Mereja.Forum

[Dama]

Beyond cruel!!

[Dama]

They were used as war burden donkeys and to manufacture swords, spears, gashas, horse saddles and harneses. They were used to eat enemy swords and spears in every Abyssinian battles as far back in the battles of shifta Yekuno Amlak and in the various battles of Abyssinia against Imam Ahmed El-Ghazi. A few of them live in Hadiya who remembers their ancestors there to fight the Imam who never returned after the end of the war.
All this in addition to the dispossesion of their lands by Amara settlers, ethnic slurs, acusations of hating Amara,

[Horus]

They were used as war burden donkeys and to manufacture swords, spears, gashas, horse saddles and harneses. They were used to eat enemy swords and spears in every Abyssinian battles as far back in the battles of shifta Yekuno Amlak and in the various battles of Abyssinia against Imam Ahmed El-Ghazi. A few of them live in Hadiya who remembers their ancestors there to fight the Imam who never returned after the end of the war.
All this in addition to the dispossesion of their lands by Amara settlers, ethnic slurs, acusations of hating Amara,

ዳማ፣
አሁንም የጉዴላ ፕሮፓጋንዳ ነው የምታሰራጨው ። የኦቶማን ቱርክ ተላላኪው ግራኝ መሃመድ ክርስቲያኖችን እያረደ ፣ አስገድዶ እየደፈረ ፣ ቤተክሪስቲያኖችን ዘርፎ እያቃጣለ ለ17 አመት ኢትዮጵያን ሲያውድምና ሲያሰልም ጋፋቶች ጥብቅ ኦርቶዶክሶች እስከ ሞጆ ድረስ እየዘመቱ ግራኝን ተዋግተዋል። አገራቸው ደሞ ዛሬ አዲስ አለም ፣ ግንደ በረት አምቦ እምባቦ ሲሆን በዚያ ዘመን እንደ ገብጣን ይባል ነበር ። እኔ ሆረስ የጋፋትን ቋንቋ ከክስታኔኛ ጋር አንድ እንደ ሆነ እዚህ ፎረም ላይ አሳይቻለሁ ። ጋፋትን ዘሩን አጥፍቶ ካገሩ ነቅሎ የሞቱት ሞተው የተረፉት አባይን ተሻግረው የጎጃም ተራሮች ላይ እንዲመሽጉ ያድረጋቸው የጋላ ወረራ ነው። ጎጃም ከሄዱ በኋላ ያው ልክ እንደ አገው ፣ ወይጦ ፣ ቅማንት፣ ሽናሻ ወዘተ ቋንቋቸው በአማራኛ ተውጧል። ሸዋና ደቡብ የጠፉት ጎሳዎች በጋልኛ እንደ ተዋጠ ማለት ነው። የውሸት ታሪክ አታሰራጭ ።
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/SCSB-9356210

[Wedi]

ዳማ፣
አሁንም የጉዴላ ፕሮፓጋንዳ ነው የምታሰራጨው ። የኦቶማን ቱርክ የላላኪው ግራኝ መሃመድ ክርስቲያኖችን እያረደ ፣ አስገድዶ እየደፈረ ፣ ቤተክሪስቲያኖችን ዘርፎ እያቃጣለ ለ17 አመት ኢትዮጵያን ሲያውድምና ሲያሰልም ጋፋቶች ጥብቅ ኦርቶዶክሶች እስከ ሞጆ ድረስ እየዘመቱ ግራኝን ተዋግተዋል። አግራቸው ደሞ ዛሬ አዲስ አለም ፣ ግንደ በረት አምቦ እምባቦ ሲሆን በዚያ ዘመን እንደ ገብጣን ይባል ነበር ። እኔ ሆረስ የጋፋትን ቋንቋ ከክስታኔኛ ጋር አንድ እንደ ሆነ እዚህ ፎረም ላይ አሳይቻለሁ ። ጋፋትን ዘሩን አጥፍቶ ካገሩ ነቅሎ የሞቱት ሞተው የተረፉት አባይን ተሻግረው የጎጃም ተራሮች ላይ እንዲመሽጉ ያድረጋቸው የጋላ ወረራ ነው። ጎጃም ከሄዱ በኋላ ያው ልክ እንደ አገው ፣ ወይጦ ፣ ቅማንት፣ ሽናሻ ወዘተ ቋንቋቸው በአማራኛ ተውጧል። ሸዋና ደቡብ የጠፉት ጎሳዎች በጋልኛ እንደ ተዋጠ ማለት ነው። የውሸት ታሪክ አታሰራጭ ።
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/SCSB-9356210

Gafat: The Forgotten Victims of Genocide by Gallas

Introduction - Part I
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Writing in 1593, Abba Bahrey, the great church scholar, chronicler, poet, and ethnographer, reports that the seizure of the old Ethiopian provinces of Bizamo, Damot and Shawa by the new migratory Oromo people in the 1580-1590s was nothing short of cataclysmic and apocalyptic event for the indigenous population. At the arrival of the Oromo, many Semitic language speaking Gafat and Amhara Christian societies lived in these provinces.

Bahrey writes that Damot and Shawa, which had anchored the culture of Gafat and Amhara societies since time immemorial, were completely despoiled and desolated. The indigenous people became refugees and fled to the neighboring provinces of Gojjam, while others scattered around the inaccessible mountains and valleys of northern part of Shawa and other places, blending with other cultures that lived in the areas to which they moved. By 1620s, the Amhara and Gafat refugee populations were restricted to small enclaves within dramatically reduced homelands in Gojjam and Shawa. The Gafat lived in Gojjam until their language and culture died out completely in the nineteenth century. While the majority of the indigenes became refuges and disappeared, many Oromo settlers arrived and thrived in former Damot and Shawa. The surviving Amhara and Gafat people were forcefully denationalized and assimilated into the Oromo population and, like in Gojjam, they eventually disappeared as distinct people in their former homeland. Many other provinces around Damot and Shawa, such as Fatagar, Waj and Bizamo, similarly lost their indigenous population during the Oromo conquest and settlement whereas other ancient peoples, including the Anfilo and the Shinasha, survive as an exhibit of a lost world. The magnitude and rapidity of the population replacement and the accompanying extinction of languages and cultures which occurred in the sixteenth century is rare in African history. The takeover of Damot and Shawa and other key provinces of the former medieval Ethiopian state by the Oromo and the accompanying rapid decimation of the indigenous people was a genocidal event of world historical significance.

