Aware is situated near the border with
Somaliland and is one of the oldest cities in the
Hawd, with a history spanning over centuries. Prior to the 1977
Ogaden War , the city served as the principal seat of the
Jarar Zone. At the onset of the '77 war, the provincial capital of the zone was moved more inland to
Degehabur, which by the early 70's surpassed Aware both in population and in economic importance. Aware was the only city in present-day Ethiopia that the British had established a colony including a sizable military presence and was the seat of the British administration in the Haud prior to Somali independence in 1960. Aware has dry pasturage. However, the construction of private wells and
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 the 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.
Insurgency 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. == Demographics ==