Issue No. 288

To much fanfare, Oromia's regional President Shimelis Abdisa and a breakaway faction of the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) agreed upon a 'peace deal' in early December 2024. At the time, Addis hailed the agreement as further proof of itself as a peacemaker, both nationally and for the Oromo people, no matter that fighting continued to rage across much of western and southern Oromia. But with its abysmal track record of adhering to domestic peace agreements, optimism was low that the accord marked a genuine turning point in the enduring conflict in Oromia rather than being another cynical attempt to splinter the Oromo political and armed opposition. Six months on, all evidence would suggest the latter, with the disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration (DDR) of surrendered OLA fighters in particular having been reneged upon.

The government's peace accord with Sagni Negasa, who led the OLA contingent in Central Oromia, came amid growing military pressure on his faction, as well as escalating tensions within the insurgent group. Rifts between Sagni Negasa's wing and the far more dominant core of the OLA led by Kumsa Diriba, better known as his nom de guerre, 'Jaal Marroo,' had escalated over 2023 and 2024. Although nominally decentralised, Jaal Marroo's faction remains undeniably dominant within the broad insurgency that advocates for Oromo rights, having split in 2019 from the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) after it negotiated an agreement with the federal government to lay down arms. The OLA's influence, initially diminished by this accord and PM Abiy Ahmed's outreach to the Oromo, has expanded in recent years amidst Addis's harsh counter-insurgency campaign in the region as well as its curtailing of dissenting voices around issues such as the capital being recognised as Finfinne and the use of the Oromo language.

In late 2024, Sagni sued for peace with the Oromia regional government, which welcomed the laying down of their weapons, both as a blow to the OLA and a much-needed political 'win' for the embattled administration. However, the accord signed in December was largely vacuous, lacking any significant political concessions from the government or genuine interest in addressing the Oromo grievances that have driven the multi-year conflict. Indeed, one of the central reasons the two rounds of peace talks in Tanzania in 2023 collapsed was the OLA's calls for more substantial reform within Oromia and nationally, which Addis rejected. The basis of an enduring peace agreement is usually a comprehensive political settlement and a shared definition of the conflict; this deal had neither.

Nevertheless, soon after the agreement between Sagni Negasa's forces and the government, OLA fighters began moving into designated military camps for their promised demobilisation. Temporary camps were erected in Adama, Sebeta and Jimma, among other locations, for the over 1,700 surrendered fighters. Provisions for their future and security guarantees formed the core of the 13 provisions agreed upon by Sagni and the government, with committees established to oversee their implementation, featuring representation from both parties. However, in the months since, much of this has atrophied or been reneged upon. Contrary to DDR best practice, over 340 fighters who laid down their arms for "rehabilitation training" at the Bulbula and Sanqallee military camps have been sentenced to terms in prison ranging from 6 years to life. Dozens more have been harassed and attacked by Oromia Police and the fractured security services, and two even were reported to have died following beatings at Sanqallee. 

Barring the integration of some senior former OLA central zone commanders into the regional government and a few dozen assigned jobs, the government has almost entirely reneged on its promises of vocational training and integration into civilian life. The remaining former fighters were promised a one-off payment of just 90,000 ETB (roughly 670 USD) from the National Disarmament, Demobilisation, and Reintegration Fund, but many, too, have been unable to access the money due to administrative issues. The Fund has further been accused of being used as a patronage siphon for government officials. In turn, some former fighters have since returned to the battlefield with the OLA, but many are stuck in this grim limbo– neither combatant nor civilian. Due to the continued insecurity across much of the vast region, returning home is difficult for many, facing a dual threat from Oromia's splintered security services as well as potential retribution from their former comrades in the OLA.

This comes against a backdrop of the punishing costs the enduring conflict is having on Oromia. Amidst persistent inflation, food insecurity rates have skyrocketed, particularly as a result of the USAID cuts, as has displacement, with over 1 million estimated to have been uprooted due to the conflict in mid-2025. Tens of thousands continue to languish in overcrowded makeshift displacement camps in Shambu and Nekemte. The fitful conflict, punctuated by periods of intense fighting, has left much of the region's infrastructure in ruins, while both government troops and the OLA have been accused of carrying out human rights violations in the form of summary executions and razing settlements. And in 2025, in particular, there have been numerous reports of security forces rounding up young boys and teenagers before dispatching them to the frontlines in Amhara with minimal training. 

At the time, the peace deal was criticised on several fronts, not least by the Jaal Marroo OLA faction that called the accord a "joke" and part of the continuing attempts by Addis to divide the Oromo. Other influential Oromo figures, such as the once highly prominent Jawar Mohammed, raised concerns about the federal government's track record of failing to implement peace agreements. And in this vein, in the past few days alone, Addis has been criticised by Ammanuel Assefa, deputy leader of the Tigray Interim Administration, for failing to deliver upon and exploiting the 2022 Pretoria agreement for its own political gain, as well as the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), for the unexplained detention of two senior officials. 

Ethiopia is pockmarked by the government's failure to implement such peace agreements with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), the ONLF, and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). In all three, the government has sought to strategically weaponise agreements to compel insurgents or rebels to lay down their arms, only to renege on such deals once their threat to Addis has been neutralised. The detente with Eritrea alongside this raft of peace agreements may have won PM Abiy Ahmed the Nobel Peace Prize, but such a strategy is myopic and self-defeating in the longer term, doing nothing to halt the accelerating fracturing of the country. Nor does this treatment of domestic peace agreements do anything to begin tackling the grievances and frustrations of disenfranchised communities, who see shrinking avenues of legal political dissent. 

With the government not considered a serious interlocutor for peace and the international community comprehensively failing to hold Addis to account, the prospects for a broader peace settlement within the country remain virtually nil. Undermining even the limited agreement with the splinter faction of the OLA hurts not just the likelihood of negotiations within Oromia but also with others, such as the immensely more challenging and divided group of militias operating under the Fano umbrella in the Amhara region. Not that it appears at all likely that peace negotiations will be launched with the various factions in the future, as that would necessitate political concessions that the federal government does not want to contemplate. Herein lies the crux of the issue —that Addis considers such agreements not as genuine attempts to resolve conflicts but as another move on their political chessboard to ensure it remains dominant. And while there may be little blowback for imprisoning a couple of hundred former OLA fighters, it is another strike against the government in the eyes of many Oromo, as well as the broader constellation of political and armed opposition in Ethiopia.