ANALYSIS · ETHIOPIA AND THE UNITED STATES

Forty-Eight Hours in Two Capitals

In Washington, a Tigrayan-born critic of the Ethiopian state won a seat in Congress and an Ethiopian-American admitted to spying for Addis Ababa. In Addis Ababa, the authorities silenced the country’s oldest independent newspaper. A tale of two cities, and what it costs the Ethiopian government.

By E. Frashie · 5 November 2026

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Dickens wrote of London and Paris on the eve of revolution. The two cities in this story are Washington and Addis Ababa, and the span is not a decade but roughly forty-eight hours, from Monday 2 November to the small hours of Wednesday 4 November 2026. In that window, three things happened that the Ethiopian government would, for different reasons, have preferred not to happen at all, or at least not at the same time.

On Monday, Ethiopia’s media regulator suspended The Reporter, the country’s oldest surviving independent newspaper, indefinitely. On Tuesday, in a federal courtroom in Washington, a former US government contractor pleaded guilty to passing top-secret American intelligence to Ethiopian officials so that they could use it against armed opponents of the state. And on Tuesday night, the voters of Denver sent to Congress a 29-year-old Ethiopian-born lawyer of Tigrayan origin who has spent years accusing the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments of genocide.

Each story has been reported on its own. Read together, they describe a government that is narrowing the space for scrutiny at home just as it is losing control of how it is seen abroad.

Washington I: The Ballot

Melat Kiros won Colorado’s 1st Congressional District with roughly 78 per cent of the vote, defeating the Republican Christy Peterson and the independent Shimon Blau. The Associated Press called the race on election night. The general election was a formality in a safe Democratic seat; the real contest came in June, when she ended the 29-year congressional career of Diana DeGette in the Democratic primary, winning the certified count by 53.2 per cent to 39.8.

She arrives in Washington as the first Generation Z woman elected to Congress and the first Black woman to represent Colorado in the House. She is a democratic socialist, endorsed by the DSA, Justice Democrats and Senator Bernie Sanders. Her campaign was about rents, healthcare and corporate money in politics, and, most controversially, about Gaza. She was fired from a New York law firm in 2023 after refusing to take down an essay defending student protesters.

That essay is where Ethiopia enters the story. Born in Addis Ababa and raised in Denver after her father won the US diversity visa lottery, Kiros wrote it explicitly as a woman from Tigray. In it she described the war of 2020–22 as genocidal and named the perpetrators as the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments. She wrote of three years spent alongside the Tigrayan diaspora pressing for international recognition, and of her father being in Mekelle during the official mourning period of October 2023. In a Denver interview this July, she again described a genocide in Tigray and warned that conflict there might be erupting again. Within weeks, it was.

“Addis Ababa now faces, inside the US legislature, a member whose formative political cause was the indictment of the Ethiopian state.”

Some caution is in order. Kiros campaigned on Denver, not on the Horn of Africa, and a first-term member of the House has little direct leverage over foreign policy. Her rhetoric on Tigray has also been contested from more than one direction: one critic, writing in the pro-Israel JNS, accused her of using Tigray selectively to sharpen her case on Gaza, while some in the Ethiopian diaspora dispute the genocide framing she adopts. And, contrary to what is being said in some diaspora circles, there is no public record of any organisational tie between Kiros and the TPLF. Her stated position is an indictment of Addis Ababa and Asmara, not an endorsement of any Tigrayan faction.

But the symbolism matters, and so does the platform. A member of Congress can write letters, place statements in the record, question officials at hearings, and give visibility to constituents and advocates. For a government that has spent years insisting that the language of genocide is a foreign fabrication, a voice of that kind inside the institution that shapes American aid and sanctions policy is not a trivial development.

Washington II: The Courtroom

The same day Denver voted, Abraham Teklu Lemma, a 54-year-old naturalised American of Ethiopian descent from Silver Spring, Maryland, pleaded guilty to conspiring to transmit US national defence information to the government of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. The US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, announced the plea; the Justice Department’s national security division called it an extraordinary betrayal.

The facts admitted are stark. Lemma worked as an IT contractor at the State Department, the Justice Department and the National Reconnaissance Office, holding a top-secret clearance. From 2021 until his arrest in August 2023, he removed classified material, including satellite imagery, maps and intelligence reports, from secure facilities and sent it to senior Ethiopian officials in political, military and intelligence roles. According to prosecutors, he hoped the material would help those officials target and kill paramilitary fighters in a regional conflict, and urged them to finish their armed opponents once and for all. Associated Press reporting says he encouraged the use of drones. An FBI counterintelligence official said Lemma admitted that Ethiopian officials used the intelligence in military operations.

The Justice Department has not named the conflict or the armed groups. The period covered, 2021 to 2023, spans the Tigray war, the Amhara insurgency and the conflict in Oromia, and those distinctions matter: which civilians lived beneath which drone strikes is the question this case raises and does not yet answer. Lemma faces between ten years and twenty-one years and ten months under the plea agreement, subject to the court’s approval, and is due to be sentenced on 14 April 2027. The Ethiopian government has made no public statement.

“A government that suspends a newspaper for harming diplomacy has just been named in an American espionage plea.”

Addis Ababa: The Silence

On Monday 2 November, the Ethiopian Media Authority announced on Facebook that it had suspended, indefinitely and with immediate effect, the registration of Media and Communication Center PLC, publisher of the Amharic Reporter and the English-language The Reporter, together with its digital platforms. The authority invoked Media Proclamation No. 1238/2021 and said a year of monitoring had found repeated legal and ethical breaches.

