By Hundreds of civilians have been killed by drones, airstrikes, and summary executions in a month of carnage across the Oromia region in Ethiopia.
The civil war in Oromia has been waged in total darkness, out of the media and diplomatic spotlight, since October 2018. It took a deadly turn in April 2022 when federal and regional government authorities launched a multi-front offensive involving security forces from several regional states to root out and destroy the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) completely. This latest offensive has engulfed at least 11 of 21 Oromia zones, with civilians paying a deadly price in Wollo, Wallaga, West Shawa, North Shawa, East Shawa, West Arsi, East Guji, West Guji, and Borena Zones.
In a press briefing with reporters in Finfinne on May 12, the chairman of the opposition Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), Merera Gudina, said:
Government forces have killed more than 297 civilians, several homes burned, more than 500,000 people displaced by the conflict, hundreds of schools closed, and hospitals and health centers made non-functional. People are arrested without a court order, tortured, some extrajudicially killed, and some made to disappear without a trace. The justice system is crippled, and the administration often overlooks court decisions. In southern Oromia, Oromo farmers and pastoralists lost millions of their livestock to drought around the Borana Zone and were forced to plow their land using their children as oxen.
The statement added: “The Oromo nation has never seen such a tragedy in its long history.”
It is the third statement OFC has issued in a month. On May 1, OFC reported 278 civilian deaths, between 16 and 29 April alone, due to combined attacks by federal and Oromia state forces, Amhara militia, and Fano – the Amhara extremist paramilitary force. Oromo properties were burned, and villagers were driven from their land in central, south, and west Oromia and the Benishangul-Gumuz region.
Fano brigades were responsible for 162 killings, often in massacres like the May 2 killings in Warra Jarso in the North Shawa zone of Oromia. A survivor of the Warra Jarso massacre explains in a video shared on social media how he escaped when 18 others, including young teenagers and elderly men – none of whom had any relationship with OLA nor any anti-government activity, were rounded up, beaten, and executed in cold blood by a unit of Amharic-speaking security forces.
Warra Jarso residents told Addis Standard that the killings included guests at two wedding parties and that “anyone speaking Afaan Oromo was associated with OLA by default.” They believed the executions were retaliation for government losses in combat with OLA forces in nearby Bustilo Dhera a few days earlier. The massacre was led by the son of a government officer killed in the fighting.
Similarly, in the Ada’a Barga district of West Shawa, government forces summarily executed more than 40 civilians on April 22. In the same zone, over 30 civilians died in indiscriminate airstrikes in the first week of May in Gindabarat.
A premeditated war
The horrifying state violence against civilians in Oromia are crimes against humanity and war crimes. As with some of the killings in Tigray, in this author’s opinion, the mass executions in Oromia amount to genocide.
Marked by aerial attacks and mass killings of civilians, the reinvigorated onslaught on Oromia was planned months ago, during the lull in fighting in northern Ethiopia. A leaked document from Abiy Ahmed’s Security Task Force, dated 14 March, is a blueprint for the current all-out war in Oromia.
It is a declaration of war not only against OLA; it is a declaration of war on the Oromo people.
The leaked Prosperity Party (PP) document admits that OLA enjoys strong support from large sections of the Oromo population, including local leaders and administrators who the Task Force said are lukewarm toward the government. According to the Task Force, the local government is so unpopular that it demands a permanent military presence for protection in some areas.
Despite acknowledging OLA’s broad support, government forces are directed to destroy OLA and ‘its associates’ so thoroughly ‘that it can never resurface.’
In admitting the extent to which OLA is interwoven within the fabric of Oromo society, PP’s expressed determination to ‘eradicate’ OLA ‘once and for all,’ including ‘its associates’ and enablers, is a chilling echo of the genocidal intent in the hate speech which was directed at Tigray and the actual genocide in Rwanda.
Thousands of people have been displaced from their homes and lost properties in all affected areas of Oromia. Hundreds have been arrested and made to pay security forces and corrupt local officials to be released. In West Guji, parts of West Shawa, and all four Wallaga zones, the conflict is accompanied by extreme humanitarian needs.
Social infrastructure is broken. Commerce has stopped. Banks, roads, and communication services have been cut off. The situation is at a crisis level in drought-affected regions of Oromia, where the United Nations says access is severely constrained by conflict, as it has said in Tigray since November 2020. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UNOCHA) reports that half a million people have been displaced in western Oromia and the Benishangul-Gumuz Region since 2018. The latest UNOCHA report, released before the current deterioration due to the offensive, underscores the life-threatening situation:
Through Western Oromia, 426 health facilities are reportedly non-functional due to looting and destruction. In East Wollega, 144 schools remain closed, and over 62,000 children out-of-school. Similarly, in West Wollega, 184 schools are closed, and 89,000 students are out of school. Partners are unable to re-stock essential health and nutrition supplies due to insecurity and other restrictions. Access to markets from rural areas is hindered, while woreda centers are facing shortages of essential supplies due to road blockage. Food deliveries to the affected population are intermittent and incomplete due to a combination of insecurity and budgetary/logistical challenges faced by authorities.
