Dire Dawa exists because a railway could not climb Harar
Dire Dawa—Oromo Dirree Dhawaa, “Place of Remedy”—is Ethiopia’s chartered eastern city on the Dechatu River beneath cliffs. Projected 2015 population reached about 440,000 for the charter, 277,000 in the city proper, second only to Addis. The modern town began when engineers could not lay track up to Harar and sited a railhead instead.
Somali speakers call it Diridhaba, where the Dir drove his spear into the ground, and Harari speakers the plain of medicine. It lies 327 kilometres by rail from Djibouti. Because the line could not climb the steep approach to Harar, Menelik II agreed in a letter of 5 November 1896 to end the first section at the foot of the mountains, at a village first called New Harar; the tracks arrived on 24 December 1902, usually taken as the founding date. Money troubles halted construction until 1909, and the full line to Addis Ababa opened only on 7 June 1917.
Meanwhile the town boomed on trade diverted from Harar, and the customs post moved here from Gildessa. The regular north-western quarter was laid out by railway engineers and drew French, Greek, Armenian and Arab shopkeepers, while the south-eastern side, mostly Gurgura and Oromo, grew in the 1920s; the whole town counted about 20,000 people. In September 1916 Lij Iyasu’s fleeing troops seized it, and 400 Europeans left.
Italian forces from Harar entered on 9 May 1936, and Badoglio and Graziani celebrated their meeting at the station. Allied troops took it on 29 March 1941, and it stayed under British military rule until 1947. In summer 1977, during the Ogaden War, Somali troops attacked from the Harewa side, losing three tanks to mines before a combined ground and air assault.
Under the Derg, railwaymen and students were shot at in April 1974, the cotton company was nationalised in 1975, and 250 detained Oromos were executed in May 1979. After rival Issa-Gurgura and Oromo fronts clashed from 1991 and both Somali and Harari regions sought the city, the federal government made it a chartered city in 1993.
Source: Dire Dawa