The charges were vague in the way such charges usually are: content contrary to Ethiopia’s national interests; sensationalised coverage of sensitive political and economic matters; selective reporting from national forums; and distorted information harmful to foreign investment, tourism and diplomacy. The suspension is to last until the paper meets what the authority calls its legal and professional obligations, conditions it did not define.

The timing was pointed. Two days earlier, The Reporter had run an editorial titled “Press Freedom Is Not A Luxury!”, warning that Ethiopia’s private press was in one of the most precarious periods in its history. The suspension fell on the UN’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. The paper had already been barred from covering the House of Peoples’ Representatives since late last year, and its journalists have been arrested before. Human Rights Watch notes that it was the country’s last privately owned Amharic newspaper.

The pattern is familiar to readers of this paper. Ethiopia ranks 148th of 180 countries in the Reporters Without Borders index; RSF counts five journalists in detention, four of them on terrorism charges. This year alone has seen the expulsion of the French correspondent Augustine Passilly, and further licence actions against other outlets. The Reporter, a bilingual institution of more than two decades, is not a partisan or fringe outlet. That is precisely why its suspension is a statement.

The Ledger: What It Costs Addis Ababa

Put the three stories side by side, and the contradictions become the analysis.

The diplomacy charge turned inside out. The Media Authority suspended The Reporter partly for publishing content that harms Ethiopia’s diplomacy. Within a day, a US federal court recorded that officials of the Ethiopian government had received stolen top-secret American intelligence for more than two years. No headline in an Addis Ababa newspaper could do the damage to Ethiopian–American relations that the plea record does. The regulator’s logic, that diplomatic harm comes from journalists, collapses on contact with the facts.

The sovereignty narrative under strain. The government’s posture in the Tigray, Amhara and Oromia conflicts has rested on sovereignty: these are internal security operations, and foreign commentary is interference. The Lemma case shows the state reaching into the secure systems of a foreign government to prosecute those operations. It also hands American critics a concrete question: did US intelligence, obtained illegally, inform strikes in which civilians died? Congress has every reason to ask, and now has a member with a personal stake in the answer.

The silence that compounds. Addis Ababa has said nothing about Lemma. It has said a great deal about The Reporter. The asymmetry is revealing: a government confident in its conduct would answer an espionage plea and tolerate a critical newspaper. This one is doing the opposite. With the domestic press curtailed, Ethiopians are left to learn about their own government’s intelligence operations from American court filings and foreign wires.

The diaspora as a political arena. Kiros’s election and Lemma’s plea come from the same diaspora, and from opposite ends of it. One is a Tigrayan-born critic who turned grievance into elected office; the other an Ethiopian-born insider who turned access into service to the state, by his own admission urging it to finish its enemies. Ethiopia’s conflicts are no longer contained within its borders. They are fought in Denver precincts, in Maryland server rooms and in the comment sections of diaspora media. A government that cannot tolerate The Reporter at home will find it far harder to manage a diaspora that now includes a member of Congress.

“Ethiopians are left to learn about their own government’s intelligence operations from American court filings.”

The timing of the war. All of this lands after the collapse of the Pretoria Agreement and the federal offensive in Tigray this autumn. Washington has applied pressure in more than one direction, including visa restrictions on TPLF hardliners, which this paper has covered. A neutral American posture depends on confidence that Addis Ababa is a reliable partner. The Lemma plea does not end that confidence, but it gives every sceptic in the State Department and on Capitol Hill a file to point to.

Coda

In Dickens, the two cities are bound together by the people who move between them. So it is here. The same week a Tigrayan daughter of Addis Ababa won the right to speak in the American Congress, the Ethiopian state took away the right of its oldest independent newspaper to speak in Addis Ababa. And the only detailed public account of how that state hunted its armed opponents came not from its own press, which it is busy closing, but from a federal courtroom in Washington.

There is a lesson in that for the Ethiopian authorities, if they wish to learn it. Suppressing The Reporter will not stop Ethiopia’s story from being told. It only ensures that it will increasingly be told elsewhere, by others, and on their terms.

◆ ◆ ◆

Opinion · Economy & Governance

The glittering façade and the miserable reality of a nation in distress

By Professor Girma Berhanu

Boulevards are widened, buildings rise and the night is lit up, while nearly two-thirds of Ethiopians live on less than USD 4.20 a day. Professor Girma Berhanu argues that a government which offers spectacle in place of welfare, security and accountability has confused the look of progress with the thing itself.

There is something profoundly disturbing, morally indefensible and politically grotesque about a country where glittering boulevards coexist with grinding poverty; where decorative lights illuminate the night while millions struggle to secure their next meal; and where monumental buildings rise against a backdrop of collapsing public trust, insecurity and widespread human suffering. This is the tragic paradox of contemporary Ethiopia under the incumbent government: a spectacle of urban splendour unfolding alongside an abyss of socioeconomic misery and political instability.

Beneath the dazzling façade of modernisation lies a nation confronting an increasingly unbearable socioeconomic predicament. For millions of ordinary Ethiopians, poverty, hunger, deprivation and uncertainty have become defining features of everyday existence. The economic hardship experienced by large sections of the population raises fundamental questions about the government’s development priorities and its understanding of public responsibility.

