Ethiopia, Oromo Liberation Army offensive on the Kenya border

Since Saturday night, fighting has raged on the border between Ethiopia and Kenya with the city of Moyale at its epicenter. This is a major offensive by the Oromo Liberation Army, the Oromia armed movement which, together with the TPLF, fights to liberate the country from the Amhara regime. According to local sources, the units have attacked both from Ethiopia and Kenya, where it is suspected that they have military training camps near the border areas and that their presence is widely tolerated by the Nairobi government.
The Kenyan side of the Kenya-Ethiopian border near Moyale serves as a refuge for OLA due to the forested mountains which are not fully accessible. The Oromo Liberation Army also has a significant armed presence on the Ethiopian side of the border. In the Guji and Borena areas of the South Oromia region near Moyale, OLA controls several key cities.
At the beginning, Moyale city defense was ensured by local militias loyal to the Amhara regime. Subsequently, units of the federal army and the Eritrean army intervened and managed to stop OLA offensive.
In the last six months, the Oromo Liberation Army, albeit lacking in heavy artillery and tanks has been structured as a real army, thanks to massive recruitments due to the unprecedented violence inflicted on civilians in Oromia by ENDF and Eritrean army. OLA has also received large arms supplies from Egypt and Sudan.
The attack on the city of Moyale is part of a vast OLA military operation aimed to block the land route of supplies between Kenya and Ethiopia in order to increase the isolation of the Amhara regime and to accelerate the national economic collapse already underway and aggravated now ny the latest sanctions decided by the American Senate.
OLA is also positioning several divisions in northern Oromia to counter the imminent offensive by ENDF and Eritrean troops. Yesterday about 8,000 federal soldiers arrived at the locality of Nagamte, north Oromia, under the control of the regime to join the invasion force which is expected to launch an offensive within days, perhaps simultaneously with the planned offensive against the Tigray in an attempt to invade the « rebel » region for the second time.
A blatant violation of the truce declared by Premier Abiy 14 days in order to allow humanitarian aid to the population of Tigray besieged since December 2020. A truce that seems like a farce with each passing day. A ploy to buy time in order to plan well the invasion of Tigray and the annihilation of the OLA in Oromia.
Italian human rights activist Davide Tommasin points out that in these 14 days since the Prime Minister’s declaration of the truce and his promise to facilitate humanitarian assistance to Tigray in all ways, only 33 aid trucks have entered into Tigray .
United Nations estimates that 100 trucks a day are needed to be able to stem the dramatic situation of the population in Tigray where about 2 million people are at risk of starvation due to the siege carried out by the Amhara regime. The international community does not seem to take sufficient steps to stop the genocide in progress, concerned exclusively with the conflict in Ukraine which, when compared with the Ethiopian one, seems very limited war.
Meanwhile the national fascist Amhara leadership continues its territorial expansion plans to create the Greater Amhara region which should include vast territories of Tigray, Oromia and Sudan. Last week the North Showa area in Oromia on the border with the Amhara region was occupied by the Amhara militias who forced the Oromo farmers to abandon their homes and lands in order to be able to settle the Amhara farmers in a premeditated colonization plan.
The Ethiopian conflict continues and fighting is expected to intensify in the coming weeks. Premier Abiy needs an immediate final victory as the collapsing economy risks not allowing him to continue the war effort. Even one of its best allies, Turkey, has significantly decreased its financial and military support due to the deep crisis of the Turkish economy and Istanbul’s war efforts in support of the government in Kiev.
The need for total victory is made even more pressing as the political divisions between Premier Abiy and the national fascist Amhara leadership are deepening and the first armed clashes between the two allied factions are recorded.
On Tuesday 5 April, the Ethiopian Premier went to Eritrea as a matter of urgency at the Massawa military camp to meet the dictator Isaias Afwerki to coordinate the final details for the second invasion of Tigray and a major offensive in Oromia to destroy the Oromo Liberation Army.
Regional observers fear that the impending Ethiopian – Eritrean offense in Oromia will be particularly brutal with a high number of civilian casualties. These fears are based on the propaganda that the Amhara nationalist leaders. In the last two weeks have been spreading messages of pure ethnic hatred on the national media and on social networks depicting the Oromo of primitive bushmen who do not know God, law and have not the slightest concept of a nation because are simply being animals.
These messages of ethnic hatred confirm the accusations of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch made in a joint report published yesterday, Wednesday 06 April. The report details with meticulous precision and irrefutable evidence the massacres of thousands of Tegaru in the areas of western Tigray occupied by the national fascist Amhara militias, called FANO with the complicity of the federal army, the Ethiopian Premier Abiy Ahmed Alim Nobel Peace Prize 2019 and Eritrean troops.
During the ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of sexual violence and rape were carried out, as well as horrific and life-threatening mass detentions, deprivation of people’s means of survival, forced movements of entire villages. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch claim that all of these actions amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Ethiopian civil society in response to the report listed those responsible for the genocide. They would be: Premier Abiy Ahmed Ali, dictator Isaias Afwerki, Generals Abebaw Tadessse, Filipos Wledeyohanes, Birhanu Jula, Bacha Debele, Police Chief Demeke Zewdu, military intelligence Commander Belay Ayalew, Amhara special forces Commander Diene Maru , Ethiopia’s National Intelligence and Security Servic Chief Temesgen Tiruneh and the former Amhara region president and current speaker of the federal government Agegnew Teshager. Civil society is asking to the international community to take action to bring them to the International Criminal Court and try them for crimes against humanity and genocide.