This paper explores the shifting patterns of conflict and violence in the pastoral lowlands of Ethiopia, specifically in the Awash River Valley which has constituted a key area for various state projects informed by visions for national security and development. Considered as a underutilized frontier area from the perspective of the central powerholders, this area constitutes the resource-rich heartland of pastoral livelihoods. Building on a relational, process-oriented understanding it will be asked how structural shifts in the national and international power balances have reconfigured forms of pastoral violence and conflict within the frontier in the course of the 20th century. It will be argued that the conflict dynamics between pastoral groups in the Awash valley can only be understood taking into account fluctuating figurations on other scales: first geopolitical conflicts and expansive state building processes in the Horn of Africa, and secondly increasing efforts of the Ethiopian state to monopolize and expand its economic and military power within the national boundaries. In this context, pastoral violence first intensified significantly while it decreased within the last twenty years. Previously, highly organized and violent raids over grazing, water points and cattle have turned into political-territorial disputes over land and territory, with territorialization and access to governmental power as major conflict practices within the recent frontier figuration.