Oromiya voices against conquest, collaboration, neutrality, and silence. Part 2

By Leenjiso Horo
---------continuation of the previous posting------- (http://oromooswiss.blogspot.com/2011/02/oromiya-voices-against-conquest.html)
  
 
2.1   A brief note on collaboration with enemy
 
If one wants to understand what is meant by a collaboration with enemy, here is a lesson worth learning.  The lesson brings to light the evidences of nationals who undertook an active and willful collaboration with the enemy of their people. The lesson shows experiences of those societies; the societies whose a segment of their nationals collaborated with the enemy.  Here to understand this, one needs to have in mind that collaborating with the enemy is  a political crime against one's people; and so  it is a betrayal.  It is important to carefully observe as to what had happened to those societies because of some of their nationals collaboration with their enemy.
 
 History bears witness that making alliance with the enemy of one's own people and fighting on the behalf of that enemy against one's own people is not uncommon.  Such an alliance is known throughout history as collaboration with the enemy.  The word collaboration generally understood to mean cooperation with enemy forces against one's country and people.  It means complicity with occupying power in arresting, torturing,  murdering, and persecuting of one's fellow countrymen and women.  And it also means complicity with occupying forces in pillaging, looting , economic exploitation, and a participation in, and support for a puppet government.  All in all, it means a betrayal of one's people. 
 
This is the irony of history. If we glance back at history, we observe collaborators within a nation fighting their own people on the behest of their people's enemy.  Hence collaborators are defined as those who collaborate with or work for the enemy against their own people.  For instance, during the Second World War Nazi regime of Germany had the policy of liquidation of Jews population.  On the basis of these policy men, women, and children of the Jewish and of Jewish blood were ganged into gas chamber.  And with cruelty they were gassed to death.  Six million Jewish and Germany of Jewish blood were perished.  While such heinous crime was committed on the population, a small segment of Diaspora Jews were doing business with Nazi Germany.  Not only this, at the same time according to historian Bryan Mark Rigg, there were Jewish soldiers in the Nazi Army which included decorated veterans , high-ranking officers, Field Marshals, Admirals, Generals, Lt Generals and major Generals.  "Germans of Jewish blood knowing the Nazi regime for what it was", Rigg noted in hi book, Hitler's Jewish Soldiers; 2002, “served Hitler as uniformed members of his armed forces." The Jewish historian Rabbi Joseph Telushkin summed up in the book Jewish Literacy, 2008; that "Throughout Europe the Nazis appointed groups of Jewish leaders known as Jewish Councils in the countries they conquered to serve as liaisons to the Jewish communities.... Unfortunately, instead of helping the Jews they [Jewish councils] often ended up facilitating the Nazis' work."  The Nazis work being the systematic murder of Jewish people.   Here what this means is that Nazi used the Jewish nationals against their own people.  The Councils had informers and police.  The informers "helped the Gestapo locate Jews in hiding."  And that the "hunting down", "rounding up", and “shipping to the death of the Jewish" were "carried out by the Jewish police."  [1]
 
Sadly enough, The Nazi did not even spare the families of those Jewish soldiers in the German army.  Captain Erich Rose, a Jewish soldier in the Nazi army whose family was murdered regretted for working for Nazi.  He was reported by Rigg to have "expressed his desire to die.  'I'm torn apart.  I've nothing to live for.  My family has all been murdered.... I'm a schwein [pig]....  The Nazi murdered my family, and at the same time, I fight for them.'" 
 
Primo Levi, a Nazi survivor, in his book The Drowned and the Saved; trans. Raymond Rosenthal in 1988, wrote:
 
The Judenrate or Jewish Councils were Nazi-established executive Committees throughout occupied Europe at once fully responsible for the implementation of Nazi directives and in charge of the administration, labor, finances, cultural and health services, food supply, and policy of Jewish community.  These councils were set up to force the Jews to do the work of the Nazi and to keep the Jews at odds with one another....
 
Hannah Arendt also wrote about the complicity of Jewish councils in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1994;“Wherever Jews lived, there were recognized Jewish leaders, and this leadership, almost without exception, cooperated in one way or another for one reason or another, with Nazi..."
 
In another historical and political context during the American civil war, the African-Americans in the south fought for the Confederate States of America, those states that did not recognized their fundamental human rights.  As historian Charles Kelly Barrow wrote, in a book entitled, Forgotten Confederates, 1995; that African-American fought for Confederate States, "Although Confederate state constitution guaranteed the preservation of slavery as a social and economic institution."  Furthermore Barrow stated, "They [Blacks] all knew that the Northern army was fighting for their freedom, and that the Southern army was fighting to keep them in slavery" and yet the blacks in the south fought for the Southern Confederates army.  Here try to understand,  the role of OPDO  in the TPLF's colonial regime.  It is and has been fighting the OLF on the behalf of and for the colonial army to keep Oromiya within Ethiopian empire, while the OLF is fighting for the independence of Oromiya.  Again in the World War I and II, the African-Americans fought for the US government that at a time did not recognize the basic rights of the black Americans.
 
