Why is the ONLF such a massive failure?

[Colonel]

All the groups which you have mentioned have been backed by the West at some point, that is not the case for ONLF who is fighting under a very difficult situation. Even the taliban were given training by Pakistan, they have throughout time become a fantastic force Mashallah.

Ethiopia receives hundreds of millions of dollars by the West and have absolute backing, they have a huge army and many Somalis in their pocket such as Puntland. The ONLF cannot rely on retarded Somalis who are either enjoying their seat on Ethiopia's lap (Sland and Pland) or still stuck in mediaval tribal warfare.

Taking all this into account ONLF is doing pretty well considering they are surrounded on all sides by their enemies and receive minimal if any outside backing. To be fair I find it highly hypocritical of you to criticize ONLF when your own leaders are controlled by Ethiopia and you can not even stand up to Somaliland let alone take on one of Africa's largest army.

[Monk-of-Mogadishu]

Quark, tanks don't mean shit against guerrillas, and Ethiopia's air force is not built for precision strikes - which is the only thing an air force can hope to throw at guerrillas. Ethiopia's military and intelligence are extremely low-tech and their peasant cannon fodder army is terribly low on morale. Its futile to try and strengthen Ethiopia's might.

Colonel, firstly quit being emotional, this is not about me and this is not about PL, I have no clue why you and the other guy believe that doing so would help answer the question I'm asking. Secondly, you are using the cliche argument about 'Western backing.' Any smart regime or opposition movement can get backing of any kind. Also, I was not referring to PL/SL/non-Ogaden factions when I stated that ONLF should seek support in Somalia/Kenya/abroad. ONLF can tap into the huge regional & worldwide Ogaden community, including figures inside Somalia (truthfully there weren't many until recently) as well as powerful businessmen & political figures in Kenya where their kinsmen holds the f-king Ministry of Defense - that alone is a goldmine and anyone would reach out to it. I simply don't believe ONLF is even trying to be successful, they think dumb little hit & run attacks a few times a year on an army of roughly 200,000 is going to do any damage. ONLF actively refuses to tap into powerful potential supporters, they refuse to go the extra length for money, and their community gives very little since they are not mobilized properly. These dudes are straight up retarded, they are one of the most powerful demographics in Kenya and have an open seat in the TFG that they can milk for anything they want and yet they don't even think to take advantage of this. I think its the lack of scope and and the massive intellectual impotence that really kills ONLF, their leadership is either full of illiterates or men who simply profit from the organization's existence and don't wish to push it to a point where their lives and the organization's existence are at stake. You guys keep saying, "ONLF doesn't have backing..." - well, whose f-king fault is that? Groups like Al-Shabaab are invested in Kenyan real estate and they get donor checks from San Diego to Stockholm down to Riyadh, Islamabad, Dar Es Salaam, Cape Town, Baghdad, all within a few short years of their existence - then again Al-Shabaab is fitted with many competent and intelligent leaders and supporters unlike the mental midgets pulling the ONLF's strings. How f-king hard is it for ONLF to find an income source, even Meles Zenawi & his young TPLF cadres were robbing banks and scamming the damn UN itself - can ONLF not rob a bank or scam aid agencies? Its really simple, yet they choose not to do it, and that's the main issue, this group's leadership refuses to take part in any activity that would boost the organization's strength.

[Addoow]

If ONLF is such a big massive failure then why are they singled out as the most potent ethiopian rebel groups? I think they are doing just fine in such an extraordinary time and when the opportunity presents it self these guys will take good advantage of it.And dont compare the taliban who has such huge pashtun backing with ONLF when their supposedly blood kin in puntland is actively harming ONLF by fully collaborating with Addis regime against ONLF.

[Teeri]

The ONLF is among the most hyped yet least effective guerrilla armies & separatist movements in the world. They've been active since 1984 yet have never held any territory nor could they create a viable social/political platform in all that time. Compare this to the Taliban, founded 10 years later, and controlled 80-90% of Afghanistan in less than 2 years of their founding, and today amidst an intense NATO-Pakistani-Iranian-Indian-Chinese-Tajik-Uzbek crackdown they are gaining even more territory across several countries. Even in the Horn, Al-Shabaab formed in 2006 and has fought off multiple invasions & troop surges and now controls half of Somalia with a tight grip. Or look at the SPLM in Sudan, formed just a year before the ONLF and by 2005 they received autonomy & independence timetable.

What is the cause for the ONLF's incompetence? They've been around for a long time, they have a common/popular cause, they have close kin (possible supporters) across multiple borders, and are fighting a weak state - yet none of this has gotten them any closer to any sort of victory goals.

That is all.

