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Can the Oromo First Movement Promote Dynamics in Oromo Struggle, Which Needs an Empowerment of Our Resilient Nation?

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I recently heard Jawar Mohammed speaking about the main objective of the currently ongoing Oromo First Movement;. He told one of the communities, which the movement is engaging now, that its main aim is to empower the Oromo people (Oromoo humneessuu) at three levels: at personal level, community level and national level. A few years ago, as Oromo nationalists were busy calling for tokkummaa qabsaa’ota Oromo (unity of liberation forces), one foreigner, but an Oromo friend, Professor Megalomatis, pointed out that what we really needed more was a dynamic movement (dynamics), not only the empowering unity, as I discussed his point of view here: http://gadaa.com/oduu/3244/2010/04/09/oromo-tokkummaa-for-bilisummaa-is-a-virtue-not-a-vice-but-is-it-impossible. It was a very good point indeed. We need to have such dynamics of action in our liberation struggle, not only a satisfaction by our dwelling on the necessary debates, talks and discussions we used to exercise till now.
Dynamics, in general, is defined as the social, intellectual or moral force that produces activity and change in a given sphere. That means, in deduction, political dynamics in a national liberation struggle is a national force that can produce activity and change in the political life of the concerned nation. What kind of activity, what sort of change and which direction do we, the Oromo people, need to achieve the Kaayyoo (goal) of our struggle? Are we really active enough? What is our desired change? Can we achieve that change? We can just ask and think over such questions and then try to get answers. Surely, we are not satisfied with our present situation; we want to change it, for which purpose we need power. That is why talking about the possible empowerment of our nation at this moment is not bad.
National empowerment refers to an increase in the political, social or economic strength of the nation. It often involves the empowered nation to develop confidence in its own capacities. It is also the process, which enables the nation to fully achieve its collective power, authority and influence as well as help it to employ that strength when engaging with other nations, peoples, institutions or societies. National empowerment is not simply giving the concerned nation a needed power from outside, because such nations already have plenty of power in the form of their collective knowledge and motivation to do their jobs magnificently. So, national empowerment can be defined as simply letting out nation’s own power and using it. It encourages people of such nation (in our case the Oromo) to gain the skills and the knowledge that will allow us to overcome the obstacles in our political life or to deal with the challenges in our region and, ultimately, help us develop as well as achieve our national goal.
Our national empowerment can include the following capabilities: our ability to make decisions about collective circumstances; the ability to get information and resources for decision-making; the ability to consider a range of options from which to choose; the ability to exercise assertiveness in a national collective decision making; having positive-thinking about our own ability to make a change; the ability to learn and attain skills for improving national collective circumstances; the ability to inform others in the nation through exchange of information, education and engagement; the involvement in the national growth process and in the changes that never end; the possible increasing of positive national self-image as well as an increasing mechanism for nation’s collective ability in discreet thinking to sort out the right and the wrong regarding our own interest.
When we do assess Oromo nation’s way of dealing with our own circumstances, I must say, the Oromo is one of the most resilient nations in the world. Our nation resisted and survived the negative forces, which threatened our existence and identity in the last about 3000 years. Actually, resilience refers to the property of being able to endure; it means to bounce back and be stronger – not crumbling and falling apart; it is when a nation had a bad past, and has bounced back and has put its bad experience behind itself and moved on with its life. Is Oromo nation not resilient in this sense? Just as various types of metal, when subjected to external forces, may remain supple, bend or break, so the national identity of a people, when attacked or threatened continuously like what the Oromo experienced till now, may remain unchanged, adapt, or be pushed to a breaking point. Fortunately, the Oromo, as a nation, did not yet break under the hitherto oppression by the domination/colonizing forces, but remained supple and, of course, adapted in some areas. That is why, I dare to say that the Oromo nation is almost as supple as a metal.
