The Political Economy of Land in Oromia and Ethiopia

Introduction

This paper critically assesses the issues and controversies related to land under the former Abyssinia (current Ethiopia) and Oromia for about a century and a half. The famous Oromo saying, “Dubbiin lafaa, dubbii lafeeti,” interpreted as land issue is the bone of the Oromo question, demonstrating the centrality of land in the contestation between Oromo society and the Ethiopian colonial empire. The colonization of the Oromo people during the last decades of the 19th century by Ethiopia (formerly Abyssinia/mainly Amhara) caused land dispossession of Oromo society, which used to own land communally. The Abyssinian/Ethiopian/Amhara colonial state and settlers and their collaborators expropriated Oromo lands and forced most Oromos to work for them on the lands they expropriated without compensation. They created the nafxanya-gabbar system, which made most Oromos impoverished laborers (serfs) and the nafxanyas (gun holders) affluent and influential. Regime changes in 1974, 1991, and 2018 could not fundamentally solve the problem of land ownership because its “nationalization” by the Proclamation No. 31/1975 has become the basis of state ownership of land.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Ethiopian student movement raised the famous saying, “Land to the Tiller,” because land has been the foundation of the political economy of the Ethiopian empire. With the revolutionary crisis of 1974, the Haile Selassie government was overthrown and replaced by the military regime that nationalized land because of the pressure from the students and other progressive forces. However, successive Ethiopian regimes owned the land and used it as their primary economic resource by dominating the political economy of the Ethiopian empire. First, the paper starts with an introduction. Second, it identifies and explains methodological and theoretical issues. Third, it describes the essence and characteristics of land ownership in Abyssinia proper and Oromia. Fourth, it deals with the relationship between Ethiopian colonialism and land dispossession in Oromia. Finally, the paper examines the change and continuity in the land tenure systems in Abyssinian proper and the colonized territories, mainly in Oromia, after subsequent regime changes.

Methodological and Theoretical Considerations

I use interdisciplinary, multidimensional, comparative, historical, and critical methods and approaches to examine the essence and characteristics of land tenure systems in the Ethiopian Empire. Issues addressed include indigenous land ownership and the interplay among European imperialism, colonialism, state violence, dispossession of the land of farmers and herders, serfdom, labor and resources exploitation, colonial capitalism, famine, poverty, and underdevelopment in the colonized territories, such as Oromia.

The Oromo and the Habasha (Amhara-Tigray peoples) fought from the 16th century to the mid-19th century without defeating each other over the issues of land and power, religion, culture, history, and the Oromo maintained their communal ownership of land and political sovereignty until they were colonized by the alliance of European imperialism and Ethiopian colonialism during the last decades of the 19th century (Jalata [1993] 2005; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990). The creation of the modern Ethiopian colonial state in this process enabled the Ethiopian colonizers to pillage the Oromo resources, such as enslaved people, ivory, cattle, and dispossess Oromo lands and introduce coercive labor such as slavery and the nafxanya-gabbar system (semi-slave labor).

The subsequent alliance between hegemonic powers, namely, Great Britain, the United States, the former Soviet Union, and other countries, has allowed the Ethiopian state and colonial settlers to continue to control the ownership of the land to extract resources by exploiting the Oromo farmers (Jalata [1993] 2005). By combining history and theory, this work explains how the penetration of imperialism in the Horn of Africa through colonialism introduced the ownership of Oromo land and that of other colonized peoples by the settlers nafxanyas (gun-carriers) and by successive colonial governments after its “nationalization” in 1975.

The data for this research include interviews, historical and anthropological sources, government and church records, and published materials. While focusing on social history and the political economy of land, this work also employs the French Annales School approach, which rejects the overspecialization of social science disciplines by combining idiographic and nomothetic modes of analysis of the political economy of land concerning social change and underdevelopment. This critical and historical study of land looks at societal issues from the bottom up. It utilizes essential discourses and the world system approach that deals with long-term and large-scale social changes concerning indigenous colonized peoples and their underdevelopment and suffering in the Ethiopian empire. As Kiernan (1982, 230) puts it, “There are, after all, good reasons for prying into the past with a historian’s telescope and trying to see more clearly what happened, instead of being content with legend or fantasy.”

Without critically and thoroughly understanding the past, we cannot comprehend the present problems, such as the underdevelopment and poverty of the Oromo and other colonized peoples, because the past exists in the present. Critical thinking and studies, such as subaltern studies, help confront and expose the false claims of Ethiopian exceptionalism that attempt to hide colonial history and imperialist practices in Ethiopia and other places. The problems of global capitalism and Ethiopian colonialism concerning land and their impacts on the colonized Oromo and others are studied using these theoretical and methodological approaches. The continued land dispossession in Oromo society has been the major factor for the underdevelopment of Oromia and its society.

Land Ownership in Abyssinia Proper and Oromia

Land ownership in Abyssinia differed from that in Oromia and the other colonized regions. More than 90 percent of the Habasha farmers controlled significant means of production, such as land, oxen, and seed. However, the caste groups and enslaved people were landless and tenants. The ruling class and its state controlled the farmers through Christian ideology, ethnonational affinity, and military force to extract their produce and labor. Tribute collection was the primary production extraction mechanism; thus, the arrangement was more analogous to a tributary production system (Amin 1980, 46–70) than feudalism. In the tributary system, the ruling class mainly extracted tribute and labor from the farmers who owned the basic means of production. However, in the feudal mode of production, the cultivators were connected to land by serfdom, which restricted their geographical mobility, and they were obligated to work in a large, landed state. In addition, the farmers paid their lords rents in kind or money from their families’ holdings. Until the emergence of the absolutist monarchy, feudal political power was relatively decentralized. In contrast, the tributary mode of production was usually based on a centralized political order. The lineage ownership of land did not allow the development of serfdom in Abyssinia, without which feudalism could not exist.

Some European travelers who visited Abyssinia in the 19th century uncritically applied the notion of feudalism to Abyssinian productive relations; since then, “feudal” constructs have been uncritically reproduced and spread by Ethiopianists and Ethiopian scholars (Hiwet 1975), except for very few (Ellis 1976, 275–95). The characterization of Abyssinian society as feudal was based mainly on the existence of hierarchical political structures: the monarchy, the nobility, and the cultivators (Crummey 1980, 122–130). However, the main characteristics of feudalism were missing. First, there was no serfdom connecting farmers to the land and restricting their mobility. Rodney Hilton (1976, 14) argues that “serfdom is the existence-form of labor in the feudal mode of production . . . The surplus labor could be used directly on the lord’s demesne (home farm of the manor), or its product could be transferred in the form of rent in kind or money, from the family holding.” In contrast to a feudal society where “the basic unit of production is a large, landed estate surrounded by small plots of peasants” (Kula 1976, 14), in Abyssinia proper, the great majority of the farmer households held collectively their primary means of production based on lineage. Although there were hudads (estate farms) requiring corvée labor, the household farm was the basic production unit.

The Abyssinian farmers primarily tilled the soil using draft animals and secondarily reared livestock (Gamst 1970, 373–392). The cultivators lived in scattered homesteads and produced grains and legumes. Although they mainly consumed what they created, they traded some products to obtain what they did not make, such as cloth, mining products, leather, and pottery (Gamst 1970, 373–392). The farmers supported their households, the state, and the church from what they produced as agriculturalists. The monarchs directly suppressed regional autonomy, except during the era of the rases (1769- 1855), when no central power existed. In Abyssinia, even the church and its clergy were integrated into the monarchical institution in a subordinate position. Amhara-Tigray “lords were not bound up with the production process. With no secure prospect of being able to reap long-term benefits from any investment, they pursued a purely predatory strategy” (Gamst 1970, 381–392). The rulers claimed their social position was given to them by God and that to obey them and observe their laws was to follow and to observe God’s law. According to Fetha Nagast, “God has appointed all these rulers and given them authority; one who opposes the ruler and is against him rebels against the ordinance of God, his creator. Those who rebel against the rulers secure their condemnation” (Gamst 1970, 381–392). The Ethiopian cultivators were controlled through political and ideological mechanisms that linked the ruling class to supernatural power.