Roads remain blocked. Three consecutive farming seasons have been disrupted by conflict and, in places, drought. Security forces have burned crops ostensibly because rebels are hiding in them.
Yet, despite this humanitarian emergency, international media and the diplomatic community continue to ignore the escalating violence and deteriorating living conditions in Oromia. The UN and the U.S. government appear to have been purposefully avoiding commenting on the civil war in Oromia. Rather than naming this war, official statements euphemistically refer to the conflict in Oromia, with its population of 40-45 million (similar to that of Ukraine), as merely one of the ’other conflict-affected areas’ in Ethiopia.
Disinformation
As indicated in the May 2 press release by the Oromia Support Group, from ‘the very start of his premiership, Abiy Ahmed began systematically and methodically to identify and execute members of the Qeerroo pro-democracy Oromo youth movement whose peaceful demonstrations and self-sacrifice in the face of lethal suppression enabled his rise to power.’
Abiy also strikes at the very foundations of Qeerroo (Oromo youth) by deliberate disinformation. He relies heavily on his skills of public deception, which he perfected as a ringmaster in the EPRDF security service, where he was tasked with spying on exiled opponents and discrediting the OLF with fake propaganda and disinformation campaigns.
When the magnitude of the Oromo welcome to the returning OLF in September 2018 rocked the confidence of former political elites, the backlash was immediate. The rioting and loss of life in the Burayu sub-district of Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) were instantly blamed on Qeerroo in a deliberate ploy to besmirch the group, known previously for its self-discipline and non-violent ethos.
At every opportunity since then, whenever violence has been instigated against civilians by government forces, Amhara militia, and Fano, and even on occasions when there has been no ‘incident’ at all, either Qeerroo or OLA have been blamed.
OSG has documented other examples of the deliberate disinformation war against Qeerroo and OLA, including the attempt to blame OLA for the massacre of Karrayyu leaders on 1 December 2021 in East Shawa. State-run media quickly accused OLA of the blasphemous crime; disproved immediately by eyewitness accounts and later admitted by two senior government officials who accused the Oromia Police Commissioner of ordering the massacre and confirmed by the state-backed Ethiopian Human Rights Commission. No one has been held accountable for the killings to date.
It is not only the PP and its officials who have waged an effective war of genocidal rhetoric and propaganda against OLA and the Qeerroo. Amhara individuals and diaspora-based extremists have conducted a continuous and vociferous campaign using social media and Amharic language media.
While government officials, Amhara diaspora organizations, and hired lobbyists feed the international community lies about OLA and Qeerroo, Fano and Amhara militia continue their campaign of ethnic cleansing and territorial expansion; but now more so in Oromia than Tigray.
OSG has documented the mass killings and ethnic cleansing of Oromo, Qimant, and Agaw people in the Amhara region; of Oromo, Gumuz, and other minorities in the Benishangul-Gumuz; and of Oromo in three zones of Oromia, which border the Amhara state. Evidence shows that all these atrocities are committed by Amhara militia and Fano, which appear to be aiming to clear non-Amhara people from the state and to expand the region into Tigray, Benishangul-Gumuz, and Oromia.
Abiy’s grandiloquent claim to ‘make Ethiopia great again’ has re-awoken the behemoth of Amhara chauvinism, a desire to reassert dominance over a centralized Ethiopia, represented to the world almost exclusively by Amhara culture, language, script, alphabet, religion, and calendar.
War, truth, and National Dialogue
The blitzkrieg on Oromia mirrors the war on Tigray, with millions starving and displaced. With a population about seven times larger, 40-50 million, the humanitarian consequences of the conflict in Oromia may well eclipse the horrors in Tigray. The international community must heed the cries of Oromo civilians as they are executed, burnt alive in their huts, or driven from their land. Western democracies in Europe and North America, all of which have vested interests in a peaceful, stable Ethiopia, must surely wish this industrial-scale killing to stop.
There are few tools at the international community’s disposal to help staunch the flow of blood and misery in Ethiopia. A good starting point would be a good-faith acknowledgment that, as with Tigray, the Ethiopian government has launched a full-scale military offensive in Oromia. Human rights groups, the media, and diplomats in Finfinnee should similarly address the escalating war in Oromia directly and unequivocally. It is time to stop shying away from naming the problem.
International condemnation and sanctions can help save Ethiopia from its descent into chaos, especially if sanctions include the prohibition on the flow of funds and arms from North America to the Amhara militia and Fano.
Another significant and possibly more effective response would be for the media and social media platforms to moderate the dissemination of false reports of abuses purposed solely for the denigration of Qeerroo and OLA.
The media are responsible for reporting the truth and not fanning the flames of racist hatred by re-iterating false claims of attacks on Amhara civilians while ignoring attacks perpetrated by Amhara militia and Fano on others.
Finally, as the architect of Ethiopia’s multiple crises, Abiy should have no place in designing, establishing, running, or contributing to an all-inclusive National Dialogue for peace. The PP-led National Dialogue is the last gasp of a dying regime. It will do nothing to stop atrocities, famine, and chaos in Ethiopia. Only a dialogue platform established and administered by neutral third parties can steer the country out of its present nightmare.
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