Page 90 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

The Oromo National Movement
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The OLF’s longevity is due, less to its military strength than to its public commit-
ment to and defense of Oromian self-determination and the restoration of Oromo
culture, particularly aspects of the Oromo democratic heritage. When the OLF ex-
panded its sphere of influence and began to consolidate its army in the late 1980s and
the early 1990s, new conditions started to emerge in the Ethiopian empire.These new
situations were indicators of the deep crisis and disintegration of the Amhara-led mil-
itary regime in response to internal, domestic, regional, and global politics.These pol-
itics raised new opportunities and new challenges for the Oromo national movement.
The Current Status of the Oromo Struggle
The current Oromo national struggle cannot be clearly understood without explain-
ing it in relation to the structural problems of the Ethiopian empire and the global
imperial interstate system. The Ethiopian military regime headed by Colonel
Mengistu Haile-Mariam (1974–1991) emerged as the result of the structural and rev-
olutionary crises of the early 1970s. This government took several policy measures,
such as land reform and nationalization of industries and financial institutions, then al-
lied with Soviet-bloc countries to solve the crises that subsequently arose. Depending
on Soviet military assistance and expertise, the military regime attempted to solve po-
litical problems largely through military violence and terrorism. It also tried to reduce
the problems of politics, poverty, and famine through controlling farmers by forcing
them into cooperatives, resettlement, and villagization schemes. Further, thousands of
able-bodied farmers were conscripted into the army to fight against the OLF, the Er-
itrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front
(TPLF). Despite all these attempts, the military regime failed to eliminate the politi-
cal, economic, and social problems that it inherited from the Haile Selassie govern-
ment. Further, its misguided policies led to the severe internal crisis of the regime that
brought on the unsuccessful military coup of 1989.The top leaders of the army who
were involved in this coup were murdered or imprisoned by Colonel Mengistu and
his faction.As a result, the military lost its experienced leadership and was debilitated.
It could not fight effectively against the national liberation fronts in the late 1980s and
the early 1990s.
At the same time,the Soviet Union began new initiatives known as glasnost and per-
estroika (openness and restructuring) under the leadership of Gorbachev to change its
domestic and international policies. 194 Since the Soviet Union was changing its cold-
war politics, it informed the Ethiopian military regime that it would not continue its
military assistance after 1992. Between 1977 and 1991, the USSR provided military
equipment estimated at U.S. $12 billion, but this could not guarantee the survival of
the regime. 195 When the USSR notified Ethiopia that after 1992 it would not renew
its arms transfer agreement, Ethiopia began to look to the United States for assistance.
The U.S. government agreed to act as a broker between the military regime and the
EPLF, the strongest liberation front, and continued its support to the TPLF, viewing it
as an alternative to the Mengistu regime.Domestic crises,global politics,and assistance
from the U.S. and the EPLF encouraged the TPLF to prepare itself to replace the
Mengistu government and rule over a collapsing empire.The ambition of the TPLF
to reorganize Ethiopian colonialism by replacing the Mengistu regime was also sup-
ported by Sudan and Libya. All of these forces ignored Oromos and their primary
front, the OLF. Although the EPLF had a friendly relationship with the OLF, it