The negusa nagast (king of kings), the mekwannint (the nobility), and the upper clergy formed the upper layer of the ruling class; the balabats (nobilities) and the local clergy constituted the lower. The monarch was at the social pyramid’s apex, controlling Abyssinia’s political economy (Pankhurst 1974, 159–179). Apart from his permanent bodyguards, the emperor needed troops temporarily during a political crisis or emergency (Abir 1968). The troops were recruited from the cultivators and were expected to have their spears, shields, swords, bows, arrows, and provisions. The permanent bodyguard received a minimal salary, food, and clothing. Discussing the condition of the army of Amda-Siyon in the 14th century, Tadesse Tamrat (1972, 191) describes that a bodyguard was a “professional soldier of fortune who had joined the court in search of wealth and adventure. These soldiers were handsomely paid for the loot taken from the conquered peoples. Some even possessed enslaved people obtained through the wars of conquest.” Most traditional troops "did not constitute a separate section of the population but were ordinary citizens mobilized by their rulers in time of need (Pankhurst 1967, 7). The two main tasks of the governors were to collect tribute and taxes and recruit fighting forces whenever the monarch needed them. These soldiers depended mainly on cattle and other commodities in the lands they passed through. This consumption sometimes caused conflicts between the cultivators and the army, as did the mandate that the cultivators give dirgo (free provisions) to officials and soldiers passing through the region (Pankhurst 1968, 563–72). Below the cultivators were caste groups, such as artisans, enslaved people, and servants, who did not have rights to the land. Enslaved people and servants had no means of production and worked for their masters for only food, shelter, and clothing.

When the Aksumites expanded their territory from Aksum southward, they occupied the land of Agew and Qimant, and later, their descendants claimed usufructuary rights to it (Huntingford 1965, 11). The land occupied by the original colonialists was called the rist land. Rist’s rights were initially claimed based on occupancy, conquest, and clearance of forest land (Markakis 1974, 75). The monarch had only limited authority on land other than his own (Huntingford 1965, 11). However, he could expand his holdings under certain conditions. The monarch claimed the right to collect tributes over all lands under his domain (except church land) and revoked rist-holder rights in the case of failure to pay homage; took abandoned land; possessed unclaimed and unused land; confiscated land as punishment for crimes and political opposition; took the land of hereditary families that were dying out; and expanded his territory through colonization and land expropriation (Huntingford 1965, 11). The kingdom furthered its territorial expansion through military colonies in which significant-scale Christian settlement occurred (Tamrat 1972, 100). The land of the conquered population was given as gult (“fief”) for military, administrative, and religious service; heavy dues were also imposed on the colonized people (Tamrat 1972, 98–99). The conquerors intensified the assimilation process by expropriating the means of production of the colonized population, attacking their identity, and imposing Christianity and Abyssinian languages and customs.

Those caught resisting were reduced to slavery. Taddesse Tamrat (1972, 98–99) argues, “The juridical effect of a fresh military conquest was to reduce all the conquered people and their belongings to the king’s absolute power. He appropriated all the people and their land and reserved every right to dispose of them according to his wishes.” The gult land charter was begun during the Aksumite kingdom when a certain king gave land for the Cathedral of Aksum. The state granted the gult fief-style rights as a reward for services and as endowments. The monarch appointed regional rulers, waived part of the taxing power over the cultivators, and provided the rulers with the gult land (Tamrat 1972, 98–99). The gult holders received tributes in cloth, grain, honey, salt, camel, sheep, and cattle; the amount was estimated at one-tenth and one-third of the farmer’s product (Hoben 1973, 83). The ruling class, including the church officials who were given gult rights, had the right to collect tributes, labor, and other services from the farmers who lived on the land and had some authority over them. Gult rights could be temporary, lifetime, hereditary, or (rist-gult) depending on the giver’s interest and power and the receiver’s services. The crown and its officials allocated lands to royal family members, aristocracy, court, provincial governors, clergy, and local functionaries in return for loyal service. However, these rights could sometimes be canceled if the guilt-holder was disloyal. Crummey asserts that (1980, 83) “the Ethiopian ruling class enjoyed some direct access to land and had this land worked by the peasants, either by tenancy relationships or corvée.” This tenancy phenomenon was probably of recent origin.

Land rights indicated class: Whereas the ordinary farmer had a rist right, the ruling class simultaneously had both rist and gult or rist-gult rights. Artisans, formerly enslaved people, and strangers had no land rights; hence, they were tenants. The various mechanisms of surplus extraction from the producers included tithe on land, tribute on agricultural production (between a fifth and a third), and tax on livestock (Crummey 1980, 83). The cultivators were also required to provide compulsory military service and corvée labor, give gifts honoring their lords’ appointments, and contribute to various ceremonial feasts. The farmers supported government officials and soldiers by billeting (Crummey 1980, 83) and supplied provisions (dirago) whenever necessary (Caulk 1978, 457–493). The ruling class depended mainly on tribute collection from cultivators and handicraft workers. Taxes from traders increased government revenue. The rases or the nagadras (chiefs of trade) levied taxes on local and regional trade at the marketplace (Pankhurst 1973, 157–58) under the tax-farm system; the nagadras paid a fixed annual sum of money or commodities to the government. Ethiopian colonialism initially expanded and modified tributary productive relations in Oromia. Due to its technological backwardness, exploitative nature, and dependence on European imperialism, the Ethiopian colonial system could not develop productive forces except by creating colonial social relations.

Before the colonization of Oromia by Ethiopia during the last decades of the 19th century (Jalata [1993] 2005; Holcomb and Ibssa 1990), the land was owned or controlled by lineage groups, whereas cattle belonged to individual families (Haji 1982, 19). Internal and external factors brought about the gadaa social organization’s disintegration and the Oromo kingdoms’ emergence in northern and western Oromia. The social transformation and the disintegration of the gadaa system did not occur throughout Oromia during the same historical era. In the first half of the nineteenth century, the development of agriculture and trade and class and state formations undermined the foundation of the gadaa system in northern and western Oromia. The egalitarian and democratic gadaa governance became incompatible with the mooti system (kingdom and tributary mode of production) due to the fundamental changes in the landholding system. In other words, the emergence of class differentiation and the rise of the Oromo kingdoms destroyed the gadaa system and introduced the landholding system in these parts of Oromia.

In the regions presently called Sidamo, Arsi, Bale, Gamu Gofa, and some parts of Shawa, the gadaa system did not disintegrate until the late nineteenth century. In these regions, it was undermined mainly by external factors. The Ethiopian colonial administration destroyed gadaa in these areas by creating the new Oromo chiefs, who emerged as an intermediate ruling class who obtained hereditary power (Lexander 1970, 277). Similarly, Turkish Egyptian colonialism destroyed the gadaa system in Hararghe between 1875 and 1885. The mooti system emerged through war, confiscation of land, collection of booty, tribute, and market dues, and establishing hereditary rights to ownership of property and political office in northern and western Oromia. The emergence of influential autocratic leaders and their private armies led to the control of marketplaces, trade routes, and land and the development of an agricultural economy, leading to class differentiation and state formation (Lewis 1964, 142). In the Gibe region of Oromia, wealth differentiation went beyond cattle wealth in the 17th century when the sorreessa (the wealthy merchant and landlord class) emerged (Hassen 1990, 89–187). The foundations of the five Oromo Gibe states - Limmu-Ennarya, Guma, Jimma, Gera, and Goma were laid by the development of agriculture, local industry, and the expansion of regional and long-distance trade between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries (Lewis 1965, 47–121).

