The news of the death in Yemen of Abdulkarim Ibrahim Hamid- known as Jaarraa Abaa Gadaa- has reached me through a friend who phoned from the Arab Gulf. This is and must be a sad moment for the entire Oromo people. What can we learn from Abdulkarim and what is the best way of advancing the cause of liberation from the iron grip of Abyssinian domination to which he has heroically dedicated his entire life? I met Jaarraa briefly in Mogadishu in 1968. At the time, I was delirious with fever from malaria and was trying to escape inland from humidity in Mogadishu. In that brief encounter I sensed his determination to stand to the Abyssinian arrogance. Among other things he asserted I remember him saying that, to self respecting humanbeings, death is preferable to slavery. Over subsequent years and decades he translated his conviction with exemplary bravery and selflessness to actions that will inform successive generations of Oromo freedom fighters, by fighting first alongside Oromo patriots such as Waaqoo Guutuu, Hussein Bune, Aliyyii Cirrii and Elemoo Qilxu, and finally by reorganizing armed struggle under his own leadership.
In an age where any Moslem resistance to imperialism is easily repackaged as Islamic “terrorism” some OPDO- Woyane puppets and missionary OLF ideologues tried, without success, to craft a narrative around Jaarraa promoting religion in Oromo politics. Great Oromo patriots mostly act on sound instincts rather than dogma. Jaarraa is no exception. If such patriots failed to achieve their noble aims it was not because their instincts were wrong. It was rather because of a constellation of other factors beyond their control. What matters is their undying revolutionary legacy.
Jaarraa is one of the brightest luminaries in the galaxy of great Oromo freedom fighters. His militant single mindedness contrasts sharply with the corruption and opportunism of most of the Oromo political elite today.
His mortal remains must not be allowed to be transferred to Ethiopia to be misused by the OPDO-Woyane agents for propaganda reasons as they had misused the mortal remains of Waaqoo and Hussein Bune, turning many of their relatives, including their children and supporters, into puppets of the fascist Woyane regime. Shame on them. Jarraa does not need funeral orations to underline his importance. The purpose of this article is not to write eulogy for him. It is to encourage the living to emulate him and the rest of our great dead heroes, not to make of them paternalistic figures, not to imitate them, not to deify and worship them as the Abyssinians do to their warlords.
Authentic human beings do not simply inherit the vocabularies of their revolutionary heroes. They also revise and transform them creatively and compassionately in accordance with genuine revolutionary human spirit. Are we authentic enough to do that? Can we move a step forward and create a political organizational framework in self defence that can guarantee the continuity of our struggle for democracy and real independence?
It may not be out of place to mention here in passing my recent trip. It suddenly brought me face to face with a dimension of our dilemma that we usually avoid to discuss openly. Our problem is not just the wide gulf between those of us who see the Oromo question as a colonial question and therefore struggle for an independent Oromia, and those of us who are made to chase consciously or not the illusion of a democratic Ethiopia. It is sad that even some of us who raise the banner of an independent Oromia are humanbeings with dubious background and motives, who think lies, cunning, intrigues must be used to achieve political aims. Moreover, I think at least part of the failures of the OLF are due to its elements who had closely collaborated with the Derg regime until it turned on them. Essentially the same can be said today of the Oromo elements in OPDO. All of them are still trying to play havoc with the struggle of the Oromo people. Among them are Oromos with neo-Stalinist pretensions and tendencies who have not learned from history. I leave the biography of Jaarraa to those who know him better. But I must mention here that one of the lasting merits of Jaarraa Abbaa Gadaa, in my opinion, is his acute awareness of such dubious and double-faced Oromo elements whose thinking is saturated with the Abyssinian-Ethiopian- mythology and who are are determined to hijack the Oromo question from within. Besides, it is clear today as ever that the Abyssinian rule over Oromos has been made possible partly by the fact that there is a large number of people among us who are willing to be manipulated. But manipulation functions best especially when the manipulated are not aware of being manipulated.
May we Oromos discover our birthright as human beings to more self awareness without which true self-respect and freedom are not possible