Now, when the Oromo First Movement is engaging the Oromo comunities all over the world, we have to be able to think over the way how to empower this resilient nation, so that we can have a necessary political dynamics to achieve our Kaayyoo. Till now, we have tried to promote tokkummaa (unity) for we knew that tokkummaan humna (unity is force), but we do not have to forget the reverse truth: humni tokkummaa dha (force brings unity). In this short opinion, I would like to concentrate on this second premise. Besides our effort to foster unity, we need to find ways to empower our liberation camp in order to strengthen our unity of purpose. No question that we are observing nowadays the fact that both our foes and our fools are trying to weaken the Oromo liberation camp by sowing discords among the Oromo nationalists. It is sometimes entertaining to hear and read them in the cyberworld and community life concentrating on only the “mistakes and weaknesses” of the Oromo liberation leaders in particular, and that of the Oromo liberation forces, in general. How can someone with sound mind cry, lament and talk about the the mistakes/weaknesses of the same organization/person for about twenty years unless otherwise that person is an Oromo foe with bad intention or an Oromo fool with no good intention? Let’s just register move of such people, but no need of wasting our resources (our money, energy and time) in dealing with them unless they are really a threat to our liberation struggle.
What we need in the coming years is to concentrate on how to empower ourselves personally, our communities, our liberation army, our liberation forces and our nation. Let’s celebrate Irreessaa daily in a sense of its second meaning, i.e. in a sense of empowering our nation. What are some measures to be taken so that we can achieve this empowerment? For instance, engaging and encouraging our communities as the Oromo First Movement is doing; helping our national army, despite the present campaign, which both our foes and our fools are making to hinder us from supporting OLA (Oromo Liberation Army) by giving our money,… etc are two of the ways we can use in order to contribute what we can. Additionally, just as OLA raised its guns, let our intellectuals pick up their pens to write what ever promotes our struggle and let them compose whatever necessary to tackle the propaganda from our adversaries. Above all, let’s stay bold and strong to deal with the worst circumstances, which we, as a nation, are facing nowadays.
Just as we have done in the last many hundred years, we are struggling today, not only against the Abyssinian domination/colonial forces, but also against their international handlers. For we had and still have few friends from the international community, we need to be self-reliant. Also, the fact that our neighboring countries (Kenya, Djibouti, Somalia, the Sudan and Yemen) are cooperating with our tormentors in Finfinne palace by deporting our friends, who sought refuge there, should not discourage us. It was in such lack of international support and lack of regional sanctuary that the Oromo nation remained supple and survived till now. Surely, we will do the same also in the future. Now, not only our neighboring countries and the traditional supporters of Abyssinia (all the Westerners, Israel and Russia), but also the newly emerging world power-players like China and India are moving against our interest by grabbing our land.
All these challenges can be the main reasons to motivate us, the Oromo people, to come together and empower ourselves. We have no time for luxury to be divided and to quarrel on minor and secondary issues, like the never ending dispute on the artificially created “difference of Kaayyoo: Ethiopian/Great Oromian democratization vs Golden Oromian decolonization.” I do not want to comment on this issue for I already wrote about it more than enough, but important to mention is just to observe how both our foes and our fools like to talk about it 24 hours a day and 7 days a week in attempting to disintegrate and divide Oromo nationalists. Let’s ignore their mantra and concentrate on the constructive way of doing our liberation business. Of course, there are very few genuine nationalists, who are neither a foe nor a fool, but do this same divisive job based on their resentment against the few Oromo liberation factions or liberation leaders. These are the nationalists who, as Oromo used to say: “kan gaara ol bahuu dadhabee, dalga fiiga” (the one who can not walk upward on a hill, prefers to run horizontal, but in a wrong direction away from his/her intended goal). For such individuals, any struggle against an enemy is a hard job; so they usually do have no better concept to fight against the enemy, but they tend to lament against their own friends, who do their best, the action which is not as such constructive even to lead the lamentors to their own intended goal.