In this chapter, I examine how and why the Gafat came to loss their homeland and disappeared totally in the seventeenth century and thereafter. In doing so, it revisits the evidence that previous scholars have already explored, and radically revises their argument and conclusion concerning the destruction of Gafat society from Damot and Shawa. Like many victims of colonial conquest and genocidal assimilation elsewhere in the world, the Gafat remain largely erased from public memory today. It is commonly noted that the Gafat died out and their language and culture vanished, but the agent for their disappearance is rarely asked. For many, it seemed the Gafat had simply vanished. This study, in contrast, argues that far from vanishing quietly, the destruction of the Gafat was the consequences of human migration and conquest actively committed by foreigners who wanted to exploit and settle the newly conquered Gafat homeland through the destruction of the local population. As I will show later in this chapter, the disappearance of the Gafat was straightforwardly the result of Oromo settler colonialism and conquest. In seeking to understand the circumstances in which the Gafat disappeared, the chapter uses the concept of cultural genocide by which to analyze the impact of Oromo settler colonialism.

Labeling the destruction of the Gafat as cultural genocidal is wholly apt. The tragedy that befell the Gafat befits the enormity of the destruction conveyed by the term genocide. The Gafat faced enormous historical forces practically identical to other settler colonial settings which resulted in elimination of indigenous people, such as wars of conquest, settlement, miscegenation, land appropriation, expulsion, and assimilation. Although the Oromo genocidal conquest and settlement is never discussed and viewed in these terms, in terms of its motives, events and consequences, there could be little doubt that Oromo settler colonialism can be labeled as genocidal.

The recognition of the Gafat as victims of cultural genocide would have radically different implications for the current literature on the impacts of Oromo colonial expansion on indigenous peoples. Previous appraisals treat the disappearance of the Gafat people as the outcome of the forces of evolution and progress. The only historical study on the disappearance of the Gafat was written by Taddesse Tamrat. Taddesse attributed the demise of many language groups and cultures in Ethiopia, including Gafat, to their weakness and vulnerability as a primitive people with very low level of cultural, political, and socio-economic developments. He thus states his thesis in his article on the Gafat as follows, “And because of the essentially progressive nature of human history, those language groups who had attained higher levels of economic, cultural and political development always tended to dominate the others. It is a common phenomenon of world history that, in this way many ancient speech communities, gradually lost their identities by being absorbed into stronger and bigger populations.” Taddesse views contact between different societies which have reached different levels of social and cultural developments to be main driver of language extinction in world history. He considers less developed people to be weak and vulnerable to the influences of more developed societies. If primitive and weak people were to interact with civilized and stronger societies, the ultimate result would always be the extinction of the primitive people, which, in his view, is true also for the Gafat. The implication is that the Gafat were on a lower level of culture, who gave way to more civilized and stronger people with advanced level of culture and became extinct.

The concept of evolution structured Taddesse’s interpretation of the extinction of the Gafat. According to the theory of evolution, human societies and cultures progressed through time in defined stages. The general idea was that societies developed from primitive way of life to a more sophisticated and culturally complex civilized societies. Those peoples who were thought to live as primitive cultures were considered less evolved and doomed to extinction. Although the ideas of progress inherent in evolution have since the end of WWII declined, it still shapes “our understanding of the relationship between progress and the old.” As one historian has noted, “from animals to peoples and from plants to cultures, our evolutionary world view is built upon change. Yet, while evolution may have no direction as a principle, culturally we view it as progress.” The historical and anthropological literature on indigenous people is filled with rhetorical tropes of vanishing. Since “it has no agents as such,” the trope of vanishing primitive peoples “is usually a passive discourse.” Often extinction of people is ascribed to the forces of “progress and evolution.” Taddesse and others like him are surely incorrect to attribute the disappearance of entire societies to the forces of evolution and progress. The explanation given for the extinction of the Gafat is not sufficient. The disappearance of the Gafat requires a different conceptual framework for evaluating the different factors such as the Oromo colonial conquest and settlement played in the process. A brief review of historiographical trends concerning the concepts of genocide and the ways in which it may be applied to the material about the disappearance of the Gafat is required to be discussed.

What is Genocide?
________________

Thus, before discussing the factors that led to the Gafat’s extinction, I should address the appropriateness of the terminology of genocide at the outset. What exactly constitutes genocide and victims of genocide is however debatable. Genocide as an analytical concept first emerged in the post WWII era. The concept of genocide was developed by the Polish lawyer as a framework through which to understand the acts of extermination of the Jewish people by the Nazis during WWII. Earlier scholars generally accepted United Nations definition of genocide which stipulates that victims of genocide must belong to a “national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Put differently, the victims required to be a member of a certain group, usually a group defined as “others,” to be targeted for annihilation, and the perpetrators must inflict the genocide intentionally. Thus, twentieth century definition of genocide is narrowly focused on intentional actions and excludes events with genocidal consequences from historical consideration. This criteria for the definition of genocide is abandoned in the more recent literature.

More recent definitions use eventual consequences of actions and policies rather than their initial goals and intentions as criteria for recognizing genocide and victims of genocide. Genocide happened under different circumstances and “can also be the unintended consequence of a policy or a set of actions whose initial goal was different.” The use of the term genocide thus must not be restricted to intentional and outright mass killing resulting in the elimination of a particular group of people. From the perspective of this recent current of definition, whether genocide was the intentional, or unintentional consequence of policies and actions is immaterial as it does not change the essence of things. This is the near unanimous view of recent scholarship. Furthermore, what is becoming increasingly better appreciated by scholars is the prevalence and antiquity of genocide in world history. Scholars now used the paradigm of cultural genocide in a wide range of contexts. Scholars who approached the topic of cultural genocide from this perspective has done much to illuminate the process by which indigenous people disappeared in the Americas and Australia. Some recent historical scholarship even classifies forced denationalization and assimilation policies as cultural genocide, for instance, or describes indigenous boarding schools as facilitators of cultural genocide.

To add further example, in a provocative work on the history of native Americans titled Missionary Conquest, George Tinker employs the paradigm of cultural genocide to describe the consequences of the evangelical activity of European Christian missionaries. In his view, although European missionaries did not involve themselves in the killing of native people, they nonetheless contributed to the genocide of the native people. Tinker explicitly says that cultural genocide quite often is not the overt intention but “results from the pursuit of some other goal” such as economic, or religious, or political gain. Having equated forced denationalization and assimilation and cultural genocide, Christian missionaries and boarding schools are thus viewed as mechanism of cultural genocide. Thus, consequences, not intentionality, are the determining factor in the definition of genocide. This is very relevant for the analysis here.

