The people of Oromia belong to the indigenous north and Northeast African group of people known as the Cushites. The Cushitic people are related to the historic Nubians and ancient Egyptians who are known for their contributions for civilization as manifested by the artifacts and the pyramids. The people Oromia have been living in the current territories they occupy and beyond for thousands of years before and after the arrival of the Abyssinians. The people of Oromia practiced a democratic social and politico-military system of government known as Gada. In Gada system, political and military leaders are elected from among the most skilled pool of people for a term of eight years. The Abba Gada (Head of the state), the Abba Dula (chief of the Army), Abba Halanga (Judges) and all other important leaders were democratically elected for a one-time eight-year term. The Gada system for the most part is similar to the modern democratic republican form of government practiced in the Western World. In the Gada system, all males were continuously trained militarily to defend their fatherland from the enemies, which is what kept Oromia an independent country from time immemorial until the end of the 19th century. The Oromo egalitarian culture, the Gada democratic government, and other institutions have continuously endured the last 105 years of continuous open and clandestine war by foreign occupying forces. This remarkable endurance is a testimony to the deeply inculcated Oromo cultural identity and democratic heritage. The people of Oromia follow three major religions: Islam, Christianity, and Waqefachaa—indigenous Oromo religion. Because of the people of Oromia’s democratic heritage, there is no religious extremism or intolerance among the people. With time, many changes emerged in Oromia, and the Gada system too began to partially give way to feudal and semi-feudal systems. These changes in the way of life over a period of time gave rise to the sort of semi-feudal type of governments and competition among some leaders of Oromia. Good examples of such Oromia feudal or semi-feudal governments were the kingdoms of Jimma, Geera, Lemmu-Enariya, Yejjuu of Wallo, and Bakare of Wallagga. The emergence of smaller feudal kingdoms and the weakening of the Gada system of governance in parts of Oromia created rivalries among the chieftains and kings of the time. In an attempt to control the rest of the country and people, some Oromia chiefs collaborated with the Abyssinian leaders in fighting their own Brethren. Such tendencies gave the golden opportunity for the Abyssinian rulers who were opportunistically waiting for such a moment to occupy and colonize Oromia by force and thereby subjugate its people and exploit its resources. The modern Ethiopian empire state was created by the conquest of emperor Menelik II of the Shewa Amhara dynasty (1889-1913). Menelik was the only successful black African partner in the “scramble for Africa” designed by the European powers in the Berlin Conference of 1884-5. The three major colonial powers competed to use Menelik as a client to widen their spheres into the richer and historically impenetrable prize of the hinterland of northeast Africa. Menelik, aware of the inter-imperial rivalry, feigned special friendship with each one to acquire such massive modern European weaponry that by the mid 1880’s he had transformed his army into one of the largest and strongest in the region, so much so that by 1889, he felt confident enough to send out a circular to the Great Powers asking for his own booty of the Horn far beyond his Amhara enclave to include the Oromo, Somali, Afar, Sidama, Omotic, Nilotic and Southern areas, spreading well beyond the confines of modern Ethiopia. At no time before the conquest by Menelik was the present day Ethiopia a single country. What existed were independent polities—kingdoms in Abyssinia to the north, various confederacies in Oromia and others under the Gada system, the southern kingdoms of Walayita, Kaficho, and Yem, and various communal systems in the Nilotic and Omotic regions. The official Ethiopian history that, echoed by some less critical scholars, presents Menelik’s era, as “the unification of Ethiopia” is a fabrication, pure and simple. As in the rest of colonial Africa, the people of Oromia and other southern peoples were subjugated; their peace, their cultural identities and human dignity deprived. The conquest of the south took Menelik forty years. In the case of the Oromia, five entire gada-grades for forty years mounted unrelenting resistance. The critical role-played by the European armament and Earl Lytton, a British diplomat then in Ethiopia, who wrote in his book The Stolen Desert-Firms, recorded technical assistance in the subjugation of the Oromia. What followed the era of conquest was outright campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Abyssinan conquerors against the people of Oromia. The brutal occupying colonial Abyssinian forces were characterized by their inhuman atrocities. Millions of Oromians were exterminated by carnage of war, millions were taken away and sold into slavery, and hundreds of thousands perished by war-induced famine. At the end about half of the population of Oromia—estimated at about 10 million people was exterminated during the late 19th century. Menelik, by adopting the most dehumanizing form of domination subjected the peoples of Oromia who survived the genocide. Their land was confiscated and divided among Minelek’s war- lords, the clergy, and “colonial troops” known as “naftenya”. The warlords, “naftenyas” and the clergy were entitled to personal servitude of the subject people, and to collect dues often to the tune of 75% of the produce of the subjects who had absolutely no legal protection against the conquerors Under this brutal Malkanya (serfdom) the people of Oromia practically lived under the most brutal