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The Making of Oromo Diaspora is an account of forced migration from Oromoland. The book explores some of the socio-political factors which led to the uprooting and scattering of thousands of Oromos at different times and different directions (p.13). The book originates in the author’s research on forced migration. In 1999, he presented a paper on a conference held in Berlin which I enjoyed the privilege to attend and talk. As the product of the social and political history he described in his book, Professor Mekuria Bulcha demonstrates both the passion of an interested insider and the objective reflection of a scholar.

The book starts with the sociology of forced migration followed in chapter 2 by the illustration of the Red Sea slave trade. Here he notes that “slavery and slave trade were practices with ancient roots in north-east Africa. Slavery has been an important feature of Abyssinia’s social and economic life.” (p.33) Moreover, the slave trade and the import of fire arms had played an important role in the “establishment and maintenance of Abyssinian domination … at the end of the nineteenth century” (p.51).

In the subsequent chapters, the author unravels in detail “the fate of slaves into the societies they were imported” (chapter 4) taking personal stories of men and women who were captured and sold into slavery yet whose contribution to Oromo studies remains significant (chapter 5). Amongst them, the author chose four personalities: Malik Ambar, Bilile (Mehbuba), Onesmosis Nasib and Aster Ganno. The brief story of the last two is most interesting not only that the author describes one of them, Onesmosis Nasib, as the father Oromo literature, but also that they migrated back to their homeland with the help of modern religion. The challenges they faced upon return says a lot about the state system there was in Ethiopia, which is not entirely different to what exists today. In their trail, these people (what the author refers to as the bygone Oromo diaspora) laid the basis for Oromo literature, and extended literacy and education to their homeland.

In chapter 7, the making of the modern Oromo diaspora discusses the forced migration from Oromoland from 1900 to 2001. The account of the conquest, the formation of empire state, the paralysis of its founders (Menelik from 1909 to 1913), the story of prince, Lij, Iyasu who became a de facto ruler at the age of 15 and sooner than later “a refugee in his own country” (p.163) are remarkable reflections of Ethiopia’s social and political system. One, however, would desire to ask whether the grand policies of religious and ethno-national tolerance and social justice are what one would expect from a teenager who is the product of arranged marriages or that of his supporters and advisors. Youth and inexperience seem to be the case when Iyasu referred to the nobility as “my grandfather’s fattened sheep” (p.162). Even in that, he was not wrong.

That said, the author leads readers to the developments of the 1960s, the suppression of Macha and Tulama Association and related social movements which resulted in increased flow of refugees to Sudan and Somalia. Internally, what Rene Lemont called “mechanised feudalism” also caused large scale forced eviction and displacement of gabbars. The situation got worse with the Ethiopian revolution and its military regime which precipitated political and religious persecution, war, forced conscription and labour coupled with its “economic policies [that] created the largest number of refugees in the country’s history” (p.167). What is more telling of this period is the political violence by the state system and its contenders. The words terror and terrorism dawned on the world, specially America, after September 11 or 9/11. But in Ethiopia, over two decades ago in 1977, the then Ethiopian state declared a policy of “Red Terror” to combat “White Terror.” The resort to violence and terror has left the system not only with Diasporas but also as one of the most miserable places on earth, which is quickly and easily identified with pestilence, hunger, famine, death and destruction. The story thus did not end with the demise of the derg military regime but continues well after 1990s where the author describes as war being “waged against the civil society”(p.171) causing forced migration to neighbouring countries, cross-border raids against refugees, as well as intense grief and sense of nostalgia felt by the latter.

The story is not all bleak as the predicament caused the formation of Oromo organisations in the diaspora including TBOA, UONA and OSA, free from Meisonite illusions to attempt “to democratise Ethiopia.” (p.188). Here is also the place to study the past away from the education system wedded to largely irrelevant 3000 years of history.

To sum up, the book is a marvellous reflection of reality seen from the angle of the sociology and political economy of the oppressed. It is superb in its conceptual clarity, historical brevity and sociological analytic on the formation of large diaspora population created as the result of the state’s undertaking in slave trade, conquest and endless conflict and upheaval. I certainly gained a lot from reading it and commend to anyone with a slight concern to events in that part of the world to read it, and not to shelf it.

In saying so, I leave readers with the following quotation from the same book (p.206):

“When Tewodros heard the English had come through Zula, that Dajach Kassa received them… he counselled as follows: ‘No, we cannot fight; where shall we flee?’ the army did not exceed 200, for all had deserted him. They say Fitawurari Gebreyye replied: ‘Where can we be secure? Where is the place in which we did not kill, shed blood, a country which we did not plunder and devastate’! and advised ‘We should die rather honourably.’ He then released the English prisoners, Shawa prisoners, and Gojam prisoners … He threw the rest of the Ethiopian Balabbat and Wallo Balababatoch, who numbered more than 500, down the precipice of Maqdala after having shot each of them with a bullet (Asma Giyorgis 1987)”

The story in the book, one may add, is about both the devastation caused by depraved inhuman system which did not cease as of yet to make more diasporas and the imagined communities the latter aspire to create.

Seyoum Hameso
November 2003

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