From Fano groups? What is its relationship to the rebellion in the Ethiopian Amhara region?

Fano groups actively participated in confronting the Tigray People's Liberation Front (French)

The outbreak of rebellion in the Amhara region represents one aspect of the ambiguous relationship between this nationalism that has had a profound influence on the formation of modern Ethiopia and its second largest population group, and between the successive ruling authorities in the country since 1991.

The conflict in its final stage between the Amhara and the federal government is of great importance, as is evident in the focus it received in the annual threat assessment report issued by the US intelligence community in February 2024, as the federal authorities were forced to declare a state of emergency in the region for six months in August 2023. Before extending it in February 2024.

The danger of the Fano rebellion increases given its emergence in a context of increasing crises surrounding the Ethiopian government, which is suffering internally from an economic crisis and a violent rebellion in the Oromo region, and while many question marks cast a shadow over the future of implementing the peace agreement with Tigray, tension with the regional neighborhood remains a possibility. To escalate against the backdrop of Ethiopia's demand for a sea port.

From social media to weapons

The term Fano is not of recent origin. Rather, it is rooted in the social history of Amhara, as it historically refers to various connotations, including what was reported by Mehdi Labzai, a researcher at the French Institute for Ethiopian Studies in Addis Ababa, that it is linked to “the free peasant who fights in defense of his motherland, Ethiopia.” The last Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, also mobilized these fighters to confront the Italian invasion of Abyssinia between 1936 and 1941.

In its contemporary incarnation, Fano represented the youth counterpart of the Oromo Kairo movement that led the popular movement against the rule of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which ruled Ethiopia under the leadership of the Tigray People's Liberation Front between 1991 and 2018, ultimately leading to the fall of Tigray and the rise of Abiy. Ahmed assumed the position of Prime Minister in April 2018.

The Fano movement was predominantly peaceful in the 2016-2018 phase, which was characterized by demonstrations calling for the defense of the interests of the Amhara nationality in the face of what they considered to be the persecution of them by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front and their targeting by various parties inside Ethiopia. Through the use of social media, the movement had the ability to mobilize and gain Popular ground within Amhara communities.

In the years before the outbreak of war in the Tigray region in November 2020, the violent side of Fano began to emerge with the expansion of its popular base significantly, and the rise of popular leaders who mobilized groups of fighters to defend the Amhara amid reports of attacks on them in areas such as Oromia, where they were attacked. They were accused of attacks on other groups, including the Geminet, and were accused of involvement in human rights violations, which later increased significantly in the midst of the war on Tigray.

The Tigray war is a critical turning point

This war represented an important point in the activity of Fano groups, as they actively participated in confronting the Tigray People's Liberation Front, which gave their activities a kind of legal cover resulting from their fighting alongside the federal forces and the Amhara region's special forces.

The war also provided the Vano with the golden opportunity to build camps, recruit and train fighters, and benefit from the government's logistical, security, and administrative networks, which in turn enabled them to expand their community networks, attract new members, enhance their military capabilities, and gain significant field combat experience.

In addition to the above, Fano’s participation in the war provided the opportunity to extend its control over disputed areas that have a great sentimental and emotional dimension among the Amhara, who consider that the Tigray seized it and annexed it to their region in accordance with the 1995 constitution, which divided the country’s regions along lines of language and ethnicity, which they did not accept. The Amhara view it as their “historical land.”

The Fano militia's effective contribution to curbing the push of the Tigray Defense Forces into the Amhara region in the summer of 2022 gave it wide popular support as a force protecting the Amhara, in exchange for allegations of government inaction that allowed the hostile forces to penetrate deep into the region.

As a result of this war, many reports appeared indicating support received by Fano from neighboring Eritrea, where both sides share hostility to the Tigray People's Liberation Front and their decisive participation in the war against it, and in the end their exclusion from formulating the final solution in Pretoria, which led to an escalating dispute between them and Addis Ababa. .

Motives for rebellion

An article published in the prestigious magazine Foreign Policy outlines the Amhara view into the background of this rebellion, which it describes as an armed manifestation of the long-standing grievances of the Amhara people, whose roots extend to decades-long systematic marginalization, mass killings and displacement of Amhara in different regions of the country.

This situation is partly due to the ethnic politics that escalated in Ethiopia as a result of the adoption of an ethnic federalism system of government under the authority of the Tigray People's Liberation Front and its allies (1991-2018), which led to the Amhara feeling marginalized and oppressed on the basis of identity.

