The people is also not coming together and defending itself, thanks to the inept and illiterate Qeerroo, which is silently watching from the sideline while the people is being robbed of every wealth it has created over years, or clapping its hands for the robbery in the name of Qabso Bilisumma Oromoo (QBO), which means Oromo Liberation Struggle.
I met someone recently who visited the place where I live and told me that almost every family is being robbed by the bandit Shane all over the country side, every passing day, the person said. Even a single family head woman is not spared of the robbery, she could be coerced to sell her only one ox and give the money to the robbers. The people in the countryside is being depleted of any resources to sustain its life, many are already condemned to an abject poverty, he added.
Even those who can't afford to pay the money are told to take it from somebody else, like relatives, and give it to the bandits. Life has become unbearable, some people don't even tell others of the ordeal, else could be targeted in the future, according to the information I got.
The bandits don't rob the whole village at once, they do it one by one, few or just one at a time, over the time they reach all of the inhabitants of a given rural village. Many have abandoned their residence areas and decided to move to the towns (becoming refugees in their own homeland, IDPs), where it is relatively safer for now. If you have more, then you are a prime target in the countryside, according to the information.
This is not in any remote parts of the country but in the central part of the country, specially West, North and East-Showa zones of the Oromia region.
The person I met is from West-Showa zone.
Now the question is where is this money flowing to? An enormous sum of money, which could be in billions in total, is being collected and channeled to somewhere. That amount of money can't be spent in just the bushes for sustaining the lives of the bandits. I can't imagine of any of luxury life-style to cost that amount of money.
One thing the person indicated is that some times the true culprits are not clear, there could be "other" factions of the bandit, the prime suspect being Shane (OLF-Shane).
If this is indeed true, or at least the main actors are from this group, then the question is where is it going? Who is depleting the whole region and for whom?
The command center (or top power echelon) of Shane is in Wollega, while there are members from the rest part of the country. If that is the case, then, is this some sort of well-designed plan to rob one part of the country and transfer the wealth to somewhere else? What is the guarantee that this is not the case?
If someone is collecting a ransom of 10 Million per head of the hostages it kidnaps from time to time, you can imagine the sum of such money over time. At one place the group collects in such situations around 60 Million ETB.
Hostage taking is a common happenstance in the region, like we know by now.
https://borkena.com/2023/10/04/ethiopia ... employees/Reportedly, a ransom of 10 million Ethiopian birr per person was demanded, a demand that the organization has reportedly declined to meet.
We need to collect the information and expose the bandits, or at least document what is going on.