In the first half of the 19th century, the emergence of the Abbaa lafa (a hereditary landlord), the mooti (king), Abbaa qorroo (governor), trade chiefs, and market administrators reduced the egalitarian aspects of the gadaa to religious rituals in some parts of Oromia. The mooti continuously accumulated wealth in his treasuries with incomes he extracted from a tribute on the land and its products, his estates, and commerce (Abir 1965, 205–219). This production extraction enabled the mooti to create and maintain regulatory institutions like the military, bodyguards, and courts (Lewis 1965, 93). In the Gibe region, through the process of social class differentiation, the egalitarian and democratic gadaa office was replaced by the autocratic and hereditary office of the mooti. All officials below the mooti were directly or indirectly appointed by him from the landowning warriors. Finally, there were, at the bottom, free farmers, qubsissa (tenants), ogeesa (artisans), and enslaved people. There were also other parts of Oromia where social class differentiation and kingdoms developed. According to records, the Wallo Oromo exercised military power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (Prouty and Rosenfeld 1981, 181). In the eighteenth century, the Wallo Oromo replaced the gadaa administration with that of the dynasty (Prouty and Rosenfeld 1981, 181).

In the first half of the nineteenth century, the democratic gadaa system was also disintegrated in the Afre confederation of the Macha Oromo (Wallaga) because of social class differentiation. During the earliest expansion, particularly in Wallaga, all members of the lineage had equal usufructuary rights to the land, and there was no scarcity; therefore, every male Oromo had his own house and tract of land on which he could raise animals and cultivate crops (Ta’a 1984, 179–197). With the emergence of a relative scarcity of land in the community, pioneers’ descendants began to monopolize land rights and impose a special settling permission called qubsissa (tenancy) on newcomers who were forcibly subordinated and annually performed labor service for a specific number of days (Ta’a 1984, 179–197). The emergence of Leqa-Naqamte and Leqa-Qellem mooti systems was based on the initiation of appropriation of rights to land and labor, warfare, and control of trade and marketplaces. The land rights and the development of agriculture and trade facilitated the emergence and consolidation of the mooti system in Wallaga. The most successful pioneers’ descendants, such as the leaders of Leqa-Qellem and Leqa-Naqamte, gradually transformed the gadaa fighting forces, qondala, into their armies (Ta’a, 1980: 44). These leaders also created effective administration and better military organizations to control trade routes and marketplaces to collect tribute; they also accumulated wealth by collecting regular tributes on heads of cattle, ivory, gold, cotton, and other commodities (Ta’a 1984, 53).

The Gadaa system was attacked in eastern Oromia by the Turkish, Egyptian, and Adare alliance. The interethnic alliance and interdependence between the Adare and the eastern Oromo were shattered when the faction of the former invited the Turkish Egyptian power to colonize the Hararghe region in 1875. Under Turkish Egyptian rule, between 1875 and 1885, the Adare consolidated their power and accumulated wealth and capital at the cost of the majority Oromo. The leaders of the Oromo who settled around Harar were gradually forced to accept the administration of the Amirs, abandon the Oromo political system, receive these titles, and become hereditary chiefs. The remaining eastern Oromo had the gadaa government until the alliance between the Turkish Egyptians and the Adares destroyed it.

The Colonial Landholding System

Whereas the Oromo intermediaries (balabats) were given one-fourth of the expropriated Oromo lands and received Ethiopian titles (such as balambaras and grazmach), the patriotic Oromo leaders who continued to resist were physically eliminated or forced to live in forests while they fought against Ethiopian colonialism. Although the primary objective of the local balabat system was to ensure the maintenance and reproduction of the Ethiopian colonial system, the immediate purpose was to facilitate the continuous supply of grain, labor, and other necessary materials for the settlers. Because they were unfamiliar with the language and culture, the colonialists would have faced severe difficulty establishing their colonial rule in Oromia without this local intermediate class. The Ethiopian ruling class, which was an intermediate stratum of European imperialism, gradually created or consolidated its sublayer among the Oromo. The Oromo collaborators became the instrument of the colonialists and accepted this role because it provided them with economic and political advantages.

An institution that entitled the colonialists and their intermediaries to exact labor and agricultural products from the Oromo and others was called the nafxanya-gabbar system. The Ethiopian settlers—soldiers, clergypersons, and administrators (all known as nafxanyas)— exploited gabbars who were coerced to provide them food, labor, tribute, and tax revenues both in cash and in kind. A ras or dajazmach might have received 1,000 gabbars, a sub-governor 200 or 300, a fitawrari 300, a kangazmach 150, and ordinary soldiers, according to rank 20, 15, or 10. Michael Stahl (1974, 4) states, “The lords demanded from one-third to one-half of the harvest. In addition, they had to provide chicken, eggs, sheep, and beer for lords’ banquets on important holidays.” The farmers were also forced to work on estate farms and build roads and other construction projects (Stahl 1974, 4). The control of gabbar labor and land expropriation were inseparable phenomena. Initially, land without labor had little value, so the colonialists needed grabbars that would work for them. The colonial state expropriated the best Oromo lands and appointed stewards (missilenes) to manage hudads (estate farms) and gabbar labor. The emperor and royal households owned extensive tracts of the best lands that supplied necessary provisions. Local and regional state officials had estate farms that were worked by the gabbars. These farms produced all the required products for consumption and the market.

In Oromia, the primary sources of revenue gradually became gabbar labor and land for the colonial state and its officials. “With increasing demand for gabbar labor, the government needed an alternative solution. Increased numbers of settlers put more pressure on government resources since many northerners, when offered measured land, declined, hoping to receive gabbars later. This pressure could not be allowed to continue indefinitely” (McClellan 1978, 12). Between 1935 and 1941, Italian colonialism, the scarcity of gabbars, and the emergence of agro-capitalism undermined the nafxanya-gabbar system. The survival and evolution of the Ethiopian client state depended mainly on the dual bases of land ownership and articulation with European imperialism. Initially, this colonial state financed itself with revenues obtained from looting, the enslavement of the colonized peoples, and the control of trade. However, gabbar labor and land gradually became the primary state revenue sources. “The system of land ownership was of crucial importance to the country’s economic and social life,” Richard Pankhurst writes, “for besides determining questions of social class, it was the basis of administration, taxation, and military service” (Pankhurst 1968, 135). Oromo land was turned over to the state’s governors, military commanders, soldiers, and settlers to safeguard Ethiopian control and produce extraction.

The Ethiopian colonialists continued to settle fellow citizens in Oromia to perpetuate their dominance. Discussing this condition, James McCann (1986, 369) writes, “A key component of this process has been the movement of people out of . . . `Abyssinia’s empire into the south [mainly Oromia], first as soldiers/settlers and then as landlords, administrators, and political entrepreneurs.” The colonial state claimed absolute rights over three-fourths of the Oromo lands and provided portions for its officials instead of a salary. The Ethiopian nobility and ecclesiastical, civil, and military officers were rewarded with grants of maderia and rist-gult. The Ethiopian farmers and foreign mercenaries who participated in the colonization of Oromia as soldiers, settlers, messengers, priests, spies, and corrections officers were also granted land as a reward for their service. The amount of land (whether granted temporarily or permanently) depended on rank or position. An ordinary soldier received from one to three gashas (a gasha is approximately forty hectares), a captain of fifty soldiers was granted up to five gashas, and a leader of three hundred soldiers received up to twenty gashas of land (Markakis 1974, 113). The state also commodified and sold some lands to individuals.

