Oromo Liberation Army

Uh, quite the opposite.

Uh, and the Oromo Liberation Army.

So these are three of the largest, um, anti-government, paramilitary, militant, whatever you want to call them, rebel, uh, groups in Ethiopia, uh, uniting to form, along with four other smaller groups, to form what they're calling the Ethiopian People's Forces Alliance for Survival.

Uh, the conflict bro- broke out, uh, a few days after the announcement of that group's creation, which was on September twenty-first.

Uh, before this survivor for an alliance, there was also another, uh, alliance which is called the Tsamdu, uh, Tsamdu in Tigrinya, which is, uh, similar to an alliance, which also involve, uh, the TPLF regime, the, the EPLF, the Eritrean regime, which was a sh- very short-lived, uh, experiment on an alliance But wh-while we were following that, then a new alliance under, under the survival and an extension survival, uh, topic, like seven, seven pa- uh, military groups, at least three ones are very core.

The TPLF, uh, leadership and its army, the Fano, uh, army, uh, rebel army, and the OLA, Oromo Liberation Army.

The three of them at least, uh, came into, into an agreement and onto an alliance to wage a war against the common enemy, which they perceived the, the federal government, the central government.

Yeah.

It is a, a marriage of convenience in which, uh, not ethnic alliance, not ethnic affiliations, not the classic, um, uh, ideological, uh, convergence, but convenience, pragmatic, uh, ideologies to win, uh, the common enemy, which they, they call the federal government.

And also, they also imagined, uh, or aspire toward this, uh, uh, transitional government in their, in their first, um, uh, declaration of this alliance.

Uh, uh, to remind you, two of these armies, especially the, the TPLF leadership, which is now the, the rebel leadership, and is also the OLA, the Oromo Liberation Army, were classic guerrilla armies in the past.

They were-- They, we can trace their history back to the 1960s, '70s, '80s, and so on.

The TPLF, who have clearly not disarmed as they were supposed to, have announced the formation of the Alliance for Survival, a coalition of seven largely ethnically organized rebel groups from six of Ethiopia's 12 provinces.

Aside from the TPLF, the most prominent are the Amhara Fano National Liberation Movement, the Oromo Liberation Army, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

Ironically, this is in itself an almost impressive endeavour in peace forging, given that a few of these outfits have previously fought each other.

Even more ironically, their mission statement speaks solemnly of a concern that Ethiopia is in danger of disintegrating, i.e. precisely the outcome for which many of the alliance's survival have long been agitating.

They fought each other, but this time around they came together to officially announce that they are fighting or trying to fight to overthrow the federal government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.

So that means that this alliance includes also the Oromo Liberation Army, OLA, uh or guardian national liberation front which has um i mean it used to have a fighting force but this time around um it's just a kind of a splinter group from another uh faction um it also includes um other two three factions from uh gumus or benshangul gumus So AFAR also, in fact, Eritrea, not officially, but they are also helping.

So it is wider because they have prepared to attack or to fight against the government from every direction.

Right.

And out of the three, two or three of them have an armed group or an armed wing or they are already armed.

These are the Tigray People Liberation Front, the TPLF, OLA, the Oromo Liberation Army.

It has been fighting the government since 2019.

So it has been active in Oromare region, far away from the north, where we see the current violence.

But they have stated that they have no interest in starting violence in Somali region of Ethiopia.

So, we can see their intentions.

OLA, the Oromo Liberation Army, which has been active in Oromia region since 2019, they have also kind of indicated, they didn't say out loud, but kind of indicated that they don't have a collaborated operations in plan, but they have agreed to remove the current government.

So you can see that there is no coordinated operation plan and only a couple of them or three of them agreed to start a new escalation in northern Ethiopia.

the removal of Abiy Ahmed from office.

Alongside the TPLF and Fano, the members of the Oromo Liberation Army , the Ogada National Liberation Front, the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front, the Beneshagul People's Liberation Front, and the Gmuz People's Democratic Movement.

The most remarkable thing about this alliance is the fact that it exists at all, because most of these groups, and I'll use the technical term here, they fucking hate each other.

We've already mentioned the territorial dispute between the Tigray and the Amhara, but that is, oh, just the tip of the iceberg.