Afghanist was totlally lawless and the russians have left in 89, then came the taliban, ONLF is fighting a nation with one of the biggest armies in africa, if not in the developing world that gets $5 billion a year from the West, you compare talipan and ICU with ONLF, these groups you mention were running around lawless nations with no govenment for decades,

also you mention the south sudan group, they werent formed a year before ONLF, they were fighting since the 50s when sudan got indepence from ''egypt'' and UK, i thought you were smarter then that, obviously you lack knowledge in history.

you also say we have close kin in multiple borders? what focking kin? puntland and Somaliland? , alshabab took over a country with 1000 world lords fighting each other, a country with no governemnt can not be compared to ehtiopia, i expected my sulgab cousins to be a little bit smarter then others, but obviously you disappoint me MOnk.

[Monk-of-Mogadishu]

God damn you are genuinely f-king retarded. I have reiterated multiple times in this short topic that by "kin" I was solely referring to Ogaden people around Africa and abroad, I don't f-king expect MJs or Qaldaans to support a self-declared clan-oriented organization that does not even wish to represent them, especially when that group exhibits embarrassing incompetence.

Secondly, you and the others make Ethiopia out to be superpower, what a joke. Barring South Sudan, the victories of the ICU & growth of Al-Shabaab, and more difficult Taliban rise were by no means easy. During the first few years, when they conquered 80% of Afghanistan including the capital, the Taliban only had 10,000 militia consisting mostly of untrained dugsi youths. They fought the Afghan warlord government, which had MiG jets newer than the shit Ethiopia has as well as a huge array of tanks and armored vehicles plus far more firepower than Ethiopia in terms of artillery, rockets, and heavy weapons - some of the gov't allied warlords had 50,000 highly experienced militias under their command [unlike Ethiopia's peasant shoeless army], they completely dwarfed the modest little Taliban far more than shit hole Ethiopia dwarfs the ONLF.

As for the Shabaab; have you even f-king seen the level these guys operate on - these guys shit all over every other guerrilla army in the world. These dudes have a very professional website, a terrestrial TV station that airs high-quality propaganda tapes to the world wide web featuring hosts & narrators who speak flawless English, they also have radio stations that beam all the time - even the poor SSDF had radio stations that aired inside Somalia as early as 1982 despite Siad Barre being in power. I'm sure you heard it too, a few weeks ago Shabaab had a twitter war with Kenya's top general, and even the press could not help being fascinated by the complexity of Shabaab's metaphors and vocabulary compared to the dumb Kenyan general. That's just scratching the surface, Shabaab has a huge number of intellectuals from leadership posts down to trained uniformed medics and engineers. All that and I have yet to express the most shocking aspect. Today, after 27 years of existence and 16 years of armed resistance, the ONLF still run around in poorly-stitched rags and fight with weapons that have collected rust for years - actually, they tend to just buy rusty weapons due to their shitty financial situation. Meanwhile, after just 5 years of existence and not even knowing how they'd fund their organization, the Shabaab soldier of 2011 wears fresh combat fatigues, carries an AK so shiny it looks like a display model, he carries an expensive communication device, and rides around in vehicles that still have their factory scent. They've got American students and professionals working feverishly and even dying for them, they've got Pakistani engineers who volunteer to build them explosive devices never seen before in Somalia, also Khaleejis who join their ranks with their own weapons and even surplus cash to just give to the organization, there are Yemeni members who use their networks their home country to smuggle weapons to Shabaab, and countless volunteers from distant and unlikely places; Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Chechnya, Nigeria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan...the list is huge. There are foreigners in Somalia training other foreigners to fight for Shabaab, these guys don't even have to lift a finger, they've used their superior mental capacity and social awareness to sustain and flourish.

In concluding, I am not saying that you need a complex network to flourish, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara had just 11 albeit highly-educated and ambitious soldiers when they started their brilliantly successful revolution in Cuba - but they started with so little strength because they were just students and did not have any connections. ONLF on the other hand has a gigantic pool of potential supporters with deep pockets and the ability to use the situation in the region to acquire and divert aid money to their organization [you gotta do what you gotta do], and despite the world that is available to them, they have yet to capitalize on anything, and that to me is what confuses me, and the sole reason why they are so weak - to add, the average ONLF fighter does not even understand what he's fighting for or simply does not believe strongly in it, which is easy to conclude considering the very low education level and absolute lack of scope that the general organization demonstrates. Shit, just recently the ONLF had an ugly split - so f-king dumb, even the inexperienced and newcomer Shabaab leaders eliminated enemies and incorporated neutral members of other like-minded factions one-by-one, as evidenced by their brilliant dismantling of the once-powerful Hizbul Islam faction.

Just one more huge show of idiocy by the ONLF that overwhelmingly proves the group's utter lack of strategy ............... they elected a former Naval commander as their leader, in a landlocked f-king state. These niggas must be high or functionally retarded.

