Default, splinter deal, climbdown

The split that wasn’t a peace, the peace that wasn’t a settlement

A senior OLA commander breaks with the organisation in September 2024 and signs a December peace deal with the federal-aligned Oromia regional government. The federal-government characterises the deal as the operational end of the OLA insurgency. The OLA characterises the breakaway commander as a long-dismissed dissident with no significant forces. Both characterisations are partially true. The insurgency continues at substantially the same scale.

Filed late December 2024

The Oromo Liberation Army, the principal armed organisation operating against the federal government in Oromia Region since 2019, faced its most consequential internal crisis of the post-2018 period in September 2024 when one of its three regional commanders publicly broke with the organisation’s principal leadership. The split was not, on its operational facts, the federal-government victory the federal-government communications characterised it as. It was also not, on its operational facts, the negligible event the OLA principal command communications characterised it as. The split’s substantive significance lay in what it demonstrated about both the OLA’s structural fragility and the federal government’s continuing inability to produce a comprehensive political settlement in Oromia.

The OLA’s organisational structure, as documented by various international analysts and by the OLA’s own public communications through 2021–2024, consisted of three principal regional commands operating under a loose central coordination. The Western Command, headquartered in the Wollega zones of western Oromia, was led by Commander-in-Chief Kumsa Diriba (nom de guerre Jaal Marroo) and was the largest of the three. The Southern Command, operating in the Borena and Guji zones, was led by Deputy Commander Gemechu Aboye (nom de guerre Jaal Gemechu). The Central Command, operating in the Shewa zones, was led by Sagni Nagasa (sometimes spelled Sanyi Negassa, nom de guerre Jaal Sagni). The three commands operated with substantial regional autonomy but coordinated through a seven-member Executive Committee and through a broader 57-person general assembly. By the OLA’s own public communications, the organisation’s principal decision-making body was its high command rather than any single commander; the actual operational reality, by various international analyses, was that Jaal Marroo’s effective authority within the organisation was substantially greater than the formal structure indicated. [GOV.UK Country Policy and Information Note, “Oromos, the Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Army, Ethiopia,” March 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ethiopia-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-oromos-the-oromo-liberation-front-and-the-oromo-liberation-army-ethiopia-march-2022-accessible]

The OLA’s organisational coherence had been progressively tested through 2022, 2023, and 2024 by three structural pressures. The first was the cumulative attrition from the federal-government’s counter-insurgency operations: the OLA had lost senior commanders and substantial fighter numbers through the period, and replacement recruitment had been increasingly difficult under operational conditions of restricted civilian movement and federal-aligned militia activity in Oromo communities. The second was the failure of the two rounds of federal-OLA peace talks in Tanzania (April 2023 and November 2023), both of which had been mediated by the Tanzanian foreign ministry with US and EU encouragement, and both of which had collapsed without producing operational disarmament or political settlement. The third was the proliferation of independent armed factions in Oromia operating outside the OLA’s command structure — the Fekade Abdisa-led “Shene mootummaa” formation, the regional militia networks the federal-government had been organising, the cross-border Amhara Fano militias whose operations against Oromo civilians in disputed zones produced retaliatory dynamics that the OLA’s central command could not effectively control.

The factional split that surfaced in September 2024 had been developing through the preceding months. The proximate trigger, by Sagni Nagasa’s subsequent public communications, was his appointment as the OLA’s head of intelligence following the second round of Tanzania talks in November 2023. Sagni had refused the appointment and had declined to transfer command of the Central Command fighters under his operational control to a successor commander. Through 2024, tensions between Sagni and Jaal Marroo had escalated. By August–September 2024, the disagreement had turned violent: ACLED documentation through the period notes “internal disagreement between Jaal Sagni and Jaal Marro” that “turned violent, leading to an unknown number of casualties.” By late September 2024, Sagni publicly announced that his faction would no longer operate under OLA central command. [Addis Standard, “OLA denies split following reports of Central Zone Command defection,” 30 September 2024, https://addisstandard.com/ola-denies-split-following-reports-of-central-zone-command-defection/]

Sagni’s public communications in his September 2024 split announcement focused on three claims. First, that the OLA “lacks bylaws and a constitution” and that its leadership had operated through personal authority rather than through institutional process. Second, that Jaal Marroo’s command had become “authoritarian” and had operated to suppress dissent within the organisation. Third, that the structural defects of the OLA’s command had produced “disarray” among the armed forces fighting in different regions. The factual accuracy of these claims is, on the available evidence, mixed: the OLA’s institutional formalisation has been limited and Jaal Marroo’s personal authority has been substantial, but the OLA’s operational coherence through 2021–2024 had been substantively greater than Sagni’s characterisation suggested. The political function of the claims was to provide political justification for what would, by December 2024, become a peace agreement with the federal-aligned Oromia regional government.

