The Hidden Reign of Terror in Oromia

The long-simmering conflict in the Oromia state continues to unfold in total darkness with severe consequences for civilians and the future of Ethiopia.

The war involves multiple armed actors. The federal government has stepped up airstrikes and drone attacks to give cover to ground troops deployed against the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) in Wallaga, West Shawa, North Shawa, and Guji zones. At the same time, Amhara state forces (commonly referred to as Fano) have invaded Oromia territories bordering the Amhara Region from Karrayyuu in East Shawa to Kiramu in East Wallaga. Federal officials and the Oromia regional government continue to downplay or deny large-scale cross-border invasions by the Amhara forces. The mounting death toll and number of IDPs across the state illustrate the consequence of such incursion for civilians. Fano’s expansionist irredentism in Oromia risks triggering a large-scale civil war that could destabilize the entire Horn of Africa region.

The risk of Fano’s invasion rapidly degenerating into a civilian conflict is high, and that is a crisis no group is prepared to control or counteract. It is also why the international community should break its deafening silence and take steps to end the war in Oromia before it is too late.

For the central government in Addis Ababa, the conflict in Oromia is going as planned.

Addressing the one-party dominated parliament on February 22, 2022, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who came to power in April 2018 on the back of Oromo protests, stated: “Success cannot be achieved through a military campaign alone. It behooves us to ask why the Oromo people support the armed group. If there are deficiencies with us, we must correct them. It is not sufficient simply to bemoan Shane [OLA]. We must ask why a specific district [in Oromia] gave the group safe haven and provided provisions.”

On the surface, Abiy seems to understand the futility of a military solution to a primarily political problem. But his notoriously discordant administration continues to engage in Orwellian double-speak. For example, following the premier’s parliamentary speech, on March 23, 2022, the president of Oromia, Shimelis Abdissa, addressing a public gathering in Adama, said: “The Shane forces find an opportune time and attack our forces; when we attempt to attack them, they hide in the civilian population and as a result civilians suffer.” Shimelis seems to blame Oromo civilians for their suffering since they harbor the OLA, which the government refers to as Shane. Yet, he also admits, perhaps inadvertently, that it is an unwinnable war.

Despite this admission, the Abiy administration continues to launch counteroffensives that attempt to cleanse the Oromia region of OLA. In April 2022, the state-run OBN media reported that the final operation to clean the OLA from across Oromia was succeeding. Again, on June 28, 2022, the presidents of Oromia and Amhara states vowed to coordinate and intensify efforts to eliminate what they called “terrorists.” In August 2022, federal forces and Amhara regional forces launched a coordinated operation against the OLA in western Oromia to assist the Oromia Police and Special Forces, and Gaachana Sirna (militia-like ruling party’s revolutionary guard formed of the local community) to stop the OLA’s progress towards Finfinne.

I was part of the Abiy government and witnessed the genesis of the political and security crises in Oromia closely. I want to shed light on how the current crisis evolved. As I have argued elsewhere, the devastating conflict in northern Ethiopia germinated in Oromia when Abiy’s government decided to crush all competing forces, including the youth movement that propelled him to power and opposition parties to establish a dominant one-party state.

In a Central Committee meeting of the Oromo Democratic Party (ODP), which predates the Prosperity Party, in early 2019, Abiy told us:

We should learn from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). It ruled Tigray for over 27 years without any opposition, especially from within the region. The ODP should rule Oromia as the TPLF did in Tigray. We should also learn from Eritrea, no opposition at all and if the worst comes, Ethiopia can move on without election.

Some of us, including the president of Oromia at the time, Lamma Magarsa, questioned Abiy’s authoritarian proposal. Abiy’s response was, “I know how to eliminate them smoothly.”  Sadly, the majority of ODP leaders supported his idea and approved it. To this end, Lamma was removed from office in April 2019 as the first step toward implementing Abiy’s vision.

From April 2019 onwards, I witnessed a series of catastrophic campaigns that decimated the nonviolent Qeerroo movement and its leaders across Oromia. I witnessed when Shimelis and the head of the party secretariat, Fikadu Tassama, in a video conference with local government officials, ordered extrajudicial killings of jailed youth leaders they labeled as members of an “enemy cell.”  Regional authorities arrested and kept many of the youth in police stations, unknown places, and administration offices for months or years without a court appearance. And Oromia police and Special Forces killed many others without due process of law.

I was forced to leave the Abiy government in March 2020 following a meeting of the newly formed Prosperity Party central committee in which Abiy proposed exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to postpone the national election and eliminate “all our enemies” both in towns and bushes. The central committee approved both agendas with few objections. A massive crackdown ensued in Oromia.

