AHC/WI The Oromos become the most powerful ethnic group in Ethiopia?

In otl the oromo are the first minority in Ethiopia but the Amhara still remain the most powerful and dominant group because historical reasons. Your challenge is to make the oromo hegwmonic and explore how things change now that the country is governed by a majority muslim cushitic people. Do the Oromo include other muslim/cuchitic peoples in the government (forming a new majority though alliance with minor parties)? Would make sense to rename the country to something like the Cuchitic Federation or the Horn federation? I doubt the last one but is fun to expeculate.
 
The Shewan Amharas don’t dominate Ethiopia anymore (and haven’t since the mid to late 1970s) and the Oromos already make up the majority of the population of Ethiopia but if you want Oromo dominance, then you could always have Ethiopia fall to Adal and have what remains of the Orthodox Christian Habeshas re-establish Ethiopia in the northern regions of the country while having Adal fall to the Oromo penetrations that reach as far as the new Ethiopian state and find themselves dominating soon enough.

EDIT: The Oromos also aren’t majority Muslim.
 
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The Shewan Amharas don’t dominate Ethiopia anymore (and haven’t since the mid to late 1970s) and the Oromos already make up the majority of the population of Ethiopia but if you want Oromo dominance, then you could always have Ethiopia fall to Adal and have what remains of the Orthodox Christian Habeshas re-establish Ethiopia in the northern regions of the country while having Adal fall to the Oromo penetrations that reach as far as the new Ethiopian state and find themselves dominating soon enough.

EDIT: The Oromos also aren’t majority Muslim.


Today Oromos are about 60% Muslim,

A good percentage of the Amhara ethnicity is actually assimilated Oromos.

And on the other side a good percentage of the Oromos in the south are various ethnicities assimilated into Oromo from 1560's onwards .
There are already Somali groups half way assimilated into Oromo right now that fit into both Somali and Oromo like gurgura, akisho etc jarso are near totally Oromo today.
 
Form the nucleus of the anti-Derg movement and overthrow them
For that to happen, you’d need to have the Oromo Liberation Front to become much more organized earlier on. Also, you’d have to eliminate the TPLF early on as well if you want to avoid the issue of competition - if the Qey Shibir is more successful and completely wipes out the TPLF in its infancy, that might pave the way for the OLF to become a more dominant force in the anti-Derg movement. On the other hand, having the TPLF die early on could strengthen the Derg with one less sizable insurgency to focus on and even allow for Operation Red Star to succeed if the Eritreans can’t receive help from TPLF forces that tied down quite a few of their troops in Tigray. So this might end up actually leading to a timeline where the Derg survives.
 
To summarize the more important parts of my post above, just have Tadesse Birru avoid being arrested in the late 1960s and escape into the Shewan countryside with the OLF contingent that became the nucleus of the OLF IOTL. Under his leadership, they go on to become a credible fighting force on par with the TPLF and EPLF as the Derg either collapses in the late 1970s from having to deal with numerous insurgencies and the Somali invasion from the ashes of the Ethiopian state or around the time the Derg falls IOTL, except they either secede to form a Oromo state or end up taking the role that the TPLF did OTL.
 
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A famine that is stronger in Oromia could help. A famine forced the tigray against the derg.
If we're talking about the famine that occurred in the mid-1980s, then no - the TPLF was already an effective combatant against the Derg by the time the latter was forced to abandon the province in the aftermath of the failed battles of Operation Red Star as the Ethiopian Civil War began to spread into the Amhara-inhabited regions of Wollo.
 
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If we're talking about the famine that occurred in the mid-1980s, then no - the TPLF was already an effective combatant against the Derg by the time the latter was forced to abandon the province in the aftermath of the failed battles of Operation Red Star as the Ethiopian Civil War began to spread into the Amhara-inhabited regions of Wollo.
This. Gebru Tareke has an excellent article outlining the counterinsurgency offensives undertaken by the Ethiopian Revolutionary Army (or "Red Army", as some call it) and why they failed to knock out the TPLF and EPLF but managed to do so with the armed ethnic nationalist movements in the southern regions of Ethiopia.
 
To summarize the more important parts of my post above, just have Tadesse Birru avoid being arrested in the late 1960s and escape into the Shewan countryside with the OLF contingent that became the nucleus of the OLF IOTL. Under his leadership, they go on to become a credible fighting force on par with the TPLF and EPLF as the Derg either collapses in the late 1970s from having to deal with numerous insurgencies and the Somali invasion from the ashes of the Ethiopian state or around the time the Derg falls IOTL, except they either secede to form a Oromo state or end up taking the role that the TPLF did OTL.
I wouldn't be so sure that the OLF would be too effective when it also has to deal with the Western Somali Liberation Front and Somali-Abbo Liberation Front attempting to become the dominant guerrilla movements in the region, although the OLF could take advantage of the situation to mobilize more support amongst the Oromos against the Somalis.
 
This. Gebru Tareke has an excellent article outlining the counterinsurgency offensives undertaken by the Ethiopian Revolutionary Army (or "Red Army", as some call it) and why they failed to knock out the TPLF and EPLF but managed to do so with the armed ethnic nationalist movements in the southern regions of Ethiopia.

link plz :)
 
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