The Arithmetic of Hunger

According to the World Bank’s Poverty and Equity Brief for Ethiopia (October 2026), almost two-thirds of Ethiopians (63.7 per cent) live on less than USD 4.20 a day, the poverty line the Bank uses for lower-middle-income countries. Close to four in ten (38.6 per cent) fall below the international extreme poverty line of USD 3.00 a day, and more than nine in ten (93.5 per cent) live on less than USD 8.30. For millions, this means an existence characterised not simply by poverty but by a relentless struggle for survival. Food insecurity, malnutrition, inadequate housing, unsafe drinking water, inaccessible transport and insufficient health care remain serious challenges. The suffering of children, particularly those affected by malnutrition and stunted growth, and of elderly citizens facing hunger and destitution, raises profound questions about the country’s political and economic priorities.

Meanwhile, inflation continues to erode purchasing power, placing essential commodities beyond the reach of ordinary households. Persistent inflationary pressures, structural economic weaknesses, mounting indebtedness and declining economic confidence further complicate an already precarious situation. External debt and fiscal vulnerabilities raise troubling questions about economic sustainability, the prospects of future generations, and the state’s capacity to meet its obligations without imposing additional hardship on an impoverished population.

A Crisis of Trust and Security

Yet the economic crisis represents only one dimension of Ethiopia’s unfolding tragedy. The erosion of public confidence in government institutions has become equally consequential. Trust, an indispensable foundation of political legitimacy, has been undermined by widespread perceptions of corruption, authoritarian governance, institutional weakness and impunity. A government increasingly estranged from the lived experiences and aspirations of its citizens cannot indefinitely compensate for diminishing public trust through propaganda, monumental projects or choreographed spectacles of national grandeur.

Even more devastating is the deterioration of peace and security across substantial parts of the country. Armed conflicts, mass displacement, communal violence and persistent insecurity have inflicted enormous suffering on civilian populations. Reports and allegations of extrajudicial detention, unlawful killings, war crimes, mass atrocities and other grave human rights violations demand independent investigation, accountability and an unwavering commitment to justice. The increasing reliance on coercion and repression, rather than dialogue, reconciliation and democratic accommodation, raises serious questions about the governing approach of the incumbent administration.

The Showcase

Against this distressing backdrop, however, the government proudly showcases its urban transformation projects: widened boulevards, elegant walkways, expansive parks, imposing edifices, decorative lighting and ambitious digitalisation initiatives. These developments are presented as evidence of progress, modernisation and national renaissance.

To be fair, urban infrastructure, public spaces and digital technologies can be valuable instruments of development. Cities need roads, parks, efficient public services and modern infrastructure. Digitalisation can improve governance, facilitate transactions and enhance administrative efficiency.

The problem, therefore, is not modernisation itself. The problem is modernisation divorced from human welfare, social justice, economic inclusion and political accountability.

What moral or developmental justification can there be for an urban landscape of dazzling sophistication when millions remain trapped in hunger, homelessness, unemployment and deprivation? What meaningful achievement is represented by decorative illumination when children are denied adequate nutrition, elderly citizens face destitution, and displaced families struggle to survive? What is the significance of digital sophistication when citizens lack fundamental freedoms, institutional accountability and personal security?

These questions expose a fundamental contradiction in the government’s developmental narrative: the substitution of spectacular visibility for substantive progress, and the privileging of architectural grandeur over human dignity.

“Decorative lighting cannot dispel the darkness of repression. Monumental architecture cannot conceal the erosion of public trust.”

Modernisation Without Welfare

The contradiction becomes even more pronounced when digitalisation and urban beautification receive extraordinary public attention while the essential foundations of a functioning state (security, justice, institutional integrity and public confidence) remain gravely compromised. Technology cannot substitute for political legitimacy. Decorative lighting cannot dispel the darkness of repression. Monumental architecture cannot conceal the erosion of public trust. Nor can urban beautification compensate for the destruction of livelihoods and the disintegration of social cohesion.

Ultimately, development must be measured not by the brightness of streetlights, the breadth of boulevards or the magnificence of government buildings, but by the quality of human life. Its genuine indicators are the nutritional status of children, the dignity of elderly citizens, the affordability of food, the availability of housing, access to health care, the security of communities, and the freedom of citizens to live without fear.

A nation cannot credibly celebrate prosperity when its children suffer malnutrition, its elderly face hunger, its citizens are displaced, and its communities remain engulfed in violence. Nor can a government adequately demonstrate developmental success by pointing exclusively to the visible manifestations of modernisation while profound and pervasive human suffering persists.

The tragedy of Ethiopia today is not simply that poverty and political repression coexist with urban beautification. It is that the spectacle of beautification is increasingly presented as though it were an adequate response to the country’s existential crises.

The Measure of a Government

The bottom line is as heartbreaking as it is politically consequential: undernourished and stunted children, impoverished elderly citizens, displaced families and struggling communities stand bewildered beneath decorative lights and glittering urban landscapes that appear to celebrate a prosperity they themselves have yet to experience.

This is not development in its fullest human sense. It is a disturbing juxtaposition of glitter and deprivation, spectacle and suffering, ostentation and despair.

It is, indeed, apocalyptic suffering in Sin and Tinsel Town.

History will ultimately judge a government not by the lights it switches on, the buildings it erects or the boulevards it widens, but by the lives it protects, the hunger it alleviates, the freedoms it respects, the peace it secures, and the dignity it restores, or fails to restore, to its people.

“A country is not illuminated merely because its streets are brightly lit. It is illuminated when its people are free, fed, secure and dignified.”

