As we have repeatedly warned, the bloodshed in Horro Guduru and East Wollega, unthinkable before Abiy came in 2018, is a deliberate weaponization of Oromo and Amhara civilians against each other.
The latest violence unfolded on March 4, when the so-called “Fano in Wollega”—a militia cultivated and sustained by Abiy—descended on four kebeles in Abe Dongoro District. They torched 180 homes, murdered three civilians (among them a three-month-old infant), and looted hundreds of livestock.
Two days later, ENDF officers, mobilizing Oromia special forces and proxy “Shene” fighters under ‘Jal’ Mosisa, swept into Arusee Kebele—an Amhara community—and burned 200 houses to the ground.
The regime that is waging a furious war on Fano in Amhara never really fights this “Fano in Wollega.” Why? Because they are not enemies; they are instruments—allowed to kill Oromos so the regime can pose as avengers, dispatching its units to burn Amhara homes in “retaliation.”
Both so-called “Fano in Wollega” and its Shene, now led by Mosisa, are merely OPDO appendages. Every burned Oromo or Amhara home, every child’s corpse, every stolen dream, every stolen herd, serves one purpose: to lock the Oromo and Amhara, as people and political community, into a cycle of retaliation that neither can escape.
The solution is straightforward: all people of the country must cooperate to dismantle this abomination of a regime. In the meantime, Amhara forces must publicly recognize these machinations, condemn them unequivocally, and distance themselves entirely from the regime’s mechanisms of murder.
OLF-OLA High Command
March 10, 2026
