By Qawdhan Shuuriye
After twenty-five years of healthy and thriving federalism, Ethiopia stands today at, in my humble opinion, a critical juncture in its history. So more than anything else, it is which path it takes from here now, that will determine the future of peace, prosperity and unity. There are two competing trends in this regard that I need to highlight. The first and obviously the most assuring in terms of sustaining peace, protecting national unity and achieving prosperity is uncompromised adherence to federalism which was, in the last quarter of a century, built on strong foundations of equality and brotherhood. This requires firmly defending the constitution of the country and raising collective interests of the nation over that of individual ethnic groups. The second is very different from the first but it has, in the last three-years or so, apparently forced its way into the national spotlight, consuming national attention, pulling resources from the development sector through increased deployment of security forces to areas of unrest and conflict and increasingly risking the defilement of Ethiopian image in the world stage. This is about getting intoxicated with narrow nationalism and giving in to futile ethnic madness in fervent pursuit of group interests at the expense of collective interests.
Federalism has been and always will be the most blessed chapter of the Ethiopian existence but more than any other time since its birth in the early 1990s, it is facing a real threat in which silence and inaction are not an option. The greatest menace facing Ethiopia now is internal and is of ethnic nature. So, turning a blind eye to the problem and window-dressing moves in the face of spreading chaos and political wild fires in the heartlands of Ethiopia is what I fear we might ultimately pay a heavy price: irreversible destruction. This is just a scenario that all wisely thinking and peace loving Ethiopians, as most of us are, never want to come to terms with in the real sense but the sad fact is that we are increasingly drifting towards and getting closer to it day after day with the Oromo-staged crisis.
Given what has happened in recent months, I believe that the stakes have never been higher today as everything we preciously hold dear now – peace, unity, democracy, development and ethnic brotherhood – is gradually slipping from our fingers amid the chase of political gains at any cost by the Oromo’s political elite. Ironically, the most upsetting thing is that all Oromo groups, including OPDO itself and the OLF, are one and the same when it comes to pursuing what they see as an Oromo agenda to turn Ethiopia into an Oromo-ruled nation. Please don’t get me wrong, I am not against Oromos leading Ethiopia, but I am against using chaos, violence and intimidation as a principal approach to achieve such goal instead of consensus and democratic process. The end of tyranny and dictatorship in Ethiopia ushered in a new era of peace, stability, economic growth and justice for all instead of only for some as the case used to be under previous regimes. However, the Oromo elite is now trying to exploit this to serve their own ends, running economically and socially destructive and politically poisonous campaigns, inciting public violence and disrupting law and order. Today, the country is facing emerging critical trends where mindless violence driven by this political group both inside and outside the country is targeting not only other ethnic groups through artificially staged border conflicts but also the federal government, which seems engaged in helpless retreat instead of proactively responding to the problem.
More than a year ago, the federal government under growing pressure from street protests has provided concessions to the Oromos with good intentions: to quell their thirst for violence and diffuse the tension in the streets of many Oromo cities but this has energized them into deeper violence instead. For millions of Oromos, this was a reckoning point and they could not believe that mere riots would shake the very foundations of government into giving them unexpected political space to accommodate their agenda. In the end, they have learned the wrong lesson from this: the government is not invincible to Oromo determination and force. They also made the wrong conclusion: keep the pressure until lemma Magarsa becomes the boss of the prime minster’s office. If this Oromo plan succeeds, the very person and his team, the OPDO, who are now in a position of authority and responsibility to solve the Oromo-driven crisis, would become the sole beneficiaries of such now remote success. So it is therefore naive and unwise to simply expect them to genuinely engage the crisis and solve it in the first place. This explains why the new guard of the OPDO under the leadership of Mr. Magarsa is acting aloofly in terms of breaking the cycle of recurrent violence and Oromo disruptions of law and order in the country.
Window-dressing actions are only massaging the Oromo problem and will not bring the crisis to rest sustainably. Instead, it is emboldening Oromo politicians and peasants alike, generating more violence as we go further into this strange journey of nation-abduction in which the Oromos are at the wheel and by which derailing peace and stability, bloodshed, human displacement and destruction of property are the only rewards we have earned so far. Daydreaming and thinking that the Oromo stalemate will just go away if we bluntly hope so or blindly ignore it is not an option when reality is glaringly otherwise, seriously jeopardizing our collective future. So, all Ethiopians need to wake up and act in defence of our constitution and rejection of violence and bloodshed before it becomes too late.