References

World Bank. (2026). Poverty & Equity Brief: Ethiopia, October 2026. World Bank Group. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/099559004212518954/pdf/IDU-74184097-0606-4f26-a1b5-135f87d3c88c.pdf

World Bank. (2026). Poverty, Prosperity, and Planet Report 2026: Jobs at the Center of Poverty Eradication. World Bank Group. https://doi.org/10.1596/978-1-4648-2342-8

About the author: Girma Berhanu is Professor in the Department of Education and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a regular contributor to The Ethiopian Tribune.

THE ETHIOPIAN TRIBUNE

HISTORY · ANNIVERSARY

Tikimt 23: The Weight of a Crown

Ninety-six years ago today, a regent named Tafari became Emperor Haile Selassie I. To understand Ethiopia’s twentieth century, its triumphs and its unfinished reckonings, one must understand how he reached that throne and what he did with it.

By Endex

2 November 2026 · Tikimt 23, 2019 E.C.

On Tikimt 23, 1923 in our calendar, 2 November 1930 in the world’s, the bells of St George’s Cathedral in Addis Ababa rang for a coronation the world had been invited to watch. Abuna Qerellos placed the crown on the head of a slight, composed man of thirty-eight. He took the throne name Haile Selassie, “Power of the Trinity”, with the full style of Negusa Nagast, King of Kings, Elect of God, Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah.

He would be the last to wear that crown. Within forty-four years the dynasty that claimed descent from Solomon and Makeda would be swept away by soldiers in a single September morning. Between those two dates lies the most consequential reign in modern Ethiopian history.

This essay is offered for education, not hagiography. It traces the road to that November morning, the institutions he built, the war that nearly erased the state, the diplomacy that made Addis Ababa the capital of Africa, the reforms it attempted, and the revolution that ended it all. Our young readers in particular deserve the whole story, not the poster version favoured by either his admirers or his detractors.

◆◆◆

“A boy from Ejersa Goro, born in the shadow of Adwa”

Tafari Makonnen was born on 23 July 1892 at Ejersa Goro, near Harar. His father was Ras Makonnen Wolde Mikael, cousin and closest confidant of Emperor Menelik II. His mother, Weyzero Yeshimebet Ali, died when he was an infant.

The Ethiopia of his childhood had just done something no other African state managed in that era. On 1 March 1896, at Adwa, Menelik’s armies destroyed an Italian invasion force. The Treaty of Addis Ababa that followed recognised Ethiopian independence, and Adwa became a beacon for colonised peoples everywhere.

Ras Makonnen fought at Adwa and then served as Menelik’s diplomat abroad, including at the coronation of Edward VII in London in 1902. He was among the first Ethiopian nobles to see Europe’s railways, schools and ministries up close. He made sure his son learned French and was taught by Catholic missionaries in Harar, alongside the traditional church education every noble child received.

When Ras Makonnen died in 1906, the fourteen-year-old Tafari was brought to Menelik’s court. He was given governorships in Selale, then Sidamo, then in 1910 his father’s own province of Harar. These were his first lessons in administration, taxation and the difficult art of managing powerful men.

◆◆◆

“On the feast of the Cross, a throne changed hands”

Menelik suffered a series of strokes from 1906 onwards and died in December 1913. His chosen heir was his grandson, Lij Iyasu, a young man of energy and real ambition. Iyasu reached out to Muslim and Oromo communities in ways that alarmed the Shewan nobility and the Church.

His courtship of the Ottoman Empire and Germany during the First World War also alarmed the British, French and Italian legations. The accusation that he had abandoned the Orthodox faith, much of it propaganda, gave his enemies their pretext. On 27 September 1916, during Meskel, the nobility and the Church deposed him.

Menelik’s daughter, Zewditu, became Empress, crowned on 11 February 1917. Tafari, then twenty-four, was named Balemulu Silt’an Enderase (regent plenipotentiary) and heir to the throne. Iyasu’s father, Negus Mikael of Wollo, marched on the capital but was defeated at the Battle of Segale on 27 October 1916.

It was an uneasy partnership. Zewditu was devout and conservative, surrounded by the old guard. Tafari was patient, quietly reformist, and increasingly the face of Ethiopia to the outside world. For fourteen years, two centres of authority coexisted in one palace compound.

◆◆◆

“Adwa had won independence, but not security”

Tafari understood that Adwa had won Ethiopia’s independence, but not its security. Surrounded by British, French and Italian colonies, the country needed recognition as a member of the community of nations. His regency was a patient campaign to secure exactly that.

• The League of Nations (1923). Ethiopia was admitted on 28 September 1923, one of very few African members. Britain and Italy had objected, citing slavery. The condition of entry was a commitment to end the slave trade.
• The slavery question. Edicts in 1923 and 1924 banned the trade and provided for gradual emancipation. Enforcement was uneven, and final abolition would not come until 1942. Still, the regent made the issue a national commitment rather than a foreign accusation.
• The European tour (1924). Tafari travelled through Palestine, Egypt, France, Belgium, Sweden, Italy, Britain, Greece and other states. He studied schools, hospitals and factories, and he sought, without success, a port on the Red Sea.
• Schools and the press. The Tafari Makonnen School opened in 1925. A printing press produced the weekly Berhanena Selam (“Light and Peace”) from 1925, a forum for a new generation of Ethiopian reformist intellectuals.
• A crown before the crown (1928). After facing down a palace challenge by Dejazmach Balcha Safo, Tafari was crowned Negus (King) on 7 October 1928, still under the Empress.

