On the ongoing conflict within the opposition OLF leadership
Sudan Tribune - August 13, 2008

By Kallacha Dubbii

On the left, OLF's ultra-radical members condemn any attempt to negotiate with any Abyssinian organization; leave alone the Tigrean-led Ethiopian government. This has been a paralyzing tide for the OLF leadership. In the early 2000's, considerable time and energy was spent needlessly, arguing the merits and demerits of negotiations, interpreting and reinterpreting the very idea of talking to the enemy as violation of the principles of liberation, betrayal of the cause, etc. This leftist tendency may just have been a pretext for power struggle, this I can't tell. But the leftist arguments readably existed and heavily populated the Oromo internet.

On the right, the OLF is pulled by members who want to drop armed struggle and go into power sharing competition against the TPLF. This matter was a serious agenda both at the 2004 Bergen conference and at the OLF Congress in Eritrea . The group's motion was defeated by a large majority of the OLF congress. Although the group raises some legitimate concerns and important questions regarding lack of significant progress in the armed struggle, there are no indications that the group has modified its sympathy for the idea of converting the OLF into a legal Ethiopian opposition. I will write more about this below as it relates to the ongoing conflict.

In the middle are the OLF members who are willing to negotiate, but without ever compromising their right to armed struggle. Read More.