11/04/2026
Why Oromo must not fight each other?
By Yadesa Bekele Banti
Understanding Contemporary Political Dynamism and the Pursuit of Optimum Political Consciousness: Why Refusing the Gun Is the Highest Form of Oromo Political Maturity A Critical Appreciation of the "Silencing the Gun Among Brothers" Movement =====================
This analysis is not for a casual scroller. My readers are awakened Oromo youth willing to sit with reasoned ideas. They can handle length. So read slowly. Read twice. Then argue with ideas and break the silence. --------------------
I am a teacher. I have spent years observing Oromo politics from a distance not because I do not care, but because I urge to understand before I spoke. I have watched the warriors. I have watched the leaders. I have watched the youth. And I have watched my people suffer.
For a long time, I kept silent. Many of our elites keep silent. They are afraid to offend one faction or another. They do not want to be called traitors. They do not want to lose access or status. But I am not an elite. I am an instructor. My currency is truth, not power. And today, I cannot keep silent anymore.
What I see in Oromo politics breaks my heart. Two mentalities have trapped us. One says: "The state is ours. We must capture it and build ourselves from within." The other says: "Freedom requires the gun. Only armed struggle can break the chains." Both sides fight each other. Both sides claim to love Oromo. And both sides, in my observation, have forgotten the civilians—the ordinary families, the displaced mothers, the young people who just want to live with dignity.
I am writing this to support the "Silencing the Gun Among Brothers" movement. I do not belong to any political faction. I am not a spokesperson for any armed group or any political party. I am simply a teacher who has seen enough death and enough silence. I believe the ‘Qeerroo’ youth are onto something profound. They are not weak. They are not sellouts. They are the first generation brave enough to ask: What if the gun is actually hurting us more than it helps?
Let me explain what I mean by Optimum Political Consciousness. In social psychology, we know that trauma narrows our thinking. When a group has been oppressed for generations, the brain becomes hypervigilant. It sees enemies everywhere. It confuses intensity with effectiveness. It clings to familiar methods even when those methods fail. This is called cognitive rigidity. It is a survival response, but it is a terrible strategy for liberation.
Optimum Political Consciousness is the opposite of rigidity. It is the ability to step back from your own anger and ask: What actually works? Not what feels brave. Not what honors our martyrs. But what, given the real world we live in, will move us closer to justice? That question is hard. It is harder than carrying a gun. Carrying a gun gives you immediate identity. You are a fighter. You are respected. You do not have to doubt yourself. But strategic restraint requires you to doubt yourself every day. It requires you to admit that maybe, just maybe, the method we have romanticized for decades is not working. It is a reflective thinking!
And here is the truth that no one wants to say aloud. We are no longer in the 20th century. We are in the era of virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and pervasive digital surveillance. This changes everything. The gun is not the decisive weapon it once was. The Ethiopian government now has drones that track movement from the sky, satellites that capture images of training camps, signals intelligence that intercepts communications, and AI-powered surveillance that predicts where armed groups will strike next. A guerrilla force cannot hide anymore. Every armed cell is tracked, infiltrated, or bombed from above. The era of the lone fighter with a rifle and a cause is over. That is not an opinion. That is a technological fact. Think about it. In the past, an armed movement could operate from remote forests and mountains. Today, thermal imaging finds you. Mobile phone signals betray you. Facial recognition identifies you. The state's technology improves every year. What chance does a guerrilla force have against algorithms that never sleep? This is not defeatism. This is realism. And realism is the foundation of political consciousness.
When armed struggle invites state retaliation, who pays the price? Not the commanders who flee to other countries. Not the political party who write manifestos from safe cities. Not social media influencers who post contents and slogans from behind a screen. The civilians pay. Villages are burned. Families are displaced. Children go hungry and dropout school. The gun does not protect my people. It invites collective punishment onto my people. I have watched this cycle repeat for years. Armed group emerges. State responds in accordance. Civilians suffer. The armed group loses legitimacy. A new armed group splinters off. The cycle continues. And at every stage, the ordinary Oromo family is crushed between two equipped forces. That is not liberation. That is suffering.
The "Silencing the Gun Among Brothers" movement understands this. They are not saying that the state is just. They are not saying that resistance is wrong. They are saying: We need a different kind of resistance. One that does not sacrifice our own people as collateral damage. One that builds rather than burns. One that uses ideas, organization, legal advocacy, and social capital instead of bullets. In an era of AI and virtual reality, the most powerful weapon is not a gun. It is information. It is narrative. It is network organization. It is the ability to coordinate thousands of people without a central command that can be decapitated by a drone strike.