If such few nationalists feel to be genuine Oromo freedom fighters, then they have to learn from almost all football (soccer) coachs/trainers, for instance from the coachs of Manchester United and the likes. When these trainers suffer any defeat because of certain mistakes committed by their own players, they usually go to the media and talk as if they are also part and parcel of the mistakes. They say “we” had so and so mistakes so that we lost the match, and then go on to plan what they need to correct and improve for the future games. We do not hear or read from them any sort of blaming, cursing and denouncing of their own players, which, actually, only their opponents can do. Parallel to this, no wonder when our foes and fools do purge their cursing against our political players, for the foes have their own bad intention and the fools have no good intention for the Oromo. But, the disgruntled genuine Oromo nationalists, who play the same role of character assassination, should learn from these soccer coachs and identify themselves with the possible “mistakes and weaknesses” of our leaders (our political players) so that we can correct them and move on.
This is a reason why I would like to encourage all Oromo nationalists, who want to see a free and liberated Oromia, to distance themselves from the destructive actions of our foes and our fools, and take steps to concentrate on the constructive way of empowering our resilient nation. Let’s do and give what we can to make Oromo nation powerful. The whole secret of politics in this globe is about power; only if we get humna (force), we can assert our plans for our political, economic and social profit. That is why our enemies do their best to hinder the Oromo from being in power. But unfortunate to them, the Oromo nation, as resilient as we are, will definitely be the future power of that cursed region, be it in only few years or after 100 years. Time will come, when Golden Oromia will be independent and our neighboring countries, which are now deporting back our friends to be “eaten by Ethiopian hyena” in Finfinne palace, as once depicted by Gadaa.com with a very nice descriptive picture on its front page, will be ashamed of their today’s actions.
Such atrocities by the Abyssinian elites, the cooperation they do get from the regimes of our neighboring countries and from the international power players, can only motivate us to fight back, but not to be the cry babies, as our foes and our fools are doing, just in an attempt to paint us as such in the cyberworld. We now definitely need an empowering political dynamics in our liberation movement. For this dynamics to happen, we have to be more action-oriented and do our best. The ongoing practical steps taken by OLA in engaging our enemy by force must be encouraged; it seems that Oromo nationalists who have tried an “election” way to achieve the Kaayyoo have now recognized that no Abyssinian ruling force on earth is ready to give up its domination through only the ballot box and to allow Oromo freedom happen, be it within the Ethiopian/Great Oromian union or without a union. The best way to get our freedom is by combining bullet/armed struggle with ballot/non-violent struggle, but not only per futile exercise of “election.” We have to be clear here: there is no other alternative to strengthening OLA, if we want to promote the Oromo liberation movement. Of course, only our foes and our fools do oppose such empowering of OLA.
Let’s learn from SPLM of South Sudan. They fought fiercely; they lost about two million of their people; and now they already achieved their freedom and independence. Let’s not forget that they used to talk about both the autonomy within a united Sudan and the independence from the north part of Sudan, which had to be decided by public verdict per referendum. The same is true for Golden Oromia; no need of the foolish quarrel now on the issue: autonomy (internal self-determination) vs. independence (external self-determination). Only our foes and our fools, who used to cry against tokkummaa qabsaa’ota Oromo and against the possible tumsa (all-inclusive alliance) are interested to continue such a quarrel now, just in order to divide and disintegrate Oromo nationalists. I do encourage the genuine Oromo nationalists to stop such endless “discussion,” to concentrate on the armed struggle as well as the non-violent sgruggle, and then to coordinate it with a possible future civil disobedience and/or with a public uprising in Oromia.
