In Ethiopia, fighting has resumed in Oromia, the country’s largest region, for a week. For three years, this region has been plagued by conflict between government forces and the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) rebellion. A round of talks for a peace agreement brought the two parties together in early May, without any significant progress. While discussions will continue in a second round, the fighting continues.
Faced with scattered clashes reported in the region, the OLA rebels on Wednesday (May 17th) accused the Ethiopian federal government of having launched an offensive contrary to the “hoped-for de-escalation” after the first talks.
The Ethiopian government and OLA – classified as a terrorist organization by Addis Ababa since 2021 – began discussions on April 25th in Zanzibar, a semi-autonomous island of Tanzania, described by the rebellion as “preliminaries for more in-depth negotiations”.
After the end of this first round of discussions, which concluded on May 3rd without progress, “we saw the regime launch an all-out offensive, which is contrary to the spirit of de-escalation that we were hoping for”, affirmed Odaa Tarbii, OLA spokesperson. “Although there was no formal ceasefire, it was commonly accepted that de-escalation would be favored during the negotiation process,” he explained.
The OLA has been actively fighting the Ethiopian authorities in the Oromia region, the largest and most populated region in Ethiopia, which surrounds the capital Addis Ababa since its split in 2018 with the historic Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). He renounced the armed struggle that year when the current Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power.