The remaining one-fourth of the colonized Oromo land was divided among the Oromo collaborators. This enabled the state to create or consolidate local landlords ready to serve between the Oromo and the colonialists. For instance, in the Arsi region, about 96 percent of the land was distributed among the settlers, and the local intermediary group controlled the remainder (Poluha 1974, 59). The Oromo farmers and pastoralists faced a similar fate everywhere. One-fourth of the land was granted to the Oromo collaborators, and one person from each subgroup took charge. Such persons collected taxes and then paid them to the colonial settlers and the state. Gradually, they developed into landlords and collaborated with the colonialists for the oppression and exploitation of the Oromo. Between 1889 and 1929, the state expropriated more than 14 million hectares of land (Pankhurst 1966, 121–134). Thus, the merger of capitalist imperialism with the Ethiopian precapitalist social formation created a hybrid situation in which combined non-capitalist and capitalist relations emerged. The Oromo farmers and herders were mainly separated from their basic means of production—cattle and land— to be enslaved and/or serve as gabbars to the colonial masters without payment. They received from their products only “that amount of food necessary for not dying of hunger” (cited in McClellan 1978, 124).

The development of coffee farms in Oromia increased land expropriation and the influx of new Ethiopian settlers to the Oromo country (Siemienski 1955, 67–68). In the 1960s, about 80 percent of the farmed land in the colonized regions was cultivated by tenants who paid up to 75 percent of their products to landlords (Bekele and Chole 1969, 28–29). In coffee-producing parts of Oromia, about 62 percent of coffee producers were tenants (Haile-Mariam 1973, 66–67). In addition to the household farms, there were large-scale and small-scale coffee farms, and absentee landlords owned a large proportion of the large-scale coffee fields; they were “government officials who live in Addis Ababa, while a few are coffee exporters who have integrated their operations back to the farm. Very few large-scale farms [were] owned by non-Ethiopians” (Haile-Mariam 1973, 42). For instance, in Kaffa alone, of the 119 large-scale coffee plantations in the early 1970s, 38 of them had 40 to 800 hectares of land, and 81 had from 20 to 39 hectares (Haile-Mariam 1973, 44). There were about 36 foreign and 4 Ethiopian coffee exporters and 50 brokers in Addis Ababa in the early 1970s (Haile-Mariam 1973, 88). These foreign exporters (Arabs, Indians, Armenians, Greeks, Italians, French, and Germans) handled the 85 percent of the coffee that was exported. (Haile-Mariam 1973, 86–89). After 1957, the colonial state attempted to control the flow of coffee beans from the farm to local and international markets through the newly created National Coffee Board. This was justified on several grounds: stabilizing year-to-year returns to growers against large year-to-year international market price fluctuations, standardizing quality, and negotiating higher prices for national production.

Since U.S. hegemonism was sponsoring Ethiopian colonialism, the coffee produced in Oromia and managed and marketed by Ethiopians and Europeans mainly exported to the United States (Prouty and Rosenfeld 1981, 38). Coffee remained important—“the top foreign exchange earner and the primary source of tax revenue (48 percent of total export earnings from 1972-77)” (Prouty and Rosenfeld 1981, 37). The exploitation of resources by the colonialist-imperialist alliance for mutual benefit extended to the development of the sugar and cotton industries in the Awash Valley. This valley suits commercial farms because of its irrigation, mechanization, and transportation potential. Various irrigation schemes developed from the Awash River, the Addis Ababa-Djibouti Railway passes through this valley, and many towns in Hararghe and Shawa are linked to this railway by all-weather roads. After the HVA (Handels Vereniging Amsterdam) United firm was expelled from the Republic of Indonesia by nationalization, it sent its representatives to Ethiopia in 1947 to explore the prospect of locating its sugar industry there (Bondestam 1974, 424). The Ethiopian Government evicted Oromo pastoralists and leased 5,000 hectares of land in the Middle Awash Valley for sugar production. The investment in the first sugar plantation and industry was Eth. $20 million, and production began in 1954 (Mohammed 1969, 61).

The attractiveness of the business prompted the Ethiopian Government to become interested in investing in the sugar industry. According to Duri Mohammed (1969, 61), “Production increased by more than twice its original output, rising from 15,900 tons in 1954 to 32,000 tons per year in 1958. . . . At this time, the Ethiopian Government required a minority equity interest to be represented in the enterprise. As a result, ‘H.V.A.’ was converted to ‘H.V.A. Ethiopia’ and the capital raised to Eth. $28 million.” Profitability in the sugar industry in the middle Awash Valley encouraged the opening of a factory in Shawa, which was financed mainly by the same company. The total investment in the sugar industry and plantation rose from 1958 to Eth. $50,400,000, of which Ethiopians held 20% and 80% by foreigners" (Mohammed 1969, 61). In the 1960s, the total investment in sugar production and estates of the three sugar industries amounted to Eth—$ 106.4 million. The Ethiopian Government created the Awash Valley Authority in 1962 to facilitate commercial agriculture and sugar production. Great Britain was also interested in the valley. Its firm, Mitchell Cotts, established the Tendaho Plantation Share Company (TPSC) in the Lower Awash Valley. It proved to be a profitable cotton plantation. Discussing the nature of this enterprise, Lars Bondestam notes, “This is an increasingly lucrative business, administered and managed by the British firm Mitchell Cotts, which has 51 percent of the share capital: the Ethiopian Government [had] 38 percent, Sultan Ali Mira 7 percent, while various local and foreign private interests share the remaining 4 percent” (Bondestam 1974, 435).

In 1970, the TPSC cultivated 8,200 hectares of land with a production value of Eth—$9 million (Bondestam 1974, 432). In the same year, Israeli and Italian investors established Abadir and Nura Era plantations. The former cultivated 2,800 hectares of land at about Eth. $2.5 million production value; the latter cultivated 2,000 hectares at about Eth. $2 million (Bondestam 1974, 432). The total estimated land under cultivation in the whole valley in 1973 was some 65,000 hectares (Bondestam 1974, 429). According to Bondestam (1974, 431), “The total value of production had surpassed Eth. $90 million in 1969-70. Although many plantations are still in their infancy, profits are impressive, and investments [venture capital] are being recovered after only 3-4 years.” The introduction of commercial farming, dam construction, and the Awash Game Park (80,000 hectares) development in the Awash Valley had disastrous effects on the Oromo and Afar pastoralists, who were forced to leave their lands. Helmut Kloos (1982, 32) states, “The irrigation schemes in the Awash Valley have displaced an estimated 20,000 pastoralists. Most of them appear to have remained near the farms, resulting in crowding, over-grazing, and destruction of the remaining pastures. The schemes blocked migration routes and livestock watering points of some groups.” The decrease of pastureland, the deaths of cattle by drinking from ponds polluted by industrial waste, and drought and famine resulted from the destruction of the ecosystem, which destroyed the lives of the pastoralists. As a result, most of the Karayu, Jile, Arsi, and Ittu Oromo and the Afars sold their remaining cattle and tried to adapt to new conditions. Some died, while others turned to agricultural labor to survive (Kloos 1982, 37–40). With the crisis of the Ethiopian empire in the early 1970s, the Haile Selassie government was overthrown and replaced by the military regime called the Derg, which changed the landholding system in the empire.

Change and Continuity in Land Ownership and the Politics of Domination

The Derg, the military regime that overthrew the Haile Selassie government in 1974, consolidated its position as head of the extensive state apparatus by introducing economic reforms and crushing its opponents, using both brutal force and a radical ideological discourse. On one hand, it nationalized land and industries and organized urban and rural populations to broaden its power base. On the other hand, the Derg intensified the war against its enemies, mainly radical Ethiopian political groups, popular forces, the colonized peoples, and their liberation movements. By claiming a theoretically radical political position, it temporarily allied with those few radical political groups willing to work with it and began to use them for organizing the people; for political expediency and obtaining arms, it invited the former U.S.S.R. to become involved in the empire’s affairs. In this manner, the Derg, particularly Colonel Mengistu’s faction, established its dominance while the struggle intensified from below.

