በቀለ ገሠሠ (ዶ/ር)

፩ኛ/ መንደርደሪያ፣

ብዙ ዓለማት ዞረን ዐይተናል። እግዚአብሔር አምላካችን ኢትዮጵያን የፈጠራት ሁሉን ነገር አሟልቶ ነው። የምድሯን ስፋትና ለምነት፣ የወንዞችና ሃይቆችዋን ብዛት፣ ንጹህ አየር፣ ደጋግ ህዝብ፣ ወዘተ ስንመለከት እጅግ በጣም ሃብታም አገር መሆን ነበረባት።

አልታደለችምና ዛሬ የምትገኝበትን የባሰ ሁኔታ ስንመለከት እጅግ በጣም እናዝናለን።

ጎሣን ከጎሳ ያጋጫሉ። የአማራ ህዝብ የትግሬ፣ የኦሮሞና የማንም ጎሣ ጠላት ሆኖ አያውቅም። ደጋግና እንግዳ ተቀባይ ህዝብ ነው። በማንኛውም ሥርዓት ሥር ጥሮ ግሮ ከመኖር በስተቀር ያገኘው አንዳችም ልዩ ጥቅም አልነበረም። ዛሬ ግን በገዛ ቀዬው እንኳን እንዳይኖር፣ አርሶ ነግዶ ልጆቹን እንዳያሳድግ ዘመቻ ሲካሄድበት ይታያል። ትምህርት ቤቶች ይዘጋሉ፣ የእምነት ቦታዎች ይደፈራሉ።

እነዚህን ከባድ ችግሮች እንደመቅረፍ ፈንታ ስለውሸት ምርጫ ሲወራ መስማት በጣም ያሳዝናል፣ ያሳፍራል።

፪ኛ/ የነፃ ምርጫ አስፈላጊነት፣

የኢትዮጵያ ህዝብ ነፃ  አገራዊ ምርጫን ሲጠማ ነው የኖረው።

የዲሞክራሲ ሥርዓት ምሶሶ ነፃ ምርጫ እንደሆነ ግልፅ ነው። ነፃ ምርጫ ከሌለ አምባገነንነት ይንሰራፋል፣ በውድ አገራችን ሲፈጸሙ የቆዮት አረመኔያዊ ጭፍጨፋዎች፣ ማፈናቀሎችና ዝርፊያዎች በዲሞክራሲ ሥርዓት እጦት ምክንያት ነው። 

፫ኛ/ የነፃ ምርጫ ቅድመ ሁኔታዎች፣

እውነተኛ ምርጫ ለማካሄድ፣

ሰላም ምስፈን አለበት፣
ነፃ የምርጫ ቦርድ መቋቋም አለበት፣
በየምርጫው ኬላ ላይ ገለልተኞች የሆኑ አገራዊና የውጪ ታዛቢዎች መገኘት አለባቸው።

፬ኛ/ አሁን ምን መደረግ አለበት?

መጀመሪያ ሁሉ-አቀፍ የሽግግር መንግሥት መቋቋም አለበት። ከፋፋዩ ሕገመንግሥ መለወጥ አለበት።
ወንጀለኞች ለፍርድ መቅረብ አለባቸው።

ከዚያ በኃላ ነፃና ፍትሐዊ ምርጫ ማካሄድ፣
ሰላም ማውረድና
እድገት ላይ ማተኮር ይኖርብናል።
እግዚአብሔር ይርዳን፣ ይታረቀን።

Given the Dire Situation, Thinking About Elections is Impossible

By Bekele Gessesse (PhD)

1. Introduction

We have travelled and seen much of the world. Almighty God created Ethiopia with everything she could possibly need. When looking at the vastness and fertility of her land, the abundance of her rivers and lakes, her clean air, and her generous people, she should have been an incredibly wealthy nation.

Unfortunately, she has been unlucky, and it is deeply saddening to witness the worsening conditions she finds herself in today.

They pit one ethnic group against another. The Amhara people have never been enemies of the Tigrayan, Oromo, or any other ethnic community. They are a kind and hospitable people. Under any regime, they have never received any special privileges, asking for nothing more than to live by working hard and honestly. Today, however, we see a campaign being waged against them, preventing them from even living in their own localities, or farming and trading to raise their children. Schools are being closed, and places of worship are being desecrated.

Instead of resolving these severe crises, it is deeply disheartening and shameful to hear talk of a sham election.

2. The Necessity of Free Elections

The people of Ethiopia have long thirsted for a free national election.

It is clear that free elections are the cornerstone of a democratic system. In the absence of free elections, tyranny flourishes. The barbaric massacres, displacements, and plundering that have been carried out in our beloved country are the direct result of a lack of a democratic system.

3. Preconditions for Free Elections

To conduct a genuine election:

 Peace must be established across the country.

 An independent electoral board must be set up.

 Neutral national and international observers must be present at every polling station.

4. What Must Be Done Now?

First and foremost, an all-inclusive transitional government must be established. The divisive constitution must be amended, and criminals must be brought to justice.

Only after these steps are taken can we: Conduct a free and fair election, Restore peace, and Focus on development.

May God help us and grant us His reconciliation.

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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Abiy Ahmed’s corridor megaprojects seduce the global influencer class while 43 per cent of Ethiopians sink below the poverty line—a politics of aesthetic modernisation masquerading as development

By E. Frashie

On a sweltering May afternoon in Addis Ababa, American streaming sensation Darren Watkins Jr. known to millions as iShowSpeed, walked barefoot through the newly paved Merkato district, livestreaming his gratitude to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed for the city’s “incredible transformation.” In January, global influencer Dylan Page arrived to similar fanfare, greeting Arsenal supporters and narrating the elegance of renovated riverside promenades to his international audience. Neither mentioned the 3,250 households displaced by a single corridor project. Neither addressed the fact that 43 per cent of Ethiopians now live below the poverty line.

The contrast is not incidental. It is the very architecture of the Prosperity Party’s political strategy what we might call the aesthetics of austerity: the deliberate cultivation of a modernised, globally legible urban facade, deployed to obscure the material deterioration of the nation itself.

The Narrative of Transformation

By any measure of infrastructure ambition, Addis Ababa’s corridor development project is formidable. Since 2019, the city administration has overseen the transformation of 88 kilometres of urban space, constructing walking paths, cycling lanes, playgrounds, museums, and riverside parks. The Economist recently observed that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s re-election in June 2026 is certain, but noted with considerable ambivalence that Ethiopia’s future is less so. This tension political inevitability coupled with systemic uncertainty sits at the heart of the urban modernisation project.

The government frames these corridors as more than infrastructure. They are, in the official lexicon, symbols of national dignity and pan-African aspiration. In August 2025, the Prime Minister described the completed Addis International Convention Centre–Goro–VIP Airport corridor as evidence of “a different vision and a renewed work culture” shaping Ethiopia’s urban transformation. The rhetoric is intoxicating: pedestrian walkways as democracy, green spaces as equity, modern boulevards as the infrastructure of freedom.

But the statistics are stark. A single corridor, the Piassa-Mexico-Sarbet-Gotera-Wollo Sefer stretch, cost the city $325 million to construct, displacing 3,250 households and 14,000 residents. The project required an expenditure of approximately €11.5 million per kilometre for 48 kilometres of street upgrade. For perspective: that same investment could have funded over 1,100 kilometres of federal road projects. Yet only five out of one hundred woredas in Addis Ababa enjoy continuous water supply.

The Influencer Machine

The arrival of international influencers represents a calculated element of the regime’s image management. In May 2026, the government hosted the inaugural African Social Media Influencers Summit in Addis Ababa, attracting 61 digital creators from 30 countries with a combined following of 321 million. An additional 120 Ethiopian content creators brought another 150 million followers into the equation, a total reach exceeding 470 million users.

The strategic logic is transparent: deploy the informal authority of the global creator economy to narrate Addis Ababa as Africa’s premier destination for top-tier international digital creators. In the language of the summit organisers, these influencers would serve as cultural ambassadors, reshaping global narratives about the continent. Data presented at the summit claimed that skewed global narratives cost Africa up to $4.2 billion annually, framing the influencer campaign not merely as tourism promotion but as continental economic necessity.

What was remarkable about the summit was what it omitted. The government provided these influencers with 24/7 VIP security during their stays, granted them curated access to gleaming new infrastructure, and ensured their livestreams and social media posts featured polished urban vistas. No creator was invited to the neighbourhoods of Kasanchiz, where residents are still seeking compensation for forced evictions. None were brought to Arat Kilo or Piassa, where the demolition of historic buildings erased cultural heritage for the sake of commercial corridors and glass towers.

The regime is, in essence, outsourcing legitimacy. By facilitating content creation from prestigious global creators, the government transforms the city’s modernised districts into a form of soft power a visual argument that this is what development looks like. The influencers, most of whom lack depth of knowledge about Ethiopia’s political economy or displacement crises, become unwitting validators of a gentrification project sold as continental pride.

Gentrification for the Global Elite

The second audience for Addis Ababa’s transformation is less visible but far more economically significant: wealthy expatriates, diplomats, and—increasingly, Middle Eastern capital seeking refuge from regional instability.

Marketing materials for Addis Ababa’s luxury real estate market are explicit about this segmentation. Bole, traditionally the expatriate district, now features mid-luxury and high-end developments explicitly marketed to high-net-worth individuals, expatriates, and businesses. Three-bedroom luxury apartments command rents of $1,000 to $3,000 monthly, with prices per square metre reaching 240,000 to 420,000 Ethiopian Birr at a time when the World Bank estimates the monthly minimum for subsistence living at 1,500 to 3,000 Birr.

The corridor projects have been instrumental in creating this market. By displacing low-income residents from historically mixed neighbourhoods and replacing them with commercial centres, glass towers, and upscale amenities, the government has effectively engineered demographic change. It is gentrification by state decree—not the organic process of market forces, but deliberate policy. One former urban planning official, speaking on condition of anonymity, described it bluntly: “You destroy one’s house in anticipation of better houses for someone else. It’s portrayed as development, as improvement. You take someone’s property and give it as an economic opportunity for the other one. What happened to the displaced person? Nothing, a very small amount of money.”

Critics on the ground have deployed a pointed neologism: Gazanchis the wholesale removal of a people in the name of cosmetic progress. The term draws a parallel to Gaza, evoking the forced displacement of a population to make way for elite luxury. In this rendering, Addis Ababa’s transformation is not merely urban development but spatial and economic ethnic cleansing, effected through planning rather than military force, but with outcomes equally devastating for the displaced.

The Poverty Crisis: The Suppressed Narrative

What makes the influencer campaign and the gentrification project particularly troubling is the catastrophic context against which they unfold.

Ethiopia’s poverty rate has surged from 33 per cent in 2016 to 39 per cent in 2021, and is projected to reach 43 per cent by the end of this year—a reversal of two decades of progress. The World Bank attributes this deterioration to internal and external challenges: the Tigray war, persistent droughts, pandemic aftershocks, and the macroeconomic reform shock that followed the government’s decision to float the Ethiopian Birr in late 2024.

The Birr’s devaluation has been catastrophic for ordinary households. The currency fell by approximately 90 per cent in the weeks following its float, introducing runaway inflation. Food prices have surged far beyond the purchasing power of static wages. Basic commodities coffee, sugar, meat, have become luxury items for much of the urban working class. A recent analysis noted that the cost of living has evolved from a chronic strain into an existential threat. Inflation officially moderated to 9.7 per cent by February 2026, but by April it had returned to double digits at 11.7 per cent. Food inflation climbed to 13.5 per cent—a figure that bears almost no relationship to the lived experience of families making impossible choices between paying rent, buying food, and medicating illness.

This economic devastation has been accompanied by an aggressive fiscal consolidation demanded by international creditors. The government has expanded tax bases, tightened enforcement, and reduced tax deductions precisely when ordinary citizens were experiencing income contraction. The effect is perverse: for a population spending the vast majority of disposable income on food, aggressive tax policies function as a form of penalty on survival.

Meanwhile, the government allocates hundreds of millions of dollars to corridor projects, $10 billion to a palace complex, and enormous sums to hosting international summits for influencers—events explicitly designed to showcase a city that most Ethiopians cannot afford to live in.

The Government’s Defence: Order and Progress

To be fair, the government’s position merits articulation. Officials argue that the corridor projects represent necessary modernisation, that they create employment, improve public health through better urban mobility, and position Ethiopia as a continent-leading force in urban transformation. They point to improved road infrastructure, reduced travel times, and the creation of public spaces that strengthen social cohesion. The government contends that the corridor model is being emulated across 75 cities nationwide, suggesting genuine demand for this approach to urban development.

Defenders note that private investment in luxury real estate generates tax revenue, creates construction jobs, and enhances the city’s global standing. They argue that attracting diaspora investment and wealthy expatriates is not merely symbols but substance, it brings foreign currency, technical expertise, and international connections that benefit the broader economy. The international influencer summit, from this perspective, is not vanity but smart branding: in an age of social media, image-shaping is consequential economics.

On the matter of displacement, officials acknowledge that relocation has been necessary but argue that affected residents receive compensation and that resettlement housing will ultimately benefit them through improved neighbourhoods. They further contend that growth will create jobs and trickle-down benefits that today’s gentrification is tomorrow’s shared prosperity.

Why This Argument Fails

These defences contain an element of truth but mistake correlation for causation and confuse elite dynamism with shared development.

First, the timing is ruinous. Launching a $325 million corridor project and a billion-dollar palace renovation at the moment when poverty is approaching 43 per cent and food inflation is double-digit is not bold governance; it is tone-deafness elevated to policy.

Second, the comparative opportunity cost is devastating. €11.5 million per kilometre of city beautification, whilst five out of every hundred urban neighbourhoods lack basic water supply, is not a resource allocation choice made in good faith toward development. It is a choice that prioritises the visibility of modernity over its substance.

Third, the research on gentrification in the Global South is clear: when middle-income and low-income residents are displaced and replaced by wealth that does not derive from within the local economy, the aggregate effect is not job creation but labour-market bifurcation. Newly constructed luxury apartments employ security guards, housekeepers, and service workers at minimal wages. The commercial spaces are franchised to international corporations. The benefits flow upward and outward, not to the displaced.

Finally, on the matter of compensation and resettlement: Amnesty International’s investigation in April 2025 documented that the government has forcibly evicted at least 872 people in Bole and Lemi Kura alone, without prior consultation, compensation, or provision of alternative housing. The government’s assertion that affected residents will ultimately benefit rings hollow when families are displaced with weeks’ notice, provided minimal compensation, and offered no genuine pathway back into the transformed neighbourhoods.

The Political Utility of Facades

The deepest critique of the corridor project is not economic but political. Gleaming infrastructure and international influencer endorsement serve a political function: they allow the regime to claim dynamism, modernity, and visionary leadership at precisely the moment when institutional legitimacy is eroding.

As The Economist noted, Abiy Ahmed’s re-election is certain, yet his re-election lacks democratic substance. Opposition boycotts, the exclusion of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, restrictions on campaign space, and the arrest of journalists mean that the June 2026 election will, like 2021, be a landslide victory composed largely of uncontested seats. The regime faces no genuine electoral threat.

