The most populous province in the country is the scene of a hard-repressed nationalist rebellion and deadly confrontations between community militias.
by Noé Hochet-Bodin (Nairobi, Correspondence )
Ethiopia is once again witnessing, anxious, with the push of a fever that seizes Oromia, the most populous region of the country. In early December, student demonstrations organized to protest against the repression of Oromo opponents and clashes with the militias in the neighboring region, Amhara, rekindled the embers. Students of universities and high school students went down to the street and a dozen cities experienced serious eddies. “We denounce the coordinated attacks against the Oromo by the federal government and the Amhara forces,” says the world one of the organizers, leader of the Qeerroo movement, representing the Oromo youth.
Now, when anger rumbles in the Oromia, Addis Ababa trembles. Political tribulations in recent years can testify. The 2016 Oromo contestation wave had the time of the time has faltered. And in 2020, the troubles that followed the assassination of a popular Oromo singer had paralyzed the country for a whole summer. While a peace agreement has just been signed to end two years of civil war in the Tiger (North), the revival of tension in Oromia thus threatens to plunge Ethiopia again into its chronic instability.
In the mosaic which constitutes Ethiopia and its 24 ethnic groups, Oromia, with its 40 million inhabitants, is in the heart of the country, surrounding the capital. For three years, she has been the theater of a rebellion fueled by the Liberation Army Oromo (OLA) and confrontations between members of Ethnies Oromo and Amhara, the two largest Ethiopian communities. A hidden war that draws its roots from a superposition of reasons: territorial claims, historical and ethnic disputes, as well as a struggle of political influence.
martial law and air attacks
The recent images of Oromo fighters by the Fano, of the Amhara militias, have raised the anger of a notch. Between November 25 and 29, the Horo Guduru zone, 250 km northwest of Addis Ababa, was the battlefield that featured as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed: provincial militias clashed and around twenty Villages have been completely emptied in this district where the two communities coexist and where the United Nations and the media have not dares to go for a long time. “Fano have the will to create an exclusively Amhara area in Horo Guduru,” says, under the cover of anonymity, a humanitarian familiar with the question.
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