Page 114 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

•
The Impact of U.S. Foreign Policy on the Oromo National Struggle
105
separatist or terrorist. Neighboring countries like the Sudan, Kenya, Djibouti,Yemen,
and some factions in Somalia could not resist financial incentives and/or political pres-
sures from the West, particularly the United States, to deny sanctuary to the OLF and
to deport many Oromo nationalists to Ethiopia even if it meant breaking international
laws. Further, Oromo refugees have been threatened with refoulement from Yemen,
Germany, Israel, Djibouti, Sudan, and Kenya since the United Nations High Com-
mission for Refugees (UNHCR) is “staffed by apologists for the Ethiopian govern-
127
The refoulement of hundreds of
ment” that do not protect Oromo human rights.
Oromo refugees has taken place from Djibouti since the early 1990s with the “pro-
128
tection” of the UNHCR that ignores the violation of Oromo human rights.
The United States ignores the violation of human rights of Oromos and other col-
onized nations. According to Human Rights Watch/World Report 1999: “With about
$30 million in development aid and $66 million in food aid, bringing the total to
about $97 million, Ethiopia remained the second largest recipient of U.S. aid in Sub-
Saharan Africa, after South Africa.The U.S. failed to use its privileged relations with
Ethiopia as a leverage for human rights improvements. . . .The only public statement
involving human rights came on August 6, [1998] when the U.S. government ex-
pressed deep concern at the detention and expulsion of Eritreans in and from
Ethiopia.” 129 The U.S. government is only concerned about the human rights viola-
tions of Eritreans, ignoring the ethnic cleansing that the Tigrayan-led regime commits
against Oromos and other colonized nations.When Oromos presented their cases to
the U.S. government that it should support the struggle of Oromos for self-determi-
nation and democracy rather than supporting Tigrayan ethnocracy, they did not get a
positive response.They were ignored.U.S.foreign policy elites seek advice from schol-
ars who have accepted without inspection the racist assumptions implicit in the con-
struction of Ethiopia when they formulate a policy toward Ethiopia.They never have
taken into consideration Oromo scholarship and Oromo studies that have successfully
exposed the deficiency in Ethiopian Studies. 130 The State Department and its elites
who deal with Ethiopian issues ignore the voices of Oromo scholars and politicians
and other students of Oromo society.
Conclusion
Racism in U.S. foreign policy has discouraged the success of an alternative leadership
that can solve the problems of Oromos and other population groups who suffer under
Ethiopian colonialism and global imperialism. Both the generous support the succes-
sive Habasha elites headed by Menelik, Haile-Selassie, Mengistu, and Meles received
from the West, particularly the United States, and from the East, and the institutional-
ized distinctions in the Ethiopian empire have mobilized Amharas and Tigrayans
against Oromos and other colonized peoples and eliminated the possibility of form-
ing a common political platform against the Ethiopian colonizing structure.The dis-
tinction between Habashas and Oromos is the outward expression of the fundamental
subjugation of Oromos and other nations upon which Ethiopia is built.To challenge
this basic contradiction is to shake the very foundation of Ethiopian colonialism.
Combined Ethiopian policies and U.S. policies have frustrated Oromos from de-
mocratically getting access to Ethiopian state power or from creating their own inde-
pendent state by keeping them in the position of second-class citizens. Because of this,
the Oromo national movement must broaden its political base both regionally and