Page 91 - Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization

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Fighting Against the Injustice of the State and Globalization
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demonstrated its favor for the TPLF by helping it in “recycling” Oromo-speaking
Ethiopian soldiers who were captured at various war fronts and by assisting the TPLF
in creating the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO) to undermine the
196
OLF and Oromian national self-determination.
Because of shared ethnonational affinity, geographical proximity, and political in-
terest, the EPLF-trained TPLF fighters coordinated their operations with the EPLF
against the army of the Derg’s military regime. Sudan provided sanctuary and territory
to import weapons, ammunition, provisions, and other necessary materials without in-
197
Libya provided ample military and financial assistance to the TPLF,
tervention.
198
Furthermore, during the famine (1984–1985) and after, the TPLF formed a
too.
strong relationship with the United States and received economic assistance that
helped it to build itself militarily, organizationally, and diplomatically.The TPLF mo-
bilized famine-stricken Tigrayan farmers as its fighters and organized its affiliate orga-
nizations from prisoners of war by using U.S. financial and political assistance. It
merged the Ethiopian Officers Revolutionary Movement (EORM), the Ethiopian
People’s Democratic Movement (EPDM), and the Oromo People’s Democratic Or-
ganization (OPDO) to form the Tigrayan-led Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary De-
199
As Agency France Press states, the U.S. government
mocratic Front (EPRDF).
backed the TPLF “for several years in their struggle against Lieutenant-Colonel
Mengistu’s regime and it was on American advice that the TPLF became the EPRDF,
though former Tigrayan guerrillas are still dominant in the movement.” 200 Both the
EPLF and the United States essentially ignored the Oromo, the largest ethnonation,
and its primary liberation front, the OLF, and prepared the Tigrayan elites and their
liberation front,TPLF, to reorganize Ethiopian colonialism under Tigrayan leadership.
The EPLF fought side-by-side with the TPLF-led EPRDF in capturing parts of Oro-
mia and later recolonizing Oromos by fighting against the OLF.The EPLF army was
in Oromia as late as 1997 defending the Tigrayan regime. 201
When the Colonel Mengistu regime was paralyzed because of its internal, domes-
tic, and international structural crises, the United States attempted to bring together
the EPLF, the TPLF/EPRDF, the OLF, and the Ethiopian government at the London
Peace Conference on May 27 and 28, 1991. Before this conference was held,
Mengistu, on U.S. advice, left his power to Tesfaye Gebre Kidane and fled to Zim-
babwe.Then the organization of Mengistu’s troops dissolved and they turned on one
another and stopped fighting.The TPLF/EPRDF replaced the Mengistu regime with
the blessing of the EPLF and the United States without establishing “a broadly based
provisional government that would prepare the country for election.” 202 Hoping that
the Oromo question would be solved peacefully and democratically and that atten-
dance would give the Oromo people and its main front media recognition all over the
world, the OLF participated in the aborted U.S.-sponsored London Conference and
the Addis Ababa Peace Conference of July 1–5, 1991.The OLF also invited and con-
vinced other independent Oromo political organizations such as the Islamic Front for
the Liberation of Oromia (IFLO), the United Oromo People’s Liberation Front
(UOPLF), and the Oromo “Abbo” Liberation Front (OALF) to participate in the
Tigrayan-dominated Transitional Government of Ethiopia.
The OLF participated in the formulation and adoption of a Transitional Charter,
which was to govern relations among the parties during an interim period. This
charter theoretically endorsed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the
United Nations, the right of nations to self-determination, freedom of association