Otherwise, we do not need to worry about the possible recognition of independent Golden Oromia by the international community now. When the time comes, those Westerners and the confused Cush elites (Abyssinian rulers), who still deny their Cushitic root and who talk about “the Tsionawit Tigray = Tigray related to Israel,” will surely be compelled to accept and respect our sovereignty. They will accept not only that of Golden Oromia, but also will recognize the other future free and sovereign Cushitic nation-states in the Horn. The possible future Cushitic nation-states to be liberated from the hitherto system of Abyssinization are: Beja-land (now divided into two: being part of Sudan and Eritrea); Agew-Midir (now divided into three: being in Amhara, Tigrai and Eritrea); Afar-Saho (now divided into three: in Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti); Somali-land (now divided into six: British Somaliland, Puntland, Djibouti, Ogaden, South Somalia and the part in Kenya); Biyya-Oromo (now divided into four: Rayya in Tigrai, Wallo/Shoa in Amhara, OPDOs Oromia and the part in Kenya) and Sidama-land (which includes all Cushitic nations in the Southern Ethiopia). Note that other minor Cushitic and Nilotic nationalities in the region, which are too small to have their own nation-state, can be part of one of these mentioned nation-states. Ethiopia/Great Oromia, in a sense of Cushland (not in a sense of the derogatory Greek’s version), will be possibly only the future union of these free nation-states, if the nations will opt for a union rather than for an independence. To accomplish this, we need to fight against the present Habesha colonizers (against the system of domination by the Abyssinized Cushites), who have been always used and abused by the colonial forces of the Europeans in order to oppress and suppress their fellow Africans. Of course, the current puppet/instrument/servant of these neo-colonial Westerners is the ruling Woyane regime, which has to be removed by hook or by crook.
I hope such pawns of the Western power, who served their masters in the last many centuries, by denying their own true African/Cushitic origin, will come back to their sense and their root with the help of the Oromo national liberation struggle. Liberation of Biyya-Oromo will definitely lead also to the liberation of Agew-Midir aka Abyssinia (a derogatory name given by the Portuguese to this part of Cushland). It is surprising to observe Abyssinian elites talking about being proud Abyssinian/proud Abesha (which actually means be proud about the “land of bastards”) or being proud Ethiopian (proud for belonging to the “land of burnt-face”). They better leave being proud in this sense and accept being a citizen of either Agew-Midir or Biyya-Oromo. Abyssinized Agew are Cushites, just like their neighbor, the Oromo. The Abyssinized Oromo in the northern part of Oromia (Rayya, Wallo, South Gojjam and North Shoa) will definitely be part of Biyya-Oromo and, surely, be proud of being citizens of the future possibly free and independent Golden Oromia. To liberate these two nation-states (Agew-Midir and Biyya-Oromo), from both the hitherto false identity and from the hitherto Western influence, we, the Oromo nationalists, need to empower ourselves and create the necessary dynamics in the liberation struggle.
If we do empower ourselves now, create the necessary political dynamics and help our resilient nation move forward to our political freedom and national independence, surely we will have automatically unity of purpose between the Oromo nationalists, for which we are now vehemently struggling. Not only that, even the Abyssinian leaders will start to say to us: “The ball is in your court and the decision is yours. If you say unity, welcome; if you also say secession, you are also welcome; and I would like to say: welcome to a new brotherly state.” This was what Al-Bashir of Sudan said regarding the referendum by the people of South Sudan, as reported here: http://www.waltainfo.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24850&Itemid=52. So, Oromo freedom fighters, let’s be empowered and let’s create the dynamics we need to move to this level, where the Abyssinian rulers, will say the same regarding the Oromo and Golden Oromia. For this to happen, we need to empower the Oromo liberation forces in general, and OLA in particular now. If we choose and decide to be the fierce fighters for our cause, like the liberators of South Sudan, definitely also Waaqa/Rabbi will be with us and help us achieve our Kaayyoo. The Oromo First Movement seems to be the best instrument in realizing this process of national empowerment and success in our liberation struggle.

Galatooma!

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2 comments

  1. Dear Editor,
    would you separate the paragraphs, so that the reading be palatable? Tnx!!

  2. Moblization of oromo resources(human resources,material resources,energy,know how,time) is only through organized ,coordinated and controlled ways.Great expectation of Oromo first is to mobilize oromo society( community) all over the globe for the sole reason of promoting Oromo national cause and interest.For that purpose Multifaceted struggle is important. therefore as the writer try emphasize TOKKUMMAAN HUMNA AND HUMNI TOKKUMMAA.We need to develop capablity in all spheres.