Genocide is most relevant term to use when the purpose is to study the indigenous people who disappeared because of settler colonialism which is reconceptualized as ‘structural genocide.’ Although settler colonialism did not inevitably lead to genocide in all instances, settlers and foreigners throughout the world had committed mass murder and engaged themselves in the extermination of indigenous people. In settler colonialism land was the most sought-after resource. Indigenous populations had to be displaced from the land out of practical necessity to create colonial space for settlers to build their own communities. The work of Patrick Wolfe has added breadth and depth to our understanding of the concept of settler colonialism and its inherent genocidal consequences for the indigenes. According to Wolfe, in its essential, settler colonialism subsumed ‘a logic of elimination.” He identifies two important characteristics of settler colonialism: “Negatively, it strives for the dissolution of native societies. Positively, it erects a new colonial society on the expropriated land base.” Despite the existence of different emphasis and theoretical positions, most scholars are in agreement in viewing settler colonialism as a form of structural genocide and a fundamental violation of human rights of the indigenes. The historian Lorenzo Veracini underscores the same point when he states that “settler colonial projects are specifically interested in turning indigenous peoples into refugees.” Veracini and Wolfe made these comments for European settler colonies in the Americas and Australia, but it can as well be applied to the Ethiopian context because the manner in which the Gafat disappeared was similar to other colonial settings.
The growing historiography which privileges the indigenous peoples right and their tragic experiences of dispossession and compulsory cultural conversions and disappearance at the hands of colonizers had led to the reconceptualization of the settler colonial expansions as gross violation of human rights. This reconceptualization invites, or requires us to classify the carnage and devastation of sixteenth-century Ethiopia and the resulting extinction of indigenous people as the human rights violations and ‘structural genocide.’ Despite some peculiarities, the Oromo conquest and settlement had many of the attributes of classical settler colonialism and led to dramatically similar genocidal outcomes to other continents. Like other classical settler colonial societies, the Oromo reproduced their own society through migration, conquest, and settlement on top of the indigenes society, such as the Amhara and Gafat. Their conquest involved the wholesale seizure of land for the settlement and benefit of the new Oromo population. Indeed, the expulsion of the Amhara and the Gafat from their homeland and the colonial settlement of the Oromo represented one of the most brutal land grabbing and dispossession in African history.

There was no recognizable overt Oromo policy aiming at genocide. Yet, although the disappearance of the population was not an orchestrated extermination, it is vital to recognize the genocides that did take place. The Oromo practiced forced denationalization and assimilation on a mass scale. They obliterated the identity and culture of the surviving indigenes through their well-known institution of assimilation known as mogasa or collective adoption of conquered non-Oromo subjects without physically killing them. The mogasa was distinct from conventional, ‘natural’, assimilation. It must be stated that the Oromo were never greeted with open arms. The Gafat and Amhara groups did not merge with the dominant Oromo tribes and clans all by themselves and out of their volition. But instead, the indigenes were compulsorily denationalized and assimilated into Oromo culture. Furthermore, Oromo system of collective assimilation in mogasa aims to destroy the Amhara and Gafat as Amhara and Gafat by forcing them to assume Oromo ethnic identity and language. The disappearance of the Gafat because of the Oromo conquest and settlement, violent dispossession, and assimilation contained all elements of genocidal practices. It thus hardly makes sense to regard Oromo settler colonialism anything but ‘structural genocide.’

The reinterpretation of Oromo colonial expansion as agents of indigenes destruction reshapes the image current generation of Oromo politicians and historians cultivated of them as victims of Ethiopian colonialism. Oromo colonization and expansion is portrayed in the secondary literature as simple population movement and settlement. The fine Oromo historian Mohammad Hassen, for instance, writes off the Oromo system of forced assimilation known as “mogasa” simply as “Oromo genius for assimilation” and Oromo migration and conquest as “a stuff of history.” Like Taddesse Tamrat, he palliated and condoned the Oromo expansion and its catastrophic consequences for the Gafat people just as natural order of things. Muhammad said nothing about the hideous cruelties and iniquities of the Oromo conquest and the policy of forced assimilation against native people. To whitewash Oromo conquest and settlement as peaceful and deny its inherent genocidal intention is to deny the victims of Oromo conquest their suffering.

Scholars also emphasize that genocide most commonly occur in the context of “extreme historical trauma, confusion and chaos.” This observation fits precisely well with the circumstances of Ethiopia during the period considered here. The chronological focus in this chapter is on the period between 1529 and 1636. It will be shown that during this period Ethiopia went through a long period of extreme violence and rampant civil war. Endemic warfare, profound spiritual crisis, enslavement, genocidal jihad war, dispossession and territorial loss, massive population displacement and depopulation, and destruction of cultural heritage characterized this period. Indeed the two main factors that enabled the Oromo to control vast territories were the jihad and the subsequent civil war and frequent failure of royal government. The political disorganization, the frequent warfare and the ravages of the Oromo no doubt hastened the disintegration of Gafat and Amhara society. Within the mere century between 1529 and 1630, the medieval Ethiopian state was completely obliterated and no viable Amhara and Gafat community exist in the ancient provinces and homelands of south of Abay. In the following sections I discuss the processes leading to the extinction of the Gafat people.

Jihad and the Gafat፡
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Among the several cases of armed conflicts and mass murders that disrupted, weakened and eventually impoverished the Gafat, the first was the jihad war of Ahmad Ibrahim al-Ghazi (1529-1543) known in popular tradition as Gragn, ‘the left handed.’ The carnage, enslavement, and destruction perpetrated by Ahmed and his warriors is documented by his Yemeni follower and admirer, Šihāb ad-Dīn Aḥmad bin Abd al-Qāder. The latter participated as expedition chronicler and described in great detail the terrible devastation inflicted on churches and the Christian population by the jihadists. Ahmad was ruler of Adal, to the east of Ethiopia. Labeled as a jihad, he was fighting in a systematic attempt to conquer a neighboring state. The jihad grew into a crescendo in 1529, when Ahmad’s forces equipped with standard weapons of the period inflicted a shattering defeat against the Ethiopian army led by King Lebna Dengel (1508-1540) at the battle of Shembra Kure. It was the worst defeat the army would ever suffer in battle with the Muslims. The defeat of the Ethiopian army by the jihadists began a chain of disastrous events. Emboldened by their victory the jihadists set out not only to overthrow the Ethiopian state but also stamp out Christianity and replace it with Islam. Thus, indiscriminate violence metastasized after the stunning defeat of the Ethiopian army at Shembra Kure.

