Oromo Liberation Front (OLF)
March 25, 2001

The news of a split almost in-half of its 28-strong Central Committee (15/13) of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the dominant party in the ruling EPRDF, comes to many as a shock just as the Ethio-Eritrean war was two years ago. However, the Oromo Liberation Front believes that this is merely a culmination of a process that has began in 1992 in which the Ethiopian political stage became increasingly narrower as the ruling party pushed all credible political and civic organizations from the stage and established its sole hegemony. The TPLF regime is built on a narrow political and social base and the current power struggle makes this narrow base even shakier.

According to official and media reports, the genesis of the crisis lies with disagreements over the handling of the war and the peace accord with Eritrea, ideology, and rampant corruption in the system and the problem of democracy. However, we believe that the current crisis within the TPLF leadership owes its origin to the basic political contradiction of Ethiopia in which a minority clique rules over a substantial majority. The conflict has a lot to do with the refusal of the Oromo people and the subject peoples of the south, accounting for over 70% of the population in Ethiopia, to lend legitimacy to the current regime and the regime's predicament on what to do about it.

Grasping these underlying causes and their intimacy with the interstate dimension of the ongoing conflict appears impossible without recalling the developments that resulted in the steady deterioration of Ethiopia's politics. We believe the systematic reversal of two closely interrelated visions embraced at the time of change of regime in 1991 accounts for the conflicts going on within Ethiopia as well as with Eritrea. These are:

• The Charter of 1991 envisioned the decolonization and reconfiguration of the remainder of the Ethiopian empire state (after Eritrea's de facto independence) so as to base its governance on the fair participation of the authentic representatives of all the peoples based on their free will.
• Such a restructured Ethiopian state and newly independent Eritrea would cultivate harmony between them and become the joint pioneers of the idea of a Greater Horn Community. States that are commonly owned and administered by their constituent communities were thus envisaged to serve as the building blocs for this Community.

This promising vision, in the articulation of which the OLF participated, started unraveling when the TPLF started pursuing the ambition of replacing the old Amhara elite as the dominant power in Ethiopia. Once achieving dominance in Ethiopia, TPLF could not resist the temptation to project a similar form of dominant relationship outside the borders of Ethiopia. That is what made war with Eritrea inevitable. Whether to remain on this course or not seems to figure in the internal TPLF disputes that have resulted in an unprecedented shakeup of its leadership.

The Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) would like to underscore and bring to the attention of all involved the following two fundamental implications of this development.

• It has clearly exposed the absence of a consensus within the ruling party regarding the very agreement concluded to achieve lasting peace between the two states. Recent events demonstrate that TPLF still functions as the old communist parties of the cold-war era rather than as a democratic party as it claims. In addition to throwing Ethiopia into chaos, the crisis within TPLF seriously undermines the integrity of the recent peace agreement with Eritrea. Since the outbreak of the Ethio-Eritrean conflict in 1998, the OLF has been persistently urging the world not to treat the conflict strictly as an interstate dispute but rather seek a comprehensive solution to it. The unraveling of the TPLF justifies our principled position and underscores the need for a thorough reassessment of positions. All parties with interest in the Horn ought to take this development very seriously as it has far-reaching implications.
• And more importantly, it indisputably demonstrates the existence of a synergy between the interstate aspect of the conflict and its intrastate dimensions hence signaling the inadequacy of any settlement approach that is focused purely on the resolution of the former.

Therefore, the OLF recommends that:

• The present effort to resolve the interstate dimension of the conflicts in the Horn be expanded to also address the intrastate dimensions as well. Nations not at peace with themselves tend not to be friendly to their neighbors. Border disputes are known to be more of pretexts than the ultimate causes for war between neighboring states. Investing so much resources and energy on simply addressing the symptom while leaving the more crucial underlying causes completely untouched does not bring peace in the Horn.
• Otherwise, the continued simmering of internal conflicts would eventually disentangle whatever peace would result from settling the dispute merely through boundary delimitation or providing millions of dollars for reconstruction and poverty reduction.

The Ethiopian empire's treatment of Oromos and other Horn societies, and its relations with Eritrea have therefore now arrived at a critical turning point. If making a new beginning to revive the visions of 1991 is embraced, the Horn of Africa could very well emerge into an engine for democracy, stability and social and economic development. The aspiration to restore the win-lose thinking of the 1980s, on the other hand, can only trigger a conflagration.

We ask the international community to put pressure upon the Tigrean-led Ethiopian government to close the books on its futile practice of dominating other peoples in the name of democracy and commit itself to a comprehensive resolution of conflicts in Ethiopia. We believe the time is opportune to assemble all forward-looking political forces in the region, with the backing and input of the international community, to deliberate on the means and ways of realizing all-inclusive comprehensive solution.

We also call upon the Government of the State of Eritrea to publicly recommit itself to play a role in pacifying the region without which peace with Ethiopia or other states would at best be fragile.

Hence, we call upon the international community, the UN, OAU, US and EU, to reassess their current piecemeal approach in resolving the closely interrelated conflicts raging in the Horn of Africa and adopt a comprehensive approach.

Victory to the Oromo people!
Oromo Liberation Front.