The OLA’s response to Sagni’s announcement was to deny the operational significance of the split. The OLA’s central command, through spokesperson Odaa Tarbii, characterised Sagni as a “disgruntled former member of the organization whose actions are unanimously condemned by all commands of the OLA across Oromia” and as having been “dismissed months earlier for sabotage.” The OLA further characterised the post-split developments as “a fabricated drama” in which “the government is staging a spectacle with a counterfeit ‘Shene’ group to tarnish the Oromo struggle.” The OLA denied that significant fighter numbers had defected with Sagni and characterised the subsequent peace negotiations as theatre orchestrated by the federal government rather than as a substantive split. [WardheerNews, “Oromia regional gov’t reports OLA fighters entering camps after peace deal; armed group rejects reports,” 4 December 2024, https://wardheernews.com/oromia-regional-govt-reports-ola-fighters-entering-camps-after-peace-deal-armed-group-rejects-reports/]

The peace agreement that followed was signed on 1 December 2024 (some sources give the date as 3 December) between Sagni Nagasa, in his characterisation as the leader of the now-split Central Command faction, and Shimelis Abdisa, the federal-aligned President of the Oromia Regional State. The agreement’s full text was not publicly disclosed. By the public communications that did emerge, the agreement provided for: the cessation of hostilities between Sagni’s faction and Oromia regional forces; the entry of Sagni’s fighters into federal-government-administered “rehabilitation camps” for disarmament, demobilisation, and reintegration processing; the eventual reintegration of some Sagni-faction fighters into Oromia regional police or other federal-aligned security formations; and political assurances regarding the personal status of senior Sagni-faction commanders.

The federal-government and Oromia regional communications characterised the agreement as a significant strategic accomplishment that demonstrated the OLA insurgency’s progressive disintegration and the federal-government’s capacity to manage the conflict through political-administrative means rather than through purely military operations. The federal-government communications emphasised, in particular, the precedent the Sagni agreement set: that OLA commanders could break with the central organisation, negotiate with the federal-aligned Oromia administration, and receive personal political guarantees in exchange for ceasing operations. The implication, in the federal-government framing, was that other OLA commanders could follow Sagni’s example and that the central OLA leadership under Jaal Marroo could be progressively isolated through successive defections.

The substantive operational consequences of the agreement, through December 2024 and into 2025, were substantially less significant than the federal-government framing suggested.

Sagni’s actual fighter strength, by various independent analyses, was substantially smaller than the federal-government’s public communications implied. The OLA’s characterisation — that Sagni had been a marginal figure within the organisation whose dismissed status from earlier in 2024 meant that he had no significant command of operational forces — was, on the available evidence, partially accurate. The number of fighters who entered federal-government rehabilitation camps under the Sagni agreement was, by Oromia regional government figures, in the low hundreds; by independent estimates the actual number was substantially smaller; the broader Central Command operations under what remained of the OLA’s central authority continued substantially unaffected through 2025.

The OLA’s principal operational areas — the Wollega zones of western Oromia under Jaal Marroo, the Borena and Guji zones of southern Oromia under Jaal Gemechu — continued operations without disruption following the Sagni split. Through October, November, and December 2024, the OLA conducted ambushes against federal convoys, attacks on government officials and aligned militia leaders, and the broader pattern of guerrilla operations that had characterised the insurgency through the preceding period. On 1 November 2024, OLA fighters in the Wuchale woreda of North Shewa Zone ambushed Oromia state police and kebele militias, killing at least 45. By December 2024, attacks on civilians and on federal-aligned security personnel continued at the operational tempo of the pre-split period. The Sagni agreement did not, in operational terms, reduce the broader OLA insurgency.

The deeper analytical question is what the Sagni split and the December 2024 agreement demonstrate about the structural condition of the Oromia conflict.