Ahmad’s murderous campaigns were driven by religious fanaticism. The war was extremely brutal, with the Muslims othering the Christians so as to justify the destruction and indiscriminate massacre. To the Christians in turn, Ahmed was the personification of the savagery of the Muslims. The Islamic religious ideology of jihad framed Ahmed’s campaigns and occupations. Besides religious reasons, the powerful motivation for booty and dreams of wealth drew many Muslim warriors to join Ahmed’s campaign. The idea of “holy war” in the jihad contained the seeds of cultural genocide and indiscriminate slaughter. The jihadist ideology becomes genocidal by feeding on an impulse to destroy Ethiopian Christianity. Atrocity-filled genocidal campaigns characterized Ahmed’s jihad and his seventeen years of occupation of the Ethiopian highlands. In this atmosphere of extreme hatred, with the jihadists believing they were doing God’s will, wanton destruction of churches and monasteries and random violence prevailed during the Muslim occupation.

Abd al-Qāder records a staggering degree of plunder, destruction and killing with unimaginable cruelty. The Muslims burned their way through the Ethiopian highlands, killing and looting at will. They plundered and burned everywhere they went, slaughtering and enslaving men and women, looting property, and living off the land. Ethiopia became subjected to harsh oppression, murder, pillage, and the burning of churches and homesteads. The royal town of Barara in Shawa was seized, plundered, and burned down in 1531. The nearby royal town of Badeqe too suffered a similar fate as Barara. Churches and monuments which were important sources of local and national pride, such as Dabra Libanos, were specially targeted for destruction. While staying at Barara in 1531, the imam sent 300 soldiers and ordered them to burn the famous monastery of Dabra Libanos in Shawa. After plundering the monastery in front of the monks, the raiders put its church to the torch and rode back to Barara. In desperation the “monks plunged into the fire, as moths dive into the wick of a lamp; all but a few of them” burned alive with the church. The jihadists moved from monastery to monastery looting and burning and capturing and killing. Churches and monasteries in Gafat areas were similarly targeted for Muslim looting and burning.

The churches and monasteries and the monks and priests of the Ethiopian church were attacked with a genocidal fury. The jihadists had carried out a relentless war of cultural destruction and extermination. Only very few hard to destroy prominent architectural reminders of the Christianity and civilizations of the defeated Ethiopians, such as the opulent rock hewn churches of Lalibela survived. The cultural destruction perpetrated by the jihadists was appalling enough to be described as cultural genocide. Criticism of violence, destruction and looting, atrocities, and killing in the period is extremely rare. In May-July 1531, Ahmed sent a detachment of his army to plunder, terrorize and destroy the churches in Warab inhabited by the Gafat and Amhara. Abd al-Qāder captures the mood of the jihadists and the callousness with which they acted in his description of a dispute involving Ahmed’s two soldiers while destroying and looting royal churches:

When the emir Ḥusain arrived at the church [built by king Lebna Dengel] he found that ‘Abd an-Nāṣr had burnt it down. A heated argument developed between the two of them. The emir Ḥusain asked, “Why did you act in so high-handed a fashion, coming to the place that the imam ordered to come to? ‘Abd an-Nāṣr replied: ‘This is the country of the idol-worshipers: any one of us can do whatever lies within his power. Thus he placated him, gave him some of the valuables, and pacified him; and they all retuned to the imam.”

‘Abd an-Nāṣr spoke for the jihadists when he says that they could act with impunity and exercised their discretionary power in dealing with the churches and the Christian population which he described as idol-worshipers. The jihadists inflicted widespread death and destruction deliberately upon the captives, monks and clergy of the Ethiopian church. The hatred and determination to destroy Christianity explains the brutality of the jihadists campaign.

The jihad campaign commonly involved the execution and the selling of indigenous captives into slavery. Summary executions became so routine that the killing of captured Christians required little or no justification in dispatches. In a minor campaign sometime in 1527, Gragn orchestrated the execution of 487 captives. Those whom they did not wish to kill by the sword were sold into slavery and sent as gifts to Yemen. In another terrible 1528 attack, they jihadists returned to their homeland, killing most of their prisoners and taking thousands of others with them. Abd al-Qāder reported that the Muslims divided the captives according to established practice. As Abd al-Qāder documents it, one-fifth of the booty which comprised “five-hundred head of slaves, a thousand head of livestock and a vast number of mules” went to Ahmed. His army terrorized, plundered, and killed hundreds of thousands of people for over fifteen years in a futile attempt to Islamize Ethiopia.

The jihad badly divided Ethiopians, with most eventually siding with the Muslims and converting to Islam to escape death and enslavement. The Christian population faced the choice of violent death or submission to Islam. Most preferred the latter option. An estimated nine out of ten Christians were forcibly converted to Islam. The Gafat could not escape the torment of the jihad. They participated in the conflict, mostly but far from exclusively on the Christian side. In 1533, the imam instructed one of his followers, Yaqim, to go Warab and fight the predominantly Gafat inhabitants “until God conquers it by your hand.” Abd al-Qāder writes that the Gafat put up a resistance at first but soon submitted to the Muslims and agreed to pay poll-tax in return to preserving their Christian faith. Conversely, some Gafat tribes had become collaborationists and converted to Islam to avoid destruction. The jihad also offered opportunities for some Gafat tribes, such as the Shat, who exploited the war to liberate themselves from state control. The process of mass exodus to Gojjam started probably during the jihad of the 1530s, although there has always been mobility between Shawa and Damot and Gojjam across the Blue Nile. Medieval tradition about the Gafat collected by the historian Ayda also indicates that many Christians from the Gafat areas had also dispersed to relatively safer places such as Gojjam during the jihad.

Genocidal violence continued to until 1543, when a regrouped Ethiopian army along with small number of Portuguese soldiers led by King Galawdewos (r.1540-1559), son and successor of Lebna Dengel, defeated the jihad and killed its leader. Although the jihad was defeated, the conflict left Ethiopia badly shaken. The costs in human lives, cultural and historical heritage of the jihad conquests was immense. The jihad derailed economic, cultural, and political developments throughout the Ethiopian region. The Ethiopian church never ever recovered from the destruction and many churches permanently disappeared and remains in ruin. Likewise, it devastated and seriously depopulated many regions and reduced large population groups to fractions of their former numbers and significance. The jihad was catastrophic to the Gafat in Damot and Shawa. Worse was yet to come.

