The End of Restraint: A Declaration of Resolve by the People of the Somali State
For Media and Diplomatic Distribution Jigjiga, Somali state

The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the Congress for Somali Cause (CSC), and the Somali Regional Democratic Alliance (SRDA) hereby announce the formation of THE SOMALI PEOPLE’S ALLIANCE FOR SELF-DETERMINATION (SPAS) – a unified Political, diplomatic, and civic platform established to consolidate Somali political agency and advance the collective rights, dignity, and political future of the Somali people.

Affirming that the forceful political incorporation of Somali territories into the Ethiopian state occurred through historical processes during the Scramble for Africa and afterwards that didnot reflect the free and informed consent of the Somali people, and that successive Ethiopian governments -imperial, military, and contemporary – have presided over systems marked by political exclusion, centralized rule, demographic manipulation, structural marginalization, and persistent violations of fundamental rights. We will not forget the crimes against our people, but we will not be captives to the sad past our people were subjected to.

 In the aftermath of the OPDO-led regime’s rise to power under Abiy Ahmed in 2018, we – the resilient Somali people of Ethiopia’s Somali Region – made a deliberate and courageous choice for peace. We laid down our arms and pursued our inalienable rights through disciplined, nonviolent means, extending an extraordinary measure of trust to the government in Addis Ababa despite its long record of duplicity and bad faith. Anchored in principles of mutual respect and informed by our shared history of resistance to domination, we exhausted every conceivable avenue for reconciliation and justice.

That chapter of restraint has now come to a definitive end.

Our patience has been cynically abused. In place of dialogue, the regime has intensified repression, institutionalized exploitation, and unleashed policies that pose an existential threat to our people. What confronts us today is not mere misrule, but a calculated campaign aimed at erasure – one we will no longer endure in silence.

These crimes are neither incidental nor unprecedented. They represent the latest episode in a long continuum of state subjugation.

From the violent annexation of the Ogaden in the 19th Century to the post-independence conflicts of the 1960s and the devastation of the1977 Ogaden War, our people have endured relentless cycles of rebellion and repression. Time and again, Somali men and women stood firm in the face of mass atrocities and the systematic denial of self-determination. Even the much- heralded “peace” of 2018 – sold as a promise of autonomy and prosperity- has been exposed as a hollow façade, concealing accelerated land dispossession, resource plunder, and demographic engineering. Rather than healing old wounds, it has deepened our resolve.

The regime itself has sealed the gates of peace through its malice, contempt, and intransigence. Let this be stated without ambiguity: the era of futile negotiation is over. Our repeated overtures have been met only with dismissal and abuse. Today, existential dangers confront us openly. Yet we are not broken. The Somali people have demonstrated a level of forbearance few nations could be expected to sustain. Even the most cautious among us now recognize an inescapable truth: the hostility directed at our people by the Addis Ababa regime – driven by kleptocratic ambition and annihilatory intent – is profound, irredeemable, and unparalleled.

This, then, is our solemn call to collective resolve.

We call upon every Somali to rise with clarity of purpose and moral conviction, and to undertake the arduous but just path before us: the struggle to reclaim our rights, restore our dignity, and secure our future. We will strengthen unity among our own people and stand in principled solidarity with all who resist tyranny and domination. With steadfast determination, we will confront and dismantle the corrupt system that has entrenched itself in Addis Ababa.

Victory is not a matter of chance – it is a matter of will. AND THE WILL OF THE SOMALI PEOPLE IS UNBREAKABLE!