But political certainty is not the same as legitimacy. It is achieved through institutional engineering, not consent. The corridor projects therefore serve a compensatory function: they provide the appearance of effective governance and national progress at a moment when actual governance has failed to deliver security, justice, or shared prosperity. They tell a story to international investors, to diaspora Ethiopians, and to the regime’s own supporters that this is what we have built, even if what most Ethiopians experience is deteriorating livelihoods.

The influencer campaign is the most naked expression of this strategy. By turning the city into a stage for global digital creators, the regime ensures that the international narrative about Ethiopia is written not by journalists investigating poverty and displacement, but by paid or incentivised cultural entrepreneurs who have neither the knowledge nor the motivation to investigate the regime’s record. The message sent to the world is simple: Ethiopia is modern, dynamic, and open for business. The message suppressed is more complicated: millions of citizens cannot afford to eat.

Conclusion: Architecture as Deceit

There is nothing inherently wrong with urban modernisation. Cities require investment, infrastructure, and vision. But infrastructure investments carry moral weight. They represent choices about whose lives matter, whose security is prioritised, and whose displacement is acceptable.

The Addis Ababa corridor project, viewed through the lens of this moral calculus, represents a choice: the choice to invest billions in boulevards, parks, and commercial spaces for a minority of wealthy residents whilst 43 per cent of Ethiopians live in poverty. It is the choice to stage-manage the city for international influencers and diaspora investors whilst displaced residents live in emergency shelters. It is the choice to narrate modernity through architect’s renderings rather than through the substantive improvements in water, healthcare, education, and security that ordinary Ethiopians require.

Abiy Ahmed will be re-elected in June. His government will continue to promote Addis Ababa as Africa’s premier city. International influencers will continue to livestream from polished corridors, their 470 million followers watching in admiration. Meanwhile, the real story of Ethiopia:-one of deepening poverty, insecurity, and institutional dysfunction will continue to be written in displaced neighbourhoods, households choosing between medicine and food, and young people seeking any route out of the country.

The city’s gleaming new face is not a sign of progress. It is a mask. And it is masks, not substance, that sustain faltering regimes.

The Ethiopian Tribune | Analysis from the Horn of Africa

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editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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By Professor GIRMA BERHANU

For more than half a century, Ethiopians have endured cycles of drought, famine, and mass starvation. A German scholar who devoted his career to studying Ethiopia’s long history of devastating famines once observed that one factor driving the catastrophic death toll — particularly in the northern regions — was cultural: a profound sense of dignity and pride that made people ashamed to beg, even as they faced death.

An American senator who visited the famine-stricken areas, including the notorious camps at Korem, was arrested by the eerie silence of the dying. He watched men, women, and children standing patiently in line for food distribution and remarked with quiet awe, “What grace, what discipline.” He reflected that in his own country, people reduced to such desperation might erupt in chaos. Ethiopians, by contrast, absorbed their suffering in silence — with a composure that was both humbling and heartbreaking. This silence persists, but the geography of catastrophe has shifted.

What we are witnessing today is something historically without precedent: famine and starvation unfolding inside Addis Ababa itself — not in remote villages or drought-scorched highlands, but in the streets of the capital. And it is happening with a cruelty all its own. The dying do not look like the famished of humanitarian crises past. They are well-dressed, composed, outwardly dignified — good-looking men and women walking slowly toward death in pressed clothing, in broad daylight, past skyscrapers and manicured city parks. Far from being a natural disaster, this is a man-made one.

As part of this ongoing investigation, I sought access to the institutions that absorb this hidden catastrophe. I approached hospitals across Addis Ababa and conducted interviews with the directors of morgues where unidentified bodies are held. The findings are staggering: at a single hospital, a minimum of ten bodies collected from the city’s streets arrive every day. Many are never claimed. The municipality buries them in silence — as invisibly as they died.

This study is an indictment. It seeks to strip away the gleaming façade of a city marketed as a symbol of African modernity and expose the system behind the spectacle: an ethnic apartheid structure that has engineered extreme inequality into a mechanism of death. In today’s Addis Ababa, the divide between the privileged and the dispossessed is no longer merely economic — it is the difference between living and dying. This is the city that the skyscrapers were built to hide.

GIRMA BERHANU
Professor

GOTHENBURG UNIVERSITY

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On the thirty-sixth anniversary of the coup d’état that almost toppled Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian Tribune examines the fatal miscalculations of the officer class, the cascading logic of internal betrayal, and the historiographical void that has erased these generals from national memory.

On This Day: Thirty-Six Years Since the Failed Coup

16 May 1989 (8 Ginbot 1981 EC): The Officers Who Challenged and Fell

The institutions of a dictatorship reveal themselves most clearly at the moment of their rupture. On the morning of 16 May 1989, when a faction of senior military officers gathered in the Ministry of Defence to plot the removal of Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Ethiopian military hierarchy fractured along a line that would prove both revealing and tragic: the distinction between formal authority and actual power.

Major General Merid Negussie, the Chief of Staff, presided over a war room consumed by debate: should the dictator’s aircraft be intercepted before clearing Ethiopian airspace? Should decisive, irreversible action be taken? Or should caution prevail, institutional norms be respected, civilian lives protected? The paralysis that followed that debate became the coup d’état epitaph. Within hours, Mengistu’s aircraft cleared the border. The window of opportunity slammed shut. And a conspiracy that had assembled the rank and authority to seize the state found itself, quite suddenly, fighting for survival instead of power.

What followed was a cascade of failure and fratricide. In Asmara, Major General Demissie Bulto and his senior staff were executed by their own troops. In Addis Ababa, Major General Merid Negussie and Major General Amha Desta took their own lives. Thirty or more senior officers were killed, imprisoned, disappeared into the interrogation apparatus, or hunted down and shot whilst fleeing. The coup that was meant to challenge Mengistu’s dictatorship instead became an occasion for the dictatorship to purge its own officer corps with ruthless efficiency.

Yet for three and a half decades, this history has been largely erased from Ethiopian public memory. There are no memorials. There are no sustained historical investigations. The names of the officers who died whether by suicide in the Ministry of Defence, execution by their own soldiers in Asmara, or torture in the interrogation centres of the Derg regime have faded into silence. Only the families of these men carry the memory, and even that memory is constrained by the political interests of successive Ethiopian regimes that have found it inconvenient to memorialise a failed coup attempt.

This silence is not accidental. It is the product of choices: the choice of the post-1991 EPRDF regime to construct a narrative in which the Derg was uniformly villainous and the insurgencies uniformly heroic, a binary that left no room for the complicated reality of officers who were simultaneously perpetrators within the dictatorship and, in their final acts, challengers to it. But a complete historical reckoning demands more complexity, more honesty, more willingness to grapple with the actual mechanisms by which authoritarian regimes function and ultimately decay.

The coup of 16-18 May 1989 failed militarily, but its historical significance lies precisely in its failure. It revealed the Derg regime to be institutionally vulnerable, dependent on terror to maintain control even over its own officer corps. It demonstrated that a significant faction of the military hierarchy had concluded that Mengistu’s dictatorship was unsustainable. And it contributed, however indirectly, to the regime’s eventual collapse by forcing the Derg to consume resources and institutional energy in internal purges rather than in effective counterinsurgency operations against the TPLF and EPLF.

The following essay undertakes a systematic examination of the coup attempt: its strategic miscalculations, the cascading failures in command coherence, the internal betrayals that sealed its fate, and the purges that followed. It offers no heroes, no redemptive narrative. It asks, instead, that we remember these officers not as saviours but as complex historical actors whose attempt to challenge the regime they served, however imperfectly executed, deserves to be part of the permanent historical record.

On this thirty-sixth anniversary, the names of Major General Merid Negussie, Major General Demissie Bulto, and the thirty or more officers who died in the coup attempt and its aftermath deserve remembrance. Not to celebrate them, but to complete the historical record. Not to deny their complicity in the Derg regimes brutality, but to acknowledge the full complexity of how authoritarian systems function and how, finally, they come to an end.

The Editorial Board

The Ethiopian Tribune

The Paralysis in the War Room

At the precise moment when Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam’s aircraft crossed Ethiopian airspace on 16 May 1989, the architects of his potential overthrow sat in a Ministry of Defence conference room consumed by a debate that would define the coup’s fatal trajectory. Major General Merid Negussie, the Chief of Staff, presided over a military hierarchy fractured not by ideological conviction but by competing calculations of legitimacy, institutional consequence, and moral restraint.

The strategic divide was stark. One faction emboldened, decisive, willing to absorb the costs of decisive action advocated for the immediate termination of the dictator: either an air strike against the presidential aircraft or a forced landing in Asmara, where Mengistu could be detained and presented as a fait accompli before international and domestic audiences. This was the language of revolution: swift, irreversible, the kind of action that forecloses negotiation and establishes new facts on the ground.

The opposing faction seized upon a different calculus: the protection of civilian lives on the departing aircraft, the preservation of Ethiopian Airlines’ international standing, and an implicit recognition that shooting down one’s own head of state, however, despised carries a reputational cost that transcends the immediate political moment. This was the language of institutional stewardship, of officers conscious of their role as custodians of state apparatus rather than revolutionary architects.

The debate itself is instructive. It reveals a military officer corps that had not yet crossed the psychological threshold required for successful coup execution. Revolutionary movements, whether they succeed or fail share a common prerequisite: the willingness of the conspirators to burn the bridges behind them, to commit acts of such magnitude and moral weight that retreat becomes impossible. The hesitation over Mengistu’s aircraft was not a failure of nerve alone; it was symptomatic of deeper institutional ambivalence about the legitimacy of their own enterprise.

By the time this internal debate reached its conclusion, the window of opportunity had sealed. Mengistu’s aircraft cleared Ethiopian airspace. The coup, as a coherent political project, was already hollow not yet defeated militarily, but spiritually compromised by its own architects’ inability to commit fully to the violence required to see it through.

The North Moves on False Intelligence: Major General Demissie Bulto and the Asmara Gambit

In Asmara, the commander of the Second Revolutionary Army, Major General Demissie Bulto, operated on faulty intelligence. Receiving early signals from the capital that Mengistu had been successfully removed, he mobilised with a speed and decisiveness that should have been the template for Addis Ababa. Demissie seized the local radio station and broadcast a declaration: the regime had fallen. The regime was history. The revolution was underway.

The tactical logic was sound. With Mengistu apparently neutralised in the capital, Demissie deployed the elite 102nd Airborne Division southward aboard Antonov transports under the command of Major General Kumlachew Dejene. The strike force was meant to consolidate control of critical infrastructure the state broadcaster, telecommunications hubs, airports, the military nerve centres that had sustained Mengistu’s grip. This was the operational implementation of what the war room in Addis Ababa had theoretically imagined: the seizure of state apparatus before the regime could reconstitute itself.

But Demissie and his subordinates were executing a plan based on a fiction. The war room in Addis Ababa had not moved decisively. Mengistu was not neutralised; he was airborne and returning. And by the time this reality became clear in Asmara, the 102nd Airborne was already committed, already in transit, already the vanguard of a coup that had no head, no political leadership, no coherent command structure to support its operational objectives.

This is the anatomy of military collapse under pressure: a coalition of conspirators, each operating on partial intelligence and optimistic assumptions, each believing that the others have secured their sector of the plan. When one component fails when the war room in Addis Ababa paralysed itself over the question of whether to shoot down an aircraft the entire edifice becomes a series of isolated uprisings with no centre of gravity.

The Architecture of Betrayal: Tesfaye Wolde Selassie and the Internal Compromise

Colonel Tesfaye Wolde Selassie, the Minister of State Security, became the coup’s executioner. His betrayal was not merely tactical; it was symptomatic of a deeper institutional reality that the conspirators had failed to address: the security apparatus of the Mengistu regime, despite its brutality and paranoia, maintained layers of counterintelligence so dense and so ruthlessly enforced that penetration at the highest levels was nearly impossible to conceal.

Tesfaye’s role illuminates a fundamental weakness of the coup: it was an officers’ plot without the structural capacity to neutralise the security state. The Derg regime, whatever its military incompetence in the field against the TPLF and EPLF, had constructed an internal security apparatus that was exquisitely sensitive to elite deviance. Every senior officer was monitored, every coalition watched, every meeting of consequence filtered through informants whose survival depended on their vigilance.

Tesfaye’s tip-off to loyalist forces particularly to Captain Mengistu Gemechu’s Special Protection Brigade activated the regime’s immune system. The conspirators, for all their rank and institutional position, had not grasped a fundamental reality about authoritarian militaries: position and loyalty are not synonymous. A general can command troops in theory and still be isolated politically. A colonel controlling the presidential guard can be more consequential than a major general commanding distant garrisons.

This asymmetry of power between titular military rank and actual control over coercive assets destroyed the coup. By the time Mengistu’s aircraft touched down in Addis Ababa, the conspirators in the Ministry of Defence had already lost control of the narrative, the capital’s security apparatus, and any credible claim to legitimacy based on institutional authority. What remained was isolated pockets of resistance, each cut off from the others, each fighting a battle already lost at the level of strategic coordination.

The Deaths in Addis Ababa: Suicide, Execution, and the Collapse of Authority

The suicides of Major General Merid Negussie and Major General Amha Desta occupy a particular place in the emotional and political archaeology of this failed coup. These were not desperate men acting under threat; they were senior officers who, in the privacy of the Ministry of Defence, chose to end their lives rather than face capture and interrogation. The choice itself speaks to their understanding of what awaited them: not trial, but torture; not imprisonment, but systematic annihilation.

Merid Negussie, the Chief of Staff, turned his service pistol on himself in the same conference room where, hours earlier, he had presided over the debate about whether to shoot down Mengistu’s aircraft. The irony is almost unbearable: the man tasked with exercising command authority over the coup’s execution ended his life in the very space where his paralysis had become institutionalised. His suicide was, in some sense, the final acknowledgement of that institutional failure a recognition that the decision not to act decisively had cascading consequences that could no longer be reversed or reframed.

Amha Desta, the Air Force Commander, followed Merid into death by similar means. The symmetry of their deaths both senior officers, both taking their own lives within hours, both in the Ministry of Defence suggests a shared understanding of their fate and a collective decision that death on their own terms was preferable to the machinery of Mengistu’s interrogation centres.

Major General Fanta Belay, the Minister of Industry, attempted a different strategy: flight. For four days he evaded security forces, hiding deep within the Ministry of Defence compound a bunker of sorts, a man trapped in the very institution he had tried to seize. But physical hiding could not obscure institutional vulnerability. He was discovered, arrested, and days later killed under “mysterious circumstances” inside the Maekelawi central investigation prison. There is nothing mysterious about Maekelawi; it was the Derg’s primary torture centre, a facility whose existence was synonymous with the regime’s capacity for systematic brutality.

Major General Aberra Abebe, the head of military operations and a key instigator, chose armed resistance. He shot and wounded Major General Hailegiorgis Hailemariam, the Minister of Defence, when the latter entered the compound to negotiate with the mutineers. Aberra managed to escape the initial security cordons, scaling the compound wall and vanishing into the capital’s urban landscape. For months he eluded the regime’s manhunt a fugitive general in his own capital, reduced to hiding with relatives, stripped of his institutional position and his ability to exercise command. When he was finally cornered by police at a relative’s house in Addis Ababa, he died as so many of the conspirators did: attempting to escape over another wall, gunned down in flight.

