The wave of decolonisation that swept throughout the African continent in the 1960s was characterised by both optimism and tumult. Former colonies attained independence, and newly liberated states hoped to regain territories that had historically been a part of their nation. A prominent example is the division of Somalia by the European colonisers into Italian Somaliland, British Somaliland, French Somaliland, the Northern Frontier District (NFD) in Kenya, and Ogaden in Ethiopia. Somalia's claim to the Ogaden region, a Somali-inhabited region ruled by Ethiopia, was particularly contentious. The notion to retake the Ogaden region was rooted in the Greater Somalia project that would unite all ethnically Somali peoples across the East and Horn of Africa (Sheik-Abdi, 1977).