Paper short abstract:

This paper explores Qimant territorial making in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region using empirical and secondary data. It examines how contentious territorial claims, identity, the interplay of various actors, violent conflicts, and the civil war in Northern Ethiopia shaped the Qimant territorial formation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper addresses the Qimant self-determination quest and territorial making within the Amhara region in light of the cascades of contentious politics, the interplay of different actors, and the ensuing conflict with the Amhara from 2009 to 2022. Indeed, assemblages of factors are at play, inter alia, the conflation of ethnicity and territoriality in the FDRE Constitution served as a bedrock in the evolution of ethnic conflicts into territorial boundary making. To capture the case in all of its complexities, this paper situates the Qimant-Amhara conflict in the context of territorialized contention, its interplay with identity and the overarching national political setting. Through drawing empirical data from interviews, focus group discussions, meeting minutes, and documents, the paper argues that a constellation of events of alliance, competition, and violent conflict between the Qimant and Amhara from 2009 to 2021 shaped the Qimant’s territorial making. These phases were shaped by four factors: first, Qimant-Amhara's mutual hostility toward the ruling EPRDF in the early 2010s. Second, the outbreak of the Amhara protests in 2016 that questioned the Qimant territorial claims caused violent conflict. Third, the outbreak of civil war in the North facilitated an alliance between the Qimant and Tigray ethno-nationalists, further exacerbating confrontation of the Qimant and Amhara. Four, the Amhara region's slow response to the quest for self-rule and subsequent measures of granting the establishment of an autonomous Wereda administration consisting of 42 Kebelles in 2015 and later a Special Zone consisting of 69 in 2018 shaped the Qimant territorial making.