The regime undertook a series of nationalization moves in 1975, beginning with the takeover of banks and insurance companies on January 1, 1975. The regime nationalized seventy-two industries, commercial institutions, and twenty-nine other companies on February 3. Because land was a central issue, the Derg nationalized all rural land on March 4 and all urban land, rentable houses, and apartments in July. One scholar argues, “The radicalization which led the Derg to promulgate a whole series of radical measures in 1975-1976… [was] not to be explained by the `socialist’ good intentions of the soldiers or the ideological pressure put on it by intellectuals. The reality was that Ethiopian society was rapidly swinging leftwards, forcing the government to yield to events while pretending to organize them or give up power” (quoted in Lefort 1981, 153). The Derg found it necessary to follow the revolutionary wave that brought it to power to stay in control. Suppose nationalization is the factor that makes a state revolutionary or a socialist. In that case, the Ethiopian colonial state fits the description because it expropriated most of the Oromo land and other properties through colonization. However, without clearly grasping who nationalized what, for whom, for what purpose, and without identifying the key decision-makers in allocating the wealth or capital extracted from the nationalized economic sectors, many scholars have wrongly characterized this colonial military regime as a revolutionary or socialist government (Crummey 1981). To equate colonial state ownership with a revolutionary transformation is entirely erroneous.

Had the people had ownership rights over their productive assets, they would have had a decisive voice in their political economy. As one official of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) commented, referring to the new ownership of land in Oromia, “Individual Amhara landlordism has been replaced by collective Amhara landlordism. The state, which is the collective property of the Amhara colonialists, is the landlord. Our peasants are its tenants” (“Ethiopia’s Hidden War: The Oromo Liberation Front” 1983, 63). The junta designed villagization and settlement programs in Oromia to force the Oromo farmers and pastoralists into “security villages” to create a room for the new settlers from Abyssinia/Ethiopia proper. Between 1991 and 2018, the Tigrayan-led government and between 2018 to the present, the Abiy-led neo-nafxanaya government followed similar policies on the issue of land. As I discuss below, these regimes have continued to undermine the public ownership of land and lease it to foreign and domestic investors by evicting the cultivators. Consequently, between 2014 and 2018, the opposition to land-grabbing policies, gross human rights violations, cultural destruction, political and economic marginalization, poverty, and rampant unemployment mobilized the entire Oromo society against the Tigrayan-led government and engaged in the Oromo peaceful protest movement. The accumulated grievances and the broadened and deepened political consciousness of the Oromo resulted in the Oromia-wide peaceful protest movement. Although Oromo nationalists started organizing the Oromo youth with the formation of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the organization paid serious attention to organizing Oromo students in the early 2000s (Jalata 2019–2020, 160–75).

Between 2004 and 2005, the OLF focused on organizing students in clandestine cells and coined the slogan Fincila Dida Garbummaa (Revolt Against Political Slavery).^[1] Although scattered protests started in the early 2000s, the popular protest movement erupted in Ginchi, near Ambo, on November 12, 2015, and covered all of Oromia like wildfire. The small town’s Oromo elementary and secondary school students ignited peaceful protests due to the privatization and confiscation of a small soccer field, as well as the sale of the nearby Chilimoo forest for clearing and deforestation.^[2] Supporting the peaceful demonstrations of these students and opposing the so-called master plan, the entire Oromo from all walks of life joined the peaceful protests. For the first time since colonization, Oromo nationalism had tied all Oromo branches together to take a coordinated collective action to defend their national interest.^[3] The so-called master plan was intended to expand Finfinnee (Addis Ababa) to 1.5 million hectares of surrounding Oromo lands by evicting Oromo farmers, destroying Oromo identity, culture, and history,^[4] and replacing the Oromo with Tigrayans and their collaborators. The Oromo had interpreted this policy as the replication of the policy of the Amhara-led government that uprooted and destroyed the Oromo in Finfinnee and replaced them with Amhara colonial settlers and their collaborators during the formation and development of Addis Ababa as the capital city of the Ethiopian Empire. Through the accumulated experiences of the past two and a half decades, the Oromo people have realized that the Tigrayan colonial elites have been expropriating Oromo lands and other resources and transferring them to themselves and their domestic and global supporters. In the process, the regime had merchandised some Oromo land to enrich the Tigrayan elites and their supporters—the Oromo who had been forcefully evicted and had become daily laborers or beggars, or destitute.

Furthermore, the Tigrayan colonial elites dominated commerce, sold fertilizers at high prices to farmers, and directly or indirectly forced the Oromo farmers to sell their animals and grains at low prices to pay their debts, taxes, and other expenses.^[5] In these ways, the Oromo people became alien in their own country, and the Tigrayans owned Oromia. As a result, the Oromo people were impoverished and lost hope. Some educated Oromo became jobless or daily laborers or unemployed, while the Tigrayan elites dominated and controlled Oromia and Ethiopia’s political economy and enriched themselves.^[6] At the same time, the Oromo national struggle that emerged in the 1960s had been penetrating the psyche of the Oromo people. The more the OLF, other Oromo political organizations, and civic institutions challenged the legitimacy of the colonial regime clandestinely and openly by opposing its policies, the more the regime intensified its racism, terrorism, and repression.^[7] While engaging in low-level guerrilla activities in rural areas, the OLF organized activist cells or a nucleus to propagate its political objectives and to raise political consciousness or Oromo nationalism among Oromo urban dwellers, farmers, and students.^[8]

The politicized term Qerroo (Oromo youth) emerged in 2011 after the OLF clandestinely organized Oromo students for many years. After the OLF was forced from the transitional government, it focused on armed struggle and clandestinely organizing the Oromo in general and the students in particular.^[9] Organizing the Oromo youth continued for many years. Still, it intensified when the Bale and Borana forests of Oromia were burned and thousands of wild animals were killed from January to the first week of April 2000, and when the Ethiopian government ignored the problem. The Oromo in Bale and Borana, and others, believed that the regime set the fires to deny a base to OLF guerrilla fighters when it was fighting against Eritrea in 2000.^[10] When the high school students from Ambo, Naqamte, Dembi Dollo, and other places demonstrated the burning of Oromian forests, the regime killed a few students and imprisoned hundreds of them (Bulcha 2014). The killings and imprisonments of these students increased the determination of Oromo students to resist the regime and continue their struggle. Between 2000 and 2004, Oromo students and civic organizations such as the Macha-Tulama Self-Help Association (MTA) and legal political organizations such as the Oromo National Congress and the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement resisted the move of the capital city of Oromia Regional State from Finfinnee to Adama.^[11]

On January 4, 2004, the leaders of MTA organized a peaceful protest against the change in the Oromia capital city. Oromo students, journalists, activists, and other civilians were targeted for imprisonment and killing.^[12] Oromo university students engaged in various activities; in addition to publishing their graduating bulletins every year, they started to celebrate an Oromo indigenous calendar beginning in January. The more Oromo students in higher institutions increased their political and cultural activities, the more the regime increased its repression. The expulsion of 350 Oromo students in 2004 from Addis Ababa University demonstrated the enormous rift between the Oromo students and the regime.^[13] The resistance of Oromo students to the burning of Bale and Bornana forests and the changing of Oromia’s capital city from Finfinnee to Adama helped these students learn about the importance of collective struggle and action. The OLF also learned from its trial and error how to build secret activist cells or nuclei through which it had disseminated its directives and policies among Oromo students in colleges and high schools.^[14] In 2005, it declared what it called Fincila Dida Garbummaa, which invited all Oromo students and others to peacefully and clandestinely participate in the Oromo national struggle.^[15] The genocidal policies and practices of the regime, the continuous humiliation of the Oromo people by the regime, the Oromo cultural renaissance initiated by the MTA and the students, the persistent struggle led by the OLF and legal Oromo political organizations, and the broadening and deepening of Oromo national and political consciousness among the Oromo youth and other sectors of Oromo society cumulatively made young Oromo to be bold and fearless in 2015 and 2016.^[16]

