Issue No. 146

A War of Decolonisation

Every day now brings reports of bloody clashes between the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) and Amhara forces. The Western media labels the violence ‘ethnic clashes’ and ‘ethnic attacks,’ which is partly true. It is worth considering recent violence in Ethiopia as what French philosopher Gilles Deleuze calls a rhizome. 
 
A rhizome grows horizontally underground with stems unfolding without any apparent connection.  The war in Tigray and the bloody conflict in Oromia are like the rhizome-unbounded, distributed and interconnected. In other words, the conflicts may appear disconnected, but both have their roots in Menelik II’s expansionism and the ‘Amharization’ of the Ethiopian empire. Ethiopia, known as the only African country not to have been colonized by a European state, is in fact an empire whose colonized peoples are seeking liberation.
 
The Amhara provided Ethiopia with emperors since the 13th century. It was not until the end of the 19^th century, however, that the drive to expand the empire truly accelerated. Expansionism began during the reigns of Tewodros II (1855-1868) and Menelik II (1889-1913). These emperors began the process of centralization that was later completed under Haile Selassie. Territorial expansion was achieved through conquest.
 
In the beginning, Menelik II pushed eastwards into Arsi and as far as Harar in the Somali region. During his conquest, he killed 11,000 Oromos in one single day. On 6 September 1886, at Hitosa in the Arsi area, his soldiers cut off the breasts of women and the hands of men.  A memorial was erected in 2014 in Aanolee displaying a hand raised to the sky with a breast in its palm. This remembrance was a step towards acknowledging the trauma suffered by the Oromo people.  But recent brutality exhibited by Amhara militias has reopened this wound just beginning to heal. Young Su Park, a physician anthropologist, wrote about the memorial in an article aptly titled, "Re-membering Dismemberment: Haunting Images of Amputation at Aanolee and Oromo Political Subjectivities in Ethiopia." 
 
Amputation and decapitation are embedded in the collective memory of Oromo society. It is no coincidence that in late 2021 the Amhara nationalist militia (Fano) launched ‘Operation Menelik’ (Zemetcha Menelik). The campaign was named after the man who ordered the Hitosa massacre in 1886, and was carried out by soldiers armed with axes and machetes. 
 
Although the militia possessed sophisticated weapons, the Fano arrived in Oromo villages wielding their bladed weapons, wearing black armbands bearing the inscription ‘Zemetcha Menelik.’ Their objective was to spread terror, to speak to the memory of their victims and to remind them of colonial domination. Terror was recently heightened when the Fano paraded through in the Oromo region displaying the decapitated heads of two men.
 
Interpreting violence in Ethiopia as ethnic warfare leads to dead ends. Only a deeper understanding of crises in the country will lead to lasting peace. It has become the norm in Ethiopia to interpret conflict solely in terms of territorial gain and capture of resources. Symbolism, national pride and the desire for power, even if they result in heavy losses, combine into a formidable driving force in empires (e.g., Ethiopian, Russian, Turkish, Chinese). It is time for us to change our thinking; we must understand that irrationality counts insofar as it shapes imaginations and feeds ideologies.
 
Empire still weighs heavily on Ethiopian peoples today, whether they wish to restore it or free themselves from it. Thecurrent crisis runs so deep that it affects the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahedo Church. The empire and the church were consubstantial, both dominated by the Amhara aristocracy. Even today, though Patriarch Abune Mathias is Tigrayan, 85% of the Synod is made up of Amhara dignitaries. In protest of the ‘Amharisation’ of the church, along with the use of Ge'ez in liturgies, three Oromo archbishops have ordained 26 priests without reference to the Synod. The schismatic archbishops highlighted the lack of representation and absence of services provided to all populations in the Tawahedo Church. These grievances are being expressed across Oromo civil society.
 
Like most everything in Ethiopia, the commission appointed to carry out this important work is dominated by Amharas,and boycotted by the main parties of other ethnic groups. All indications are that the federal government, and the commissioners it has appointed, will remain in denial about inclusion and reconciliation. But national dialogue must include the notion of decolonisation to be truly meaningful.

By the Ethiopia Cable Team