Page 88 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

The Oromo National Movement
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With the official birth of the OLF in 1974,
fully to contest foreign domination.”
the Oromo nation consolidated its challenge to Ethiopian colonial domination ideo-
logically, intellectually, politically, and militarily.
The birth of the OLF introduced a new direction for Oromo nationalism; con-
scious Oromos had started to talk about the formation of a liberation front before the
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The OLF’s stated objectives were to create Oromo national
birth of the OLF.
power, to overthrow Ethiopian settler colonialism, and to decide Oromia’s political fu-
ture democratically through a referendum. OLF asserts that it is only the Oromo na-
tion that can decide whether to create “an independent republic of Oromia,” or to
build a multicultural democracy by joining “other peoples in a federal or confederal
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arrangement.”
The OLF emphasized that “the right of self-determination is an in-
alienable right of our people to the fulfillment of which our front is committed as a
matter of priority and it holds that it is the Oromo people and only the Oromo peo-
183
ple who should determine its own political future.”
An Oromo armed group initiated its first military operation in the Charchar
mountains of Hararghe in November 1973.Since this group had connections with the
underground Oromo movement that later emerged as the OLF, the OLF claims this
military operation as its own, although it declared itself as a front in 1974.This oper-
ation was not successful. Its leader, Elemu Qilixxu, was martyred in 1974, and the
guerrilla unit was suppressed.This occurred when the military regime, the Derg, “de-
ployed a special force in the area . . . and carried out mass genocide on an innocent
civilian population.” 184 Similarly, General Taddasa Biru, who escaped from prison
when the Haile Selassie government was overthrown, initiated unsuccessful armed
struggle in Ambo, central Oromia, in December 1974 and declared land to be owned
by those who farm it. Since the General took popular measures and won several fol-
lowers within a very short time,the Mengistu regime panicked and hurriedly declared
the nationalization of rural land, mobilized its military and security personnel, infil-
trated the rank and file of his followers, and captured and arrested him on March 13,
1975. 185 His associate, Colonel Hailu Ragassa, and the general were executed by the
military regime on March 19, 1975.
These unsuccessful armed struggles, the revolutionary crisis of the Ethiopian em-
pire, and the land reform put the Oromo underground movement in turmoil. Some
Oromo intellectuals, in order to influence the direction of the emerging revolutionary
crisis in Ethiopia, joined different organizations, such as the Ethiopian People’s Revo-
lutionary Party (EPRP),All Ethiopian Socialist Movement (MEISON), and Ethiopian
Oppressed Revolutionary Struggle (ECHAT).Of all the Ethiopian organizations,it was
only ECHAT that did not oppose the independent Oromo voice, because it was
mainly organized by the members of the colonized ethnonations.At this time the ma-
jority of Oromo intellectuals thought that the Oromo question could be solved by
these Ethiopian organizations and consequently joined them.It was a minority of Oro-
mos at that time who insisted in maintaining the independent Oromo voice.
The military regime destroyed these Ethiopian organizations one by one ostensibly
because of their political immaturity, lack of interest in the questions of the oppressed
classes and the colonized nations, adventurism, opportunism, Ethiopian chauvinism,
and lack of political unity.The independent Oromo voice survived and reorganized the
Oromo Liberation Front in 1976, revising its program and reinitiating armed strug-
gle. 186 The Front’s underground papers, such as Warraaqaa and Bakkalcha Oromo, popu-
larized the activities of the movement. There were also independent underground