Rebel commander’s taunt about disarming Ethiopian troops sparks misinformation

This article is more than one year old.
Published on June 21, 2023 at 15:55
2 min read
By Tolera FIKRU GEMTA, AFP Ethiopia

A Facebook post with a link to a video claims that the footage shows an Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) commander boasting about how the Ethiopian government is arming the rebel force. However, this is misleading: the post shared a tiny excerpt from a 50-minute speech by OLA leader Jaal Marroo Dirribaa and left out important context. In the original video, Marroo mocks the Ethiopian government for “providing them” with arms and ammunition that he says his rebels took from federal soldiers by force.

The post was published on Facebook on June 1, 2023 and has been shared more than a thousand times.

Text accompanying the video quotes Marroo purportedly saying: “Abiy Ahmed is arming us with heavy weapons. Long life to him.”

Abiy, Ethiopia’s prime minister, comes from Oromia where the regional OLA forces are based. Marroo’s comments in the footage were made as the federal government tries to disband the country’s various regional armies.

Screenshot of the misleading post, taken on June 16, 2023

In the video, which runs for just over a minute, Marroo is seen motivating his fighters in a wooded setting with the OLA flag behind him.

The post also includes a link to a Telegram channel that shares stories on Ethiopian current affairs.

Armed conflict

Attempts to strike a peace deal to end conflict between Ethiopian troops and the OLA failed following talks in Zanzibar, Tanzania in May 2023 (archived here).

The rebel force accused the Ethiopian government of continued attacks a few weeks later (archived here). OLA spokesman Odaa Tarbii told AFP that the military action was “contrary to the spirit of de-escalation we had hoped for”, although a formal ceasefire has not been reached so far.

Marroo, however, did not infer that Abiy’s government was funnelling weapons to the OLA.

What Marroo said

AFP Fact Check used the video verification tool InVID-WeVerify to conduct reverse image searches on keyframes from the footage. We found the original speech by Marroo on YouTube where it was uploaded on May 31, 2023 (archived here).

In the first five minutes of the footage, Marroo mocks Abiy’s government for “giving them weapons” and then qualifies what he means by saying his fighters took arms and ammunition from Ethiopian soldiers by defeating them in battle.

“These fighters are armed; those armed shall assist others to get armed. Together we will go to Abiy et al who give us support. They are sons of Gada, they are in the government palace, they are arming us, and may they live long. Is it not so?” asks Marroo, speaking in Afaan Oromoo.

The men respond: “Yes!”

Gada is a UNESCO-registered indigenous democratic system practised among the Oromo in Ethiopia (archived here).

Marroo continues, saying that “previously they were slamming us for having traditional weapons. Today we have all the weapons. We have mortars, DShK [machine guns] and others. Do we have these weapons or not?”

“Yes we have,” his fighters responded.

“Where did we get this? Did they give us?” Marroo asks. The fighters shout “yes, we got it.”

“How did we get it?” asks Marroo. “We got it by crushing them. We got it by force.”

Ethiopia experienced promising political reform and stability after Abiy took office in 2018 (archived here). Hopes for extended peace were dashed with the 2020 civil wars in the Tigray and Oromia regions, and the subsequent conflict in Amhara region.

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