The claims made to the contrary by the Ethiopian government and by such distinguished supporters of Ethiopia as Miss Sylvia Pankhurst are generally unfounded, as of course is also the pretension that the Ogaden formerly formed part of the 'ancient Ethiopian empire'. As has been seen, Ethiopia's claims to the region were originally established by infiltration and conquest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and only acquired some status in international law in the 1897 and 1908 Italo-Ethiopian agreements.

I.M. Lewis, I. M. Lewis, A Modern History of the Som…, loc. 806