At the same time, the government had claimed the policies of equality, federalism, and democracy. Still, it had practiced “violent development” by impoverishing the Oromo and enriching Tigrayans and their collaborators. The practice of state terrorism, genocide, and political repression; the regime’s lies about political and economic progress; rampant unemployment; and fake elections convinced the Oromo in general and the students in particular that the regime was colonial, terrorist, and illegitimate. As legally recognized civic and political organizations, the MTA, the Oromo National Congress, and the Oromo Federalist Democratic Movement (later both merged and called the Oromo Federalist Congress) tacitly became a political platform for Oromo students and other activists during the dark time for the Oromo people. Falsely accusing them of breaking anti-terrorist laws by associating them with the OLF, the regime imprisoned the top leaders and other activists of the MTA and the Oromo Federalist Congress. Unfortunately, the Tigray and Amhara students and others did not like the emergence of assertive Oromo students; they feared and, at the same time, despised them. A few of them wrote racist graffiti called Galla, the derogatory name that the Ethiopians have used to characterize the Oromo as backward or uncivilized and pagan, in restrooms or other places on university campuses, to provoke Oromo students.^[17] Whenever Oromo students angrily reacted, the government army or police intervened and imprisoned or expelled Oromo students from universities. Habasha professors are the majority in universities, and they also discriminate against Oromo students by giving them bad grades because they challenge biased history and knowledge in classes.^[18]

Between 1992 and 2015, all groups, particularly the Tigrayans, despised and disrespected the Oromo and thought they could do whatever they wanted.^[19] Between 2014 and 2018, the Oromo protest movement showed to foes and friends that the Oromo have a collective power to promote their national interests. The Oromo established solidarity with various nations, such as the Amharas, Sidamas, and Konsos. The Qeerroo/Qarree were made up of Oromo youth, predominantly students from elementary school to university, organizing collective actions through media networks, such as radios, televisions, and personal relations and networks. To increase its surveillance, the government expanded communication technology such as mobile phones, the Internet, Facebook, TVs, and radios. However, these innovations started to have unintended consequences during the Oromo protest movement. The Oromo youth effectively used these innovations to communicate among themselves and expose the government’s propaganda. Through daily slogans or chants, the Qeerroo/Qarree had clearly articulated that the OLF should replace the Tigrayan-led regime and recognized the front as the origin of Oromo nationalism. However, some opposition groups denied the existence of a strong relationship between the Qeerroo/Qarree and the OLF. The government’s reactions to the Qeerroo/Qarree protests had been violent and suppressive. Even though Oromia is the largest regional state in Ethiopia, it has been under martial law since the protests began. The government had been able to use this law to kill or detain thousands of Oromo, holding them in prisons and concentration camps.^[20]

The government also implemented security structures called tokkooshane (one-to-five), garee, and gott;^[21] their responsibilities included spying, identifying, exposing, imprisoning, torturing, and killing Oromo who were not interested in serving the regime. Thousands of Oromo were killed, maimed, or blinded because of torture and beatings during the suppression of protests.^[22] For example, during the Oromia-wide day of peaceful protest on August 6, 2016, the regime’s army, known as Agazi, massacred nearly 100 Oromo. According to Amnesty International, 400 Oromo were killed before July 6.^[23] For some time, the colonial government and its elites believed that by beating, torturing, castrating, decapitating, raping, and murdering Oromo students, farmers, educators, and merchants, they could stop the Oromo struggle for statehood, sovereignty, and egalitarian democracy.^[24] The protests gained further traction as the state’s reaction became violent. For example, in early October 2016, when millions of Oromo gathered at Hora Arsadi, southeast of Finfinnee, for the Irreecha (Oromo national Thanksgiving holiday) celebration, the government’s army killed more than 700 Oromo and injured or imprisoned thousands.^[25] This was sparked by peaceful, anti-government chants by young Oromo.^[26] After the massacre, Oromo protesters burned property and both locally and internationally owned businesses that had been built on the land seized from the Oromo by Tigrayans and other business elites.^[27]

As the Oromo protest movement intensified, the Amhara, Konso, and Gedeo joined the protest movement. The Ethiopian government’s response was to declare a state of emergency.^[28] Set for six months and extended by three months, it aimed to curb the growing anti-government protest movement. The state of emergency was the last attempt by the government to stop the Oromo protests and to stay in power. The government was, therefore, using this situation to gain total control over information,^[29] using heavy force and denying the freedom of organization and association. As a result, the regions of Oromia, Amhara, Konso, and Gedeo had become conflict zones,^[30] with the regime indiscriminately imprisoning, looting, and killing protesters, and according to the state of emergency rules, Oromos, Amharas, and Konsos had been restricted from access to media. They were not allowed to listen to radio stations such as the Voice of Oromo Liberation Radio or watch media channels like the Oromia Media Network or the Oromia News Network. Ethiopian soldiers were enforcing these rules and were seizing or breaking satellite dishes. The emergency rules also prevented citizens from associating with political organizations that the regime had branded as “terrorists.” One of these organizations was the OLF, which was established in 1973 by Oromo nationalists to promote the principles of national self-determination and democracy.

For several years, the Oromia Regional State had been under a crackdown enforced by special police groups and the army known as Agazi.^[31] After the protest movement started, according to rights organizations, more than 2000 Oromo were killed in eleven months.^[32] Several thousand more had been imprisoned, tortured, blinded, and raped. The government had stated that 11,000 people were detained. To hide its crimes from the international community, the regime had blocked the Internet and confiscated phones from thousands of Oromo.^[33] The Oromo youth movement emerged as a formidable political force between 2014 and 2018 and shook the foundation of the Tigrayan-led racist and terrorist minority government of Ethiopia. The brain of this government was the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which organized and led the Ethiopian People’s Democratic Front (EPRDF) for almost twenty-seven years. As a result of the popular struggle of the Oromo and other movements, the ruling party, the TPLF/EPRDF, was reorganized in April 2018, and Abiy Ahmed, who was trained in the Ethiopian army and politics under the leadership of the TPLF, emerged as Prime Minister by replacing Haile Mariam Desalegn. Considering that Abiy Ahmed was born in Oromia and the Oromo people would accept him, the TPLF/EPRDF elected him to become Ethiopia’s prime minister.

The Abiy government continued the Habasha (mainly Amhara-Tigray) settler state, which Menelik started. Successive Ethiopian governments have built and maintained this settler state without changing its essence through fostering the supremacy of the Amhara language, Amhara-Tigray culture, Orthodox Christianity, and the colonial ideology of Ethiopianism by using the colonized population groups, such as the Oromo, as raw material and firewood (Jalata 2022). That is why Abiy Ahmed boasts on TV that he is ready to kill anybody who tries to restructure and change the current Ethiopian state. He calls the Tigrayan and Oromo movements “the cancer of Ethiopia,” which must be militarily operated and destroyed (Jalata 2022). The current regime is characterized as the "neo-nafxanya" government by its critics (Jalata 2022) because it tries to modernize itself by glorifying Menelik and other colonial leaders. Abiy is trying to continue the colonial nation-building project, which was initiated by Menelik and continued by Haile Selassie and others. Abiy never hesitates to order to the killing and destruction of his potential and real enemies. He is the supreme commander of military-political-security structures, which combine the political leaders and the leaders of the intelligence and security networks, the defense forces, and the police. In addition, he and his agent, the president of the Oromia Regional State, have organized paramilitary groups known as Gachana Sirna (defenders of the system) and Shanee, which have similar clothes and hairstyles to the Oromo Liberation Army (OLF), to use them in destroying Oromo suspected by the government as enemies.