[The_Emperior5]

onlf is far from a big failure all the fighting and insurgency inside the region is paying of Melez zanawis Government is willing to talk in a neutral country as ONLF demanded. onlf is really a success the only Ally they have in the horn is Eritrea and Eritrea doesn't even border their region , Ethiopia gets billions of dollars in Aid from the west they have to do it with funds from Wealthy individuals and funds from Somalis abroad the ONLF are true brave heroes and they will reach their end goal inshallah an independent Ogadeniya Counrtry

[EEGA9]

All the conflicts discussed here are of movements(transitional and national) with either strong backing from powerful states and Intelligence networks(CIA/ISI) or others who have sprung up in times of civil unrest in which the conditions were ripe to launch successful efforts in gaining there intended objectives.I use the word “successful” lightly because the majority of these organisations are now either defunct or waning save the SPLM which was bankrolled by the CIA as part of its effort to unseat the Khartoum regime.More accurate examples to cite would be indigenous movements as in the case of Eritrea-EPLF or Sri-Lanka-Tamil tigers even the TPLF who launched protracted liberation efforts although they rode on the back of EPLF’s 30 year armed struggle.ONLF’s armed struggle is in comparison much shorter in its time frame compared to these struggles, .In 1998 it came into being as a political and military force capable of launching a concentrated war of attrition against Ethiopian targets, to date Ethiopia has been unable to defeat or even slow its progress significantly despite its many military campaigns, propaganda charades and its political and diplomatic efforts to isolate and criminalise the movement.Calling ONLF supporters disorganized is laughable, they pay a monthly tax as well as other payments/fees to support orphans which run in the tens of thousands and have successfully lobbied and exerted pressure on there adopted countries to apply pressure on the Ethiopian government and many have given solemn promises on issues such as Aid especially in Europe, they work in conjunction with human rights groups and have summoned Ethiopian dignitaries/ambassadors to U.N and E.U meetings to be questioned.Many educated diaspora members with doctorates have died at the front, others have risked there lives delivering medicine and other logistics.This is the most successful community among the opposition.Meles Zenawi doesn’t leave a western capital without a mild stroke.

The Ethiopian Military is not weak but it has features which can potentially destabilize it and completely eradicate it as an institution for example the ethnic tension within the force which the TPLF has capped via rotation, firing or placing trusted ethnic tigrays in positions of authority as well as recruiting wisely from the poor masses who rely on there military wage.The rise of dominant ethnic groups from the Ahmara and Oromo can create the sparks to destabilize the military as many of its members belong to these groups.Its this recruitment capacity that allowed it to successfully invade Eritrean territory despite heavy losses in 2000.A wise organisation will not exhaust itself to make a few headlines and then fall into oblivion nor will it criminalise itself by engaging in illicit activities for a few short-term gains in a sensitive environment , it bids its time for a complete victory.

Ethiopia sees ONLF as a threat to its security and survival whereas it perceives Al-shabab a bunch of mad directionless fanatics as a cash cow, an opportunity to establish itself as a strategic partner and gain further leverage with its backers.ONLF is the opposite, other than been a complete strain militarily it is a diplomatic and political nuisance which threatens its vital funding sources.ONLF doesn’t have to brandish itself to be taken serious, it has shown its adversaries its capability on the ground.The gadgets it has acquired from Ethiopian army stores is enough to dwarf anything Al-shabab has or will ever have.

ONLF split? shows how informed you are, non of ONLF’s 51 central committee,its leadership,its commanders or front-line soldiers have signed a deal with Ethiopia.Ethiopia engages in these propaganda tactics to create the image for donor countries that its creating peace or that it has defeated ONLF, this time it was firmly exposed as a hoax attempt.Admiral Mohamed Omar Osman is a trusted leader, an effective politician and military expert who has both military and naval experience.The naval experience has come to good use

ONLFs links in Kenya and Somalia are solid, it has a long affliate program from Zeylac to Nairobi’s Eastleigh.In Kenya ONLF doesn’t operate only as an organisation but influential politically. Kenyan-Somali politicians are behind the scenes and are working tirelessly to find an end to the conflict, they are an essential part of the upcoming talks.Meles Zenawi is more of an expert than anyone and he has accepted ONLFs preconditions for talks, why not talk to the OLF or Amhara's he knows where the threat is!

[Faant]

The ONLF will be succesful the day every familiy in Somali Galbeed is ready to have their sons killed in the liberation struggle.

I would love it if if they changed their name to " Western somali liberation Front" and it was a multiclan organization instead of an Ogaden group. We should all remember that " Western Somali Liberation Front" which was a nationalistic somali rebel group figthing in the 1970s for a free Western Somali land infact liberated and controlled " Ogadenia" by 1977. They have done it before! the western somalis liberated themself in 1977 but that was because they were united! every somali tribe in Western Somalia was helping the struggle.... only with unity can we succed.