Its name is often simplified to just Uguugumo (also spelled Uguguma or Ugogomo),[1] meaning "Revolution", a term sometimes reserved for its militant wing and often confused as being a separate organization that is simply closely tied to ARDUF.

Mohamooda Gaas was elected as its Secretary General in 1995, but refused the post, leaving it to his deputy Muhyadin Mafatah, who was later extradited from Djibouti to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in August 1996, where he was jailed with two other Afar leaders, Habib Mahammad Yayyo and Jamal Abdulkadir Redo.

[4] In March 1995, ARDUF was involved in the kidnapping of Italian tourists in the Afar Region of Ethiopia, resulting in an Ethiopian military campaign against the group, coordinated with the Eritrean government.

Mohamooda Gaas made a statement declaring unilateral cease-fire with government forces on 5 June 1998 after the beginning of the 1998-2000 Eritrean-Ethiopian War and an Eritrean attack on the town of Alitena, inhabited primarily by Irob people (an ethnicity closely related linguistically to Afars).

[12] In December 3, 2017, Dr. Walter Reopert, a German tourist was shot dead and his guide was injured in the assault, near the Erta Ale Volcano in Zone 2 district, Afar.