form of repression and exploitation of man by man, until the Italian invasion of the Ethiopian Empire in 1935. The Italians abolished slavery and broke the Melkagna (serfdom) system, one of the most brutal systems mankind has ever known, for good. The defeat of Italy by the allied forces brought misfortunes back to the colonized people of Oromia. After defeating the Italians, instead of supporting our people’s aspiration for liberation, the British forces reinstated the Abyssinian colonial rule of Haile Sillasie. In an attempt to strip the people of Oromia their heritage and demoralize them, the Abyssinian colonialists suppressed the Oromo language, abolished their culture and banned their history. It was a futile attempt of cultural genocide against the great people of Oromia. The attempt failed because the people of Oromia resisted these malicious and inhuman forms of colonization of people’s thoughts through cultural genocide and intellectual domination. The people of Oromia fought back fiercely wherever and whenever time and conditions permitted, individually and collectively. The early people’s revolts in different regions like Arsi, Harar, Walloo, and Shawa are few of the examples. The formation of Western Oromo confederation that petitioned the League of Nations and the British for an independent state of Oromia in 1935, under the leadership of the Wallagga Royal family, the Raya Azabo uprising of 1928, and 1940, the petition of Finfinnee (also called Addis Ababa by foreigners) and Harar the people of Oromia for independence at the time of the Italian defeat, the heroic resistance and revolt of Jimma, Guma, Limu, Illu Abbaaboora, the people of Oromia against the restoration of colonial Abyssinian rule of Haile Sillasie. Hence, The armed revolt of the early 1960s led by the nationalist veteran General Waaqo Guto and other heroes of Southern Oromia, the patriotic Matcha - Tulema movement, and the politico-cultural Afran-Qallo movement of the 1960s are only a few of the examples. The movement of Balee Oromos against the Abyssinian settlers brought by Emperor Haile Sellasie to settle on Oromian land was evidence that the Oromos were not cowards but were strong and fierce fighters against their enemies and settlers. While the armed struggle of the Balee Oromos against the settlers has terrified and frustrated the settlers, it has motivated the people of Oromia from all over Oromia to organize themselves at home in Oromia and abroad in neighboring countries. The above series of mostly overt and sometimes covert struggle gave rise to the formation of an organized struggle under the banner of Oromo Liberation Front (O. L. F.) in l969. Born out of the war in Southern Oromia and the politico cultural struggle of the Afran Qallo movement, the O.L.F. led by its heroic leader Jaarra Abba Gadaa convened its first meeting in Mogadishu in September of 1969, to establish itself, to put up an organized politico-military resistance against the colonial Ethiopian rule in Oromia, and to lead the people of Oromia in their struggle for an independent homeland. When Emperor Haille Sellasie the absolute ruler of the time knew this, he tried to put pressure on newly liberated neighboring countries not to support the struggle to liberate Oromia. However, he could not withstand the momentum of the people of Oromia struggle for independent. The capture and detention of the first armed units of the O.L.F. and its leader Jarra Abba Gada, who received military training in Aden and trying to cross Somalia territory in order to reach Oromia, by the Ziad Barre government of Somalia, who himself had a different agenda for Oromia, inflicted a temporary setback to the first organized politico-military struggle for independence of Oromia. Fortunately and before it was too long, another unit which was previously left behind as a matter of caution, organized itself under the leadership of the martyr, Elemo Qiltuu, and continued in the path and the cause for which their compatriots were arrested. The second unit carried a banner known as the Organization of Oromo People’s Liberation Struggle (O.O.P.L.S.) and successfully established a guerilla base in Oromia, in early 1974. On May 18, 1974, the first battle in the war of liberation under the banner of OOPLS was fought at Tirro in Charchar, Eastern part of Oromia. In the battle, the gallant fighters of Oromia engaged the Ethiopian enemy commandos and inflicted heavy casualties upon them. This battle also took the precious lives of five Oromia freedom fighters including the group’s leader, the martyr, Elemo Qiltu. The second, but temporary setback was short lived as in 1975, the Ziad Barre Government of Somalia learned from the battle of Tirro that it was impossible to suppress the will of a people who are determined to be free, and released the first Oromia politico-military units and their leaders from Mandheera prison, where they were held for five years and 12 days, since 1970. In 1974, unable to withstand a popular struggle in Oromia and Ethiopia proper, the government of Haile Sillasie collapsed. After months of power vacuum, the only organized group of the time, the colonial army led by Major Mengistu Haile-Mariam usurped power and continued the occupation of Oromia. Mengistu continued the trend of his forefathers, of oppression, exploitation, dehumanization and subjugation of the people of Oromia and other colonized peoples in Ethiopia. To fight against the movements in Oromia, Eritrea, Tigray, and Ogaden, he allied his regime with the Soviet Union. To suppress the oppressed people’s aspiration for freedom, the Soviets supplied Mengistu’s regime with massive armaments, military trainers and mercenaries from Cuba, South Yemen and East Germany. With that kind of foreign support, Mengistu was emboldened and continued sending his fascist army to Ogaden, Oromia, Tigray and Eritea. His continued war-making