One unfortunate aspect of the border-related conflict between the Oromos and the Somalis is that it was misunderstood from the very beginning. The conflict has started first with the displacement of over 20,000 Ethiopian Somalis from over ten places like Asabod, Bardode and Balbalaiti inside Oromo Region which has never been reported in the national press. Today, IDP camps like kolaji-I and Kolaji-II in the west of Fafan zone are a grim reminder of the fall out from such man-made disaster. In the first week of December, the majority of the Ethiopian Somalis who were left behind in these areas were mercilessly wiped out and again nobody is talking about it. Based on this, it seems that the national press is treating Ethiopian Somalis as second-class citizens or they don’t matter at all as it propagates the Oromo narrative, entirely ignoring the Somali tragedy. How can all this be entirely missed by the national press and go unnoticed despite efforts by the Somali regional elders and government to raise the issue to national attention? The Oromo politicians who masterminded and organized such massacre and displacement got away with this gruesome crime easily. The next thing that has awakened us all was the launching of well-organized and uniformly coordinated raids across the 1400-km border between the two Regions. The federal government’s response was to equally blame the two sides for this and not proportionally deal with the Oromo side considering the weight of the problem they caused first as inciters of the crisis and later for sustaining it and rendering signed agreements worthless. This in turn was a surprise reward that brought unexpected smiles into the Oromo leadership that has shown no remorse about the results of the political fires they lit in the country.
Lately, the Oromos have staged a massacre of unarmed communities in Awaday and other places in complete breach of the agreement signed between the two Regions few months ago. Much to the surprise of the Oromos themselves, nothing has happened in terms of a federal action except that the cycle of equating the victims and villains repeated itself and perpetrators went free with bloody hands for the third time. This is far from justice under any law and was again received in the Oromo side as an incentive to continue the violence. Today, the Oromos obsessed with their numbers and armed with their access to national corridors of power using their card in EPRDF membership, are preying on the much smaller Ethiopian Somalis, twisting the facts of the conflict in their favor with a purpose of influencing federal intervention. For sure, however, the conflict with the Somalis is just the starting point and not the end of the story – tomorrow, it could be SNNPR, Amhara, Afar or Tigray.
It is sadly unbelievable that our country, which all of us know, has too many bright minds and brave hearts can be overtaken by such unjust silence and misinterpretation of events. It seems that in the hustle and bustle of all this chaos, somehow the Oromos have instantly emerged as untouchables that dictate how events should be interpreted and reported to the national press despite the fact that they are on the wrong side of this story, making the Somalis soft targets not only during cross-border raids but also for their campaign to shift the blame. I have no way of coming to terms with how everybody would blame a victim and villain on an equal footing. This is not only getting us out of touch with the ground level reality but also out of rationality and sound reasoning, risking us to lose objectivity about this crisis. So the problem is not Oromo-Somali problem, but our problem, requiring us to collectively and concertedly solve this protracted violence now and make sure that it never comes back again.
Through federalism, the Oromos achieved, as much as the rest of Ethiopians, what literally seemed unthinkable just three decades ago. The president of Ethiopia hails from the Oromo nationality; they have the largest number of minsters from a single ethnic group within the federal cabinet. They have cemented their place in EPRDF coalition membership, run a regional government of their own, advance their language and culture with no restrictions and have undergone enormous transformation socially and economically. These are basic facts that can’t crumble under any debate, but are also tremendous gains that should be protected and never lost through opting for ill-conceived demonstrations that only generate violence that turn Ethiopians against each other.
To those who think that giving more concessions to the Oromos would be key to calming the storm, we have already seen that it does more harm than good and only adds fuel to the fire with the current Oromo mindset. The federal government has done just that two years ago, look the outcome: it has emboldened the Oromos and increased violence. To those who would believe in silence and inaction, you are burring your heads in the sand and your detachment from the reality will cost us the loss of more lives and property and the sowing of lawlessness and anarchy in the country. What is happening is accelerating the rise of the sun from the west, a koranic and biblical connotation to mean the end of human rationality and common sense in life just before the world comes to an end, in our case Ethiopia.
The Oromo crisis is not driven by missing rights, after all federalism has not treated them differently than other ethnic groups if not more favorably. Then, if rights have been abused in the Oromo context, it was surely done by the Oromo’s political elite and not by all Ethiopians collectively or any other Ethnic groups. This implies that they should settle the crisis internally within themselves instead of holding the whole nation for ransom and throwing their weight around onto harmless neighbours like the Somali Region, SNNPR and Amhara Region that also become the latest recipients of Oromo attacks. In principle, one of the things we should never allow anyone in Ethiopia is to advance one’s agenda by tearing up others, a motive that has defined the actions of the Oromo elite time and again.
Qawdhan shuuriye
Email: qawdhan.shuuriye@gmail.
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