The split demonstrated that the OLA’s organisational coherence had been progressively weakened by the cumulative pressures of the post-2022 period. The federal-government counter-insurgency operations had imposed substantial costs on the organisation. The failed Tanzania peace talks had eroded internal cohesion by demonstrating the absence of operational alternatives. The proliferation of independent armed factions in Oromia had complicated the OLA’s claim to be the sole legitimate Oromo armed organisation. The personal authority of Jaal Marroo had become, in some Oromo political analyses, a structural weakness as much as an operational asset: the OLA’s coherence depended substantially on his individual command, and his command had not been institutionally distributed in ways that would have made the organisation more resilient to factional defections.

The split also demonstrated that the federal-government counter-insurgency strategy in Oromia had been operationally more effective than the federal-government strategy in Amhara. The Amhara conflict, as Dispatch 21 has documented, was operating in late 2024 under conditions of expanding insurgent capacity and progressive federal-government strategic difficulty. The Oromia conflict was operating under conditions of progressive insurgent organisational stress and limited but real federal-government strategic gains. The asymmetry between the two conflicts reflected, in part, the structural differences between the constituencies: the Amhara political identity had been substantially unified through the federal-government’s perceived threats to Amhara interests in the post-Pretoria period, while the Oromo political identity had been substantially fragmented by the federal-government’s combination of Oromo-led federal leadership (with Abiy as Prime Minister and other senior Oromo officials in key federal positions), Oromo regional administrative control under Shimelis Abdisa, and Oromo opposition fragmentation across multiple parties and armed organisations.

The federal-government’s strategic position in Oromia, despite the OLA insurgency, was therefore substantially stronger than its strategic position in Amhara. The Oromo political constituency was not unified behind the OLA in the way the Amhara political constituency was substantially aligned with Fano. The Oromia regional government’s federal-alignment under Shimelis Abdisa provided the federal government with an administrative infrastructure for managing the conflict that the federal government did not have in Amhara. The OLA’s progressive organisational stress, of which the Sagni split was one consequence, was the operational expression of the strategic asymmetry that the broader Oromo political fragmentation had produced.

The Sagni agreement was, on this assessment, the federal-government’s most visible strategic success of the post-Pretoria period. It was also a substantially limited success. The OLA insurgency was not ended by the agreement. The Oromia conflict was not settled by the agreement. The Oromo political constituency was not, by the agreement, reintegrated into the federal political project. The underlying political-economic conditions that had produced the insurgency — Oromo grievances about federal-government conduct, the unresolved question of Oromo political self-determination within the federation, the cumulative violence against Oromo civilians by federal and Amhara forces — remained substantially unaddressed.

The structural fact that the Sagni agreement demonstrated, with the federal-government’s own framing as evidence, was that the federal-government’s political strategy in Oromia depended on the fragmentation of Oromo political organisations rather than on the substantive resolution of Oromo political grievances. The federal-government had succeeded, through the Sagni development, in producing a public demonstration of OLA disintegration. The federal-government had not succeeded, through any other mechanism, in producing a substantive political settlement of the Oromia conflict. The latter remained, in mid-2026, as unaddressed as it had been at any point since the October 2019 Jawar Mohammed crisis that had marked the operational opening of the federal-government’s break with the Oromo political constituency that had elevated Abiy to office.

Through 2025, the broader pattern continued. The OLA conducted ambush operations across western and southern Oromia. Federal-aligned forces conducted counter-insurgency operations producing substantial Oromo civilian casualties. The Oromia regional government, under Shimelis Abdisa and the Oromo Prosperity Party, operated as the federal-government’s administrative partner in the conflict zones. The various Oromo opposition political parties — the Oromo Federalist Congress under Bekele Gerba, the OLF political wing under Dawud Ibsa, the smaller Oromo nationalist formations — operated in increasingly restricted political space and with limited public political activity. Jawar Mohammed had been released from detention through complex bargains in 2022 but had not, in 2023, 2024, 2025, or into 2026, been able to operate as an effective opposition political voice within the federal system. The Oromo political space was, by mid-2026, substantially less democratic in operational terms than it had been in 2018 when the Oromo protest movement had elevated Abiy.

The Sagni agreement of December 2024 was, in this broader context, an operational episode in a longer political dynamic. The federal-government had demonstrated tactical capacity to fragment its Oromo opposition. The federal-government had not demonstrated strategic capacity to settle the Oromia conflict. The dependence of federal-government strategy on opposition fragmentation rather than substantive settlement has, by mid-2026, become one of the structural conditions of post-Pretoria Ethiopian politics. The dependence is not, on the historical record of Ethiopian politics, an indefinitely sustainable strategy. The fragmented Oromo opposition will, at some future point, find political expression through some combination of electoral processes, organisational reunifications, or armed mobilisations that the federal-government’s current strategy has not anticipated.

