The Oromo Liberation Front (, abbreviated: ABO; English abbreviation: OLF) is an Oromo nationalist political party formed in 1973 to promote self-determination and the independence for the Oromo people inhabiting today's Oromia Region and Oromia Zone in the Amhara Region of Ethiopia. The OLF has offices in Addis Ababa, Washington, D.C., and Berlin, from which it operates radio stations that broadcast in Amharic and Oromo.
The OLF is not to be confused with the Oromo Liberation Army, which is the now independent former military wing of the OLF. The OLA split from the OLF following disagreements over disarmament.
History The Oromo people, an ethnic group native to the Oromia Region of Ethiopia, remained independent until the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when they lost their sovereignty and were conquered by Abyssinia. The Oromos suffered harsh oppression under the imperial rule of Haile Selassie, who was ethnically Oromo and Amhara. Under the Haile Selassie regime, the Oromo language was banned from schools and government. These changes initiated a period of Amhara cultural dominance lasting much of the twentieth century. Both the Haile Selassie and the Derg governments relocated numerous Amhara into southern Ethiopia, where they served in government, courts, churches, and schools, where Oromo texts were eliminated and replaced by Amharic ones. The Abyssinian elites perceived the Oromo identity and language as an obstacle to the expansion of Ethiopian national identity.
In 1967, the regime of Haile Selassie I outlawed the Mecha and Tuluma Self-Help Association (MTSHA) and later instigated a wave of mass arrests and killings of its members and leaders. Prominent military officer and leader of the association Tadesse Birru was also arrested. This reaction by the regime was caused by the popularity of the MTSHA among the Oromo, as well as its links to the Bale Oromo resistance movement.
One of the association's members, Hussein Sora, escaped to Somalia in 1967. He and other Oromo refugees formed a rebel group called the Ethiopian National Liberation Front, of which Sora was named Secretary General. The ENLF soon moved to Yemen and began training members of the Oromo diaspora.
The first attempt by the ENLF to enter the country was directed by Jaarraa Abbaa Gadaa, but it failed when Somali security forces tracked down the militants and arrested them while trying to enter Ethiopia through northern Somalia. The second attempt proved more successful and the second group of rebels made camp in the Chercher Mountains. At this point, the group decided to operate under the name "Oromo" instead of "Ethiopian."
Initial formation In 1973, the political situation of the country had changed and the Ethiopian military had ousted the imperial regime and taken control. Leaders and members of the MTSHA, who had escaped arrest, had been operating secretly within the country by stirring up activism through underground newspapers such as "Kena Bektaa" and "The Oromo Voice Against Tyranny". They organized a secret conference which was attended by Hussein Sora, Elemo Qiltu and various other Oromo leaders. It was during this conference that the Oromo Liberation Front was officially formed and its first political program was first written out. The armed Oromo units in the Chercher Mountains were adopted as the military wing of the organization, the Oromo Liberation Army or OLA (Oromo: Waraanna Bilisummaa Oromo or WBO).
The Oromo Liberation Army in the Chercher Mountains was placed under the command of Hassen Ibrahim, more commonly known as Elemo Qiltu. In 1974, the OLA increased its activities in the mountains and caused much alarm amongst the administrators of the region especially when they killed the notorious landowner, Mulatu Tegegn. The military regime of Ethiopia then sent General Getachew Shibeshi to destroy the insurrection. On September 6, 1974, the first Oromo Liberation Army was obliterated by mortar fire in the Battle of Tiro in which they lost both Ahmad Taqi and Elemo Qiltu; only three OLA soldiers survived.
In an attempt to subjugate any further Oromo uprising, the Derg instigated mass arrests and killings in the surrounding urban areas of where the OLA had operated, particularly in the cities of Gelemso, Badessa, Mechara, Boke, and Balbaleti. After the short lived guerrilla war, the OLF become even more disorganized and a few of its leaders moved back to Aden in order to restructure the organization but to no avail.
General Tadesse Birru, who had escaped from prison, continued an armed struggle in the Shewa region of the Oromo nation along with Hailu Regassa. They were eventually captured and executed in 1976 but his OLA contingent continued fighting and gained an influx of recruits after the executions.
Official formation By 1976, the Oromo Liberation Army had taken up a stronghold in the Chercher Mountains and this was used as an opportunity to reorganize the Front. A two-day secret conference was organized among Oromo leaders and the attendees hailed from all corners of Oromia and a more broad-based leadership was elected. A few members of the ENLF, who were released from custody in Somalia in 1975 and others who had entered the country on previous occasions, as well as representatives of the underground study cells, individual Oromo nationalist and patriots were members of what is now called the "Founding Congress". The Congress revised the 1973 OLF Political Program and issued a new detailed program. The program called for the "total liberation of the Oromo nation from Ethiopian colonialism". The conference is now known as the Founding Congress and it marked the beginning of modern Oromo nationalism.