These deaths suicides, executions, killings “under mysterious circumstances,” men shot while fleeing tell a coherent story about the Derg regime’s approach to institutional deviance: there was no mechanism for peaceful resolution, no institutional pathway for the conspirators to surrender with dignity or to expect trial and imprisonment. The regime’s logic was absolute: eliminate the threat, erase the evidence, move forward as though the attempted coup had been merely a temporary disruption of order rather than a fundamental challenge to the regime’s legitimacy.

The Purge in Asmara: Fratricide and the Collapse of Command Coherence

In Asmara, the mutiny sustained itself for three days before the logic of defeat became undeniable. But the manner of its final collapse soldiers of the 102nd Airborne Division executing their own commanders reveals something deeper than mere military defeat: it was the complete disintegration of command authority and the triumph of survival instinct over institutional loyalty.

Major General Demissie Bulto and his senior staff were executed in what the historical record tersely describes as “a hail of gunfire.” The clinical language obscures the reality: soldiers shooting their commanders, junior ranks eliminating officers whose authority they had accepted hours or days earlier. This is not the behaviour of a military unit following orders; it is the behaviour of men attempting to survive by eliminating evidence of their own participation in the coup attempt.

The soldiers of the 102nd Airborne faced a choice with no good options: they could remain loyal to their commanders and face execution as coup conspirators, or they could betray those commanders and attempt to escape culpability by demonstrating their own loyalty to the regime through fratricide. The choice, from a pure survival standpoint, was clear. The result was that the senior leadership of the coup Demissie Bulto, the Brigadier Generals who commanded the divisions and corps, the colonels and lieutenant colonels who formed the officer corps of the northern rebellion were systematically eliminated by the very troops they commanded.

This moment the killing of Demissie and his staff by their own soldiers crystallises the fundamental instability of military conspiracies that do not command overwhelming support from the rank and file. When enlisted men and junior officers must choose between loyalty to their immediate commanders and survival, when that choice is made under conditions of imminent defeat and the knowledge that the regime is about to reassert total control, the outcome is inevitable: the officer corps becomes expendable, a sacrifice made to preserve the lives of men with no choice in the conspiracy.

Major General Kumlachew Dejene, who had flown in with the 102nd Airborne as the operational commander, managed to escape. As communications collapsed and the Asmara operation disintegrated into chaos, he went into hiding. Unlike Demissie and the other senior commanders, Kumlachew possessed the mobility and perhaps the connections necessary to flee the country. He eventually secured asylum in the United States, becoming the sole surviving general of the coup’s upper echelon a survival purchased, perhaps, by his ability to separate himself from the final catastrophe in Asmara and to extract himself before the killing began.

The Cascade of Names: Eighteen Officers Executed in Asmara

The list of eighteen officers executed in Asmara from Brigadier General Afework Wolde Michael, the Chief Emergency Administrator for Eritrea, down through the hierarchy to Captain Getahun Girma, the Special Assistant to the SRA Commander represents the institutional destruction of the Second Revolutionary Army’s officer corps. These were not minor figures; they were the senior administrators and operational commanders of the Derg’s military presence in the north.

Brigadier General Taye Balakir, the Chief of the Revolutionary Police in Eritrea, was executed. Brigadier General Tadesse Tessema, Head of Operations of the SRA, was executed. Brigadier General Worku Chernet, Head of Politics, was executed. The catalogue continues: Brigadier General Nigussie Zergaw (Asmara Air Force Commander), Brigadier General Kebede Mehari (Administration), Brigadier General Tegene Bekele (Operations), each one stripped of rank and institutional position and killed in the final purge.

What is striking about this list is not merely its length but its comprehensiveness. These were not marginal officers whose elimination left the military apparatus intact; these were the senior administrative and operational cadres of the northern command. Their elimination in a single purge represented the systematic decapitation of one of the Derg’s major military organisations. The fact that they were killed by their own troops in Asmara rather than by loyalist forces under Mengistu’s direct control suggests something even more destabilising: the regime did not need to send execution squads to the north. The collapse of command authority was so complete that soldiers and junior officers, facing the choice between their commanders’ failure and their own survival, chose survival through fratricide.

The Arrests in Addis Ababa: Institutional Capture and the Machinery of Interrogation

The twelve senior officers arrested by Captain Mengistu Gemechu’s Special Protection Brigade in the Ministry of Defence on 18 May 1989 represent a different category of fate. Unlike their counterparts in Asmara, they were taken alive captured, imprisoned, subjected to the machinery of interrogation and state control that the Derg had perfected over seventeen years.

Major General Hailu Gebre Michael, Commander of the Ground Forces; Major General Worku Zewde, Commissioner of the Police Force; Major General Alemayehu Desta, Deputy Commander of the Ground Forces these were men at the apex of the military hierarchy, officers whose positions placed them at the intersection of power, intelligence, and command authority. Their arrest was not merely a military matter; it was a political event that signified the regime’s absolute control over even the most senior echelons of the officer corps.

The question of what happened to these men after their arrest is less explicitly documented in the historical record than the deaths in Asmara or the suicides in the Ministry of Defence, but the silence itself is instructive. Men of this rank and position, arrested by the Derg regime, were not released. They were not tried in open proceedings. They entered the machinery of the interrogation state and disappeared into it either executed in secret, or maintained in imprisonment until the regime itself collapsed in 1991, or eliminated in the final purges that preceded the EPRDF’s military victory.

The arrest of these twelve officers demonstrated a fundamental asymmetry within the coup attempt: while the conspirators had sufficient military rank to pose a threat to the regime, they did not have sufficient control of the coercive apparatus to neutralise that threat before it materialised. Captain Mengistu Gemechu’s Special Protection Brigade a unit of perhaps a few hundred men proved more decisive in determining the coup’s fate than the combined command authority of a dozen generals.

The Cascade of Failure: Why the Coup Collapsed and What It Reveals About the Derg’s Vulnerability

The 18 May coup attempt failed not because of military incompetence in the tactical sense, but because of institutional fracture at the moment of maximum consequence. The conspirators possessed rank, they possessed command positions, they possessed access to military assets. What they lacked was coherence: a unified strategy for the moment of execution, a shared understanding of the costs they were willing to bear, and a command structure resilient enough to sustain operations when the initial plan collapsed.

The fatal decision the decision not to shoot down Mengistu’s aircraft reveals the deeper problem. This was not a decision imposed by external circumstances; it was a choice made by the coup’s senior leadership in the Ministry of Defence war room. The choice to preserve civilian lives, to protect Ethiopian Airlines’ reputation, was a conscious prioritisation of institutional norms over revolutionary necessity. In the context of an attempted coup d’état, such prioritisation is fatal. A revolution that cannot commit fully to the violence required to succeed is not a revolution; it is an institutional grievance masquerading as a coup.

Once that decision was made once the window of opportunity passed and Mengistu’s aircraft cleared Ethiopian airspace the coup was already lost in the only way that mattered: politically. The subsequent military operations in Addis Ababa and Asmara were not the execution of a coherent plan but the unravelling of an already-compromised enterprise. Demissie Bulto in Asmara and the junior conspirators in the capital were executing a plan that had already been abandoned by its senior architects. They were acting on outdated intelligence. They were trying to consolidate a victory that had never materialised.

And yet, the coup’s failure should not obscure its historical significance. The attempt revealed the Derg regime to be profoundly vulnerable not in its external military capacity (which would be challenged more effectively by the TPLF and EPLF in the field), but in its internal cohesion. A significant faction of the senior officer corps, including the Chief of Staff and major operational commanders, had concluded that the Mengistu regime was unsustainable and that military coup was the appropriate response. This was not a fringe conspiracy; this was an institutional challenge to the regime’s legitimacy mounted from within the military hierarchy itself.

The regime’s response systematic execution, torture, the elimination of an entire generation of senior officers was not a sign of strength. It was a sign of desperation: a dictatorship forced to destroy significant portions of its own officer corps to maintain control. Every senior officer killed in the purge that followed the coup was a military asset eliminated, a command position vacated, a potential source of resistance to the regime removed through extrajudicial killing rather than institutional reform or political compromise.

The Unspoken Consequence: How the Coup’s Failure Enabled the Insurgencies

The 18 May coup attempt, though it failed militarily, had a profound and paradoxical effect on the Derg regime’s capacity to resist the insurgencies that would ultimately destroy it. The purge that followed the coup eliminated a significant portion of the officer corps precisely at the moment when the TPLF was consolidating its military position in the north and the EPLF was preparing for the final phase of the struggle for Eritrean independence.

By executing or imprisoning the commanders of the Second Revolutionary Army and the senior staff in Addis Ababa, the Mengistu regime decapitated its own northern command structure. The officers who replaced Demissie Bulto and the other purged commanders were not chosen for their military competence; they were chosen for their loyalty—which is to say, for their demonstrated unwillingness to challenge the regime’s authority regardless of the military consequences. A military force led by politically reliable officers rather than competent commanders is a military force in decline.

Moreover, the regime’s need to deploy units to suppress the coup attempt and to maintain security in Addis Ababa reduced the military resources available for the counterinsurgency effort in the north. Troops that might have been deployed against the TPLF were instead employed in hunting down fugitive generals and suppressing residual pockets of dissent. The regime’s institutional energy, in the months following the coup attempt, was directed inward toward purges, interrogations, the elimination of suspected coup sympathisers rather than outward toward the insurgencies that were systematically expanding their control of territory.

The TPLF and EPLF did not defeat the Derg regime primarily through superior military technology or overwhelming numerical advantage; they defeated it through the regime’s progressive institutional decay and its inability to sustain a coherent counterinsurgency strategy in the face of internal threats. The 18 May coup, though it failed, accelerated that decay. It revealed the regime’s vulnerability, it forced the regime to consume resources in internal purges, and it demonstrated to military officers throughout the hierarchy that challenging Mengistu’s authority however disastrously was at least a conceivable option.

By 1991, when the TPLF entered Addis Ababa, the Derg’s officer corps had been devastated by purges, mutinies, and the cascading effects of seventeen years of civil conflict. The regime that fell was not defeated by an overwhelmingly superior insurgency; it was a regime that had systematically destroyed its own institutional coherence in the pursuit of absolute internal control. The coup of 18 May 1989, in this sense, was not an aberration but a symptom of a decay process that was already well advanced and that would prove terminal.

The Historiographical Void: Why We Have Forgotten Thirty Generals

Thirty-six years have passed. The officers executed in Asmara are dead. The generals who shot themselves in the Ministry of Defence are dead. Kumlachew Dejene, the sole survivor of the coup’s senior leadership, resides in American exile. Mengistu Haile Mariam, still living in Zimbabwe, remains unaccountable for the seventeen years of his brutal regime a dictatorship that would eventually claim perhaps 100,000 lives through war, famine, and political terror.

And yet, the names of these officers thirty-six generals and senior officers whose deaths were directly caused by their attempt to challenge Mengistu’s regime have largely vanished from Ethiopian public memory. There are no memorials. There are no official ceremonies of remembrance. There is no sustained historical scholarship examining their institutional roles, their strategic miscalculations, their personal trajectories from senior rank to execution or exile.

This historiographical void is not accidental. It is the product of specific political choices made in the post-1991 era. The EPRDF regime, which succeeded the Derg and governed Ethiopia until 2018, had no interest in memorialising a failed coup attempt by Derg officers. Such memorialisation might have complicated the EPRDF’s narrative of absolute moral clarity a narrative in which the Derg was uniformly villainous and the insurgencies uniformly heroic. The existence of officers who had attempted to overthrow Mengistu, who had died in that attempt, who might have been portrayed as victims of a dictatorial regime they had tried to challenge, would have complicated that narrative.

Moreover, there is the uncomfortable question of institutional continuity. Some of the officers who survived the coup some of the conspirators who were arrested but not executed eventually made their peace with the post-1991 regime. Some may have entered the EPRDF’s own military hierarchy. To memorialise the coup would have been to force uncomfortable questions about the relationships between the old regime’s officer corps and the new regime’s security apparatus. It was easier, politically and institutionally, to let the names fade.

And so the void persists. Families of the executed officers have their memories, their private grief, their understanding of what was lost. But the public record is thin. The historical scholarship is sparse. The names appear in documents archived in foreign institutions but are absent from the dominant narratives of Ethiopian history that are taught in schools, discussed in media, enshrined in official memory.

What the Coup Reveals About Military Authority and Revolutionary Change

The failed coup of 18 May 1989 illuminates a fundamental reality about military hierarchies under authoritarian rule: institutional position—rank, command authority, access to resources—is not synonymous with power in the moment of revolutionary change. The coup’s conspirators possessed almost all the traditional markers of military authority: they were generals and brigadier generals, they commanded major units, they had access to troops and equipment. Yet they were defeated by a captain commanding a presidential guard unit and a colonel in the security apparatus.

This inversion of hierarchical authority reveals the distorting effects of authoritarian centralisation. In a normal military structure, the Chief of Staff outranks a captain and can issue orders that the captain must obey. But in the Derg regime, as in many authoritarian militaries, the formal hierarchy was subordinate to a parallel hierarchy of loyalty and personal proximity to the dictator. Captain Mengistu Gemechu’s control of the Special Protection Brigade mattered more than Major General Merid Negussie’s formal position as Chief of Staff because proximity to Mengistu was the true basis of power.

This is not a new insight in the study of authoritarian militaries. It is a pattern repeated across multiple regimes: from Latin American juntas to Middle Eastern militaries to post-Soviet security states. But it is a pattern that bears repeating, particularly in the context of the coup’s failure. The conspirators appear to have miscalculated the extent to which formal military authority had been hollowed out by the Derg’s system of personalised control. They believed that their rank and command positions would be sufficient to overcome regime resistance. They did not fully account for the fact that Mengistu had spent seventeen years constructing a security apparatus that was explicitly designed to prevent officers from translating formal authority into effective power against the dictator.

The Ethics of Institutional Resistance Under Dictatorship

The coup of 18 May raises a set of difficult ethical and political questions that Ethiopian historiography has largely avoided. These officers men like Merid Negussie, Amha Desta, Demissie Bulto, Aberra Abebe were senior figures in a regime that had committed atrocities. They had commanded forces engaged in counter-insurgency operations that involved aerial bombardment of civilian areas, mass violence, systematic torture. They were not innocent men victimised by a dictator; they were beneficiaries of and participants in a brutal dictatorship.

And yet, they attempted to overthrow that dictatorship apparently motivated, at least in part, by dissatisfaction with Mengistu’s personalised control, his military incompetence against the insurgencies, his destruction of military discipline and institutional coherence. This creates a moral paradox: we can acknowledge the coup plotters as complicit in the regime’s brutality while also recognising their attempt to challenge it as an important institutional act.

This paradox is important because it reflects a deeper truth about authoritarian systems: they typically collapse not through the virtuous resistance of entirely innocent actors, but through the defection of insiders who have been participants in the regime and who have come to believe that the regime is no longer sustainable or defensible. The coup of 18 May was not a popular uprising; it was an institutional challenge mounted by men who had benefited from the regime and who had only belatedly come to the conclusion that its continuation was untenable.