The final contest came from Ras Gugsa Welle, governor of Begemder and Zewditu’s estranged husband. He rose in rebellion in 1930 and was killed at the Battle of Anchem on 31 March 1930, where the regent’s forces used aircraft for the first time in Ethiopian warfare. Two days later, on 2 April 1930, Empress Zewditu died. The road to the throne was clear.

◆◆◆

“At dawn on Tikimt 23, the world came to watch”

The coronation was designed as a message to the world: Ethiopia was an ancient Christian monarchy, a sovereign equal, and not a territory awaiting a colonial master. Seven months of preparation transformed the capital. Roads were laid, electric lights strung, buildings refaced and a monument raised.

The guest list was itself diplomacy. Britain sent the Duke of Gloucester, son of King George V. France sent Marshal Franchet d’Espèrey; Italy, the Prince of Udine; the United States, a special envoy. Delegations came from Belgium, Egypt, Germany, Japan, Sweden, the Netherlands and others. Journalists followed, among them Evelyn Waugh, whose mocking accounts later fed his novels.

“Ethiopia was an ancient Christian monarchy, a sovereign equal, and not a territory awaiting a colonial master.”

The rite itself followed the ancient Ge’ez liturgy of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Through the night the clergy chanted. At dawn, Abuna Qerellos anointed the Emperor and invested him with the regalia: the robe, the sword, the sceptre, the orb, the ring, the twin spears and finally the crown. Empress Menen Asfaw was then crowned beside him, a reminder that the throne was a household as well as an office.

Far away in Jamaica, some heard something else. To certain readers of scripture there, a Black king crowned before the princes of Europe seemed to fulfil prophecy. From that reading grew the Rastafari movement, which still bears his pre-coronation name. Whatever one makes of its theology, it shows how far the image of Tikimt 23 travelled.

◆◆◆

“A strong crown before a strong parliament”

Within nine months the Emperor gave Ethiopia its first written constitution, proclaimed on 16 July 1931. It created a two-chamber parliament, the first in the country’s history. But the senate was appointed by the Emperor, the lower house was chosen by the nobility, and sovereignty remained explicitly in the person of the monarch.

Later critics called this power drawn to the centre. Its defenders answer that a country whose regional lords had nearly torn it apart in 1916 and again in 1930 needed a strong crown before it could afford a strong parliament. Centralisation, in their view, was the precondition of national unity and of survival among colonial neighbours.

The same years saw the foundations of a modern state:

• The Bank of Ethiopia (1931) replaced the foreign-owned Bank of Abyssinia and issued a national currency.
• Ministries and a salaried bureaucracy began to replace a court run through personal retainers.
• A modern army took shape, with foreign military advisers, the Imperial Guard, and the Holeta military school opened in 1934.
• Students sent abroad, to Europe, the United States and Lebanon, formed the first cohort of Western-educated Ethiopians. Many would die in the coming war.

The time was short. Mussolini’s Italy had not forgotten Adwa.

◆◆◆

“Abandoned in Ethiopia, abandoned everywhere”

The pretext was a skirmish at the wells of Walwal in the Ogaden on 5 December 1934. Ethiopia took the dispute to the League of Nations, as a member was entitled to do. The League temporised. On 3 October 1935, Italy invaded without a declaration of war.

The League named Italy the aggressor and imposed sanctions, but left out oil, the one measure that might have stopped the war. In December, Britain’s Hoare and France’s Laval even drafted a secret plan to hand Italy much of Ethiopia; public outrage killed it. Meanwhile Italian aircraft sprayed mustard gas on soldiers, civilians, villages and livestock, in open violation of the 1925 Geneva Protocol.

The Emperor led his army in person at Maychew on 31 March 1936 and was defeated. On 2 May he left Addis Ababa by train for Djibouti; three days later Marshal Badoglio’s troops entered the capital. The decision to leave remains debated. Some saw desertion; others saw the only way to keep Ethiopia’s legal existence alive.

On 30 June 1936 he stood before the League Assembly in Geneva, jeered by Italian journalists in the gallery, and spoke for every small nation. His warning, in substance, was that collective security abandoned in Ethiopia would be abandoned everywhere: today it is us, tomorrow it will be you. Within four years Europe was at war, and the speech had become prophecy.

“Collective security abandoned in Ethiopia would be abandoned everywhere.”

He spent the exile largely at Fairfield House in Bath, England, living modestly while his envoys, among them Dr Workneh Martin in London, kept Ethiopia’s case alive. At home the occupation was savage. After an attempt on Viceroy Graziani’s life on Yekatit 12 (19 February 1937), Italian forces and Blackshirts massacred thousands in Addis Ababa. That May, the monks and deacons of Debre Libanos were executed.

Yet the country was never pacified. The Arbegnoch, the patriots, fought on in Shewa, Gojjam, Begemder and beyond, led by figures such as Ras Abebe Aregai, Belay Zeleke and Shewareged Gedle. When Italy entered the Second World War in June 1940, Britain at last became an ally. The Emperor crossed back into Gojjam from Sudan on 20 January 1941 with Gideon Force and the patriots. On 5 May 1941, exactly five years after the Italians took Addis Ababa, he re-entered his capital.

◆◆◆

“The nation the League forsook helped build its successor”

Liberation did not bring full sovereignty at once. Britain treated Ethiopia almost as a protectorate under the 1942 Anglo-Ethiopian Agreement, and the Emperor spent years prising control back. The 1944 agreement restored most of it. The Ogaden and the railway zone took longer.