Within two months, Haacaaluu Hundeessa, an icon of the Qeerroo movement and revolutionary singer, was assassinated. His assassination was used as a pretext to eliminate more youth leaders, opposition members, supporters, and anyone deemed Oromo nationalist. The extensive security dragnet closed a chapter on nonviolent resistance in Oromia. In short, since 2019, a reign of terror has prevailed in Oromia. The youth who survived the arrest, execution, and disappearance campaign were forced to join the OLA en masse. Subsequently, in March 2022, the Oromia legislature passed a law to organize and train all residents in Oromia aged 17 to 56 as members of the Gaachana Sirna (Revolutionary Guard) to defend Abiy’s regime.

The campaign against dissenting Oromo voices and the war against OLA continues unabated. Since April 2022, large-scale confrontations between the OLA and government forces have intensified. In August 2022, Amhara armed forces started to attack territories inside Oromia including such districts as Amuru, Jardega Jarte, Kiramu, and Gidda Ayana in western Oromia and Fantalle and Boset in East Shawa, central Oromia. Since November 2022, reports of mass atrocities, including massacres of children, women, and elderly people, beheadings, slaughter, burning humans alive while videotaping, more than one million IDPs, looting, and other gruesome reports have engulfed social media.

The federal government has deployed drones to strike a dozen areas where civilians were indiscriminately massacred. Students across Oromia and university students in neighboring regional states protested against the government’s indiscriminate attacks and the brutalities of Amhara forces in western Oromia. The government responded with mass arrests and kidnappings of those who spoke out against the atrocities. The state-run media has ignored the festering problems in Oromia. Gidda Ayana’s district communication office in East Wallaga was the only official organ to comment on the violence. The office, through its official Facebook account, reported that “the residents of Kiramu district in East Wallagga are entirely displaced due to the invasion by Fano Amhara extremists.”

Abiy’s government continues to conceal the war in Oromia from the media and diplomatic spotlight as planned from the beginning. In the first week of December 2022, the Abiy regime launched yet another round of “final operation” against OLA in line with the vow issued in November 2022 by Education Minister and EZEMA president, Berhanu Nega, who pronounced that “how would the conflict in  Oromia and  Benishangul-Gumuz be resolved? First of all, by use of force.” He noted that the conflict in Tigray ended precisely because Tigrayan fighters were defeated militarily. Berhanu further suggested arming civilians in conflict-affected areas to defend themselves since regular security forces cannot maintain peace and security.

Even as it is forced to seek a peaceful settlement in Tigray, the Abiy administration has shown little interest in pursuing a peaceful resolution in Oromia. Abiy sees peace as a tactical and temporary pursuit and he will not commit to a genuine political resolution unless pressured to do so. Abiy has exploited the fact that western media and the international community continue to ignore Oromia even as they call for peace and humanitarian aid in northern Ethiopia.

I want to be very clear: Yes, Abiy Ahmed is from the Oromia Region. I voted for him and supported his candidacy in 2018. However, being from Oromia does not give him the right to commit war crimes against his supposed constituency. Furthermore, lasting peace cannot be gained from ignoring a mounting crisis because it is a sensitive issue for the Abiy government. Oromia is not Abiy’s personal property. He was not elected through a genuine electoral contest. His party run unopposed in every electoral district after the opposition boycotted the polls because its candidates, members, and supporters were jailed en masse.

The mainstream media found ways to report on the Tigray war despite a complete communication blackout; there is no reason to believe it cannot do the same for the conflict in Oromia, which is unfolding within a 50 to 60-mile radius of Addis Ababa. The war in Oromia is hidden from the media and ignored by humanitarian workers and Addis-based diplomats for several reasons. First, the government did everything to downplay the extent of the problems in Oromia. Second, because the media has elevated Abiy as an Oromo leader, Oromo questions for peace, freedom, and democratic representation were caricatured as an intra-Oromo power struggle.

Third, anti-Oromo forces and the urban elite have successfully misinformed the media and the international community by misconstruing Oromo grievances on a phobic spectrum that swings from tribalism to extremism. The Oromophobia of these forces is illustrated by efforts to equate Oromummaa, the pan-Oromo identity, with ethnic and religious extremism. While the Oromo are one of the primary victims of the Abiy administration, cultural elites nostalgic for imperial Ethiopia continue to portray the Oromo as “new oppressors.”

Fourth, Oromo activists and media, particularly in the diaspora, seem exhausted and divided, and as a result cannot effectively present or explain the crisis in Oromia to the world, resulting in confusion and a lack of clear understanding about Oromo demands and the security and humanitarian crises that have been unfolding across Oromia since 2019.

To conclude, the brutal campaign against Oromo civilians in the last three years is unconscionable. The barbaric terror is testing the patience of the Oromo people. The invasion of Amhara forces and calls to put Oromia under an Amhara rule bode ill for a peaceful resolution. 2023 offers an opportunity to widen the call for peace beyond Tigray and seek a genuine political settlement to Ethiopia’s multiple crises with an urgent focus on the situation in Oromia.