Jigjiga’s autocratic modernity

Returning to Jigjiga was a big deal for me. I had been gone from the capital of Ethiopia’s Somali Regional State for thirteen years. Politics in eastern Ethiopia had deteriorated steadily during that period. Conducting fieldwork while regional president Abdi Mohamed Omer ‘Iley’ was in power was all but impossible. But now Abdi ‘Iley’ was in prison, facing criminal charges in a federal court for masterminding the killing of some 58 Jigjiga residents in August 2018.