This does not absolve them of responsibility for their prior participation in the regime’s brutality. But it does suggest that any serious historical reckoning with the Derg era must grapple with the internal decomposition of the regime—the process by which even senior officers came to conclude that Mengistu’s dictatorship had become insustainable. That reckoning cannot be reduced to a simple narrative of clear-cut heroes and villains. It must account for the ambiguity of men who were simultaneously perpetrators and, in their final acts, challengers of the system they had helped to sustain.

Conclusion: The Vanished Generation and the Incompleteness of Ethiopian Memory

Thirty-six years after the 18 May coup attempt, the names of the officers who died in that attempt remain largely absent from Ethiopian public consciousness. This is not because their deaths were insignificant; it is because their significance has been obscured by the political interests of successive regimes and the historiographical choices of the scholars who have documented the Derg era.

The coup itself was a failure—militarily, politically, institutionally. The conspirators miscalculated. They hesitated at the crucial moment. They operated on faulty intelligence. They were betrayed by men in their own ranks. And they died by suicide, by execution, by killing in flight, by torture in interrogation centres as a consequence of those miscalculations and that failure.

Yet the coup’s failure should not obscure its historical meaning. It revealed the Derg regime to be institutionally vulnerable, dependent on terror to maintain control over even its own officer corps. It demonstrated that a significant faction of the military hierarchy had concluded that Mengistu’s dictatorship was unsustainable. And it contributed, however indirectly, to the regime’s eventual collapse by forcing the Derg to consume resources and institutional energy in internal purges rather than in effective counterinsurgency operations against the TPLF and EPLF.

The families of these officers the wives and children of executed generals, the relatives of men who shot themselves in the Ministry of Defence, the dependents of officers who vanished into the interrogation system carry this history in memory even as the public record has largely forgotten it. This remembrance is important, not because it absolves the coup plotters of their complicity in the Derg regime’s brutality, but because it preserves a more complex and honest understanding of how authoritarian systems function and how they ultimately decay.

Ethiopia’s national memory remains incomplete as long as this history remains obscured. A reckoning with the Derg era that acknowledges only the regime’s external enemies the TPLF, the EPLF, the popular resistance to dictatorship while ignoring the internal decomposition symbolised by the failed coup is a reckoning that fails to confront the full complexity of how the regime actually functioned and ultimately collapsed.

On this thirty-sixth anniversary, the names of Major General Merid Negussie, Major General Amha Desta, Major General Demissie Bulto, and the thirty or so other officers who died in the coup attempt deserve to be more than footnotes in foreign archives or entries in genealogical records of private family grief. They deserve to be part of the public historical record not as heroes, but as complex actors whose attempt to challenge the regime they served, however flawed and ultimately disastrous, revealed fundamental truths about the nature of the dictatorship that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991.

That remembrance is not a betrayal of the insurgents who ultimately defeated the Derg. It is, rather, a completion of the historical record an acknowledgement that authoritarian regimes do not collapse through the actions of their external enemies alone, but through the internal contradictions that force even their most privileged functionaries to conclude that the system is no longer defensible. The coup of 18 May 1989 was one such moment of internal reckoning. Its failure was tragic. But its historical significance demands that we remember it honestly, in all its ambiguity and complexity, as part of the larger story of how Ethiopia’s military dictatorship ultimately came to an end.

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The Ethiopian Tribune publishes this essay on the thirty-sixth anniversary of the 18 May 1989 coup attempt in recognition of the officers whose attempt to challenge the Mengistu regime, however imperfectly executed, remains a significant moment in Ethiopia’s institutional and political history. The names of those who died whether by their own hand, by execution, or by fratricide deserve to remain in the public record as a reminder of the human costs of dictatorship and the institutional fragility of authoritarian rule.

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How Great Powers Play Kingmakers While Pretending to Promote Democracy

By Sewasew Teklemariam Ethiopian Tribune Columnist

Last week, the United States State Department Bureau of African Affairs released a carefully-worded statement regarding ‘productive and wide-ranging meetings’ with the Ethiopian delegation, led by Foreign Minister Gedion Timotheos, for the U.S. Ethiopia Bilateral Structured Dialogue. The language was immaculate. The conversations were constructive. The commitment to regional stability was shared.

One might imagine that somewhere in a mahogany-lined conference room, genuine regional breakthroughs had been negotiated. That misunderstandings had been clarified. That the intractable geopolitical problems of the Horn of Africa, water security, humanitarian catastrophe, Iranian regional influence, had moved measurably closer to resolution.

What actually transpired was an exhibition in diplomatic theatre of such refined quality that it merits examination not as a breakthrough, but as a perfect specimen of how great-power politics operates in the twenty-first century Horn of Africa. Every phrase was chosen to signify commitment without prescribing action. Every topic was discussed in a manner that guaranteed continued disagreement. Every statement of ‘shared values’ masked fundamentally incompatible interests.

And in this theatre, one must understand, lies the actual story of how the region will continue to be shaped, not by democratic impulses, not by humanitarian concern, but by the cold calculus of strategic advantage.

The Language Game: What 'Constructive Dialogue' Actually Means

Begin with the statement itself. The US-Africa Bureau noted that discussions covered three primary areas: the Nile River and the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), Sudan peace efforts, and Red Sea maritime security. Each merits unpacking, for what is unsaid is often more revelatory than what appears in print.

The GERD: Five Years of ‘Constructive’ Stalemate

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam represents one of the continent’s most significant infrastructure projects a 74-billion-cubic-metre reservoir designed to generate approximately 15,000 gigawatt-hours of electricity annually, critical to Ethiopia’s industrialisation and energy security.1

It is also, from Egypt’s perspective, an existential threat. Cairo, which depends on the Nile for approximately 95 per cent of its freshwater supply, has consistently argued that rapid filling of the GERD’s reservoir threatens downstream water availability.2Sudan, caught between the two, worries about both dam safety and water flow management.

Since 2020, there have been numerous diplomatic initiatives. The African Union has hosted talks. International mediators have proposed frameworks. Egypt has threatened military action. Ethiopia has proceeded with dam operations. And the United States, which has no water in the Nile but considerable diplomatic influence in Cairo, has expressed repeated ‘concern’ while offering no binding mechanism to resolve the dispute.

That the US and Ethiopia were having ‘constructive conversations’ about the GERD tells us precisely nothing about what either party actually wants. It is diplomatic code for: ‘We disagree profoundly, but we are both rich enough and powerful enough to afford politeness.’

The substantive positions have not moved in five years. Ethiopia’s development imperative is non-negotiable. Egypt’s water security is non-negotiable. Sudan’s vulnerability is non-negotiable. No engineering marvel or diplomatic formula resolves this contradiction; it can only be managed through sustained tension punctuated by occasional bilateral meetings in which everyone affirms commitment to shared principles while doing nothing whatsoever to address the actual dispute.

The dam will continue to operate. Egypt will continue to protest. The US will continue to express concern. And water will continue to flow downriver, indifferent to all concerned parties.

Sudan: Peace Brokerage as Performance Art

Sudan is currently experiencing civil war of a magnitude that has produced one of the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian catastrophes. The conflict, which erupted in April 2023 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) under General al-Burhan and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, has displaced over 6 million people, created widespread famine conditions, and generated credible documentation of systematic sexual violence, mass killings, and scorched-earth tactics.3

What is particularly instructive is the external backing. The SAF receives support from Russia (primarily through Wagner Group provision of military advisers and air support), Egypt (out of concern regarding Nile water security and strategic positioning), and various Gulf actors. The RSF, meanwhile, has received documented support from the United Arab Emirates, which has provided unmanned aerial vehicles, weapons, and financial backing, while simultaneously maintaining diplomatic relations with all parties.4

Now observe the remarkable fact: the United States, which claims commitment to humanitarian values and ceasefire achievement, has not imposed meaningful economic sanctions on the primary external backers of the RSF (the UAE) or the SAF (Egypt and Russia). Why? Because stability or the appearance of it is valued more highly than accountability.

When the US speaks of ‘international efforts to facilitate a humanitarian truce and achieve durable peace in Sudan,’ what it is actually performing is concern. Ethiopia is being positioned as a broker precisely because it has just enough leverage (refugee flows, regional diplomatic weight, Nile basin politics) and just little enough direct stake to be plausibly neutral. This is geopolitical exploitation dressed in humanitarian language.

Prime Minister Abiy will nod, will pledge engagement, will host talks that produce nothing. And this serves Western interests perfectly, because engagement preserves the fiction of concerned diplomacy while placing no actual pressure on the parties capable of ending the war.

The Red Sea: Where Geography Becomes Geopolitics

Here we arrive at what the bilateral was actually about, and why the press releases about GERD and Sudan served as diplomatic cover for a far more significant conversation.

The Suez Canal processes roughly 12 per cent of global seaborne trade approximately $1 trillion in annual goods traffic. The Strait of Bab al-Mandab, which connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, is the funnel through which this commerce flows. A functioning Bab al-Mandab means the global economy circulates. A disrupted Bab al-Mandab means shipping reroutes around the Cape of Good Hope, adding two weeks and significant costs to every container.5

For the past eighteen months, the Houthis—formally the Ansar Allah movement, operationally an Iranian proxy force have been attacking commercial shipping in these waters with increasing sophistication. Between November 2023 and May 2026, they have launched over 100 missile and drone attacks on vessels transiting the Red Sea, forcing major shipping companies to reroute around Africa at substantial cost.6

The Houthis provide a stated rationale: opposition to Israeli operations in Gaza and claimed support for Palestinian liberation. The actual mechanics are considerably more straightforward: they are supplied with advanced weaponry by Iran, trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps personnel, and directed toward targets that maximize disruption to Western-aligned shipping while demonstrating Iranian regional reach.

The United States response has been predictable: naval deployments, multinational coordination, attempts to intercept weapons shipments. This is strategically equivalent to deploying an umbrella against a monsoon. The Houthis have proven resilient because they operate with Iranian backing, have access to Iranian inventory including cruise missiles and drones, and face minimal consequence for attacks given Iran’s geopolitical importance to multiple regional actors.

Ethiopia’s Geography as Strategic Asset

Ethiopia’s value to the US bilateral is not military. Ethiopia’s armed forces, while capable, are not blue-water naval assets. What Ethiopia provides is something considerably more valuable: geography and regional influence.

Ethiopia sits astride the Horn of Africa, controlling territory adjacent to Yemen, Eritrea, Sudan, and the Red Sea corridor itself. Through various entanglements (including the contested relationship with Eritrea, which was resolved via the 2018 peace agreement and continues to be complicated by border tensions and port access questions), Ethiopia can theoretically influence regional power dynamics.

More directly: if the US can ensure that Ethiopian strategic orientation remains sufficiently Western-leaning, then Iran is denied a potential regional base. If Addis Ababa remains aligned with Gulf partners like the UAE and Saudi Arabia rather than gravitating toward Tehran, the balance of power in the Red Sea and broader Horn of Africa tilts away from Iranian influence.

This is not about securing Ethiopia as a devoted ally. This is about option denial ensuring that Ethiopia remains unavailable to Iran.

And this is precisely where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s strategic mastery becomes apparent.

Abiy’s Game: The Art of Strategic Non-Commitment

Abiy Ahmed has mastered a particular form of twenty-first-century statecraft: the art of being simultaneously everyone’s ally and no one’s tool.

When the US wishes to discuss Red Sea security, Abiy listens attentively and offers support. When the UAE offers investment and development partnerships, Abiy is receptive. When China proposes infrastructure contracts (Ethiopia has received over $14 billion in Chinese financing for transport and energy projects), Abiy welcomes the engagement.7

When Russia offers military training and weaponry, Abiy accepts. And when Iran which has historically supported Ethiopian nationalism as a counterweight to Arab hegemony extends diplomatic overtures, Abiy does not slam the door.

This is not inconsistency. This is statecraft of a sophisticated order. Ethiopia’s actual power setting aside military capacity derives from optionality. As long as Ethiopia remains genuinely available to multiple suitors, genuinely unwilling to permanently commit to any single power, it retains negotiating leverage with all of them.

This was precisely the calculation evident in Abiy’s March 2026 visit to the UAE—a carefully choreographed affair that signalled alignment with Gulf interests without actually foreclosing other options.8

The visit occurred against the backdrop of Iranian strikes on UAE infrastructure and Ethiopian Airlines’ crisis (the latter being an episode that exposed Ethiopia’s vulnerability in contested airspace and the international community’s complicated relationship with Iranian regional activity). Abiy’s presence in Abu Dhabi was read by various actors as strategic positioning—but read differently by each audience.

To the US and Gulf allies, it suggested Ethiopian alignment against Iranian influence. To potential Iranian interlocutors, it demonstrated that Addis Ababa was available for negotiation. To Chinese investors, it showed that Ethiopia would maintain relationships across ideological and geostrategic divides. To Russian partners, it illustrated that Ethiopia’s choices were not predetermined.

This is the genuine achievement of Abiy’s statecraft: not the cultivation of a single powerful alliance, but the maintenance of genuine ambiguity regarding Ethiopia’s ultimate alignment. And the bilateral with the US last week was structured precisely to preserve that ambiguity while appearing to move closer to Western alignment.

The Contradiction: Democracy Rhetoric, Stability Practice

Here we arrive at the central dishonesty that no power in Washington, Brussels, Cairo, or Addis Ababa is willing to articulate plainly.

The US is genuinely committed to regional stability. The US is also, in some contexts, genuinely committed to democracy promotion. But these two commitments are fundamentally and irreconcilably incompatible in the Horn of Africa, and have been for at least a decade.

The Abiy Case Study: Reform Rhetoric, Authoritarian Reality

Abiy came to power in April 2018 on a substantial wave of reform rhetoric. He was young, born in 1976, making him 42 at the time of the bilateral in question. He was educated, English-fluent, and had signalled commitment to political opening, prisoner releases, and democratic transformation. For roughly two years, the Western world was genuinely excited. Here, it seemed, was an African leader who might actually modernise governance while remaining pro-Western.

Then came the Tigray war.

In November 2020, following tensions with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), Abiy launched a military offensive that rapidly escalated into full-scale civil war. The documented evidence of what followed is harrowing: systematic sexual violence, mass killing of civilians, systematic starvation tactics, ethnic cleansing operations in western Tigray by militia forces aligned with Ethiopian federal troops.9

Estimates of conflict-related deaths vary widely from the UN-associated figures suggesting 600,000+ deaths to lower estimates in the 70,000-100,000 range. Regardless of which figure one accepts, the scale is catastrophic. Sexual violence was documented as systematic by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and independent journalists.10

And the Western response was to… continue security partnerships, military aid, and diplomatic engagement.

The US did not impose meaningful sanctions. European countries issued statements of concern while maintaining trade and development relationships. The World Bank, which suspended some Ethiopia programs, did not fundamentally alter its engagement.

Why? Because stability or the appearance of it was judged more valuable than accountability. Because a functioning, pro-Western authoritarian government in Addis Ababa was more strategically important than sixty thousand Tigrayan deaths.

This is not unique to Ethiopia. This is the fundamental operating principle of Western strategy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and beyond: ally with autocrats when necessary, express concern about human rights in private communications, and pivot to ‘stability’ language when atrocities become too well-documented to ignore.

It is not cynicism to observe this. It is realism. And it is precisely this realism that the bilateral dialogue was structured to preserve.