In Korea, during World War II, a segment of Korean nationals fought for Japan, their colonizer, in its quest for the conquest of Asia.  In that war the Koreans served Japanese as soldiers, as workers, and as "comfort women", despite the fact, as  historian Robert B. Edgerton,  noted in  his book Warriors of the Rising Sun, 1997;  " Many Japanese had never considered Koreans to be fully human."  These Koreans not only fought in Asia, but also suppressed the Korean resistance movement against Japanese occupation and annexation of their country.  They supported the annexation of Korea by Japan.  They helped Japanese to exploit Korean resources. Historian, Robert T. Oliver, asserted in his book A History of the Korean People in the Modern Times, 1993;  "Between 1939 and 1945, some 800, 000 Korean youths were drafted into Japan's imperial armed forces" to fight in Asia to conquer the weaker nation in Asia on the behalf of Japanese imperial power.  Again, Japanese-Americans fought for American in the WW II despite the fact that Japanese American population were put in concentration and that the Americans called the Japanese race as a "yellow monkeys", "yellow apes".
 
 Similarly, the Oromo fought for, died for, and served the Ethiopian colonial rulers and their empire under the derogatory, the dehumanizing, disparaging and insulting name  "Galla" for over a century as African-Americans fought and served the U.S government under the derogatory name "niger" or "Negro" imposed upon them.   Throughout occupation, Oromo nationals rendered services to Abyssinian rulers, to their empire; despite this they used to refer to Oromo people as "maxifoo Galla", meaning the bad Galla.  The Abyssinian ruling class and its cohorts had been despising the Oromo in  such statements as: "yeGalla xirunnati kamootee bichaa nawu.”  In English, this literally means the only good Gaallas (Oromo) are the only dead ones.  Throughout occupation  to date, the Abyssinians have never trusted the Oromo. Even those Oromo nationals who had been licking and those who are still licking the Abyssinian feet with their tongue and those who served and still serving the Abyssinia empire with the utmost loyalty were not and are not trusted.  Hence for years, the Abyssinians had been expressing their mistrust of Oromo in this term, "Gaallan maaman kamootee bichaa nawu." Laterally it means the only trusted Gallas [Oromos] are the only dead ones.  As long as an Oromo is alive, the  Abyssinians do not trust him or her.  This is not without a reason.  The Abyssinians know that they occupied the Oromo country.  Oromiya is their colony and Oromo people are their colonial subject.  And that the Oromos always resist occupation.  For this resistance, they hate Oromo. It is for this resistance, the Abyssinians do not trust Oromo.  For years, those Oromo nationals who did not resist occupation were called "xiruu Gaallas".  Meaning is good Gaallas.  In reality, the Abyssinians do not even trust their own "xiruu Gaallaas".  For instance, if you call for Ethiopian unity, for Ethiopian democratization, and for alliance with them, they call you "xiruu Gaalla" meaning good Galla.  Hence to be called "xiruu Gaalla", today there are many Oromo nationals serving the Abyssinian new rulers and others are still salivating to join and serve them. Despite this, the Abyssinians never trust them, the native Oromo collaborators.
 
In the log view of history, we see all occupiers depend on internal collaborators to occupy a country.  And to maintain their occupation, again they depend on the collaborators. That is, collaborators are used against their country and people.  Without internal collaborators, the occupiers cannot sustain their occupation.  Hence, Abyssinia occupied Oromiya with the collaboration of Oromo collaborators and still sustaining the life of occupation with such collaborators. 
 
It is commonplace to say that Europeans colonized most of the world population.  It is also commonplace to talk about an Asiatic country that colonized other Asiatic countries.  That is, the Japan colonization of Korea, Manchuria, and China.   But what is not commonplace is that the world does not talk of the colonization of an African country by an African country. That is the Abyssinian colonization of Oromiya, Sidama, and etc. As mentioned above, throughout history all colonial governments in order to maintain peace and order had used native nationals.  And so since Oromiya's occupation, Abyssinia has been using native Oromo nationals in order to maintain peace, stability and order in the empire.   All colonizers organized specialized armies and police forces from the colonial people to fight their own colonized people. 
 
 
 
------------------To be continued------------------------------