This is where my training as a social psychology instructor becomes relevant. Let me name the psychological forces that keep us trapped in the warrior mentality. First, there is identity fusion. When a person fuses their personal identity with a group and its struggle, any criticism of the group's methods feels like a personal attack. That is why questioning armed struggle is met with rage. It is not a debate about tactics. It feels like betrayal. Second, there is reactive devaluation. When we are in a conflict, we automatically devalue anything proposed by the other side. But here, the "other side" includes our own people who disagree on methods. We call them weak. We call them agents. We refuse to listen. Third, there is the sunk cost fallacy. We have invested so much blood, time, and emotion into armed struggle that admitting it might be a mistake feels like admitting our loved ones died for nothing. That is too painful. So we double down instead of recalculating.
The Qeerroo are breaking these psychological chains. They are saying: We can honor our martyrs while changing our strategy. We can love our people while criticizing our methods. We can be angry at the state while refusing to let that anger make us stupid. That is not weakness. That is emotional regulation. And emotional regulation is the highest form of intelligence.
Let me be very clear about what strategic restraint is not. It is not passivism. It is not surrender. It is not collaboration with the state. Strategic restraint is a calculation. It says: Given the current balance of power—including the technological superiority of the state—the gun will not the tailored means to meet our demand. It will only get more of our children killed. So we will redirect our energy into things that actually work. We will build leadership academies instead of training camps. We will train lawyers and journalists instead of fighters. We will create independent media that speaks truth to all power— Oromo power included. We will form economic cooperatives and dispute resolution councils that build trust within our communities. We will document human rights abuses and take them to international courts. We will use virtual platforms to organize, educate, and amplify our voices without giving the state a target to bomb. None of this is soft. None of this is easy. It is actually harder than pulling a trigger. But it has a track record of success. Qeerroo protested Woyane. The Qeerroo struggle got potential power to bring a change. Now, what Qeerroo did for almost near to three decades is, has blue print position in world’s political history. The Qeerroo’s victory is/ will equality cited as that of Poland's Solidarity movement which had no guns. Like that of South Africa's decisive phase, mass organizing and international pressure, not guerrilla warfare. Tunisia's revolution was driven by a street vendor and months of nonviolent protest. These movements won. Armed movements in our region have produced warlords, not democracies.
Qeerroo did the same history. It seems curse to reverse the Qeerroo’s bitter struggle fruits with destructive guns. I am not writing this to disrespect those who have carried weapons. Many of them are sincere. Many have sacrificed greatly. But sincerity is not the same as effectiveness. And as a teacher, I care about outcomes, not intentions. The outcome I want is simple: an Oromo people who live in dignity, safety, and self-rule. I want my students to grow up without knowing the sound of gunfire. I want mothers to stop burying their children. I want our villages to be places of learning and commerce, not ruins. In this era of virtual reality and AI, we have tools our parents never dreamed of. We can organize across borders. We can expose atrocities to the world in real time. We can build parallel institutions that the state cannot touch. Why would we abandon these tools for a gun that belongs to a past century?
The gun has not given us what we need. After decades of armed struggle, we are still waiting. How many more decades will we wait before we admit that another path is possible?
The "Silencing the Gun Among Brothers" movement is that other path. It is not perfect. It may fail. But it is based on evidence, not romance. It is based on love for our people, not love for the image of the fighter. It is based on the hard-won wisdom that the strongest weapon is not a weapon at all—it is an organized, educated, and strategically disciplined people.
I call on every awakened Oromo youth to join this movement. Not because it is easy. Because it is right. Not because it guarantees victory. Because it stops the bleeding. And because silence, at this point, is complicity. I have been silent too long. Our elites have been silent too long. But the civilians—the vulnerable, the displaced, the hungry—cannot afford our silence anymore.
So I am speaking now. Not as a politician. Not as an analyst. As a teacher. As a witness. As an Oromo who refuses to watch his people be destroyed by a method that has not worked and will not work.
Strategic restraint is not weakness. It is the highest form of political maturity. And it is time we had the courage to say so. This is what I have been describing. This is the work.
Understanding contemporary political dynamism—how power actually moves in an era of drones, AI, and virtual reality. And the pursuit of optimum political consciousness—not maximum anger, not maximum loyalty, but the precise level of awareness that produces real freedom. The Qeerroo have chosen this path. The question is whether we will join them.
History curses those who escalate enmity among brothers. It honors those who stop it. Choose which memory you leave.