Eritrea, Iran, and the Temptation of Regime Change Fantasy

At this point, some analysts may propose an apparently logical solution: if Abiy presents such problems, why not simply support genuine democratic alternatives? If Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki is hopelessly authoritarian and Iranian-aligned, why not back the opposition movement Andinet for regime change? If democratic alternatives exist, surely the answer is democratisation rather than continued authoritarianism?

This is where ideology collides decisively with geopolitical reality.

The Regime-Change Precedent: Learning Nothing From History

The notion that great powers can externally impose regime change in favour of democracy has been tested extensively in recent decades. Iraq (2003), Afghanistan (2001), Libya (2011), attempted coups in Syria (2011-2012). The success rate approaches zero.

What invariably follows external regime change is: state collapse, civil war, humanitarian catastrophe, and the installation of a different autocrat—often more brutal than the predecessor, who is at least nominally grateful to his external sponsors. Iraq descended into sectarian violence that killed hundreds of thousands. Afghanistan was handed to the Taliban. Libya became a failed state. The consistent pattern is unmistakable.

Now, imagine the US and its allies decided to back Eritrean opposition for regime change. What would transpire? First, military intervention destabilising the entire Red Sea region further, with immediate implications for shipping security that the operation was ostensibly meant to protect. Second, a civil war explicitly framed accurately as a proxy war for Western interests. Third, IF successful, a government that discovers within eighteen months that popular electoral legitimacy and the security arrangements necessary to satisfy Western interests are often incompatible.

Fourth, a genuinely democratic Eritrea might choose differently from what external sponsors prefer. It might be more nationalist, more protective of sovereignty, less amenable to foreign military bases, more inclined toward regional Arab solidarity, less dependent on external sponsors.

Fifth, within ten years you would be having the same ‘structured dialogue’ with a new Eritrean strongman, now chastened by the experience of regime change and therefore potentially moreauthoritarian than Isaias.

The uncomfortable reality that no one in power wants to articulate: the countries of the Horn of Africa will likely remain authoritarian (or democratic in name only) for the foreseeable future, not because the populations lack democratic aspirations, but because the regional and international power dynamics make genuine democracy electorally destabilising and strategically inconvenient.

And so the bilateral dialogue continues. Everyone nods about shared values. Everyone expresses commitment to democracy. And everyone knows, with perfect clarity, that none of this is true.

What's Actually at Stake: Iran, the Emirates, and Regional Balance

Beneath the diplomatic theatre lies a genuine strategic competition: the contest for regional influence in the Red Sea and Horn of Africa between Iranian and Western-aligned powers.

Iran’s regional strategy operates through multiple vectors:

1. Proxy forces (the Houthis in Yemen, potentially aligned actors in Iraq, Syria)

2. Economic and security partnerships with regional states (historically Ethiopia, potentially Eritrea)

3. Provision of military training, weaponry, and technical expertise to allied movements

Western strategy (led by the US and Gulf partners) aims to deny Iran regional dominance through:

1. Maintaining strong relationships with established Gulf partners (Saudi Arabia, UAE)

2. Ensuring that rising regional powers (Ethiopia, Eritrea) remain unavailable to Iran

3. Maintaining naval presence and commercial shipping security in the Red Sea

The bilateral dialogue with Ethiopia serves all three objectives simultaneously. By demonstrating continued US engagement, it signals to Abiy that Western partnership remains valuable. By emphasizing Red Sea security concerns, it highlights the Iranian threat. And by discussing regional stability, it creates the framework for greater coordination on containing Iranian influence.

None of this requires that democracy actually advance. None of this requires that accountability for atrocities actually materialise. All it requires is that Ethiopia remain strategically available to the West rather than gravitating toward Iran.

What then will emerge from the bilateral structured dialogue? Almost certainly, a joint communiqué affirming shared commitment to regional stability, democracy, human rights, and peace. There will be specific mentions of ‘constructive progress’ on technical issues. There may be announcements of expanded development partnerships or security cooperation.

And substantively, very little will change.

The GERD will continue to operate. Egypt will continue to protest. Sudan will continue to convulse. The Houthis will continue to attack shipping. And every few months, there will be another bilateral dialogue, another press release, another reaffirmation of commitment to shared values that no one actually believes.

This is not cynicism about international relations. This is a clear-eyed assessment of how power actually operates in the twenty-first century. Democracy rhetoric serves as diplomatic cover for strategic partnerships with authoritarian governments. Human rights concerns are expressed loudly in public and abandoned quietly in private. Stability is valued more highly than accountability.

The bilateral structured dialogue will continue. Abiy will continue his masterful fence-sitting, extracting maximum benefit from all sides. The US will continue to speak of commitment to democracy while supporting an authoritarian government. The GERD will continue to flow. And the theatre will continue, because the alternative actually addressing these contradictions, actually choosing between values and interests requires honesty that the international system cannot afford.

References

1. World Bank estimates; see ‘Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam: Developmental Impacts and Regional Implications’ (2021).

2. Egyptian government statements and UN documentation on Nile water security concerns.

3. UNHCR Sudan Crisis Reports, May 2026; World Health Organization casualty estimates.

4. New Arab, ‘UAE Weaponry to RSF: Following the Trail,’ November 2023; Reuters investigative reporting on UAE arms provision.

5. IMO shipping data; Suez Canal Authority traffic reports, 2024-2026.

6. US Naval Forces Central Command records; Houthi attack documentation, 2023-2026.

7. World Bank China-Africa financing database; Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports on Belt and Road Initiative in Ethiopia.

8. See Ethiopian Tribune analysis, ‘Abiy’s UAE Visit: Strategic Hedging in a Contested Red Sea,’ March 2026.

9. Human Rights Watch, ‘World Report 2022: Ethiopia’; Amnesty International findings on Tigray conflict (2020-2022).

10. UN Commission of Inquiry on the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (2021); International Crisis Group casualty estimates (2023).

About Post Author

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How regional war, electoral consolidation, diaspora uprising, and conflicting visions of national identity threaten to unravel the Horn of Africa’s oldest continuous state

By Sewasew Teklemariam Ethiopian Tribune columnist

The crisis engulfing Ethiopia in May 2026 cannot be understood as a collection of discrete problems requiring separate solutions. Rather, what is unfolding is a systemic collapse operating simultaneously across multiple registers:-military, political, ideological, and civilisational. These crises are not incidental to one another; they are structurally interconnected, each amplifying the others in ways that threaten to push Ethiopia past a point of reversibility.

At the military register, Sudan’s accusations regarding drone operations and training camps have created a situation in which border escalation has shifted from possibility to probability. Intelligence agencies across multiple countries now accept as baseline reality that Ethiopian territory is being used to facilitate military operations within Sudan, whether through formal government decision or through tolerated proxy activity. The physical evidence—satellite imagery of the Benishangul-Gumuz camp, recovered drone components, convoy tracking data remains technically ambiguous but strategically significant. Neither country has incentive to permit clarity to emerge. Sudan benefits from internationalism of the conflict. Ethiopia benefits from maintaining plausible deniability. This ambiguity, far from creating space for negotiation, instead creates space for escalation: both sides can claim vindication, both sides can justify further military preparations, and both sides can point to the other’s actions as justification for their own.

More fundamentally, the regional realignment orchestrated by Cairo has positioned Ethiopia at the intersection of pressure from three directions simultaneously. From the west, Sudan’s armed forces, supported by Egypt and Saudi Arabia, are consolidating control of the Blue Nile region and preparing for potential cross-border operations. From the north, Eritrea once an ally, now reimagined as an adversary has repositioned itself as a node in a regional coalition opposed to Ethiopian interests, supplied by Iran, financed by Saudi Arabia, and coordinated militarily with Cairo. From the east, Somalia increasingly falls under Egyptian influence, presenting a potential third pressure point. These are not coincidental alignments. They represent a deliberate strategic architecture constructed by Cairo and validated, through its silence or acquiescence, by Washington.

At the political register, the machinery of electoral authoritarianism operates with ruthless efficiency. Opposition leaders are imprisoned on dubious charges. Independent journalists are disappeared from streets and held incommunicado. Media outlets are raided. Civil society organisations face restrictions. All of this occurs whilst the government insists upon its commitment to democratic governance and invites international election observers to witness what is, in reality, a managed electoral process designed to produce predetermined outcomes. The elections scheduled for 1 June 2026 function not as a mechanism for determining government but as a mechanism for legitimising continued Prosperity Party monopoly on power. International observers, faced with a process that is technically procedurally correct but substantively constrained, will likely issue sufficiently ambiguous reports that will allow the government to claim vindication whilst allowing critics to point to the absence of genuine competition. The elections will thus serve simultaneously as a demonstration of commitment to democracy and as a mechanism for consolidating authoritarianism a feat that is possible precisely because electoral procedures and democratic governance have become decoupled from one another.

What makes the political crisis particularly acute is that it is occurring at precisely the moment when the government faces its greatest military vulnerability. The federal army is stretched across multiple insurgencies Oromia, Amhara, parts of Somali region and now potentially facing significant military pressure on the western border with Sudan. The government’s response to this vulnerability is not strategic reassessment but rather tightening of internal control: imprisoning opposition leaders who might challenge resource allocation decisions, silencing media who might scrutinise military spending or strategy, constraining civil society that might ask uncomfortable questions. This is a classic pattern of authoritarian response to weakness: when external pressures increase and internal capacity decreases, the instinct is to consolidate power rather than to build coalition or seek alternative approaches.

At the ideological register, competing visions of what Ethiopia is and what it should become have moved from background context to foreground crisis. The vision articulated by the Prosperity Party centres on technocratic modernisation, pan-Ethiopian identity (as opposed to ethnicity-based federalism), and the pursuit of development through infrastructure projects such as the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. This vision has real appeal to significant portions of Ethiopia’s urban professional classes and to international investors and development institutions. But it has also generated profound alienation among other constituencies who view the Prosperity Party’s approach as a means of centralising Amhara-dominated control, marginalising regional interests, and undermining federalism as a mechanism for protecting minority and ethno-linguistic rights. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, despite its defeat in the civil war, continues to command loyalty among portions of the Tigray population and operates as a pole of alternative political possibility. The Oromo Liberation Front, though excluded from electoral competition and designated a terrorist organisation, continues to attract support among segments of Oromia’s population. And now, emerging as a new force, are movements seeking to reconnect Ethiopia to visions of earlier historical configurations whether through Tigrayan intellectuals and activists articulating expanded conceptions of Tigrayan or “Geez” civilisational identity, or through Eritrean diaspora movements exploring the possibility of reunification under democratic rather than authoritarian auspices.

The Agaezi National Union Party’s perspective, articulated from within diaspora and intellectual circles, represents one such competing vision. The ANU’s analysis emphasises what it terms the “Geez Civilisation” and argues that the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia constituted a catastrophic historical fragmentation engineered through foreign intervention and facilitated by TPLF-EPLF collaboration that should be characterised as treason against the greater Geez national project. From this perspective, the TPLF’s inclusion of Article 39 rights to self-determination and eventual secession in Ethiopia’s 1995 constitution represents a continuation of the fragmentary logic that enabled Eritrea’s separation. The ANU argues that restoring access to the Red Sea, preventing further territorial fragmentation, and rebuilding a unified Geez civilisation should be central to Ethiopia’s strategic vision. This analysis explicitly rejects what it characterises as “landlocked, periphery and minority secessionist” visions and calls for a “public national constitution (not party or government based memorandum)” that prioritises national unity and territorial integrity over ethno-linguistic federalism.

The significance of this perspective lies not in whether it commands majority support it does not but in the fact that it represents a genuine intellectual and political current within Ethiopian and diaspora circles that is gaining articulation and visibility at precisely the moment when competing visions of Ethiopian identity and statehood are being contested most sharply. That multiple, incompatible visions of what Ethiopia should be, how it should be governed, and what its territorial and civilisational boundaries should be, are all being advocated simultaneously, and that none of these visions appears capable of achieving hegemonic consensus, suggests that the political crisis extends beyond the question of whether the June 1 elections are free and fair to the more fundamental question of what constitutional and political framework Ethiopians themselves desire.

The Eritrean dimension of this crisis presents one of the most historically significant developments in the region in decades, yet it remains poorly understood by international observers and inadequately covered by international media. The realignment of Eritrea from Ethiopian ally to regional adversary has occurred gradually over the past three years, but it has accelerated dramatically in 2025 and 2026. The mechanism of this realignment is straightforward: Eritrea’s government, faced with the delegitimation that peace with Ethiopia produced the loss of the external enemy that had justified internal militarisation and authoritarianism has chosen to reposition itself as a regional player aligned with Egypt and opposed to Ethiopia. This choice has been validated through material incentives: Saudi Arabia has provided financial support, Iran has established supply line access through Eritrean territory, and the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Eritrea has signalled American acceptance of this alignment.

Yet simultaneously, and largely invisible to international analysis, the Eritrean diaspora representing approximately one-third of Eritrea’s entire population has mobilised around the Eritrean Blue Revolution, a pro-democracy movement that has begun to explore the possibility of reunification with Ethiopia under a federal democratic arrangement. The symbolism of the blue flag, representing the federation era of 1952 to 1961, is significant: it suggests that a democratic future might involve not continued independence but rather a reimagined federal relationship with Ethiopia, one that would operate under democratic governance rather than under Eritrean or Ethiopian authoritarianism. This possibility, were it to gain traction, would fundamentally alter the regional configuration that both Cairo and Asmara are currently constructing.

The convergence of Ethiopian pro-democracy movements and Eritrean pro-democracy movements in shared space particularly in Addis Ababa, where the January 2026 Eritrean Blue Revolution gathering occurred represents a potential axis of political transformation that both the Prosperity Party and the Eritrean regime have incentive to prevent. That imprisoned Ethiopian opposition leaders and disappeared Ethiopian journalists represent precisely the sort of political constraint that preempts such convergences is not coincidental. The government’s crackdown is not simply about winning the June 1 elections; it is about preventing the emergence of a political configuration that could threaten fundamental regime interests through the combination of internal democratic movements and diaspora mobilisation.

The Tigray situation presents perhaps the most acute existential threat to Ethiopian territorial integrity and government legitimacy. The region that was the epicentre of a civil war killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions remains, eighteen months after the nominal cessation of hostilities, in a state of political limbo. The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, unable to obtain a party licence to participate in the June 1 elections, operates in a legal and political grey zone. The population remains largely displaced, unable to return to homes, unable to participate in normal economic activity, unable to engage with the political process. The interim administration that the federal government imposed remains administratively incompetent and politically alienating to large portions of the Tigray population. TPLF intelligence networks, dispersed and degraded but not eliminated, continue to operate. And reports suggest coordination between TPLF elements operating from Sudan and Eritrean military forces through the arrangement variously referred to as “Army 70” or the “Tsimdo arrangement.”

The ANU perspective on Tigray is particularly significant here. The ANU argues that Tigrayan identity should be understood as part of the greater Geez civilisation and that Tigrayan interests should be served through reconnection to a unified, unitary national state rather than through autonomy within a federated framework. From this perspective, the TPLF’s assertion of Tigrayan interests through federalism and ultimately through secession (which the ANU characterises as the logical endpoint of ethno-linguistic federalism) represents a betrayal of the greater Geez civilisational project. This analysis suggests that a reconstituted Ethiopia, rebuilt on the foundation of Geez civilisation and committed to territorial integration and Red Sea access, would better serve both Tigrayan and broader Ethiopian interests than would continued federalism or outright separation.

