Ethiopia announces peace talks with Oromo rebel group

The government of Ethiopia will begin talks with the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), a rebel group active in the country's largest and most populous region, it announced on Sunday.

"The peace negotiation that will be held with Oneg Shene will start [on Tuesday] in Tanzania," Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said, using another name for the OLA.

"The Ethiopian government and people will need this negotiation very much."

What is the Oromo Liberation Army?

The OLA is an outlawed splinter group of the Oromo Liberation Front, a formerly banned opposition party that returned from exile and largely agreed to disarm when Abiy took office in 2018.

The group says it is fighting against the marginalization of the Oromo people, the largest ethnic group in Ethiopia who make up more than a third of the population. Abiy himself was born in Beshasha, a town in the Oromia region

Both the OLA and Ethiopia's federal government blame each other for a number of attacks in the Oromia region.

In February, the state-appointed human rights commission blamed the OLA for an attack that killed at least 50 people. In October last year, the OLA blamed the Ethiopian government for airstrikes that they said killed civilians.

The conflict between the OLA and the Ethiopian government is separate to the fighting in the Tigray Region. However, the OLA formed an alliance with the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) — its former enemy for several decades — in 2021.

zc/jsi (AFP, Reuters)