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The Emergence of Oromo Nationalism and Ethiopian Reaction
ASAFA JALATA is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and African and African American Studies at the University of Tennessee, 901 McClung Tower, Knoxville, TN 37996-0490. Jalata teaches and researches in the areas of political economy, race and ethnicity, national and social movements, African and African American studies, development studies, the world-system, and political sociolgy. He is the author of Oromia and Ethiopia: State Formation and Ethnonational Conflict, 1868-1992, and has published several articles in The Journal of Oromo Studies, Horn of Africa, Dialectical Anthropology, and The Journal of Political and Military Sociology. He has also published book chapters on Afrocentricity, poverty, and development.
THE OROMO NATIONAL MOVEMENT HAS EVOLVED FROM SCATTERED, LOCALIZED, AND cultural resistances of Oromos to Ethiopian colonial domination and its supporters. 1 The emergence of a few nationalist and revolutionary Oromo intellectual and professional groups played a decisive role in transforming the Oromo struggle and providing it with an organized and centralized leadership. Oromo nationalist discourse has challenged both academic and Ethiopian nationalist discourses that have reduced Oromos to an object of history by portraying them as a people with neither a history nor civilization. Focusing on the main features of Oromo democratic traditions and culture, Oromo nationalists have celebrated an Oromo identity and mobilized their cultural resources as an ideological tool. Ethiopians have been very resistant to the emergence of Oromo nationalism because Oromos are the numerical majority, and Ethiopia mainly depends on Oromo economic and labor resources. Therefore, rather than deal democratically with the Oromo national movement, Ethiopians have tried their best to totally destroy it. After finding the destruction of this movement to be impossible, various Ethiopian organizations and the Ethiopian state have recently straggled to shape it according to their respective interests via the creation of puppet organizations. Despite these obstacles, the Oromo national movement has blossomed and become a formidable political force that Ethiopians must deal with, either militarily or democratically. This essay discusses the origin and essence of Oromo nationalism and the possible consequences of the military approach; it also suggests the prospects for peaceful, democratic conflict resolution between Oromos and Ethiopians.
The emergence of Oromo nationalism has raised fears and partisan battles in different political comers in...