On the other hand, conflict prevails in the relationship between the Amhara and other ethnic components, led by the Oromo, the largest Ethiopian nationality, which is attributed to historical factors on the one hand, and to conflicts over some regions on the other hand, which led to the escalation of bloody ethnic polarization between the two parties.

This conflict has developed into a state of distrust in the central authority and its institutions, as Amhara nationalists accuse the federal government and the authorities of the Oromia region of complicity in the killings and displacement to which the Amhara are exposed. The American Amhara Association recorded more than 3,300 killings in 2021, most of them in Oromia, and estimated the migration More than a million Amhares from the same region are fleeing persecution.

This suspicion has extended to the outcomes of the war with Tigray, as the Amhara complain that their demands were not taken into account in the talks that led to the Pretoria Agreement. They also doubt that the central government may return some of the disputed lands to the Tigray region, which are the areas that were to impose control. It is one of the main goals of the Amhara in their participation in this war.

This climate of mistrust was one of the drivers behind the discontent with which the federal government decided in April 2023 to demobilize the special forces of the Amhara region as part of a nationwide campaign, as the Amhara felt that the demobilization of these forces would leave them without protection after their bitter experience in the Tigray war.

In light of this atmosphere, thousands of members of the Special Forces took refuge in the jungle, and the Ethiopian Minister of Peace, Benalef Andwalem, estimates the proportion of these forces joining Fano at 50%, the results of which became apparent quickly as the rebellion reached one of its violent peaks in the summer of 2023 following the repercussions of this step.

Variations within Fano

A paper written by Asraw Necho, a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Addis Ababa, and Yared Debebe, a professor of political science at the University of Gondar, describes Fano as including a wide range of non-aligned groups, most of which are small and operate independently, with the activity of these groups characterized by decentralization, fragmentation, and organized Bottom-up, and the lack of a formal organizational structure uniting groups in the different parts of the Amhara region, where the Fano are most active: Shoa, Gonder, Gojjam, and Wollo.

Although defending the rights and interests of the Amhara represents the general framework of these groups’ discourse, it is extremely difficult to include them within a single political ideology, as views differ on many issues.

Within this framework, the most extreme elements are adopting a closed nationalist discourse that mobilizes the Amhara people to circumvent the narrow ethnic interests of their nationality and warn of the imminent hegemony of the Oromo, to whom Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed belongs, while other parties call for building a broader Ethiopian identity by going beyond the federal system. Ethnicity as applied by the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and considering it the basic root of the deep ethnic division that the country suffers from.

The most important Fano groups

One of the most important groups affiliated with the Fano coalition is the Amhara Popular Front, which was established by the prominent Amharic oppositionist and head of the Balderas for Real Democracy party, Eskinder Nega. The Front is mainly active in the Gondar region, enjoys support from the well-resourced Amharic diaspora, and appears to be expanding... Its influence is throughout the region, strengthening its links with Fano leaders and the communities in which they operate.

The “Amhara Popular Force” is also one of the most prominent Amhara forces led by Zemini Kassi, and it has gained its reputation as a force defending the Amhara people from the ethnic attacks it is exposed to in different parts of the country, so that Kassi is called by some of his supporters “the hero of the cause of defending the Amhara.” "With the escalation of clashes with government forces, this force and its allies were able to briefly control Bahir Dar, the regional capital.

The "Fanu East Amhara" represents the largest Fano armed group in the region and is led by Mehrt Wadjo (or Mert Wadjo), and it has effectively contributed alongside the Ethiopian army in the war with the Tigray Defense Forces, especially on the "Raya Front."

In monitoring the differences between the Fano factions, an analysis by the Ethiopian Peace Observatory suggests that the political differences that caused the lack of a clear unified front contributed to the initial success of the Fano militias in controlling many parts of the Amhara region, and this decentralization also gave the Fano flexibility in the face of government arrests. For many of its symbols.

However, the lack of unity of these groups has hindered their efforts to expand their areas of influence and to compete politically with the government, whether within Ethiopia or among Amhara citizens in the diaspora, as some attempts have emerged to unify the efforts of Fano groups under unifying umbrellas at the regional level, while it appears that political differences will remain a major obstacle. In the face of its complete unification.

Source: Al Jazeera