Whether this vision is appealing to the Tigray population itself remains an open question. What is clear is that the Tigray population is deeply alienated from the federal government, deeply traumatised by the civil war, and increasingly engaged with both internal Tigrayan political movements and external Eritrean political movements through kinship networks and historical connections. The possibility of Tigray mobilising around a pro-TPLF political programme, combined with Eritrean mobilisation around the Blue Revolution, combined with broader Ethiopian pro-democracy mobilisation, presents a scenario in which convergent political movements could simultaneously challenge Prosperity Party dominance and Eritrean regime consolidation. That this possibility seems to preoccupy government strategists is evident from the intensity of the crackdown on political opposition and independent media.

The international context that frames these domestic crises is one in which the United States appears to be accepting, or at least not actively resisting, Egypt’s strategy for regional hegemony. The Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on Eritrea, justified on Red Sea strategic grounds, implicitly endorses Eritrea’s alignment with Egypt and Sudan against Ethiopia. The absence of American pressure on Egypt to cease its regional encirclement strategy suggests American acquiescence. The failure of the United States to use its leverage with the Ethiopian government to insist upon minimum standards of democratic conduct freedom for opposition leaders, protection for journalists, genuine electoral competition suggests an American calculation that Ethiopia’s strategic position is sufficiently weak that the United States need not invest diplomatic capital in defending Ethiopian democratic governance. From a realpolitik perspective, this may be rational: if Ethiopia is going to be constrained by Egyptian regional hegemony in any case, why expend diplomatic capital fighting battles that cannot be won?

But this calculation appears to discount several possibilities that could alter regional dynamics significantly. The first is the possibility of successful convergence between Ethiopian and Eritrean pro-democracy movements, creating a unified force substantially more difficult for Egypt to manage than either separate movement would be. The second is the possibility that genuine democratic transformation in either Ethiopia or Eritrea could trigger cascading transformation in the other, creating a fundamentally altered regional configuration. The third is the possibility that the very intensity of external pressure on Ethiopia could trigger internal mobilisation in ways that the government cannot control. The fourth is the possibility that the June 1 elections, rather than producing the legitimation that the government seeks, instead produce a legitimacy crisis that international observers cannot finesse through ambiguous language.

The question of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam sits beneath much of this regional tension, though it is rarely explicitly discussed in coverage of the immediate crises. The dam fundamentally alters water flows in the Nile system, reducing downstream availability for Egypt and Sudan. For Egypt particularly, the GERD represents an existential threat to national survival in ways that international law, diplomatic negotiation, and technical solutions have thus far failed to address. Egyptian strategic responses have thus necessarily taken the form of regional containment: preventing Ethiopia from emerging as sufficiently powerful to resist Egyptian pressure. Supporting Sudan’s armed forces, aligning with Eritrea, leveraging Somalia through military presence in AUSSOM, developing partnerships with Saudi Arabia to constrain Iranian influence in the region all of these strategic moves can be understood as components of a broader strategy to ensure that Ethiopia remains constrained and unable to fully exploit the advantages that the GERD provides.

It is from this perspective that the ANU’s emphasis on Red Sea access becomes strategically significant. If Ethiopia were to gain reliable access to Indian Ocean shipping through either Eritrean or Sudanese Red Sea ports, its economic and strategic position would be transformed. This is precisely what Cairo wishes to prevent. Egypt’s regional strategy is thus fundamentally about ensuring that Ethiopia remains landlocked, economically dependent, and politically constrained unable to pursue independent strategic interests, unable to fully exploit the GERD’s potential, unable to emerge as a regional power. The ANU’s vision of a reconstructed Ethiopia with access to the Red Sea through reunification with Eritrea, or through some other territorial reconfiguration, thus represents precisely the strategic nightmare that Egyptian planners most fear.

The convergence of these multiple crises military pressure from Sudan and Eritrea, political crisis manifested in electoral authoritarianism and opposition imprisonment, ideological contestation over what Ethiopia is and should be, the Tigray political limbo, the GERD strategic tension with Egypt, and now the emergence of diaspora movements that could potentially alter regional dynamics creates a situation of genuine systemic instability. None of these crises appears susceptible to solution through the mechanisms currently being pursued. Military preparations in Sudan and Eritrea will not produce Ethiopian capitulation; they will produce Ethiopian military mobilisation and further regional escalation. Electoral management and opposition imprisonment will not produce political legitimacy; they will produce legitimacy deficits and post-election contestation. Continued ambiguity regarding the training camps and drone operations will not produce de-escalation; it will produce further miscalculation as both sides act on differing interpretations of the evidence. The attempt to govern Tigray through interim administration without genuine political incorporation will not produce stability; it will produce continued alienation and continued risk of renewed conflict.

The question that now faces Ethiopia and the international community is whether the convergent nature of these crises will be recognised and addressed holistically or whether, through habit and institutional inertia, the international community will continue to treat them as separate problems a military conflict with Sudan, an electoral process in Ethiopia, a political situation in Tigray each requiring separate solutions and separate diplomatic tracks. If the latter approach continues, then the trajectory toward regional war becomes increasingly probable. If a more holistic approach were pursued one that recognised that military escalation in Sudan/Eritrea, political legitimacy deficits in Ethiopia, diaspora mobilisation for democratic transformation, and competing visions of Ethiopian identity are all components of a single systemic crisis then alternative pathways might become visible.

Such pathways might involve: genuine space for opposition political competition in advance of the June 1 elections; a serious negotiated settlement for Tigray that involves genuine political representation rather than interim administration; a diplomatic track focused on de-escalation in Sudan that does not require Ethiopian capitulation but does require acknowledgment of underlying security concerns; serious engagement with the Eritrean Blue Revolution and with Eritrean pro-democracy movements as legitimate actors in regional politics rather than as marginal movements to be suppressed; and a fundamental reconsideration of the GERD’s regional implications and the development of a framework that addresses Egyptian water security concerns without requiring Ethiopian subordination.

Whether such a holistic approach is possible remains deeply uncertain. The political actors involved—Prosperity Party leadership in Ethiopia, SAF leadership in Sudan, Eritrean regime leadership, Egyptian strategists all have incentive structures that favour continued escalation or continued management of current tensions rather than fundamental transformation. The international community, particularly the Trump administration, appears to have accepted, explicitly or implicitly, an outcome in which Egyptian regional hegemony is established and Ethiopian power is constrained. And the cascading nature of the crises means that each moment that passes without fundamental reorientation increases the probability that some triggering event a military escalation that spirals out of control, an electoral outcome that is contested violently, a Tigray political crisis that reignites will push the region past a point of reversibility.

What remains clear is that the June 1 elections cannot function as a resolution of Ethiopia’s political crisis. Whether they succeed in producing a compliant parliament that legitimises Prosperity Party rule, or whether they fail in this objective and instead produce contested results and post-electoral violence, the underlying problems will remain unaddressed. The military pressure from Sudan and Eritrea will not abate. The diaspora movements for democratic transformation will not disappear. The Tigray political limbo will not resolve itself. The competing visions of Ethiopian identity and national purpose will not achieve consensus. And the regional configuration orchestrated by Cairo, validated by Washington, and now being operationalised by Sudan and Eritrea will continue to constrain Ethiopian options and continue to amplify regional instability.

The tragedy of the moment is not that the outcome is predetermined but that the mechanisms for addressing the systemic nature of the crisis recognition of interconnection, willingness to pursue transformation rather than incremental management, openness to alternative regional configurations appear largely unavailable to the political actors most capable of producing them. Instead, what is likely is a continuation of tactical escalation and crisis management, with periodic moments of acute danger when miscalculation produces unintended military escalation, until some catastrophic event forces a fundamental recalibration of the entire regional system.

Whether that recalibration comes through democratic transformation, military defeat, or some other mechanism remains unknowable. What is knowable is that the current trajectory, if maintained, appears increasingly likely to produce outcomes substantially worse than the crises currently being managed.

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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By Mefkereseb G. Hailu (PhD)

Editorial Foreword

It is with considerable gratitude that the Ethiopian Tribunepresents the final instalment of Dr Mefkereseb G. Hailu’s four-part analytical series on the Abraham Accords and their implications for Ethiopian sovereignty, geopolitical positioning, and national strategy. Over the past months, this series has established itself as the most rigorous and unflinching examination of the architecture reshaping the Gulf–Red Sea–Horn region combining legal-historical analysis, strategic assessment, and an uncompromising focus on the conditions required for Ethiopian agency.

This final instalment, “Assab, Sovereignty, and the Endgame,”moves beyond architecture into operational reality. It addresses what Parts 1–3 have prepared: the political, military, and diplomatic conditions under which Ethiopian sovereignty is recovered; the enduring legal foundations on which that recovery stands; the closing strategic window that demands urgent action; and the binary choice that now confronts the Ethiopian state and people.

What This Instalment Addresses

Internal Constraints and Public Accountability. Hailu opens with an ultimatum addressed directly to the Ethiopian people and the Ethiopian government emerging from the June 2026 election. Sovereignty is not produced as a by-product of external alignment; it is produced by populations that demand it and discipline themselves to defend it. The “monkey habit of ethnic entrepreneurship” the operational mechanism by which external opportunities are squandered through factional competition remains the binding constraint on Ethiopia’s four singular interests. The path forward runs through civic discipline, not elite pronouncement.

The Legal Foundation: Residual Rights and Continuous Chain. Part 4 reasserts the legal record established in Part 3 with load-bearing clarity: Italy never held absolute sovereignty; Resolution 390(V) explicitly preserved Ethiopian sea access irrespective of Eritrean political status; the OAU’s uti possidetis principle, applied to its founding moment with Eritrea as Ethiopian territory, locks Eritrea in as Ethiopian territory; the 1993 abandonment was performed ultra vires by an unmandated transitional government; and the Algiers Agreement, by addressing only the land boundary, preserves rather than extinguishes Ethiopian residual rights.

The Government Policy Track: Alignment and Divergence. Hailu conducts a rigorous reading of four substantial policy-track articles published in the Horn Review between November 2025 and April 2026 the most extensive Ethiopian articulation of maritime sovereignty since 1991. He identifies six critical strengths: maritime recovery is reframed as a state imperative; the legal record on Italy’s non-sovereignty is established with rigour; Resolution 390(V)’s protective function is correctly characterised; the 1962 incorporation is defended as restoration rather than annexation; the 1993 referendum is named for its constitutional illegitimacy; and the “depoliticisation” of landlockedness is correctly diagnosed. He simultaneously identifies four critical weaknesses: the AU’s complicity in 1993 goes unnamed; settlement options are hedged toward conciliation where assertion is required; Eritrean independence is accepted as settled while challenging only its conditions; and Saudi engagement reproduces a supplicatory frame. The interpretation is stark: if the government fails to extend the policy track beyond these stops-short, the inference becomes unavoidable that the government may not have been serious about recovering sovereign sea access in the first place.

The Mature Strategy: Political, Diplomatic, and Military Tracks. Hailu then presents the strategic synthesis required across three concurrent tracks. Politically: a civic mandate anchored across multiple regional constituencies and won on a programmatic platform that includes explicit positions on the four singular interests, giving the resulting government legitimacy to pursue sovereign sea access as a national project. 

Diplomatically: offence, not defence converting the Hexagon’s southern arc into a central strategic partnership; engaging bridge actors from positions of leverage rather than supplication; and confronting the AU and UN multilateral forums with the legal record of Italian-claim contingency, OAU complicity in 1993, and the ultra vires character of the TPLF-led abandonment. Militarily: credible deterrence and prepared option conventional capability, asymmetric capability, and doctrinal preparation sufficient to seize and hold the Doumeira–Beilul corridor through the “attack, hold, and negotiate” formula.

The Convergence Point: 2027–28. The military strategist’s calendar (the closing window) and the politician’s calendar (the construction curve of civic compact, macroeconomic depth, and global-capital integration) converge at 2027–28. At that point, if political, diplomatic, and military preparation is sustained, Asmara faces a choice between negotiated settlement that preserves Eritrean political existence on terms that include Ethiopian sovereign access, or confrontation that the strategist has prepared to win. This is the moment of maximum Ethiopian leverage.

Eritrea’s Path: Coexistence or Parasitism. Hailu addresses the Eritrean question with historical honesty and strategic clarity. Both populations were brutalised; the 1993 separation was not popular consent but rebel-group imposition; Eritrea’s current garrison-state offers its own population no future. The post-operation settlement envisaged preserves Eritrean separate political existence while establishing economic relationship with Ethiopia that addresses Eritrea’s developmental crisis. The objective is sovereign Ethiopian access to the sea alongside sovereign Eritrean access both nations benefiting from the recovery of a coastline that was never legitimately surrendered.

The Binary Choice. The instalment concludes with the operative ultimatum: if the conditions are met civic mandate, sustained diplomatic offence, military preparation, macroeconomic stabilisation, and leverage-based engagement with regional partners then sovereignty is recovered and the four singular interests become attainable. If any condition is abandoned, the geopolitical architecture amplifies the internal fractures; GERD becomes a factional prize; the coastline remains permanently lost; and Ethiopia’s demographic trajectory produces fragmented territory governed by competing oligarchies that external patrons exploit. The choice is binary and operational: bananas for the few and dismemberment for the many, or sovereignty for the nation and prosperity for the generations that follow.

The Election Analysis Ahead

Dr. Hailu has indicated his intention to return with a companion article examining the June 2026 election as the constitutional moment at which the political track is operationalised. That analysis examining the election’s conduct, possible outcomes, the programmatic test for every candidate, and the meaning of a Pan-Ethiopian mandate promises to be as rigorous and uncompromising as the series that precedes it. The Tribune looks forward to bringing that perspective to its readers with the same analytical independence and strategic clarity that has defined this four-part examination.

This series stands as the most comprehensive independent analysis of Ethiopian sovereignty, Horn of Africa geopolitics, and the Abraham Accords architecture available to English-language readers. It is offered to the Ethiopian public and to scholars of the region as a contribution to the urgent and necessary conversation about what sovereignty means, what conditions make it attainable, and what price is paid when it is abandoned for the comfort of dependency.

—The Editors —

Read the Full Article

Part 4/4: Assab, Sovereignty, and the Endgame

Available as PDF via the link below

About Post Author

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editor@ethiopiantribune.com

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How South Africa Forgot Those Who Fought for Its Freedom

By E. Frashie Ethiopian Tribune columnist

I. Introduction: A Nation Haunted by Historical Amnesia

South Africa today is witnessing a meticulously organised resurgence of xenophobic violence. The evidence is chilling in its precision.

At least five Ethiopians have been killed in Johannesburg in recent weeks, with four of the victims shot within 48 hours. On one occasion, three were shot inside a McDonald’s in the Johannesburg Central Business District, victims between 30 and 45 years of age who were having breakfast when the gunman entered and opened fire. CCTV footage reveals execution-style shootings. Police investigations stall. Vulnerable communities live in persistent fear.

Yet this same nation once depended fundamentally on the solidarity, sacrifice, and military expertise of Africans beyond its borders none more symbolically powerful than Ethiopia, the country that trained Nelson Mandela and sheltered the ANC’s armed struggle throughout its most perilous decades.