Another front was opened by a newly formed Oromo Liberation Army that was initiated in eastern Oromia by farmers. Oromo students and intellectuals in urban areas joined OLA camps by the hundreds in order to offer leadership and educational training. The first battles occurred in the rural areas around Dire Dawa such as Gara Mul'ata.
Late 1970s and the 1980s The OLF subsequently spread its activities to western Oromia and elected a new 41-member central committee along with a five-member Supreme Politico Military Command, which comprised Lencho Letta, Muhee Abdo, Baro Tumsa, Magarsaa Barii and Gadaa Gamada. With its structure firmly in place, the OLF began an effective campaign to educate students and the general populace about Oromo nationalism. Its military wing also began capturing land in western Oromia, particularly in Wellega.
Between 1977 and 1978, the war between Somalia and Ethiopia proved to be a double-sided coin to the fortunes of the organization. Abandoned weaponry from both armies allowed more recruits to be armed. On the other hand, the Ethiopian, Somali and Western Somali Liberation Front forces were all against the OLF and tried their utmost to eliminate the organization.
In the 1980s, the OLF opened an office in Sudan after its office in Somalia was closed down. It was also in that time that mass killings and arrests of Oromos began as a government attempt to curb the OLF's growth, which only served to further the OLF's support amongst Oromos.
The Oromo Liberation Army at that point had grown from a few hundred to over 10,000 soldiers. Despite their numbers, the troops were poorly equipped when compared to the other rebel groups which were operating in Ethiopia at the time, namely the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front. The OLA controlled vast areas of land in southern, western and eastern Oromia and offices and military bases were set up in major cities such as Jijiga, Assosa, Dembidollo and Mendi.
It was also in that decade that the organization and the movement lost many prominent figures such as Muhee Abdo, Saartu Yousef, Kebede Demissie, Baro Tumsa, Juuki Barentoo and hundreds more. The military government increased its viciousness against the OLF by burning entire villages, massacring student activists and through mass arrests. The OLF leadership was once almost wiped out during an ambush by government troops in which the OLF Secretary General, Galassa Dilbo, was almost killed.
1990s The military government was on the verge of collapse as three rebel groups were obliterating its rule of the country. The Oromo Liberation Front, the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front had differing alliances with each other, the TPLF and EPLF had a strong alliance and they both had limited coordination's with the OLF. In 1990, the TPLF formed several other ethnic-based political groups from prisoners it had released and put them all under an umbrella organization called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. The Oromo group in the EPRDF was the Oromo People's Democratic Organization and its creation was seen as an attempt to undermine the OLF.
The EPRDF, after destroying government control in Tigray and the Amhara region, proceeded to take Nekemte, a city in Oromia. In response, the Oromo Liberation Front said in a broadcast on the Radio Voice of Oromo Liberation (Frankfurt am Main) on 15 April 1991: "The OLF strongly opposes the phrase: liberating Wellega or the Oromo nation. It is false for any alien force to say that it will liberate the Oromo nation."
The three rebel groups along with government representatives were to meet in the London Conference in May 1991 but the government representatives withdrew after hearing news that their President, Mengistu Hailemariam, had escaped to Zimbabwe. In this meeting, it was decided that the EPLF would hold a referendum amongst Eritreans in order to secede from the rest of the country. The EPRDF insisted that the OLF should not ask to secede from the country due to the Oromia Region's strategic position in the country. Instead, it was decided that a transitional government compromising of the OLF, EPRDF and various other rebel groups would be created.
Despite the tension, the two rebel groups worked together to capture the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa, and bring down the remaining government forces. A national conference was convened and a transitional government was set up with the OLF having the second highest number of seats to the EPRDF.
The two groups were, however, unable to work together largely because the OLF could not handle the OPDO, believing it to be an EPRDF ploy to limit the OLF's power and influence. Eventually, skirmishes began to break out between their military wings even though both groups had agreed to encamp their forces until they could be properly transitioned into a national army. In 1992, the OLF announced that it was withdrawing from the government because of "harassment and assassinations of its members". In response, the EPRDF sent raiding parties to the encampment zones of OLA soldiers. The ensuing arrests and killings greatly reduced the Oromo Liberation Front's fighting power. Twenty thousand of its fighters were immediately arrested and thousands were killed in the raids on the camps. Some OLF soldiers were purposely kept out of camps by their commanders due to suspicion and mistrust of the EPRDF and those groups began to engage the EPRDF in battle. Despite initial victories, the EPRDF's superiority in numbers and weaponry eventually forced the OLF troops to wage a guerilla war instead.
In the late 1990s, much of the OLF leadership escaped the country and the land controlled and administered by the OLF was given to the EPRDF. Thousands of civilians were arrested, killed and chased out of the country for suspicion of supporting or being OLF members. The EPRDF's success at quickly eliminating the OLF's military capability meant that the OLA could only wage a low-key struggle.
2000s