Traps in the Path of Oromo leaders

Dr. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis
August 7, 2007

Following the feedback I have got from Oromo and other African readers, I believe I have to tackle first the issue of possible traps existing in the path of the present Oromo leaders. Before identifying targets and tasks, it is always important to beware of traps and ambushes. In the case of the Oromos, because of the seminal developments the independence of the Oromos would trigger throughout Africa, the traps are more sophisticated and not ostensible. The ambushes take the form of acceptance in the ‘club’ of influential administrations, and the psychological role it plays among people deprived of anything.
Trap 1 – Current Borders of Africa
Believing in their importance, accepting their validity, and admitting their maintenance is a suicidal act for an African. Even more so for an African leader of an oppressed, tyrannized and massacred people. If now the leaders of Africa’s third largest ethno-linguistic group are asked to demonstrate obedience to the most disreputable borderlines in the History of the Mankind, we understand that those who dare ask for it have in mind never to allow the Oromos to form an independent state.
Trap 2 – Replay of the 1991 Ominous Plot
Many voices try to convince Oromo leaders to imitate and repeat the Tigray example of 1991. If an ethnic group representing Abyssinia’s 10 to 11% managed to rule the country for 16 years, the Oromos totaling approximately 40% could eventually dominate for decades, mesmerize these deceitful voices. It would take for an Oromo no less than absolute oblivion of his Oromo-ness to possibly believe this inhuman aberration. Yet, these voices reach Oromo ears in very soft tonalities: if the US managed to deal, negotiate and build a relationship with Meles Zenawi who represents only 11% of Abyssinia’s population, the US administration could envisage the possibility of widening and deepening its involvement in Abyssinia – especially in the light of the recent events in Somalia. These perilous sirens submit the idea that the US would be delighted with an Oromo administration in Abyssinia that would be far more representative than the Tigray tribal plutocracy, suffice it the Oromo leaders do not tear down the “US-friendly” state’s unity, and do not remove their soldiers from Somalia.
Trap 3 – Lack of Interconnection
If you believe that your life’s most important event is to meet a low level US diplomat once every three months, and rely on his consolation and promises, you will have no time to interconnect with your natural allies, the Ogadenis, the Somalis, the Sidamas, the Afars, the Furis of Darfur, the Bejas and the Nubians of Sudan, and the Berbers of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Mauritania. Like this, you deprive yourself, your movement, your people and your chances from the most dynamic element in the struggle for independence: international respect from the part of the oppressed peoples of the Black Continent, and the world.
Trap 4 – Ignorance of African History
There are many Oromos who manage to travel abroad under at times adverse conditions and settle, study, and live peacefully. Oromos excel in Maths, Engineering, Medicine and Economics. Yet, nothing would enrich their experience and empower liberation struggle more than the study of other African nations’ history, politics, and culture. Interconnection with African independent states is far more valuable, as it allows advocacy in the most fertile ground.
Trap 5 – Reliance on Colonial Powers and Ensuing Ineptitude
The Oromo leaders must understand that the only force they need is the Power to drive their people to Independence, while coordinating with the Ogadenis, the Anuak, the Sidamas, and others. This power does not exist in the hands, the minds, and the pockets of the French, the British, the Americans and the Chinese. All they can offer is an hallucination of independence (if they finally agree on this, after a lot of humiliations – personal and national – of the Oromo leaders) that we noticed in so many cases of postcolonial colonialism. The Power to drive the Oromos to Independence exists among the Oromos, only the Oromos have it, and it is up to the Oromo leaders, up to their shrewdness, their astuteness, their perspicacity to identify it and finally extract. Funds allocated by European and American administrations are Oromo-wise unethical and immoral source of distraction and deviation, whereas little money collected among Oromos in Oromia and in the Diaspora is a blessing that will be wisely used.
Trap 6 – Advocacy: A Key Word Forgotten
The Oromo leaders must understand that under current circumstances only their commitment to successfully plan and carry out an unprecedented Advocacy World Campaign for the ‘Most Numerous People without State’ will corroborate their purpose and justify their future ambitions. All countries of the world must be targeted; all major languages of the world must become the field of the Oromo Advocacy campaign. The Chinese, the Brazilians, the Turks, the Koreans, the Bangladeshis, the Poles, the Danes, the Senegalese and the Moroccans, all must learn words like Gadaa, Waaqo, Finfinne and Kush; all the peoples of the world must have in their languages a brief description of what Gadaa is, and what it can still offer to the entire Mankind.
Trap 7 – Western Soft Power and “mass media democracy”
The most treacherous trap and the most mendacious purpose would indicate to the Oromo leaders how to become ‘democratic’, how to implement ‘democracy’, how to cope with Western Values. There is nothing more inhuman than what a Western politician or diplomat would determine in 2007 as ‘Western values’. We saw these Western values in Darfur, in Uganda, in Ogaden, in Tibet, and in Saudi Arabia. The massacres of 250000 innocent people in Darfur is not an issue for the Western values of the hypocritical gangsters who declare War on Terror and at the same time select as their friends the corrupt and tyrannical leaders of the Islamic terrorism factory ‘Saudi Arabia’. If Europeans want to discuss Western values and if the self-determination of a people is one among them, they have to recognize immediately three European countries that are not recognized yet: Kosovo, Transnistria, and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. And if they want to discuss ‘democracy’, Oromo leaders should explain to them that the Oromos, thanks to their open, democratic social system of Gadaa, do not need secret associations and occult mysteries in their tolerant and multi-religious society. The Gadaa system should not be replaced by a transplanted Freemasonry of French colonial inspiration.
Note
'Oromia' - Painting by Abebe Zelelew