Insecurity among the nations of the Horn of Africa is often concentrated in the nomadic pastoralist areas. Why? Is the pastoralist economy, which revolves around livestock, raiding and counter-raiding to blame for the violence? Why are rebel movements in the Horn, such the Lord‟ s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) in Ethiopia, several warlords in Somalia, etc, situated in nomadic pastoralist areas? Is the nomadic lifestyle to blame for lack of commitment to the ideals of any one nation? Why have the countries in the Horn failed to absorb and incorporate nomadic pastoralists in their structures and institutions, forty years after independence? Utilizing a political economy approach, this article seeks to answer these questions, and more.

This article is both a historical and philosophical interrogation of questions of nationhood and nationalism vis-à-vis the transient or mobile nature that these nomadic pastoralist “nations” apparently represent. It scrutinizes the absence of physical and emotional belonging and attachment that is often displayed by these peoples through their actions, often seen as unpatriotic, such as raiding, banditry, rustling and killing for cattle. The article assesses the place of transient and migratory ethnic groups in the nation-state, especially their lack of fixed abodes in any one nation-state and how this plays out in the countries of the region. I pay special attention to cross-border migratory ethnic groups that inhabit the semi-desert areas of the Sudan-Kenya-Ethiopia-Somalia borderlines as case studies.