I am looking at a picture of two young girls—perhaps in their late teens or early twenties. Their beauty is undeniable, yet it is not the kind of beauty that comes from youth alone. It is the beauty of conviction, of courage, of defiance. They are not dressed for leisure, nor are they indulging in the carefree joys of their age. Instead, they stand holding on to AK-45 rifles—they are OLA fighters. And with that image comes the eternal question: Why?
What is it that compels a person to trade the comforts of youth for the weight of war? What force drives them to bear arms, to walk the path of sacrifice rather than the path of ease? What is that deep, unshakable conviction that makes them answer a call most would flee from?
Yet, lightyears away from this moment—on another plane of existence, in a world that refuses to acknowledge theirs—the adversary sits in comfort, dictating the terms of their fate. The regime that wages an unrelenting war against them refuses to recognize their name, replacing it instead with an epithet of vilification. In its mind, it is not crushing a people; it is erasing an inconvenience. The adversary does not ask why the Liberators fight; it only knows that they must be silenced.
But what does the adversary truly know about the Liberators? Does it presume to know their pain better than they do? Does it believe itself the arbiter of their destiny? If the Liberator fights for rights as fundamental as freedom, dignity, and identity—who is the adversary to deny them? What arrogance must it take to say, “I know what is best for you,” while crushing the very essence of another’s humanity?
History is drenched in this pattern—where the demand for freedom is met with the sword, where cries for justice are drowned in blood. How many times must the same tragedy repeat before the adversary learns? When will it stop, pause, and think? When will it abandon the condescending “I know it all for you” doctrine and begin to understand?
The Three Episodes of Oromia: Darkness, Awakening, and Enlightenment
There is a story waiting to be told about the Oromo people. A story spanning 150 years, divided into three great epochs: Darkness, Awakening, and Enlightenment.
The first episode, Darkness, was one of deliberate subjugation—a time when the Oromo identity was systematically suppressed, their land occupied, their voices silenced, assisted with the unbeknown lethal weapons donated by the Scramble for Africa wild party. The adversary ensured their subordination, wielding both the Rifle and brutal policy to keep them in the shadows of human tragedies.
Then came Awakening. Not only the slow but unstoppable tide of resistance, but the realization about the greatness of the Oromo people and their culture and traditional democracy. The realization that oppression was not fate but a man-made construct, sustained by fear. It was during this time that the whispers of rebellion turned into the echoes of a movement. The adversary saw this and trembled, and ever since determined single-mindedly to crush it. The willful ignorance cast on stone till today.
Now, we stand in the age of Enlightenment. Oromos are reclaiming what was denied to them for generations. They are rising in education, in self-determination, in the reawakening of their ancient Gada system—a system that, for millennia, championed Freedom, Justice, and Peace.
Yet, even now, the adversary resists. Their fear is not new. It was once voiced by Imperial-era Prime Minister Aklilu Habtewold, who warned General Tadassa Birru against educating the Oromo people: “We must be careful about schooling the Oromos, or we will lose the empire.” Not his exact words, but undeniably his exact sentiment.
Of course, Aklilu Habtewold was unaware that Tadassa Birru himself was Oromo. Nor could he have known that his very words would ignite the transformation of an imperial bodyguard soldier into a key figure in the Oromo nationalist movement. A striking lesson in how the words of an oppressor can serve as a catalyst for the oppressed.
That long-feared loss of empire is now unfolding.
The Oromo people know why they fight. And the adversary knows why it opposes them. It is not ignorance that drives the adversary but a willful refusal to accept a future where the oppressed will no longer kneel. It is the same fear that has fueled oppression throughout history—the fear that the subjugated will one day stand as equals.
But time does not flow backward. The age of Enlightenment is here, and no amount of denial will stop it.
Let the adversary learn, or let them crumble under the weight of their own willful ignorance. The future belongs to those who refuse to be erased.
To look at those two young girls and see only combatants, rather than the sum of their experiences, their pain, their dreams, is to participate in willful ignorance. It is to choose blindness over understanding, to perpetuate a cycle that has swallowed generations whole.
And so, the question remains: how far have we come?
The painful truth is that humanity has come so far—crossed oceans, conquered diseases, reached for the stars—yet, in the most fundamental matters of justice, dignity, and understanding, we remain shackled to the same primal instincts of domination and denial. The arc of history bends toward progress, but only when those in power choose to see, to listen, to learn.
But does the perpetrator even care to know it?
Will PM Abiy Ahmed and President Shimelis Abdissa take even a fleeting moment to ask themselves what could have driven these young girls—full of promise, full of life—to exchange the joys of youth for the burden of war? Will they reflect on the chasm of desperation, the relentless oppression, the suffocating silence that left these girls with no choice but to take up arms in pursuit of a freedom so basic, yet so fiercely denied?
Or will they, like so many before them, dismiss their struggle with the cold calculus of power—another “insurgency” to be crushed, another “threat” to be neutralized, another chapter in the long, bloodstained history of those who refuse to see beyond their own self-justifications?
Perhaps just for a day, or even for a moment, they might ask themselves: Was there ever a world where these girls would not have had to fight?