What followed were the reign’s most celebrated achievements:

• Founding member of the United Nations (1945). The country the League abandoned helped build its successor.
• Ethiopian Airlines (1945). Founded in December 1945, it flew its first service in 1946 and grew into one of the continent’s great carriers.
• Korea (1951–1954). The Kagnew Battalion fought under the UN flag, a practical defence of the collective security he had pleaded for in Geneva. Ethiopian troops later served with the UN in the Congo from 1960.
• A national Church (1948–1959). After centuries under Egyptian Coptic metropolitans, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church gained its own bishops, and in 1959 its first patriarch, Abune Basilios.
• Higher education. University College of Addis Ababa opened in 1950 and became Haile Selassie I University in 1961, producing Ethiopia’s first modern professional class.
• The revised Constitution (1955). Proclaimed for the silver jubilee, it added a chapter of rights and an elected Chamber of Deputies, first chosen in 1957. Modern penal, civil and commercial codes followed between 1957 and 1965.
• Eritrea (1952). A UN resolution federated Eritrea with Ethiopia in 1952, restoring access to the sea. In 1962 the federation was dissolved and Eritrea annexed, a decision whose consequences still bleed today.

The crowning diplomatic act came in May 1963. The UN Economic Commission for Africa had already been seated in Addis Ababa in 1958. On 25 May 1963, thirty-two newly independent African states gathered in Africa Hall and founded the Organisation of African Unity, headquartered in Addis Ababa. The Emperor’s mediation between rival blocs of African states made the agreement possible. Africa Day is still celebrated on that date.

In April 1966 he visited Jamaica and was met by tens of thousands of Rastafari at Kingston airport. The orphan of Ejersa Goro had become one of the most recognised figures on earth.

◆◆◆

“Reform raced against revolution, and revolution won”

The first warning came from inside the palace. In December 1960, while the Emperor was on a state visit to Brazil, the commander of the Imperial Guard, Brigadier-General Mengistu Neway, and his brother Germame seized the capital. The army, the air force, the Church and the people of Addis Ababa rallied to the throne, and the coup collapsed within days. To many Ethiopians that loyalty proved how deeply the crown was rooted; to a restless few, it proved the crown could be challenged.

The questions of the 1960s were real, and the imperial government did not ignore them:

• Land. Ethiopian land tenure was ancient and intricate: inherited rist rights in the north, gult privileges held by nobility and Church, and newer tenancies in the south. The government created a Ministry of Land Reform and Administration in 1966, abolished the remaining gult privileges, and in 1967 introduced an agricultural income tax, which provoked an armed revolt in Gojjam in 1968. A tenancy bill to protect southern farmers stalled in a parliament of landholders. Admirers see the foundations of an evolutionary reform; critics see too little, too late.
• The students. The university he founded produced Ethiopia’s first modern professional class, and also its most radical critics. From 1965 a vocal minority marched under the slogan Meret le Arashu, “Land to the Tiller”. Many were drawn to imported Marxist-Leninist doctrine, which recast Ethiopia’s distinctive history in categories borrowed from European class struggle. The country would pay dearly for that borrowing.
• The periphery. Armed struggle began in Eritrea in 1961 and hardened after the federation ended. A long revolt ran in Bale from 1963 to 1970. Somali irredentism over the Ogaden flared into war in 1964.
• The succession. The Emperor was past eighty. Crown Prince Asfa Wossen suffered a severe stroke in 1973, and no settled plan existed for the transition.

Then came Wollo. Famine in 1972–73 cost tens of thousands of lives, and provincial officials minimised its scale; how fully the Emperor himself was informed is still debated. In October 1973 Jonathan Dimbleby’s documentary The Unknown Famine brought it to the world. On the eve of the deposition the Derg broadcast it on Ethiopian television intercut with scenes of palace luxury, a calculated piece of propaganda designed to turn reverence into rage.

“They dared not lay hands on a man so many still regarded as the Elect of God until they had first eroded that faith.”

In early 1974 army units mutinied over pay and conditions, and the oil shock brought teachers, taxi drivers and students onto the streets. A committee of junior officers, the Derg, formed in June and dismantled the old order piece by piece in a “creeping coup”. The soldiers moved slowly for a reason: they dared not lay hands on a man so many still regarded as the Elect of God until they had first eroded that faith. On 12 September 1974, the day after Enkutatash, he was deposed and driven from the palace in a Volkswagen.

What followed tested every accusation made against the old order. On 23 November 1974 the Derg executed some sixty former officials without trial. In March 1975 it abolished the monarchy and nationalised all rural land, denying the farmer ownership of the very plot the slogan had promised him. On 27 August 1975 state media announced the Emperor’s death; it is widely believed he was murdered. The Red Terror of 1977–78 killed tens of thousands of young Ethiopians, and the famine of 1984–85 claimed far more lives than Wollo had.

His remains were found in 1992, buried beneath the palace grounds. On 5 November 2000 he was laid to rest in Holy Trinity Cathedral beside Empress Menen, mourned by thousands who still called him Janhoy.

◆◆◆

“Faith, crown and nation, weighed honestly”

For half a century Haile Selassie has mostly been judged through one lens: the Marxist-Leninist narrative of the student movement and the Derg, which taught a generation to see the crown only as “feudal” oppression. That framework was itself an ideology, imported and then imposed by force. Our young readers deserve better than inherited slogans from any side, and an independent reading must hear at least four voices.