Among those who shaped that history stands a man whose contributions to South Africa’s liberation should be carved into the moral foundation of the post-apartheid state: Asnakew Sisay Tegegne — known to liberation fighters as ‘The General.’ Today, Ethiopians who might have looked to this legacy for protection are instead being hunted on the streets of Johannesburg, Durban, and Cape Town. This is not merely a security crisis. It is a profound betrayal of history.

II. The Forgotten Ethiopian Who Trained the ANC

Born in 1954 in Azezo, Gondar, Asnakew Sisay grew up in a household steeped in patriotism and Pan-African conviction. His father, Shambel Sisay Tegegne, was a decorated officer under Emperor Haile Selassie. His mother was known for community service and moral leadership. From this soil emerged a young man who believed that African liberation was indivisible — not a series of isolated national struggles, but a unified continental imperative.

The Making of a Commando

• Military and intelligence training

• Strategic studies in guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency

• Hand-to-hand combat instruction

• Resistance organising and clandestine operations

• Years of political imprisonment as a teenager for anti-colonial activism

By the late 1970s, as liberation movements across southern Africa intensified their campaigns, he was selected to train liberation fighters from across the continent a position of extraordinary responsibility and trust.

Training the ANC’s Umkhonto we Sizwe Fighters

In Zambia, at military camps including the Gondar Military Camp, Asnakew became one of the key instructors for:

• Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK), the armed wing of the ANC

• SWAPO fighters from Namibia

• Southern Sudanese liberation groups

• Somali resistance units

He trained more than 2,000 fighters in close-quarters combat, topography and infiltration techniques, survival skills, sabotage methodology, and political education the ideological foundation without which armed struggle becomes mere violence.

He worked closely with Chris Hani, who served as chief of staff of Umkhonto we Sizwe and was tasked to establish ANC military bases in Tanzania and Zambia during the liberation struggle. To the fighters, Asnakew became known simply as ‘The General.’ To Latin American comrades operating in southern Africa, he was ‘Comandante.’ To Ethiopia, he remained a son carrying the torch of Pan-Africanism into exile.

III. Ethiopia’s Gift to South Africa Now Erased from Memory

When Mandela was released in 1990 and apartheid formally collapsed in 1994, Asnakew returned home. He never sought international acclaim. He never demanded public recognition or monuments. He continued serving Ethiopia in civil society, education, and national development work, operating with the quiet dignity characteristic of those who fought not for glory but for principle.

But South Africa’s political memory grew selective.

Today, many South Africans particularly the youth mobilised by contemporary xenophobic movements — do not know:

• That Mandela received military and political training in Ethiopia

• That Ethiopian officers shaped the ANC’s military doctrine and operational strategy

• That Ethiopia sheltered, armed, fed, and educated anti-apartheid fighters for three decades

• That Ethiopian taxpayers funded liberation movements long before the international community offered support

This amnesia is not accidental. It is politically convenient for those who wish to scapegoat immigrants without acknowledging the continent’s historical bonds of solidarity.

IV. The Rise of Black Apartheid: Vigilantism Repackaged as Populism

In the vacuum created by economic despair and political fragmentation, a new class of populist actors has emerged. Operation Dudula, a vigilante group that has evolved into a political party, mobilises its base around the slogan ‘Put South Africa First,’ using rhetoric that blames migrants for unemployment, crime, and service delivery failures.

Operation Dudula morphed from an online social media campaign propelled by the #PutSouthAfricansFirst hashtag into a xenophobic movement with real-world consequences. The digital-to-physical pipeline is direct: online incitement produces offline violence.

These populist actors do not speak of Ethiopia’s sacrifice. They do not acknowledge Mandela’s training in Addis Ababa. They do not invoke the memory of Asnakew Sisay. Instead, they tell economically desperate South Africans:

• “Foreigners are taking your jobs.”

• “Immigrants are criminals and drug dealers.”

• “We must reclaim our communities from outsiders.”

This rhetoric is carefully calibrated. It does not explicitly call for murder — but it creates what activists call ’emotional permission’ for violence to flourish. It normalises the idea that foreigners are legitimate targets for vigilante action.

The Political and Social Media Infrastructure of Violence

According to Witwatersrand University’s Xenowatch, xenophobic attacks resulted in 669 deaths, 5,310 looted shops, and 127,572 displacements between 1994 and March 2024. The rate of incidents has accelerated sharply in recent months.

According to Human Rights Watch, there were 59 reported incidents of xenophobic discrimination in 2024 and 2,946 individuals displaced as a result. But these figures capture only reported incidents. The true toll is substantially higher, as many attacks go undocumented, victims lack access to reporting mechanisms, and police investigations are routinely stalled or discontinued.

Social media platforms including Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube have failed to adequately moderate xenophobic hate speech, with campaigns like Operation Dudula first emerging online before catalysing real-world outbreaks of violent protests, vigilantism, arson, and murder.

V. The Human Cost: Ethiopians Under Fire Voices from the Community

The Recent Wave of Killings

An estimated 500,000 Ethiopians live in South Africa. In recent weeks, this population has experienced what they describe as a coordinated campaign of targeted violence.

In Johannesburg alone:

• Ethiopians have been shot in restaurants whilst having breakfast

• Executed on sidewalks in broad daylight

• Killed in their shops during business hours

• Targeted for extortion by vigilante groups

• Left largely unprotected by law enforcement

In Durban, six people of Ethiopian origin were killed in alleged xenophobic attacks over a single week, with victims killed in separate incidents, mostly during daylight hours, by South African nationals. One victim was doused in kerosene and set alight.

Victim Testimony and Community Voices

Yonas Fikru, an Ethiopian businessman in Durban, said he knew all six victims all men in their twenties who used to frequent his shop. He described attackers who “just come, steal and attack. They killed them without stealing anything from them. They just came and killed them.”

Tegegne Aboye, another member of the Ethiopian community in Durban, said locals have attempted multiple times to report incidents to police but “it always falls on deaf ears.” He expressed despair: “We see our brothers getting killed, doused with a three-litre jerrican of kerosene, and no one is helping us when this happens. We haven’t seen anyone sticking up for Ethiopian citizens here.”

The silence from law enforcement compounds the trauma. The Ethiopian Embassy in Pretoria released a statement advising Ethiopians to document and report incidents of violence and attack, and said it has requested the South African government to provide security protections to Ethiopians living in the country and to investigate the recent killings. But diplomatic statements, whilst necessary, cannot substitute for state protection.

School Violence and Children at Risk

The violence has extended into educational spaces. Members of Operation Dudula have stormed schools to forcefully eject children of other African nationals and block them from attending classes. Disturbing anti-immigrant videos circulating on social media show chaotic scenes of fear and tension, with schoolchildren in uniform seen running for safety as confusion rises. In one widely circulated clip, a visibly distressed child could be heard crying as his mother attempted to calm him, with her voice laced with fear and confusion. Moments later, gunshots rang out, sending pupils and bystanders scrambling.

Children some as young as five or six are now experiencing xenophobic violence as a routine feature of their schooling.

The Silence and Inaction of State Institutions

The African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights has expressed grave concern over recent incidents of xenophobic violence perpetrated against nationals of other African countries in South Africa, noting a pattern that includes the 1998 killing of three foreign nationals in Johannesburg, the August 2000 killings in Cape Town, the May 2008 nationwide attacks resulting in over 60 deaths, 1,700 injuries and 100,000 displacements, and ongoing incidents in the 2020s linked to groups such as Operation Dudula.

This is not a new problem. It is a recurring crisis to which the South African state has consistently failed to respond with adequate investigation, prosecution, or prevention.

VI. The Moral Contradiction: Rights Preacher, Injustice Practitioner

South Africa positions itself as a global defender of human rights and continental peacemaker. The country has filed cases at the International Court of Justice. Its government issues statements condemning injustices in other nations. It presents itself as a beacon of post-conflict reconciliation and constitutional democracy.

But inside its own borders:

• Migrants are hunted with impunity

• Refugees are scapegoated for systemic economic failure

• African solidarity the very principle that sustained the anti-apartheid struggle is treated as a quaint historical artifact

• State institutions fail to investigate, prosecute, or prevent organised violence against vulnerable populations

This contradiction is not sustainable. A nation cannot preach justice abroad whilst tolerating systematic injustice at home without fundamentally compromising its moral authority.

VII. Accountability and Justice Denied

In November 2025, a South African High Court judgment confirmed that Operation Dudula perpetrated intimidation, harassment, incitement to violence and hate speech on grounds of nationality, social origin or ethnicity. The court interdicted Operation Dudula and its leaders from demanding that any private person produce identity documents to demonstrate their right to be in South Africa, and from making public statements on social media platforms that constitute hate speech.

This is welcome. But a court order alone does not stop violence. Implementation and enforcement remain uncertain. Advocacy groups note that whilst police have made arrests, those who sought to inflame tensions on social media and the masterminds remain largely untouched. The infrastructure of incitement persists.

VIII. Conclusion: Remembering “The General” in a Time of Forgetting

Asnakew Sisay Tegegne represents the best of Ethiopia’s Pan-African legacy a man who risked his freedom, his safety, and his life so that South Africans could one day live free from the terror of apartheid. He asked for nothing in return except acknowledgment that African liberation is a shared struggle, and that the bonds forged in struggle impose obligations.

Today, Ethiopians in South Africa are being killed in the very country he helped liberate. They are being killed by their neighbours. They are being killed with impunity. They are being killed whilst a state with a constitution that explicitly protects the rights of non-citizens fails to protect them.

This is not merely a tragedy. It is a betrayal of history, of Pan-Africanism, of the very principles that animated the anti-apartheid struggle.

If South Africa wants to genuinely honour its liberation struggle, it must:

• Protect African migrants and refugees with the full force of law

• Conduct prompt, thorough, and impartial investigations into all reported incidents of violence

• Identify, prosecute, and sanction all perpetrators, including those who organise or incite violence

• Reject populist scapegoating and address the real drivers of unemployment and inequality through structural economic reform

• Teach its youth particularly those born after 1994 the true history of African solidarity and continental struggle

• Implement the court order against Operation Dudula with rigour and consistency

And Ethiopia as a nation, as a government, as a diaspora community must reclaim its narrative. It must remind the continent that its sons and daughters, like Asnakew Sisay, paid the price for Africa’s freedom. It must demand that South Africa honour its commitments to human rights and African brotherhood not merely in rhetoric, but in practice.

History remembers those who fought for justice. It must also remember and condemn those who are dying because justice has been forgotten.

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editor@ethiopiantribune.com

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THE ETHIOPIAN TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL FORWARD

In the arc of modern Ethiopian politics, a pattern emerges with unsettling consistency: the language of democracy deployed to mask its systematic hollowing. From the Derg’s ‘People’s Democratic Republic’ through the EPRDF’s carefully constructed ‘revolutionary democracy’ to the present era of purported liberalisation under Abiy Ahmed, the gap between nominal democratic form and authoritarian substance has only widened.

What makes this trajectory instructive—indeed, urgent—is not merely the Ethiopian example. Professor Girma Berhanu’s examination of democratic fragility and fascistic drift offers a sobering anatomy of how political systems ostensibly founded on popular sovereignty can be quietly remade from within. His analysis, grounded in the historical lessons of Weimar and attentive to contemporary risks in ostensibly liberal democracies, poses questions that demand our attention: How do democratic institutions erode? What conditions permit authoritarian actors to weaponise democratic freedoms? And critically, what vigilance do societies require to prevent such capture?

The Ethiopian Tribune publishes this essay as a contribution to precisely this kind of vigilance. Berhanu reminds us that democracy is not self-sustaining; it is a deliberately maintained practice, constantly imperilled by economic dislocation, institutional weakness, and the calculated exploitation of democratic freedoms by those hostile to democratic limits. The warning is not apocalyptic but pragmatic: recognise the mechanisms. Understand the patterns. Act to preserve the guardrails.

For Ethiopian readers especially, the stakes are familiar. We know what the erosion of democratic norms looks like. The task ahead is building a political culture where neither the language nor the substance of democracy can be so carelessly discarded.

—The Editors—

When Democracy Weakens: Fragile Political Cultures and Fascistic Drift

By Girma Berhanu

Professor, Department of Education and Special Education, University of Gothenburg

Introduction

The three political regimes I am familiar with in Ethiopia have all used the term “democracy” in their official names or ideological framing. However, in each case, the reality has differed significantly from the label.

The military regime known as the Derg adopted the name People’s Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. Despite including the word “democratic,” it was in practice a one-party authoritarian state. There were no free elections, and the government relied heavily on repression, including the period known as the Red Terror. The name suggested democracy, but the system clearly was not.

During the EPRDF era (1991–2019), the ruling coalition introduced what it called “revolutionary democracy.” Elections were held and multiple political parties formally existed. However, one coalition dominated political life for decades, whilst opposition groups and independent media faced significant restrictions. Ethiopia was officially a federal parliamentary republic, with a powerful Prime Minister and a largely ceremonial President. In practice, however, power was highly centralised.

This period also introduced an ethnic federal system that divided the country into regions based on ethnolinguistic identity. Critics argue that this structure entrenched divisions and created a hierarchy in governance, with certain groups holding disproportionate political influence.

In the recent period (2019–present) under Abiy Ahmed, initial reforms appeared to expand political freedoms. However, the situation has since deteriorated. The government has been involved in multiple internal conflicts, including wars affecting Tigrayan and Amhara populations. Thousands of intellectuals, activists, and political opponents have reportedly been imprisoned, raising serious concerns about human rights and political freedoms. Across all three periods, the regimes did not genuinely function as democracies, despite using democratic language or structures. This highlights a broader issue: in politics, labels do not necessarily reflect reality. When the term “democracy” is repeatedly used without corresponding democratic practice, it risks losing its meaning and credibility. This raises an important question: is democracy itself becoming less relevant, or are political systems increasingly exploiting its language whilst undermining its substance?

Applying “How Fascism Works” to Contemporary Sweden: The Sweden Democrats in Focus

Reading How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley has deepened my concern about how fascism can take root within democratic systems. In the book, Stanley identifies ten key pillars that enable authoritarian movements to thrive, often by dividing societies into “us” versus “them.” His analysis feels especially relevant today, as it highlights how fragile democratic cultures can become when these tactics go unrecognised.

Stanley draws clear parallels between historical fascist movements and contemporary political trends, demonstrating that these strategies are not relics of the past. Instead, they are being repurposed and adapted within modern democracies. He stresses the importance of recognising these patterns early in order to resist their influence and protect democratic institutions.

By understanding how fascism operates—through division, propaganda, and the manipulation of truth—individuals and societies are better equipped to defend civil rights and democratic values. Stanley’s work is therefore not only a critical examination of history but also a timely warning and a call to vigilance in the present.

Developments in countries such as the United States, Hungary, and India are often cited by scholars and commentators as warning signs of democratic backsliding, where institutions, norms, or freedoms face increasing pressure. The United States, long seen as a leading democratic power and global actor, is not immune to these concerns. Debates about polarisation, institutional trust, and the resilience of democratic norms raise important questions about its future direction.

Rather than suggesting that democracy is disappearing, these developments point to how it can be strained, contested, and reshaped. This makes the need for awareness, accountability, and civic engagement all the more urgent.