Ahmed and his jihad war was the agent responsible for all the suffering that chronologically followed him. The jihad undermined the Ethiopian defense system and sharply increased the scope and scale of violence. Shembra Kure presaged the subsequent major conflicts between Ethiopians and the new invaders, the Oromo, during the next century and half. Furthermore, the Muslim occupation contributed to the subsequent internal and external conflicts, including recurrent failures of royal governments, civil war, and religious conflicts in the period 1559-1632. The jihad had no doubt a cataclysmic effect on the medieval defense system, royal administration and the tradition of public authority in general. For the sultanate of Adal the conflict with Ethiopia was as destructive to itself as it was to Ethiopia. The jihads and the civil war that raged in the country were advantageous to the Oromo since both considerably undermined the resistance of the indigenous people.

The Process of Gafat Extinction: Oromo Invasion and Settlement

Culture of Warfare and Ritual of Violence

The original homeland of the Oromo and when they first arrived on the highlands of Ethiopia remains open to speculation. The theory generally accepted by many scholars is that the borderland area between Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia was the original homeland of the Oromo. The Oromo were primarily pastoralist people with no attachment to sedentary life and urban culture. For the reasons which remain unclear, these nomadic hordes moved north, east and west in the sixteenth century en masse. The Oromo brought a profound change to the social, ethnic, linguistic, political and religious landscapes of the Ethiopian region. In the course of their expansion, the Oromo dramatically accelerated the pace and scale of violence against the indigenes. Just like the jihadists before them, the Oromo spread out to the Ethiopian highlands through sheer terror and unbridled violence. The Oromo set the non-Oromo apart as others and attacked them. Unlike the jihadists before them, however, the Oromo did not attack the Amhara and Gafat for reasons of hatred of their religion. Neither Christian nor Muslim, the Oromo massacred the population according to established Oromo social practice.

Before turning to the terror-filled Oromo conquest and settlement, however, we ought to examine briefly the military culture and ritual of violence the Oromo introduced to the Ethiopian region that made their conquest and settlement possible. Such discussion should have positioned us to assess the manner of and reason for the disappearance of the Gafat. The Oromo brought a distinct culture of violence that radically differed from Ethiopian standard of behavior of war. Contemporary Ethiopians and European missionaries and soldiers found Oromo style of warfare exotic and dishonorable and were shocked by its savage cruelty and bloodlust. The accounts by the scholar monk Abba Bahrey shows that the Oromo were perceived as savage people, who are cruel, barbarous, and an instrument sent of God to punish Ethiopians for their sins. “I started writing the story of the Galla,” reports Bahrey, “to make known the number of their tribes, their eagerness to kill men and the brutality of their manners.” The description of savagery in Bahrey’s book reflects his shock at the scale and scope of violence. Jesuit missionaries in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Ethiopia spoke admiringly of the Oromo military prowess, yet they, too, viewed the Oromo as degraded by their savagery and desire for bloodlust and divine vengeance for the heresy of Ethiopians.

Without essentializing Oromo violence and militarism, it is vital here to present the cultural context within which their habit of war functioned. The basic pattern for Oromo warfare was firmly rooted in Oromo social structure. Male members of Oromo society were classified into age-grades or classes called gada. Oromo males, including small boys, belonged to an age-grade on the grounds of being born in a particular eight-year period or span as other males. In total, there were ten gada grades which succeeded each other every eight year, and each was given a name. Bahrey comments, “They have neither king nor master like other peoples, but they obey the luba during a period of eight years; at the end of eight years another luba is made, and the first gives up his office. They do this at fixed times; luba means those who are circumcised at the same time.” The best authority on this topic, Asmerom Legesse, elaborates the definition given by Bahrey, “Luba is a group of people and gada is the term of office of the leader of that group, and by extension it is the name of that era during which that leader and his Luba were in power.” Custom required that when a new luba come to power, it inaugurates its eight years of rule by waging war against a community that none of the preceding luba had attacked and its members circumcise together in a collective ceremony. This war known as [deleted] was carried out every eight years on a fixed schedule. Muhammad Hassan defines [deleted] as “a complete national war.” The actual total war was preceded by a ritual of violence also called [deleted]. The Oromo revel in the [deleted] ceremony preceding the campaigns. The [deleted] rituals of violence were “accompanied by boastful war songs that intoxicated the participants.” Bahrey was disturbed by the high spirit of fighting and unusual readiness of the Oromo to kill non-Oromo men which he interpreted as bloodlust.

The Oromo warrior fought both for tangible and less tangible forms of reward. The Oromo came for a rich and deep source of pasture. Likewise, taking booty in the form of cattle and captives was a prime objective. Warfare provided the Oromo warrior to profit by plunder. However, the killing perpetrated by the Oromo was not exclusively about land grabbing and booty. Warfare in Oromo society was profoundly gendered and used to reinforce masculinity. Oromo warriors were bound together by gender and by age. Men aged 16 to 40 directly participated in the war. These heroic performances in battlefield brought glory to the warrior and enhanced his status in society. Bahrey notes that warriors who killed men and big game adopted a physical mark of their bravery in their hairdressing: “If they kill a man, an elephant, a lion, a rhinoceros, or a buffalo, they shave the heads leaving a patch of hair on the top. But those who have killed neither man nor animal do not shave their heads; in the same way, married men do not shave themselves if they have killed neither man nor animal.” He adds that “If they have killed men or large animals, they shave the whole head, leaving a little hair in the middle of the skull. Those who have not killed men or large animals do not shave themselves, and in consequence they are tormented with lice. That is why they are so eager to kill us.”

Ritual mutilation of the dead and wounded used to underscore masculinity was a part of Oromo habitual practices. Genital organs were the most desired human attribute. In the case of big wild animals, they cut the tails and ears as proof of killing and trophy. Taking genitalia of the enemy as trophy provided concrete evidence of the bravery of the Oromo warrior in battle. Killing men or large animals was not only honored by also rewarded. A young Oromo man who killed big games or who killed a man was regarded as brave, and this increased his reputation in the eyes of potential suitors. As P. Baxter has noted, “To kill an enemy, lion, or elephant is the aim of every young man and was formerly an essential, and still is a frequent, preliminary to a respectable marriage, which is the first step towards formal recognition as a social adult.” Thus, for the Oromo young man, the killing of men was not a concern at all just like the killing of big game. The quest for glory, the requirement of shaving hair and marriage, and asserting one’s masculinity animated the young Oromo warrior and highly motivated them to kill. It is this state of affair that made the horrified Bahrey to write “Nobody has found, as we have, an enemy which takes so much trouble to do evil.” In this way the gada system created a distinct culture of death and violence.

