Aware (woreda)

Aware (Somali: Awaare) is one of the woredas in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Part of the Degehabur Zone, Aware is bordered on the south by Gunagadow, on the west by Degehabur, on the north by the Jijiga Zone, on the northeast by Somalia, and on the east by Misraq Gashamo. Towns in Aware include Aware, Daroor, Kam Aboker, and Rabaso. Gunagadow woreda was separated from Aware.

As part of the Haud, the lands in Aware are dry pasturage, which traditionally were abandoned by the local nomadic pastoralists for areas with abundant water (like Aynabo, Burco and Odweyne in Somaliland, or outside the Haud in Danot woreda with its wells) with the advent of the dry season. However, the construction of private birkas (underground concrete water tanks), a development which started in the 1950s and later on dramatically increased after the 1970s, offered a solution to the absence of permanent water. While this encouraged birka owners to further diversify traditional animal husbandry beyond camels and small ruminants into water-dependent cattle, this also increased livestock population in an overpopulated region, putting additional pressure on shrinking resource base; the vicinity of almost every settlement in Aware have become overgrazed by cattle belonging to the villagers, thus driving away ideal nomads raising camels and small ruminants in the eternal search for pasture and water.

As part of their response to the local insurgency, the Ethiopian army enforced a trade embargo on part of the Somali Region which includes Aware. In early June 2007, a truck transporting goods (sugar, oil, and other food items) from Hargeysa was stopped by a military patrol 12 kilometers from Aware town, near the village of Dud Adaad. The patrol accused the truck's owner of delivering food to the Ogaden National Liberation Front, and confiscated his truck. In mid-September of the same year, three more commercial trucks traveling from Hargeysa to Aware were stopped and confiscated by the army at Bukudhaba village.

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