Even here at home in Sweden, I worry about the rise of the Sweden Democrats (SD). The party has documented roots in extremist milieus, including skinhead culture and strongly anti-immigrant rhetoric. According to the party’s own historical review (often referred to as a “white paper”), some of its early figures had connections to nationalist and far-right movements.

When Jimmie Åkesson, the current party leader, joined in the mid-1990s, SD was described as carrying a heavy ideological legacy. The historian Tony Gustafsson characterises the party’s early environment as a mix of nationalist, xenophobic, and, at times, openly extremist ideas. He also links the party’s origins to Bevara Sverige Svenskt (BSS), which has been described by researchers as a racist and far-right campaign organisation. Many of the party’s early representatives had direct or indirect ties to BSS, and some were associated with neo-fascist or National Socialist movements.

In its early years, the party was also marked by incidents involving Holocaust denial, antisemitic rhetoric, and hostile portrayals of immigrants and refugees. Over time, SD has sought to distance itself from these elements and rebrand its image, but debates continue about how to interpret its history and current political direction. With elections approaching in Sweden, there is concern amongst some observers that SD could make significant gains. This moment is seen by many as an important test for the country’s political landscape. Regardless of political position, it underscores the importance of public engagement, critical discussion, and vigilance in safeguarding democratic values.

What is Democracy?

Until I moved to Sweden, I thought democracy was mainly about elections and majority rule. It took me several years to grasp its broader conceptual foundations, as well as the importance of institutions and their real-world implications. Over time, I spoke with many people—especially young people I worked with on school assignments—about how they understand democracy. Most described it in terms of majority rule and free elections; a few mentioned freedom of speech. This pattern revealed something important: one of the most neglected areas, both in education and in public discourse, is a deeper understanding of democracy—what it actually entails and how it can be sustained. Many respondents could name voting as a core feature, but were less able to explain how a functioning democracy operates in practice or to articulate its underlying principles. A fuller picture includes several interdependent elements: free and fair elections; the rule of law, where everyone—including those in power—is bound by the same legal framework; the protection of fundamental rights such as speech, press, and religion; mechanisms of accountability that hold leaders responsible; and participation that extends beyond elections, including civic engagement and public deliberation. Democracy is not only a system of governance; it is also a set of values. It rests on the belief that people should have a meaningful say in decisions that affect their lives, that power must be limited and shared, and that disagreement is not a threat but a condition of political life—one that requires negotiation and compromise. The reality, however, is that these principles are neither automatic nor self-sustaining. They depend on institutions that function effectively and on citizens who understand, value, and actively uphold them.

I have often debated with myself whether democracy can become fertile ground for fascistic tendencies. Some argue that democracy itself does not inherently produce fascism, but that under certain conditions it can be weakened and exploited, allowing authoritarian movements to rise. Whilst this is a thoughtful distinction, I still find it somewhat unsatisfying when I look at real-world developments.

Observing political dynamics in the United States, I feel a growing concern about how individuals with significant financial resources, combined with simple and emotionally powerful political messaging, can rise to power and shape policies with far-reaching consequences. The influence of money, media, and rhetoric can sometimes overshadow more complex and thoughtful political debate. For example, there have been reports that Donald Trump has actively engaged with oil industry leaders and encouraged investment aligned with his political agenda. In the case of Venezuela, he has promoted the idea of major U.S. oil companies investing heavily in the country’s oil infrastructure, even promising favourable conditions and security for such investments. At the same time, U.S. policy towards countries like Iran has also been closely tied to energy strategy and geopolitical interests, including sanctions and control over oil flows. However, these developments are not solely about individual motives or simple cause-and-effect relationships. They reflect a more complex system where economic interests, geopolitical strategy, and domestic politics intersect.

What remains troubling is how easily democratic systems can be influenced by wealth, simplified narratives, and polarisation. When political discourse becomes dominated by fear, identity, or economic promises to powerful groups, it risks sidelining broader societal interests—especially those of vulnerable populations. This raises a difficult but important question: how can democratic societies ensure that political power serves the public good rather than narrow interests? If these trends continue unchecked, democracy may not collapse outright, but it can gradually be reshaped in ways that undermine its core principles.

Take the Weimar Republic as a classic example. It was a democratic system, yet it collapsed and gave way to Nazism under Adolf Hitler. This did not happen because democracy “naturally becomes fascist,” but because of a convergence of pressures: severe economic shocks such as the Great Depression, chronic political fragmentation and instability, weak institutional safeguards, and a widespread loss of trust in democratic governance. Anti-democratic actors also exploited democratic procedures—elections and constitutional appointments—to gain power from within. A similar dynamic can be seen in the rise of Benito Mussolini, who came to power through a mix of political manoeuvring and elite backing within a formally constitutional framework.

What is going on, then? Democracy institutionalises participation and competition, which means extremist movements can operate within it. When institutions are fragile or public trust erodes, such movements can win power through legal means and then begin dismantling democratic constraints from the inside. This dynamic is often described as democratic backsliding or authoritarian capture.

Thinkers have long warned about these vulnerabilities. Alexis de Tocqueville cautioned that democracies could drift towards forms of “soft despotism,” where popular sovereignty gradually yields to centralised authority claiming to act in the people’s name. Hannah Arendt, in her analysis of totalitarianism, highlighted how mass atomisation and the breakdown of intermediary institutions can create fertile ground for such movements. More recently, Jason Stanley argues in How Fascism Works (2020) that illiberal actors strategically exploit democratic freedoms—especially freedom of expression—to erode pluralism and normalise exclusionary politics.

Still, the idea that democracy can fail and be replaced by fascism—but does not inherently produce it—can feel unsatisfying. It may seem, especially when looking at historical and contemporary examples, that the very openness of democracy creates vulnerabilities that can be exploited. The challenge, then, is not to see democracy as inevitably leading to fascism, but to recognise that without strong institutions, civic awareness, and accountability, it can become fragile enough to be turned against itself.

Strong Institutions, Public Trust, and Respect for Democratic Norms

If democracy is often seen as the fairest and most legitimate form of government—giving citizens the power to choose their leaders and shape their societies—how can it be defended so that it is not undermined by forces that seek to destroy it from within? History shows that public faith in democratic governance can weaken during times of severe economic crisis. Periods marked by hyperinflation, widespread hardship, and social disillusionment often lead people to view democratic systems as ineffective and incapable of addressing their needs. In such conditions, political instability creates openings for more extreme movements.

In the Weimar Republic, this dynamic was clearly visible. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained support by exploiting fear, frustration, and uncertainty. Through persuasive propaganda, appeals to nationalism, and promises of renewal, Hitler was able to build a broad base of support. Over time, democratic institutions were gradually dismantled, and Germany transitioned into a totalitarian regime. This case illustrates how democracy can be undermined not only by external threats, but also through internal erosion. When trust declines, institutions weaken, and political actors exploit divisions, the system can begin to turn against itself. Some observers see elements of this pattern in contemporary politics, including in the United States, whilst recognising that such risks can emerge in many different contexts. The lesson is not that democracy inevitably fails, but that it requires constant protection—through strong institutions, an informed public, and a commitment to democratic norms—to withstand pressures from within.

To help address vulnerabilities within democratic systems and demonstrate resilience, courts, state officials, and other institutions must remain prepared at all times to uphold the rule of law and ensure the peaceful transfer of power through fair elections. At the same time, mass media—and increasingly digital technologies—play a powerful role in shaping public opinion and influencing electoral outcomes, sometimes in ways that contribute to confusion, polarisation, or misinformation. To safeguard democracy, societies need to build strong democratic traditions, robust institutional checks and balances, and a deeply embedded culture of constitutionalism and civic norms. These factors together can help prevent democratic breakdown.

These examples highlight a central lesson: democracy is not self-sustaining. It requires active participation, trust in institutions, and a shared commitment to rules and norms. When economic hardship, political polarisation, or misinformation weaken these foundations, democratic systems become more vulnerable to internal stress and exploitation.

In conclusion, democracy remains one of the most effective systems for representing the will of the people, but it is not without risk. The historical experience of Germany and the contemporary challenges seen in many democracies today demonstrate that democratic systems must be continuously protected and strengthened. Rather than assuming democracy will endure on its own, societies must recognise its fragility and actively work to preserve it.

—

Girma Berhanu is Professor of Education at the University of Gothenburg’s Department of Education and Special Education.

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EDITOR’S FORWARD: PART 3 — ETHIOPIA’S INTERNAL CONSTRAINT

The third instalment of Mefkereseb G. Hailu’s analysis arrives at the moment when Ethiopia’s strategic arithmetic becomes most urgent and most brutal. Parts 1 and 2 traced the architecture that has created, paradoxically, the most favourable external environment Ethiopia has faced in its modern history—the convergence of Israeli technology, Emirati capital, American security infrastructure, and demographic weight at a single strategic node. Yet that architecture, Hailu argues, can only be converted to national gain by a state capable of negotiating as a unit. A fractured Ethiopia finds in that same architecture the most efficient mechanism for dismemberment that the country has yet faced.

This instalment turns inward, but not to domestic policy abstracted from strategy. It does the opposite: it demonstrates that the internal and external are inseparable. The ethnic federalism that converts diversity into zero-sum bargaining, the personalist governance that substitutes leadership for institutions, the patronage networks that convert national assets into factional prizes, these are not merely unjust. They are the fracture lines through which external competitors penetrate Ethiopian strategic space. Every day that ethnic entrepreneurs mobilise constituencies against one another, they are simultaneously constructing the entry points for Cairo’s encirclement, for proxy cultivation, for the dismemberment that begins not with invasion but with the subtle repositioning of factional clients.

The author’s central concept the “monkey habit of ethnic entrepreneurship” will strike some as provocative. It should. It is meant to. The term names a specific political economic phenomenon with identifiable actors, predictable behaviours, and measurable costs. It is not a metaphor for poor manners but an operational mechanism: the conversion of identity into a tradable asset, the manufacture of grievance, the cultivation of victimhood narratives that locate every problem outside the constituency and every solution within the entrepreneur’s gift. The author demonstrates that ethnic entrepreneurs from rival groups are functionally allies, dependent on each other for the perpetuation of the inter-group mistrust from which they profit. They constitute a guild.

The analysis extends to the June 2026 election as a constitutional moment. This is not an endorsement of any candidate or party, nor is it naïve about the constraints under which the vote will be held. It is instead a recognition that elections offer something that no other mechanism currently available to Ethiopians provides: a moment in which voters can articulate, through their choices, whether the next political phase will be organised around programmes or around identities. The choice is not between Abiy Ahmed and an imagined optimum but between coalitions whose composition and mandate will determine whether the policies pursued afterward can be Pan-Ethiopian or will revert to ethnic-bargained variants of the same failed dispensation.

The article grapples unflinchingly with the Red Sea sovereignty question tracing the legal chain from Wuchale through Resolution 390(V), documenting the AU’s foundational hypocrisy, exposing the constitutional irregularity of the 1993 Eritrean referendum and the 2000 Algiers Agreement. It does so not as an exercise in historical recrimination but as the foundation for a strategic argument: that the window for recovering sovereign maritime access remains open while Egypt’s encirclement is still consolidating, and that the geopolitical moment that makes such recovery conceivable will not remain open indefinitely. The analysis of “attack, hold, and negotiate” as a strategic option is presented with equal weight to the political preconditions that make such an option survivable. The reconciliation lies in timing: the strategist’s calendar (dictated by deteriorating military balance) and the politician’s calendar (dictated by civic consolidation requirements) converge around 2027–28.

Yet the core argument remains domestic. A country whose internal politics is organised on ethnic lines cannot conduct a war of recovery that requires the cohesion of all major constituencies. Tigrayans will not fight for an Oromo-coded leadership’s coastline; Amhara will not accept casualties for a state perceived as having abandoned them; Oromo will not mobilise enthusiastically for an objective they perceive as Pan-Ethiopian but excluding their concerns. The military operation might succeed at the front; it would lose at home. This is why internal unity is not sentimental aspiration but the binding constraint on every external objective.

The article’s treatment of Abiy Ahmed as a political actor neither saint nor villain but a figure whose trajectory reveals the operational mechanics of the monkey habit will be controversial. The argument is narrower and more strategic than either supporters or critics commonly advance: in a country whose institutional infrastructure remains weak, whose opposition parties remain organisationally thin, whose civic ecosystem is still recovering from constraint and war, the choice presented to Ethiopians is not between Abiy and a robust civic alternative. It is between Abiy and what would actually emerge if he were defeated which, on present evidence, is not a Pan-Ethiopian civic coalition but a fragmentation contest among ethnic-entrepreneur factions whose combined effect would be to deliver to the balancing coalition (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Eritrea, Somalia) precisely the porosity it is working to engineer. The argument for engaging Abiy strategically rests on the absence of a credible alternative; the argument against permitting any leader unconditional power rests on the institutional discipline that civic citizenship requires.

The economic dimensions Birr depreciation, foreign-exchange scarcity, inflation, the compression of household real incomes receive analysis not as technical problems to be solved by experts but as the medium through which political outcomes are produced. Economic discontent is being channelled through ethnic categories. A young Amhara man unable to find work interprets his predicament as Oromo capture of the federal economy. A young Oromo man unable to find work interprets the same condition as elite betrayal of his constituency. A Tigrayan trader unable to access foreign exchange interprets the situation as deliberate federal punishment. These interpretations are not wholly fabricated; each contains elements of truth. But all of them mistake structural macroeconomic conditions for ethnic conspiracy, and ethnic entrepreneurs profit from the conversion.

The author’s fear, articulated in his transmission note, deserves reflection. He fears that the nation is not prepared to stave off the storms hurling upon it. That fear is justified. The encirclement is not theoretical 15,000 Egyptian troops in Somalia, military access at Assab and Doraleh, the Sunni leadership contest pressing Ethiopia’s Muslim communities as one more potential fracture line, Eritrea’s emergence from isolation. The window is closing. Whether Ethiopians recognise it and act on it is the question on which everything turns.

This instalment represents the most rigorous analysis of Ethiopia’s internal constraint yet to appear in these pages. It will anger some. It will clarify for others. It will provide to those Ethiopians still persuaded that their country’s future is worth fighting for the intellectual foundation on which that fight must rest: that a unified Ethiopia pursuing civic citizenship is not a luxury reform to be deferred until conditions are easier, but the most urgent strategic action available to Ethiopians today. The window for civic consolidation is open now because the external environment is favourable. It will close when one or more external actors decides that a fragmented Ethiopia serves its interests better than a unified one.

Part 4 will address the decisive question: Assab, the sovereign coastline, and the endgame examined as a sovereignty-and-deterrence problem that demands both international mediation and domestic civic consolidation.

Readers are encouraged to access and study the full PDF of the article at the following link.

Part 3 examines the internal dynamics that make institutional coherence possible or impossible.

Author: Mefkereseb G. Hailu (PhD)
Date: 26 April 2026
Series: The Abraham Accords — Part 3 of 4
Topic: Competition and Permissive Disorder in the Gulf–Red Sea–Horn

The Editor
Ethiopian Tribune
April 26, 2026

About Post Author

Ethiopian Tribune editor

editor@ethiopiantribune.com

https://ethiopiantribune.com

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