The next form of Oromo political mobilisation is, in mid-2026, not yet visible. Its eventual emergence is operationally probable; its specific character is operationally uncertain; its political consequences for the federal-government’s project are, in mid-2026, accumulating in the unaddressed grievances that the federal-government strategy has not been engaging with.

The split that wasn’t a peace, and the peace that wasn’t a settlement, demonstrated together what the federal-government’s strategic position in Oromia substantively is: a position of tactical strength built on the absence of substantive political resolution. The position has been operationally durable through the post-Pretoria period. Its durability over the medium term depends on the federal-government’s continued capacity to manage the fragmented Oromo opposition without producing the political consequences that the underlying unaddressed grievances will, at some future point, generate.

The Sagni Nagasa agreement was, in retrospective view, the federal-government’s most visible Oromia strategic success of 2024. It was also, in operational substance, a substantially limited success that did not address the underlying conflict. The strategic calculation that produced the agreement — that opposition fragmentation could substitute for political settlement — has been the federal-government’s operational strategy in Oromia through the post-2019 period. The strategy’s eventual political consequences, when they arrive, will be one of the central forward questions of the federal-government’s project.

For now, the strategy continues. The insurgency continues. The civilian casualties accumulate. The political settlement that would actually end the conflict is not on any party’s agenda. The Sagni agreement was, in this assessment, neither the federal-government’s victory nor a marginal development; it was a tactical incident in a strategic standoff whose resolution remains, in mid-2026, structurally postponed.

The OLA, under Jaal Marroo’s continued central command, operates in mid-2026 with reduced organisational strength but with substantial continued operational capacity. The Oromia conflict continues. The federal-government strategy continues. The political settlement that would substantively resolve the conflict remains, as it has been since the 2018 transition that produced the federal-government’s current configuration, undeveloped.

The structural condition that the December 2024 agreement most fully demonstrated was the federal-government’s strategic preference for fragmenting its opposition rather than engaging substantively with the opposition’s underlying grievances. The preference has been operationally successful in tactical terms. The preference’s strategic costs — accumulated unresolved grievances that will, at some future point, find political expression — are, in mid-2026, the principal latent risk of the federal-government’s regional strategy.

The split that wasn’t a peace. The peace that wasn’t a settlement. The strategy that wasn’t a resolution. The conditions that wait, accumulating, for their political expression.

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Sources for Article 22

1. Wikipedia, “Oromo Liberation Army,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_Liberation_Army
2. Wikipedia, “OLA insurgency,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OLA_insurgency
3. Wikipedia, “Oromo conflict,” accessed June 2026 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_conflict
4. Addis Standard, “OLA denies split following reports of Central Zone Command defection,” 30 September 2024 — https://addisstandard.com/ola-denies-split-following-reports-of-central-zone-command-defection/
5. WardheerNews / Addis Standard, “Oromia regional gov’t reports OLA fighters entering camps after peace deal; armed group rejects reports,” 4 December 2024 — https://wardheernews.com/oromia-regional-govt-reports-ola-fighters-entering-camps-after-peace-deal-armed-group-rejects-reports/
6. GOV.UK Country Policy and Information Note, “Oromos, the Oromo Liberation Front and the Oromo Liberation Army, Ethiopia,” March 2026 — https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ethiopia-country-policy-and-information-notes/country-policy-and-information-note-oromos-the-oromo-liberation-front-and-the-oromo-liberation-army-ethiopia-march-2022-accessible
7. Ethiopia Insight, “Peace in Ethiopia’s Oromia will only come through genuine self-rule,” 8 January 2024 — https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/2024/01/08/peace-in-ethiopias-oromia-will-only-come-through-genuine-self-rule/
8. Grokipedia, “OLA insurgency,” accessed June 2026 — https://grokipedia.com/page/OLA_insurgency
9. Wall Street Journal coverage of OLA and Fekade Abdisa, May 2023
10. Cedoca (CGRS Belgium) report on Ethiopia Security Situation in Oromia, May 2024
11. ACLED data on Oromia conflict, 2023–2025
12. Various Ethiopian-aligned outlets including Addis Standard, Borkena, and Ethiopia Insight covering OLA factional developments, 2024

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End of expanded article for Dispatch 22. One article, approximately 2,700 words.