To the faithful, he was the Elect of God. For millions of Ethiopians the Emperor was never merely a ruler. In the tradition of the Kebra Nagast and the Church’s coronation rite, the Solomonic king was anointed, the defender of the faith and the father of the nation. People called him Janhoy, bowed as he passed, and read his return from exile as providence. That reverence was not servility: it was the bond that held a vast and diverse realm together, and its violent destruction left a void that ideology and the gun rushed to fill. Rastafari across the world carry a form of that devotion still.

To the constitutionalist, he was the father of Ethiopian law and rights. The 1931 Constitution was the country’s first. The 1955 Constitution added a chapter of rights: equality before the law, freedom of speech, press and assembly within the law, protection of property, and an elected chamber. Modern penal, civil and commercial codes followed between 1957 and 1965. Monarchists argue this was a gradual path toward constitutional monarchy, of the kind Britain, Sweden and Japan had travelled, which the revolution cut short. Critics reply that political parties were never permitted and that rights on paper were narrower in practice.

To the nationalist, he was the guardian of independence. Geneva in 1936, the return of 1941, the seat at the founding of the UN, the restoration of the sea through Eritrea and the OAU in Addis Ababa: no African leader of his century carried his country’s name further.

To his critics, he left too much unresolved. Land, the succession, the place of Ethiopia’s many nations and the hunger in Wollo were not settled in time, and a system so dependent on one revered person could not outlast his old age.

“Institutions built over centuries should be reformed with care, not torn down in a season.”

An honest verdict weighs all four. It acknowledges that the crown did not reform fast enough to save itself. It also records that the alternative imposed in 1974 in the name of the peasant took the land from everyone, killed more of the young than any emperor, and presided over a deadlier famine. For a publication committed to accountability, the lesson of Tikimt 23 is neither nostalgia nor contempt. Institutions built over centuries, the crown, the Church, the law and the memory of Adwa, should be reformed with care rather than torn down in a season, and rights written into a constitution must be lived as well as proclaimed.

◆◆◆

“Forty-four years, at a glance”

Endex is Chief Editor of The Ethiopian Tribune.

OPEN LETTER

An Open Letter to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Ambassador Ervin Massinga

On the subversion of the Amhara self-defence movement, the mandate of the AFNM/AFS (“Tsimedo”) platform, and the threat to the life of Eskinder Nega

By Dr. Sosena Tadesse

Published 30 October 2026

From: Dr. Sosena Tadesse

To:

• The Honorable Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, United States Department of State
• Ambassador Ervin Massinga, U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia
• Members of the International Diplomatic Corps, Human Rights Organizations, and Policy Makers

Date: October 27, 2026

Subject: Diplomatic Notice: The Subversion of the Amhara Self-Defense Movement, the Illegitimacy of the Foreign-Backed “AFNM/AFS” Proxy Platform, and the Imminent Threat to the Life of Eskinder Nega

Dear Secretary Rubio, Ambassador Massinga, and Esteemed Diplomats,

I am writing this open letter as an Amhara scholar and human rights advocate to bring to your immediate attention critical political and security developments in Ethiopia. Specifically, this notice addresses the systematic hijacking of the Amhara people’s existential self-defense struggle by external proxy platforms, the complete lack of mandate of the entity known as AFNM / AFS (“Tsimedo”), and the severe, immediate threat to the life of veteran human rights defender and political leader Eskinder Nega.

Since the world has already attested to journalist Eskinder’s stature as a great man who has fought for justice, equality, and democracy, I will not waste time describing his heroism. Following nearly seven years of wrongful imprisonment and persecution by the TPLF-led EPRDF regime, Secretary Marco Rubio previously advocated on Eskinder Nega’s behalf and met with him in Washington, D.C., stating:

“After advocating on his behalf, I was honored to meet with Ethiopian journalist Eskinder Nega, who is finally free after being wrongly imprisoned for almost 7 years. His case is a reminder of why we must continue to advocate for #humanrights worldwide #ExpressionNOToppression.”

1. Four Years of Enduring Sacrifice and the Subversion of Resistance Structures

Eskinder Nega is an iconic figure of contemporary Ethiopian political history. Having dedicated three decades to nonviolent democratic advocacy, he fearlessly exposed systemic governance failures and documented identity-based atrocities against the Amhara population. Over the past four years, he has endured extreme physical hardship in the field, standing alongside rural communities to resist state-sponsored mass atrocities and genocide.

The current armed conflict escalated when the Prosperity Party regime implemented a policy attempting to disarm the Amhara Special Forces and local Fano self-defense units while leaving the armed structures of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) intact. Amhara self-defense forces rejected this discriminatory mandate, stating clearly: “We will not disarm while the anti-Amhara TPLF forces—who waged a brutal genocide against our people—remain fully armed.” Systemic discrimination and unchecked massacres further catalyzed a region-wide popular uprising.

To establish institutional cohesion, Eskinder founded the Amhara Popular Front (APF) and was subsequently elected by a strong democratic mandate to lead the Amhara Fano Popular Organization (AFPO/አፋሕድ) for over 19 months. However, political operatives linked to former ANDM/TPLF networks systematically subverted these principled structures. They ultimately forced the dissolution of AFPO to construct AFNM (አፋብን)—an entity transformed into a proxy tool serving external regional agendas and political brokers.

