Mogadishu (Essay)— The illegal maritime Memorandum of Understanding signed by the President of Somaliland Administration and the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, came at a time Somalia had made a modicum of progress: debt relief, lifting of arms embargo, and becoming a member of the East African community. Abiy Ahmed’s advisers have been unjustifiably oblivious to the gradual progress that gives Somalia the right to secure support from its allies funding the recovery of the Horn of Africa country from a traumatic state collapse. Under Abiy Ethiopia lost friends, and within a month, it has inadvertently become an ally of the proscribed Al-shabaab group.
There was no an Ethiopian national interest at stake when Abiy took to heart the advice of his Oromo advisers chief among them Leencho Leta the former Chairman of Oromo Liberation Front, who defend the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the secessionist Somali administration. In 2017 Leenco Lata was interviewed by Professor Ezekiel Gebissa, a historian. Lata said that, in 1991, Oromo Liberation Front was sidelined by EPLF and Sudan to make TPLF the national defence force of Ethiopia. He said that Western diplomats held the view that there was an Islamic factor in the Oromo armed outfit against the Derg regime, and that the Semitic, Ethiopian Highlanders (Amharas and Tigrayans) were more hierarchical than the Oromos, then known as Galla. Lata urged demonstrators who opposed the EPRDF regime to be careful of traps laid by “the enemy who will do anything to undermine the opposition” to the TPLF-controlled regime.
In an another 2021 interview Leenco Lata argued that peace would not prevail in the Horn of Africa unless the interests of Oromo people had been accommodated. Extremist Oromo leaders concocted Orumumaa outlook based on victimhood and a desire to rule Ethiopia “the way Amharas or Tigrayans once ruled Ethiopia”. Orumumaa supporters falsely promote Cushitic fraternity to intimidate non-Cushitic ethnicities in Ethiopia, and have devised a plan to get access to the sea in the hope of breaking away from Ethiopia if their wish to rule Ethiopia unchallenged is ever resisted militarily by other Ethiopian ethnicities.
The traditional anointment of Muse Bihi Abdi in Oromia by an Oromo Abagaadhaa (a paramount chief), after the secessionist leader signed the illegal Memorandum of Understanding with Abiy to illegally lease a coastal district to Ethiopia in violation of Somalia’s territorial integrity, indicates the risk Orumumaa poses to peaceful co-existence in the Horn of Africa.
Oromuma supporters pretend to have forgotten what Professor Gemechu Megersa, an anthropologist, said in 2013 in Minnesota about how the Somali government of President Adan Abdulle Osman and Prime Minister Abdirashid Ali Sharmarke authorised the opening of an Oromo language service in Radio Mogadishu, “only then did Emperor Haile Selassie accept to open an Oromo language radio in Dire Dewa”.
The former Somaliland Administration Planning Minister Awale Shirwa reminded Somaliland leaders of what the Memorandum of Understanding would entail practice: Ethiopia will stop relying on Berbara, nor will it have responsibility to seek recognition for Somaliland from other countries should it recognise Somaliland as a country. His sentiments have been echoed by Professor Mubarak Aar, who said that the Ethiopian government will have the privilege to exploit marine resources in the Somali sea and would be able to enter off-shore oil drilling agreements with foreign countries.
Only a vengeful tribal philosophy such as Orumumaa can fancifully dream of violating the sovereignty of a country with a seat in the United Nations. Orumumaa is now wreaking havoc in the Amhara region and Oromia, nearly two years after the end of Tigray conflict in which more than 500,000 people were killed in addition to targeting Tigrayans for persecution.
The Somaliland leader has made a pact with a dangerous Orumumaa cult whose purveyors have the potential to spark a geopolitical war in the Horn of Africa. Abiy might have heard of the fate of Aman Andom and Tafari Benti, who played major roles in the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie by the Derg junta in 1974.
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