The government, masquerading as the OLF, has killed, terrorized, looted, and abused the Oromo people to turn them against the OLA. Some members of these groups are non-Oromo, particularly members of the settler community who have hatred and hostility against Oromo society. From 2018 to the present, Abiy has given free rein to kill Oromo who are considered nationalists and the custodians of Oromo culture and those who are suspected of sympathizing with or supporting the Qeerroo/Qarree movement, the OLF, and OLA. The killings of Oromo have been graphic, involving burning alive, raping, cutting necks,^[34] setting fires to corpses, throwing dead bodies in streets or forests, burning the houses of Oromo farmers,^[35] burning pregnant women in homes,^[36] and executions at public squares. Rashid Abdi, a journalist, says, “In Ethiopia’s brutal conflict, a bullet to the head is an act of mercy. The unlucky ones get roasted alive in open pits, thrown off cliffs alive, or thrown into rivers, arms and legs tied. The Fanno militia and Amhara Special Forces are masters in gruesome mass murder.”^[37] For Prime Minister Abiy, “Fanno is the pride of Ethiopia; they have fought heroically and will continue to fight. Fanno deserves praise and the utmost respect.”^[38]

All these criminal actions have been intended to impose fear on the Oromo public to change their political behavior and support the neo-nafxanya government of Abiy Ahmed. This government mainly uses state terrorism, genocidal massacres, and gross human rights violations in Oromia and Tigray. “The widely shared video, which sparked outrage on social media late Friday [March 11, 2022], shows an unarmed man being set on fire as a group of people, including some wearing Ethiopian army uniforms, taunt him in Amharic.”^[39] The Abiy’s army, security networks, special forces, and the police; the Amhara Fanno and special forces; and the Eritrean military have been terrorizing and massacring the Oromo in Wallaga, Borana, Guiji, Wallo, and Central Oromia, claiming to protect the Oromo people from the OLA. The Oromia Support Group reports, "The campaign against OLF supporters, Qerroo/Qarre members, and their families began in earnest in West and East Wallaga in the last week of December 2018. Ten were killed in Wallaga between 17-31 December 2018 … Although rumors said’ substantial numbers’ died on December 23 in Hararge, confirmed killings were not recorded until January 2019 (Oromia Support Group, Report 50, 2019). In December 2018, there were about 163 extrajudicial killings and at least 933 arbitrary detentions of suspected supporters or sympathizers of the OLF, which returned to Oromia from Eritrea in September 2018.^[40]

In July 2019, the Abiy government intensified the extrajudicial killings and arbitrary arrests of Oromo. The government has implemented brutal policies to maintain absolute power: “Vast numbers have been killed in Western Oromia, especially in Wallaga, where another 92 killings of Oromos have been added to the 350 recorded previously since October 2018. Of these 92, 54 died before mid-2019 and 38 in 2020. An additional 60 Amhara settlers died at the government’s hands in Guliso on November 1. Government forces have been responsible for at least 442 civilian deaths in Western Oromia, 340 in 2020 alone” [Oromia Support Group 54, 2021].^[41] Between December 2018 and January 2019, in Guji, an area in Southern Oromia, government soldiers displaced 80,000 Oromo, detained more than 10,000 men and women, and executed 52 people, suspecting they were sympathizing with or supporting the OLA (Gardner 2020). The government arrested hundreds of people for several months without charging them by violating national and international human rights laws under conditions that amounted to torture; it provided ‘training’ for detainees for a few months on the constitution, the rule of law, and the so-called history of the Oromo people’s struggle (Gardner 2020). Government soldiers and security forces have committed many crimes, including extrajudicial killings, burning houses, raping, forced evictions, brutal beatings, and burning people alive or corpses.^[42] Amnesty International U.K. notes, “Ethiopian security forces committed horrendous human rights violations, including burning homes to the ground, [public] executions, rape, arbitrary arrests, and detentions … in response to attacks by armed groups and inter-communal violence in Amhara and Oromia.”^[43]

In September 2020, the Oromia Support Group, report 53, reported that “Oromia is a slaughterhouse now,” noting the government killed 446 people in Wallaga, arrested innocent people, including politicians and journalists, and executed some of them by taking them out of prisons.^[44] In the attempt to destroy the OLA, the Abiy government has intensified state terrorism and genocidal massacres in Wallaga and Wallo. A resident from Wallaga reported to the Oromia Support Group (OSG) in May 2020 the following: “They [government forces] demand to know where the OLF is. If you say you don’t know, they shoot you. If you complain, they shoot you. If you move, they shoot you.” The Abiy government has mobilized its military, the police, Amhara Fanno and regional and special forces, and Eritrean soldiers against the Oromo people. As a result, the Amhara militia attacked Oromo in Wallo from March 19-22 and March 25-28, 2020: the Amhara militia razed about 13 villages and “went on a rampage of killing, raping, and burning homes and corpses around Kemise. In five villages in the Jille Dhumga district and ten villages in the adjacent district of Artuma Fursi alone, at least 79 named farmers and their wives were killed, not counting those killed in Ataye town. Eyewitnesses reported hundreds of dead, ‘bodies everywhere’, and over 10,000 displaced.”^[45] The Wallo Oromos were terrorized and murdered by extremist Amhara gangs who took them down from a car and pulled them out of a hospital in March 2021 because of their Oromo identity and Islamic religion.^[46]

In the Ethiopian Empire, the Oromo and other subjugated peoples’ lives had no value or respect. Ethiopian government forces and their supporters are killing, burning, hanging, torturing, and raping girls, boys, and women. Public executions are glorified. In Dembi Dollo, Wallaga, on May 11, 2021, the government forces executed Amanuel Wondimu, a 17-year-old Oromo boy, at a public square (Human Rights Watch 2021).^[47] The Abiy government and its agents are above the rule of law and are not accountable for crimes against humanity. Realizing the condition of the Abiy government, the Human Rights Defender in West Wallaga, on May 18, 2021, said, “The lives of citizens have no value with the Prosperity Party or Dr. Abiy, as you see in Tigray, Benishangul, and Oromia. Sorry, it is very, very sad. When George Floyd was killed in advanced countries like America and Europe, the community came to the streets and said, ‘Black Lives Matter.’ But it doesn’t matter if the security forces kill thousands of civilians in Ethiopia.”^[48] Government forces and security agents have also focused on identifying and executing people related to OLA and Qeerroo/Qarree in politics and blood, claiming they support or sympathize with them. According to the Oromia Support Group (Report 58, 2021), the Oromia Support Group (OSG), a human rights organization from London, England, states that the Abiy government and its political party, known as the Prosperity Party, do not hide their plans and actions of ethnic cleansing in Oromia. Fekadu Tessema, Prosperity Party head, Oromia branch, stated at the Oromia Regional Parliament meeting, Adama, February 27, 2021, “If you want to get rid of the fish completely, you need to dry up the ocean.”^[49] He meant that to eliminate OLA, the government needs to destroy the Oromo people who are supporting the organization, which is struggling for the self-determination and democracy of the Oromo people. “This catchphrase of dictators and perpetrators of abuse was used by the Oromia Prosperity Party head to justify ongoing, systematic elimination of Qeerroo, OLA, and OLF supporters - to ‘overcome resistance in East and West Wallaga, Guji and Borana zones of Oromia.’”^[50] As Amnesty International reported in 2020, the Ethiopian armed forces and the Oromia Special Police had normalized mass detention, torture, extrajudicial killings, and all forms of gross human rights violations in Oromia.