In many ways the institution of gada was a cult of death and destruction. The gada system and the violence built in and around the [deleted] war ignited deeply subsumed genocidal tendencies. The requirement of shaving hair and proof of bravery was a destructive principle as it habituated and encouraged Oromo men to indiscriminate slaughter. Virtually every male needing to prove his worth and masculinity must kill either a big game or a man. Every male non-Oromo, armed or unarmed, was a legitimate target. In this case, killing a man was not simply a part of warfare; It was the exclusive goal of many campaigns. Although the Oromo did not seem to have killed because and when it pleases, they were free from any constraints to killing non-Oromo men:

…whereas the merit of killing was honored among other Ethiopian people as a man’s personal merit, among the Oromo it was merely regarded as the fulfilment of the natural order of things. What counted for them was not the heroic achievement - the killing of an enemy warrior or a dangerous wild beast - but simply killing as such. It is true that the sacrificial victim had to be a human being or an animal of particular kinds. But within this range it did not matter whether it was a young elephant, a delicate youth or an old man.

They often attacked by surprise under the cover of darkness and burned, looted and killed without any kind of consideration of sex and age. Finally, the Oromo attacked the same land again and again “whatever strength the local inhabitants had.” Mohammad Hasan states that the Oromo return to the site of former attacks again and again designed to intimidate and dishearten the local population. A case can also be made that the Oromo returned to the same sites with the goal of eliminating the targeted population completely and pave the land for Oromo settlement. But this is far from saying that they killed everyone they encountered. Children were taken, and adult women survived the war.

The Oromo profoundly enhanced the culture and scope of violence that cascaded across the breadth and width of Ethiopia. They moved north, east and west radiating death, terror, and destruction across the entire country. Bahrey has written a blow-by-blow account of the Oromo conquest and settlement and the transfer of many key provinces into their control as well as the rapid decimation of the indigenous peoples. The Oromo were ruthless, relentless, and resourceful in conquering new land and dealing with the indigenous people. They adopted consist policies toward the previous established indigenes. First, they devastate new lands through repeated surprise night attack and turn the majority of the indigenes into refugees. Then conquest was followed by settlement of Oromo colonists and complete subjugation and Oromization of the surviving indigenes through the well-known assimilation practice of adoption. The discussion in this section will present these two stages of Oromo colonialism and the accompanying extinction of the Gafat people.

Habtamu Tegegne (Prof)

[Odie]

Dama has serious issue of hating christians. He is a clear islamist. Very unusual among Gurage. That part of him suspicious to be Gurage but his knowledge of the Gurage people is quite significant. He has god idea about history but in bigoted way.

[Horus]

Dama has serious issue of hating christians. He is a clear islamist. Very unusual among Gurage. That part of him suspicious to be Gurage but his knowledge of the Gurage people is quite significant. He has god idea about history but in bigoted way.

Keep believing in illusion. Dama is not a Gurage. Dama is an Hadiyan in politically correct language or a Gudela as we used to say. He hates everything Gurage. When was the last Dama said or posted anything good about Gurage or Ethiopia? Never. He is a foreign Islamist in a Gudela body.

የጋፋቶች ጉዳይ በተመለከተ ...
ፈጠጋር ወይም ፋጣጋር የዛሬ ናዝሬት አዳማን ይዞ ወደ ላይ ወደ ከሰም ወንዝ ያለው አገር ነበር ። ትርጉሙ አለም ጤና ፣ ተስማሚ አገር ማለት ነው ! ፌጦ መድሃኒት ፣ ጤናም እንደ ማለት ነው ። ገር/ጋር ዛሬ ላይ አገር የምንለው ነው።

ወጅ የዛሬ አዳዲን ፣ዝቋላን የረርን ይዞ እስከ ዛይ ማለትም ፈጠጋር ድምበር የነበረው አገር ነው ፣ በኔ እምነት የዛሬ ስልጤ አዘረነት ፣ ኡርባረግ ሁሉ የወጅ ጥ/ግዛት አካል ነበሩ ፣

ጥያቄው ዛሬ ገላን ኦሮሞ የሚባሉት ከመልካ ቁንጡሬ ሌማን እስከ ለገጣፎ አዲሳባና ታሪካዊው አቃቂ የዛሬ ቢሾፍቱ ወጅ ነበሩ ወይስ ፈጠጋር የሚለው ነው ።

አቃቂ ድብን ያለ ጥንታዊ የሴም ቃል ነው

[Dama]

They were used as war burden donkeys and to manufacture swords, spears, gashas, horse saddles and harneses. They were used to eat enemy swords and spears in every Abyssinian battles as far back in the battles of shifta Yekuno Amlak and in the various battles of Abyssinia against Imam Ahmed El-Ghazi. A few of them live in Hadiya who remembers their ancestors there to fight the Imam who never returned after the end of the war.
All this in addition to the dispossesion of their lands by Amara settlers, ethnic slurs, acusations of hating Amara,

ዳማ፣
አሁንም የጉዴላ ፕሮፓጋንዳ ነው የምታሰራጨው ። የኦቶማን ቱርክ ተላላኪው ግራኝ መሃመድ ክርስቲያኖችን እያረደ ፣ አስገድዶ እየደፈረ ፣ ቤተክሪስቲያኖችን ዘርፎ እያቃጣለ ለ17 አመት ኢትዮጵያን ሲያውድምና ሲያሰልም ጋፋቶች ጥብቅ ኦርቶዶክሶች እስከ ሞጆ ድረስ እየዘመቱ ግራኝን ተዋግተዋል። አገራቸው ደሞ ዛሬ አዲስ አለም ፣ ግንደ በረት አምቦ እምባቦ ሲሆን በዚያ ዘመን እንደ ገብጣን ይባል ነበር ። እኔ ሆረስ የጋፋትን ቋንቋ ከክስታኔኛ ጋር አንድ እንደ ሆነ እዚህ ፎረም ላይ አሳይቻለሁ ። ጋፋትን ዘሩን አጥፍቶ ካገሩ ነቅሎ የሞቱት ሞተው የተረፉት አባይን ተሻግረው የጎጃም ተራሮች ላይ እንዲመሽጉ ያድረጋቸው የጋላ ወረራ ነው። ጎጃም ከሄዱ በኋላ ያው ልክ እንደ አገው ፣ ወይጦ ፣ ቅማንት፣ ሽናሻ ወዘተ ቋንቋቸው በአማራኛ ተውጧል። ሸዋና ደቡብ የጠፉት ጎሳዎች በጋልኛ እንደ ተዋጠ ማለት ነው። የውሸት ታሪክ አታሰራጭ ።
https://catalog.princeton.edu/catalog/SCSB-9356210

Without prejudice to your Machiavellian tolerance, which got you condemned by all Forumers here, to the crimes committed by Ethiopia now and Abyssinia in the past for its ethno Amara expansion and predation against ethnic groups neighboring it, in your tale of one of the most persecuted ethnic groups of Abyssinia in hidtory, the faultless Gafats who lived on vast territories extending north to Debre-Berhan, you ommit truth because you fear facts will inconvenience Amara elites. I will post the Gafat word for Debre-Berhan anytime when I relocate the history piece. Gafat language was wide spread in Gonder as well.
Historians located Gafat villages in Shewa still bearing Gafat names proving their theory that the southward movement of Amara, after Yekuno Amlak usurped power from the Zagwe Dynasty, displaced the Gafats westward to north of Gibe and South of Abav rivers.