effort, however, did not pay off. The Ethiopian fascist army did not succeed in Oromiyaa, Ogaden, Tigray or Eritrea. Mengistu’s reign was marked by fascism, terrorism, driving the people of Oromia from their land, and large-scale massacres in the countryside. Entire villages were butchered; millions were forcibly removed from their ancestral villages and resettled in inhabitable places under Mengistu’s infamous villagization program. Some Ten million people of the rural Oromia were moved into “strategic hamlets” under a policy of “villagization” with a double-pronged objective of resource control and surveillance of emerging liberation forces. In this field, the project’s goal was to destroy the Oromo language and the Oromo culture and replace them with the Amharic language and culture, the language and culture of Mengistu’s clan. Tens of thousands of people from Ethiopia proper were also resettled in Oromia under Mengistu’s project of resettlement, which was a government program to grab the land of the people of Oromia for the Abyssinian settlers. The effects were crumbled economy, state of fear, and massive and tragic famine, which painfully took the lives of over one million people in 1984. In the cities, Mengistu’s infamous Red Terror, which was nothing more than arbitrary killings of innocent civilians, wiped out an entire generation of students, teachers, trade union members, civil servants and workers from all walks of life. It was an era of fascism and state terrorism by every meaning of the words. However, the armed struggle wedged by various national liberation forces - including the Liberation Forces for Oromia (LFO) - combined with the disintegration of the Soviet Union that maintained the Dergue in power for 17 years, ushered in its collapse in 1991. TPLF AS Successor to the Empire State (1991- present) Its foreign supporters to fill the power vacuum created by the fall of the Dergue regime prompted the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), also known as Wayanne, in 1991. This led to the replacement of the Amhara regime by a Tigrean power as was evident to those familiar with the Ethiopian political landscape. With the full approval of the US government, the TPLF marched into the Ethiopian capital in May 1991 and exclusively formed an interim administration. Financial and technical assistance provided by international donors is used to build the capacity of a murderous minority regime. The institutions of violence built with the assistance provided by international donors are mobilized to commit acts of genocide against the people of Oromia. The regime has turned Oromia into a military garrison where training camps with a total capacity of hundreds of thousands are maintained. Several thousands of the regular army and air force personnel are trained and deployed to kill, rape, loot, and terrorize the people of Oromia and the neighboring countries. The regime is using its security forces and full military capacity to forcibly suppress the people’s demand for self-determination. The root-cause of political conflict in Ethiopia is the state’s forcible denial of the right of colonized peoples to self-determination. Front for Independence Democratic Oromia is committed to the fundamental democratic principle that the people of Oromia and other peoples, being tyrannized by the TPLF regime, are endowed with the right to decide their own political status and destiny. To achieve stability and development in the region, national colonization, oppression and domination by the TPLF must be brought to an end. To realize this objective and solve the political conflict peacefully, the political will of concerned parties—and ultimately that of respective peoples in Ethiopia and that of the international community—is essential. The policy of evasion of the real issues must cease. The current struggle of the people of Oromia has its root in its opposition to colonization, political domination, economic exploitation, and cultural suppression by successive Abyssinian regimes. The fundamental objective of the liberation struggle for Oromia, led by FIDO, is to exercise the people of Oromia inalienable right to national self-determination. Its goal is to terminate a century of colonization, oppression and exploitation and to form, where possible, a political union with other peoples based on equality, respect for mutual interests, and the principle of voluntary association. If the people of Oromia cannot forge a voluntary union with others based on equality, respect for individual and collective rights, and promotion of mutual interest, then the people shall exercise their inalienable right to form their own independent state to promote peace and prosperity THE LIBERATION PHACES OF OUR STRUGGLE The struggle for liberation of Oromia has taken its first step and there is a long way to go to achieve the final goal. Brothers and sisters Oromia is not under the control of the people of Oromia yet, the ruling group will use all means including force to dominate and control the people of Oromia under its rule, while it is strengthening its own group. We have seen successive Ethiopian rulers, the emperor who ruled the country by force, the Communist Dergue who spread the Abyssinian culture and the present group who ruled by the name of democracy. What will come next? We believe the people of Oromia have to shape their future by not allowing other Abyssinian rulers to rule them. We do not believe people who are colonized, subjugated, controlled by force and lived under gunpoint can be liberated without armed struggle. We would like the people of Oromia to know that the total emancipation of Oromia would require prolonged sacrifices of its people and resources. Presently, there are several political organizations operating inside and outside Oromia. Many of these organizations are working to liberate Oromia and establish