhan. Peace conferences during 1990–1997 stabilized much of Somaliland, but eastern Sanaag remained only partially integrated into Hargeisa's structures. In the wider north-east, Harti–Darod constituencies, including the Warsangali around Badhan, participated in the process that led to the founding of the Puntland State in 1998, which developed from clan conferences and security coordination among Majeerteen, Dhulbahante and Warsangali leaders. Following…