When the Oromo arrived in Gafat, they were weakened by religious divisions and Amara settlers had almost dispossessed all Gafats fertile lands. Oromos found both Amara and Gafat in Gafat territories.

[Right]

This is the first time that I observed a piece by Prof HT. The late Prof Alem Eshetie, the late Prof Getachew Haile and to a degree Dr Negaso’s G have researched and written extensively on this particular subject.
The truth is out there for those who cares.

This Amhara bashing, specially by the minority ethnic groups, will end very soon catastrophically.
The Amharas protected and spill their blood to safe guard and built Ethiopia, creating a space for the minority groups to flourish and be who they want to be.There is no Ethiopia without the Amharas. The way things are moving, they will soon find out the new hot and intoxicating bromance with the Oromos is not different than the Galla werera of 1500.

It is about time for the Amharas to work on the contingency plan of building and modernizing Amhara around the Gerd dam. The Oromos can move on on their own as long as they guarantee & protect the right and freedom of the 20 million Amharas in their region and so is Tigray. Otherwise it is a waste of time and resources doing the same thing again and again to salvage something that is not salvageable.
Ethiopians proved that they are not capable of governing themselves. Not at this point.

[Dama]

Weslata!
You abuse and miuse the word "minority". Sh*ermuta.

[Right]

You and the Ormos deserve each other. Good luck with the new found love.
Ungrateful animal. If the Oromos have their way then you wouldn’t have a chance to backstab & insult people today in Amharic.

[Selam/]

Why do Amaras still hate Gafats long after they extincted them? አማራ አሁን ድረስ ጋፋትን ይጠላል

ዶማ ልበልህ ወይንስ ሞረድ?

ምን ዓይነት ንፍጣም ነህ፣ ጥላሸት ብላና እንዴት ሰው የሌለንና የማያውቀውን ነገር ይጠላል።

የሆንክ ኮረት!

[Odie]

This is the first time that I observed a piece by Prof HT. The late Prof Alem Eshetie, the late Prof Getachew Haile and to a degree Dr Negaso’s G have researched and written extensively on this particular subject.
The truth is out there for those who cares.

This Amhara bashing, specially by the minority ethnic groups, will end very soon catastrophically.
The Amharas protected and spill their blood to safe guard and built Ethiopia, creating a space for the minority groups to flourish and be who they want to be.There is no Ethiopia without the Amharas. The way things are moving, they will soon find out the new hot and intoxicating bromance with the Oromos is not different than the Galla werera of 1500.

It is about time for the Amharas to work on the contingency plan of building and modernizing Amhara around the Gerd dam. The Oromos can move on on their own as long as they guarantee & protect the right and freedom of the 20 million Amharas in their region and so is Tigray. Otherwise it is a waste of time and resources doing the same thing again and again to salvage something that is not salvageable.
Ethiopians proved that they are not capable of governing themselves. Not at this point.

There is no minority or majority ethnic. It exists only in the minds of the uncivilized and the arrogant. No one has bashed Amhara. Amhara ONLY protected and spilled their blood to safeguard and build Ethiopia is a false mantra. Yes, Amhara contributed to the building and protection of Ethiopia to large extent and should be respected/not attacked. But each ethnic has paid, spilled its blood in protecting Ethiopia and building Ethiopia. Be it during the kings or even during the dictators. So, mind your wording because it creates divisions again. It is not for political correctness. It is historically true all ethnics played their role in the issues of the country. Before I even saw Addis, I remember my parents speak how people left their home to fight Mussolini invasion. Even in the OPP system now all ethnics, including Amhara, are involved. The system may be fascist but uses and abuses all ethnics. The issue should be how can the ethnics use their unity and force/energy for common good instead of propping up dictators. In the Ethiopian history whoever sat in the throne, insulted, abused the so called "minority" ethnics and the poor despite their contribution be in tax, military or civil service. If you are interested go read books written at the times of the kings to see how people and their ethnics were referred. Wolayta was called Wolamo. Others were called gudella. The Gurage at times were called derogatory names too just for their work and business ethics. Everyone had name. No one is going to behave as if everything was smooth. Keeping quiet by other ethnics when the Amhara ethnic is attacked by the current system does not mean these other ethnics agree to what the thugs in power are doing. The OPP now is not even supported by all Oromo elites themselves. It is a dictator system of its own account and way. You have no right to insult, or filthy talk or name call other ethnics because they failed to come out and die in open field. All have grievances and perhaps waiting for opportunity to show that given the right situation and environment. The system now or the previous Ethiopian systems had their own fault and only few pigs used to use the main resources and the name of the country for their own benefits. That was to some extent the reason for student and military revolution. We have seen that segregation in the military and civil system. There was unseen categorization. But we could talk of which system was relatively better than which in relative terms. For example, in the Derg system whatever its atrocities were, people would feel more accepted as Ethiopian than other times. Personally, I want Ethiopia to be a country where everybody feels equally Ethiopian and has equal privileges and access to opportunities the country provides (can this happen, is it too idealistic, may be but can be done if people stand by their right). Short of that, we can forget the name existence of the country. All humans are born free before God. No one has to be ashamed of for being from any particular ethnic or race for that matter. They cannot be name called and shamed, and their right opportunity exploited. We all are going to live once in this form in this universe. Expect this demand now, tomorrow and in the future. If Ethiopia fails to provide an equal opportunity and equal citizen nation, these wars and rebellions won't cease.

[Dama]

You and the Ormos deserve each other. Good luck with the new found love.
Ungrateful animal. If the Oromos have their way then you wouldn’t have a chance to backstab & insult people today in Amharic.

Yeqomata lij!

[Dama]

Why do Amaras still hate Gafats long after they extincted them? አማራ አሁን ድረስ ጋፋትን ይጠላል

ዶማ ልበልህ ወይንስ ሞረድ?

ምን ዓይነት ንፍጣም ነህ፣ ጥላሸት ብላና እንዴት ሰው የሌለንና የማያውቀውን ነገር ይጠላል።

የሆንክ ኮረት!

