OLF Annual Film Festival: Review of the Inside the Rebel Territory and Inside the Limousine Films

Showing a video of Oromos soldiers every summer has been one of the most effective fund-raising tool used by OLF since 1980's. The leaders know that as a people who have been oppressed, humiliated and dehumanized beyond any imagination, Oromos are extremely emotionally eager to see liberation soldiers fighting to regain the lost pride. Since the leader rarely had notable achievement to show, they simply produce videos to tell Oromos about an upcoming major plan to destroy the enemy. So, it was not surprising to see another production of video reached the diaspora audience this past summer. Now lets review what the goal of the two videos were, what impact they had and if any lesson can be learn from it.

Inside the Rebel Territory

This film, which was supposed to be four part, was professionally produced by an impressive Kenyan journalist. The fact that this documentary was produced by a concerned young African native makes its quite interesting in world where few and only foreign journalists dare to go into such conflict zone to produce documentaries, not to tell address the core issues of the conflict but to romanticize the war and depict Africans as animals born to kill each other. Unfortunately, for the OLF faction whose primary goal is to destroy each other than advance their stated goal, the documentary became their major cause of controversy over the summer. I have argued in one of my previous articles that the “change” group is unlikely to make any difference because they have not truly differentiated themselves from the old guard. My assumption was confirmed as the numerous articles written by individuals aligned with this faction attest, the primary objective of the “change” in helping produce this documentary was to outshine Dawud's faction during the summer festival.1 Specifically they wanted to prove that their faction is the only one with military force and hence the legitimate OLF. As Dawud's faction could not show any thing to counter the powerful video, it is quite fair to say that this summer was dominated by the change group, thus, as far as change's narrow objective is concerned, they have been quite successful. Their cadres have been obsessed in convincing the public about the death of “shanee” rather tell us how many enemies they have killed. The video is supposedly meant to show the “existence” of the OLA, but the “change” have yet to realize that a symbolic existence with no tangible result means nothing. Although they have repeated the outdated promise of liberating Oromia soon, it is hard to believe them as their entire focus so far is eliminating their factional opponent, and we know from past experience that any group that prioritizes fighting internal adversaries will loose sight of the real enemy. So if they want us to believe about their military power, they better back up this video with real actions in Oromia. For this to happen, they need to stop this destructive factional politics and focus, and more importantly, unless he moves in to jungle of Oromia and command his soldiers, their chairman will not be any different than the persons her rebelled against. “ Haatee barreddii jennaan karaa kanaa dhuftii ni agarta” jedhan Oromoon.

Inside the Limousine

Mr. Dawud's faction seem unprepared for the bomb shell this video dropped, thus all they could do was send out a self-ridiculing press release that shamelessly claimed about how unnecessary and impossible it is to have a base in Kenya2. I do not understand how they came to conclude that a neighboring country with the longest boarder with Oromia and where a distance of over 100 km into its land is been occupied by Oromo people is less strategically important than an internationally isolated, economically crumbling state. Unless they are trying to cover their past failure to have strong presence in Kenya, there is no question that Kenya is the number one strategically important neighbor for an Oromo insurgency. May be it is too painful for OLF leaders to remember that in 1990's although several Oromos occupied important positions within Kenyan government, the OLF, consumed with its never ending internal war, was never able to take advantage of the situation.

When the press release backfired, Dawud's faction released a video of the chairman , who is been touring America, being received by a limousine.3 It is not really clear what this faction wanted to gain by this video, but it is quite laughable for a man who led this organization to its grave to show off like that. This video indicates how factionalism has completely disillusioned the supporters, and how the man has lost touch with the reality.

Lesson's to be learned

The “inside the rebel territory” documentary has way more importance to the Oromo cause than change group aimed for. It has introduced our just cause to the Kenyan public, may be for the first time ever. As Yassin Juma claimed, the documentary truly demystified about the OLF. One of my Kenyan classmates once told me that the Kenyan people thought of OLF as a cross-boarder bandits who have been engaged in looting cattle. Asked about the allegation of the Turbi massacre, Liban, the field commander, precisely and eloquently responded that their struggle is against the Ethiopian government, and hence they have no reason to fight in Kenya. I do not think it would be an exaggeration to say that that young commander has done a much better diplomatic work in improving the relationship between the Kenyan and Oromo people than the OLF leadership was able to achieve in the last several decades.

Predictably, TPLF showed an extreme reaction to this video. Some people believed that this reaction was because the regime in Finfinne does not want the public to know about the existence of an organization it has repeatedly declared dead. I do not believe so. The TPLF wants the OLF to be around, it will even do any thing it can to keep it on life support. This is because without OLF around, TPLF will have no excuse to harass, imprison, execute and repress Oromo dissents. Therefore, in my view, the reason why TPLF was very upset about this video is because, if a documentary made by a Kenyan national is aired on a national television, it could have unpredictable geopolitical impact. This fear is correct because several sources within Kenya have testified that, when the advertisement of the documentary was released, the Kenyan public was highly eager to watch it. Even after the much altered version was aired, the issue has become one of the major talking point among all sections of the society – TPLF's dictatorial attempt to block an independent media in a sovereign nation backfired pushing the issue in to several major news outlets around the world. What learn from this saga is that the Kenyan people have been kept at dark about the issues across the boarder, but they highly receptive of the Oromo cause if and when its properly presented to them. This video has opened a great window of opportunity, its up to us to capitalize on it.


In general the two video games presented by OLF faction have made the summer quite interesting. As far as the factional politics is concerned the change group has scored 1 point, and the Dawud' group -1. But as far as moving their stated goal forward, they both receive a big 0.