Anti-War

The OLA’s decision to join the so-called Alliance for National Survival, an alliance of former adversaries with whom it shares no principle or vision of any real substance, is absolutely confounding. Equally disturbing is that some who know better appear to be rooting for its success. There is much here that needs unpacking. I focus on one overarching theme that seems to animate the idea that an alliance with an Eritrea-backed TPLF and Fano, whatever the history of animosity and the absence of a shared vision, would somehow advance the interests of the Oromo. The OLA and some supporters of this alliance still insist on the original, pre-2018 narrative of national oppression and national liberation. That narrative cannot be sustained as a coherent argument today. For decades, Ethiopian and Oromo political thought described the Ethiopian state as a colonial formation (Donald Levine 1974; Merera Gudina 2002), a prison house of nationalities (Wallelign Mekonnen 1969), or a structure of national oppression (Asafa Jalata 1993, 2007, 2010, 2021; Sisai and Holcomb 1990; Leenco Lata 1999; Mekuria Bulcha 2011; Abbas Gnamo 2014). Those diagnoses spoke to a different political order and moment, one in which the Oromo existed as an oppressed/subordinate national group. Since April 2018, the Ethiopian state has been ruled by ethnic Oromo elites. The claim that the Oromo remain under national oppression by another group - and that armed struggle must therefore take the form of national liberation - no longer fits that context. This is in no way an apology for the current government. Human rights violations, democratic deficits, and the absence of the rule of law remain real, and they demand continuing struggle. But for the Oromo, in particular, that struggle is not national liberation in the pre-2018 sense. The distinction matters. Whatever the failures of the present government, Ethiopia today is headed by an ethnic Oromo; ethnic Oromos occupy many of the highest offices of state; and Oromia itself is run by ethnic Oromos. For the national oppression thesis, it is immaterial what one makes of these individuals and whether the state has become accountable and democratic. That is a different struggle - one that expands its horizon beyond the national group to establishing a democratic, accountable, and inclusive government that works for all Ethiopians. In any event, if this Eritrea-sponsored alliance of past adversaries were to succeed, it is far from clear how that would advance Oromo interests. In my view, the risk would be far more serious: a likely return to conditions of national subordination that the 2014-2018 struggle and the post-2018 order, for all its failures, had displaced. No serious reading of Oromo interest can treat that as progress.