I got proofs. That is why title of my post. Dedeb. Zerenya. You should have asked.

[Dama]

There is no minority or majority ethnic. It exists only in the minds of the uncivilized and the arrogant.

There are sociological minorities. But no one is minority in their terrorities with ownership its resources having their own culture and languages. Tgese indepenfent groups of people with a way of life their own creation are no minority or majority to another.
A minority has no independent existence of its own. No one in Ethiopia is minority or majority to the other. All have their independent existence as explained above with their own land, history, culture and language.
The concept and definition social.minority gets true meaning when only applied legal migrants or settlers into a larger group. For example, Amaras in Gurage are minority, so also are minority in Oromo, Somali, and anywhere outside of Amara. If there live Gurages, Tigreys, Oromo migrants in Amara region, they are minority.
More example is United Kingdom. The Welsh, thd Scots, Irish are not considered minorities to the English because of their indepedent living in their own territories, with their own tradition, language and history. Just because a group is conquered by violence and annexed, it does not become a minority to the bloody conquerer.

[Odie]

This is the first time that I observed a piece by Prof HT. The late Prof Alem Eshetie, the late Prof Getachew Haile and to a degree Dr Negaso’s G have researched and written extensively on this particular subject.
The truth is out there for those who cares.

This Amhara bashing, specially by the minority ethnic groups, will end very soon catastrophically.
The Amharas protected and spill their blood to safe guard and built Ethiopia, creating a space for the minority groups to flourish and be who they want to be.There is no Ethiopia without the Amharas. The way things are moving, they will soon find out the new hot and intoxicating bromance with the Oromos is not different than the Galla werera of 1500.

It is about time for the Amharas to work on the contingency plan of building and modernizing Amhara around the Gerd dam. The Oromos can move on on their own as long as they guarantee & protect the right and freedom of the 20 million Amharas in their region and so is Tigray. Otherwise it is a waste of time and resources doing the same thing again and again to salvage something that is not salvageable.
Ethiopians proved that they are not capable of governing themselves. Not at this point.

There is no minority or majority ethnic. It exists only in the minds of the uncivilized and the arrogant.

Ehhh! There are sociological and political minorities. But no one is minority in their terrorities with ownership its resources having their own culture and languages. Tgese indepenfent groups of people with a way of life their own creation are no minority or majority to another.
A minority has no independent existence of its own. No one in Ethiopia is minority or majority to the other. All have their independent existence as explained above with their own land, history, culture and language.
The concept and definition social.minority gets true meaning when only applied legal migrants or settlers into a larger group. For example, Amaras in Gurage are minority, so also are minority in Oromo, Somali, and anywhere outside of Amara. If there live Gurages, Tigreys, Oromo migrants in Amara region, they are minority.
More example is United Kingdom. The Welsh, thd Scots, Irish are not considered minorities to the English because of their indepedent living in their own territories, with their own tradition, language and history. Just because a group is conquered by violence and annexed, it does not become a minority to the bloody conquerer.

Sir, there should be no "minority" "majority" stuff in the same country. Those words are derogatory, and abuse used to exploit others like-developing and developed countries, third world countries and first world counties etc. These terminologies are abuse and exploitative terms. It was the Tigrian Oligarchs and the midget who introduced minority word and the whole SNNP and other regions are tranquilized to silence ever since. That is why the so-called majorities usurp power, best offices and resources. Don't try to convince me with vocabulary or the most known global colonizer UK system. The way they use it and other use it different. Blacks are exploited because they make minority in other countries even if they contribute much to their countries.

[Dama]

Do blacks have their own territory? Haven't they been brought in to the already existing culture and language and polity.
Simply because one ethnic group is numerous, it does not become a majority to another independent group. They live in different worlds of language, custom, different histories and geography. You do not become a minority in your own land, culture and language. Minority signifies absence or lack of independent living. Signifies dependence on majority in all things like land, culture and and language.

Illustrations
Amaras in Gurage are minority. Gurages in Somali are minorities. Qebena in Gurage are minorities.

[Right]

there should be no "minority" "majority" stuff in the same country.

That is something you have to address and debate with your Oromo mates.

The Amharas tried in blood and hard work to create one beautiful Ethiopia that treats all Ethiopians equally. The country was sailing in a slow but smooth transition into a civilized world overcoming ethnic divisions until you drop in with a borrowed ethnic ideology.
Almost every ethnic group large or small have grievances against the Amharas. They all scream to have their own independent country.they all want to kill the Amharas.

The Amharas have to call the bluffs and look after themselves. Trust me, if there is an ethnic or regional group that can survive on its own, that would be the Amharas.

[Misraq]

Daesa (Dama) is a wahabist silte & a soldier of Gallaw Ahmedin Jebel who is coward and living in hiding fearing Fano's . The silte minority and wahabist Gallas are the first that will pay for the crimes committed on Amharas.

Gafat & Amharic are mutually intelligible languages. Here, the silte wahabist is transferring the blame for the extinction of Gafat from Gallas to Amharas while historical records and geographical evidences are clear enough that Gallas decimated Gafats and a few of them managed to escape crossing the Nile to Gojam where they melted to the dominant society (Amharas) there, which is natural.

The fact that Gafat speakers were found until 70 years ago in Gojam indicates that they were not persecuted by Amharas while no remnents of Gafats exist now in southern, western, and eastern Shoa.

[Odie]

there should be no "minority" "majority" stuff in the same country.

That is something you have to address and debate with your Oromo mates.

The Amharas tried in blood and hard work to create one beautiful Ethiopia that treats all Ethiopians equally. The country was sailing in a slow but smooth transition into a civilized world overcoming ethnic divisions until you drop in with a borrowed ethnic ideology.
Almost every ethnic group large or small have grievances against the Amharas. They all scream to have their own independent country.they all want to kill the Amharas.

The Amharas have to call the bluffs and look after themselves. Trust me, if there is an ethnic or regional group that can survive on its own, that would be the Amharas.

Why don’t you take your stin ky nose to your shovinist buddies and poke it here? Who the hell asked for your arrogant self implicating stupid comments? Go talk to your buddies. If you come and mix your stin cky bottom among others comments you will get spanked for sure. ጃንጥላ እንዲያዝልህ ፈለግህ? ወረኛ! ኦሮሞን ሳይሆን ኦሮሙማን በባላ የተሽክሙት ዘመዶችህ መስሉኝ! ሆረስ እና እኔ ላይ ከመጮህ ዘመዶችህ ላይ አምባርቅ