its independence. This is the biggest and the most unparalleled achievement; and we would like to congratulate all the people of Oromia for this triumph. However, what all the people of Oromia need to know is that while the current Abyssinian ruling group is unifying its nationality, it is also organizing the minority groups against the people of Oromia to extend its rule of Oromia. To counter this, the people of Oromia need to unite by bringing all its resources together. In the bitter struggle the people of Oromia have undertaken so far, the contribution of IFLO and its leadership and particularly, that of Jarraa Abbaa Gadaa is unequalled. In this long struggle for liberation, the role played by the people of Oromia is immense and we are grateful to all of them for their effort, contribution and achievement. The IFLO leader Abbaa Gadaa would like to express his appreciation and thanks to Oromian mothers for helping him to re-establish the Forces for Liberation of Oromia three times. The sacrifice of their children’s milk and food was a main source, which helped him to rekindle the movement. The IFLO leader would like to thank all of you for your contribution and wished all of people would enjoy the fruits of the liberation. The people of Oromia naturally are peace-loving people. However, Habashas have tried to taint them as cruel and barbaric because of their continuous resistance to the abysinian colonization. The truth is: the people of Oromia are long known as the indigenous people of the horn of Africa who have maintained peaceful relationships with their neighbors and the world community. They are characterized as selfless people and very receptive to strangers as recorded by their warm reception to visiting missionaries in early days. Throughout its entire long struggle for independence the people of Oromia had never participated or supported an extremist ideology of any sort.

INTERNAL STRIVES AMONG THE LIBERATION FORCES FOR OROMIA

• The Abyssinian colonization remains confusing not only to outsiders but also to the Oromians themselves. This is because Abyssinian colonization is black-on-black political domination, which is different from white-on-black political domination that is carried out by rich European colonial powers.
• Right from the start of modern struggle for the liberation of Oromia, there were groups of Oromians who believed the Oromian question was not a colonial one. They preferred to go under the banner of Ethiopia. This issue remains a fundamental cause of internal conflict among the liberation forces of Oromia.
• It is very unfortunate that the division among the political organizations that represent the people of Oromia had at some point led to inter-organizational violent confrontations that caused the loss of many innocent lives. This situation has contributed to perpetuate the Abyssinian colonial presence in Oromia.
• Jaarraa Abbaa Gadaa and his fellow liberation forces have encountered setbacks several times and to be forced to take different routes to save the struggle from faltering.
• In 1978 a group of Oromos with different outlook joined the liberation force formed in Eastern Oromia and tried to destablize it. Jaarraa Abbaa Gadaa, Mul’is, Bookee and few other leaders and founders of the liberation force were forced to out of the unit they had formed in Eastern Oromia.
• Jaarraa and few others after leaving Oromia regrouped and formed Islamic Front for the Liberation of Oromia. It was intended to check against the infiltration of those who do not believe in Oromian independence struggle and want mend fences with Ethiopia government.
• Forty years after our struggle, it is expected that the liberation movement should have matured to a point where groups and people with differing world-views can function with each other for a common goal.
• As a result of this, our organization is adopting more inclusive name by abandoning the name, IFLO, which has served the liberation movement a great deal.

THE QUESTION OF LIBERATION OF OROMIA

• The liberation struggle of the people of Oromia against successive Ethiopian regimes cannot be characterized as “an internal civil strife, banditry, terrorism, and a civil war”. It is a struggle of people under alien domination -
• The legitimacy and validity of the people of Oromia right of self-determination is based on the fact that the people are under foreign domination.
• Article one of resolution 2649(XXV) of the United Nations General Assembly recognizes the right of dependent peoples to “use any means at their disposal” to restore to themselves their legitimate right.
• The people of Oromia’s demand for self-determination is not a question of secession from a country with whom they have willfully integrated.
• It is not also a matter of a periphery struggling for decentralization or devolution of power from a central government. It is a demand by the people of Oromia to restore the sovereignty taken away from them by the Abyssinian conquest and to freely determine their own political status.
• The people of Oromia are culturally and linguistically distinct and territorially separate from the Abyssinians who dominate them. Their demand does not, therefore, violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Abyssinia-cum-Ethiopia.
• The people of Oromia have never been meaningfully represented in the Ethiopian political process. In fact, there has never been a moment in the political history of the Ethiopian empire-state when the state possessed a government representing the “whole people”.
• The population is never given any opportunity to freely express its political will.
• The demand of Oromia people for self-determination is not an internal affair of Ethiopia in the same way as the demand of the three Baltic States of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania for self-determination was not an internal affair of Russia.