The Abiy government has instigated the war, and the Ethiopian and Eritrean troops and their supporters uprooted “hundreds of thousands of civilians … from their homes by rising insecurity in western Oromia; social infrastructure has been destroyed” (UNOCHA 2022). Furthermore, on August 30, September 27, 30, and 20, 2022, the Fanno Amhara militia attacked Amuru Horo Guduru and massacred or displaced hundreds of Oromo. After killing them, they beheaded individuals and hanged their heads on sticks as trophies, took them to the Amhara region, and danced and ululated. Amhara Fanno militia also attacked Alibo Town, Horo Guduru, and Kiramu Town, East Wallagga, on November 17, 2022, massacring and displacing hundreds of Oromo. This paramilitary Amhara force is organized and supported by Abiy and the Amhara regional governments, well-organized local Amharas, and their national and international supporters. Oromia’s president has collaborated with the Amhara region to fight against the OLA and provided substantial money. Also, the mayor of Finfinnee has provided three million Ethiopian birr to the Amhara Regional government for the same purpose. The Amhara Fanno, supported by secretly organized Amhara Fanno from Amhara settlers in Oromia, massacred Oromo civilians in West Oromia and displaced over 70,000 people.

In addition, using drones and helicopter gunships,^[51] the government has engaged in targeted attacks and mass atrocities in Oromia from October to December 2022. The Abiy government uses drone strikes and jets at public gathering places to terrorize and kill Oromo civilians under the pretext of killing members of the OLA. “Abiy’s weapon of choice in dealing with the insurrection [is] the armed drone, cheaply procured from the likes of Iran, the UAE, and Turkey in 2021; Ethiopia’s arsenal of crewless aircraft killed over a hundred civilians in Tigray during two weeks in January this year, including at least 50 at a camp for displaced people. Now deployed again, the drones have exacerbated human suffering across Oromia, a region also ravaged by drought and communal violence” (Zelalem and Jelan 2022). For example, on October 30, 2022, the government bombed by drones Wama-Hagalo and Nunu-Qumba, East Wallaga. Similarly, it was also attacked by drones in Metta-Welkite, Meta Robi, West Shewa, Chobi, Jaldu, West Shewa, and Fentalle, Karrayyuu areas, on October 19, 23, 24, 2022, respectively. The government engaged in multiple drone strikes on Bila, Boji Dirmajji District, Najjo, and Mendi Town in West Wallaga on November 2, 3, and 9, 2022, respectively. Naqamtee Town, East Wallagga, and Chobi, Jaldu District, Amaya, Southwest Shawa, Wadessa, Ambo District, West Shawa, Begi Town, Qellem, Wallagga, and Kombolcha Town, Horo Guduru were attacked by multiple drone strikes on November 10, 14, 22, 26, and 27, 2022. Drone strikes continue in Oromia; on December 20, 2022, the government bombed Babo Gambel in Wallaga and killed many people and animals. Since the Abiy government has prevented independent journalists from these areas from reporting the casualties (Zelalem and Jelan 2022), we do not know how many people and animals were killed and houses were burned.

Since Oromo’s lives do not matter to the nafxanaya ruling class, their media outlets, and the international community, all these atrocities and crimes against humanity have remained unreported. In addition to different forms of violence, the Abiy government has used famine to dehumanize and control the Oromo people. “Food shortages and violence across Oromia have contributed to Ethiopia’s grim world record of 5.1 million internally displaced people in a calendar year (2021). The Ethiopian army’s search for Jaal Marroo [the Oromo politico-military leader] and its attempt to pacify [Oromia] have led to the deaths of [several hundred] people suspected of affiliation or sympathy with the OLA” (Zelalem and Jelan 2022). The international community ignores the crimes against humanity in Oromia for reasons not clear to us.

The Abiy Ahmed government has used “Article 40 of the Constitution of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia that land is the property of the State and the peoples of Ethiopia and that its use shall be subject to specific regulation by law” and engaged in leasing urban and rural lands mainly in the colonized regions, such as Oromia.^[52] This government has passed laws to enable foreigners, government officials, and cadres to own land in Oromia and beyond,^[53] and it has evicted millions of Oromo farmers and herders so that foreigners can engage in commercial farming and mining businesses. Many things have changed because of the Oromo protest movement. The cost the Oromo have paid for life and suffering is very high. According to different reports, between 2014 and 2018, more than 5000 Oromo, including school children, pregnant women, and older people, were massacred, and tens of thousands of Oromo were imprisoned, kicked, beaten, tortured, and decapitated. Despite all these tragedies, the Oromo people have restored the national pride, patriotism, and bravery they enjoyed before the mid-19th century, as one of the phases of the Oromo national struggle.

However, the neo-nafxanya of the government of Abiy Ahmed has continued the policies of successive Ethiopian governments of violently controlling the Oromo and expropriating their lands in various pretexts, such as development projects. Let me provide two examples. First, Abiy Ahmed’s new palace known as the forest project has been evicting hundreds of Oromo families from 500 hectares without adequate compensation. ^[54]One farmer said, “We lived in this land for over a century, and it was passed to us by our ancestors, but all of a sudden I was told I did not have a title deed to my own home and was forced to vacate it with no compensation.”^[55] The new palace could cost between $10 and $15 billion dollars, which is in the process of being built when 20 million Ethiopians need emergency food.^[56] Second, the regime is displacing Oromo farmers in Bishoftu, 40 kilometers from Finfinnee (Addis Ababa).^[57] The airport is called Bishoftu Mega International Airport; its construction costs more than 10 billion American dollars, and it will be built on a 1.1 million square meter site.^[58] The government did not release adequate information on the Oromo farmers who are in the process of dispossession, except claiming that 350 American dollars are budgeted to resettle more than 2,000 farming families.^[59] The government has collaborated with the regional governments of Amhara and Somalia to incorporate some Oromo land into their regions through violence, displacement, and dispossession. The Oromos in Easter Wallaga, Borana, Bale, Salale, Wallo Shawa, and Harargee have been suffering from these crimes against humanity for the last seven years^[60] because of the policies of the Abiy Ahmed government that terrorize the Oromo people through warfare, targeted terrorism, and gross human rights violations (Jalata 2025).

Conclusion

With the increasing population and the decrease of resources, and with the determination of the Ethiopian government to control and exploit resources, the contestation over land and other resources, such as water, minerals, and others, will intensify in Oromia and Ethiopia. The tight control or ownership of land by the Ethiopian colonial government has disastrous consequences for people who have no control over their lives and properties. These conditions have already created conflicts and contradictions, leading to protracted armed struggles in Oromia and other territories. The government has leased land to rich people and international land grabbers who do not care about the well-being of the cultivators and herders in Oromia and other areas. Solving the political and economic contradictions and related conflicts concerning land requires empowering farmers and herders to control their lands and labor through democratic access to political power.

All Amhara and Tigray state elites and their successive governments have been struggling to own or control the lands of the colonized peoples, such as the Oromo. Similarly, the Somali governments and elites have attempted to colonize and incorporate Oromo territories in Hararghe, Bale, and Borana since the 1970s. Since the neo-nafxanya government of Abiy Ahmed is committed to supporting the enemies of the Oromo, it ignores land expropriation in Wallo and Wallaga by Ahmaras, and by Somalis in Eastern, Southeastern, and Southern Oromia. Also, in Easter Wallaga, the settlers and Fano are killing and displacing Oromos with the support of the Oromia regional state and the central Ethiopian government in Wallaga and Shawa.^[61] If the Oromo people continue to lose control of their lands and other resources to their competitors and enemies, their survival will be in question soon. Land is the mother of humanity. Without land, a society cannot survive because protecting its culture, history, language, and collective identity is impossible. A human group that lost its land by violent dispossession faced cultural destruction, hunger, famine, disease, poverty, and underdevelopment because it could not produce the necessary products for its survival. In history, societies that lost their lands through colonialism and terrorism were destroyed when those who colonized and expropriated their lands and related resources became rich and powerful. The cases of indigenous Americans, Australians, and others demonstrate these realities (Jalata [2016] 2017). Realizing this reality, the Oromo people should be organized and defend their lands and other resources before it is too late.