2. Documentary Evidence of Subversion: Eskinder Nega’s Official Declarations

The subversion of the Amhara struggle is formally documented through Eskinder Nega’s official statements:

• August 24, 2026 (Official Interview with Deutsche Welle / DW):

Eskinder publicly rejected unrepresentative coalitions, stating: “The ‘Tsimedo‘ alliance being formed without the knowledge or consent of the broader Fano membership is completely unacceptable.”

He further warned of imminent physical danger, revealing: “I am facing repeated assassination attempts from state military forces as well as armed militants who currently prefer to remain unnamed.”

• September 22, 2026 (Message Following Zemene Kasse’s Tigrai TV Announcement):

Following Zemene Kasse’s September 20 broadcast on Tigrai TV announcing the formation of the “Alliance for Survival,” Eskinder exposed that AFNM leadership—without member knowledge or consent—aligned with armed groups hostile to the Amhara population (specifically the TPLF, OLF-Shene, and the Gumuz Liberation Movement). He stressed: “These entities have been documented by independent international human rights bodies as primary perpetrators of identity-based mass atrocities against Amhara civilians over the past eight years, carrying severe legal and moral accountability.”

• October 27, 2026 (Formal Resignation Letter to the AFNM Politburo):

In his formal resignation letter, Eskinder exposed the 30-year structural network that orchestrated this takeover:

“The TPLF-aligned ANDM/TPLF network has built a pervasive presence across government, the economy, media, and the diaspora over thirty years. Unlike other groups, this faction sought to directly control Fano from its inception. When that failed, they spent years systematically hijacking emerging Fano structures across the Amhara region. Their hijacking eventually succeeded… Although it remained toothless during three decades of TPLF rule, it has now positioned itself as the primary political and public relations engine within AFNM.”

3. AFNM / AFS (“Tsimedo”): An Unrepresentative Proxy Platform

The platform claiming to represent the Amhara resistance—AFNM / AFS (Tsimedo)—holds zero political, legal, or moral mandate from the Amhara people.

• Reversal of Ground Realities and Territorial Integrity: AFNM/AFS actively seeks to dismantle the self-determination and administrative realities re-established in historic Amhara domains—including Wolkait, Tegede, Telemte, Humera, Korem, Alamata, Waja, Mehoni, and occupied Raya territories. During Ambassador Massinga’s official visit to Wolkait, he directly observed the established administrative realities and the firm resolve of the local Amhara population. The expansionist TPLF seeks these ancestral lands solely to construct a ‘Greater Tigray’ and dismantle Amhara existence; AFNM/AFS attempts to surrender these lands back to facilitate that expansion.
• Collusion with Perpetrators of Atrocities: By aligning with entities responsible for documented massacres of Amhara civilians, the AFS leadership has betrayed the sacrifices of victims and martyrs. As Eskinder Nega observed, this arrangement represents “the ox partnering with its butcher.”

4. Categorical Rejection of Aviation Terrorism and Extremism

The authentic Amhara popular resistance operates strictly within the framework of International Humanitarian Law (IHL) and legitimate self-defense principles. We categorically condemn and distance the Amhara cause from rogue agitators affiliated with the AFS network who incite attacks against civil aviation (including commercial Ethiopian Airlines flights) or critical national infrastructure.

Such incitements constitute international aviation terrorism under the 1971 Montreal Convention. As Secretary Rubio correctly identified, extreme attacks targeting capital infrastructure and civilian transport are the work of terrorist and separatist elements—not the principled, popular self-defense movement of the Amhara people.

5. Immediate Life Threat to Eskinder Nega and Pattern of Internal Assassinations

Eskinder Nega is currently under effective political captivity by internal saboteurs and faces an immediate threat of physical assassination. This TPLF-aligned faction has an established history of orchestrating internal betrayals and targeted liquidations of principled leaders loyal to the Amhara cause—most notably the tragic assassination of Arbegna Kefyalew Desse. Eskinder’s refusal to compromise the Amhara cause to foreign proxy interests has made him the primary target of this same network.

Diplomatic Call to Action

• Urgent Intervention for Eskinder Nega’s Physical Safety: We urge the U.S. Department of State, Ambassador Ervin Massinga, and international human rights bodies (including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch) to urgently monitor Eskinder Nega’s status and demand his immediate physical protection.
• Formal Rejection of Unrepresentative Proxies: We request that the United States Government and international diplomatic partners formally reject AFNM/AFS, recognizing them as foreign-backed proxy entities operating contrary to the stability of the Horn of Africa.
• Acknowledgment of Public Rejection on the Ground: International observers must take note of widespread public demonstrations across the Amhara region, particularly in Gojjam, where citizens have explicitly denounced AFS forces—publicly marking photographs of figures like Zemene Kasse, Debretsion Gebremichael, and Kumsa Diba (Jaal Marroo) with large red ‘X’s to signal total public repudiation.
• Adherence to Ground Realities and Atrocity Accountability: Any sustainable peace framework in the Horn of Africa must respect the sacrifices of the Amhara people, differentiate authentic Fano self-defense units from unrepresentative proxy coalitions, demand strict accountability for anti-Amhara genocide, and respect the established administrative realities in Wolkait, Tegede, Telemte, Humera, Korem, Alamata, Waja, Mehoni, and Raya.

Sincerely,

Dr. Sosena Tadesse

Advocate for Human Rights and the Amhara Survival Struggle

— The Ethiopian Tribune —

AMHARA UNDER PRESSURE

The Amhara Crisis: Human Suffering, International Silence, and the Demand for Accountability

By Professor Girma Berhanu  ·  30 October 2026

Editor’s Foreword

In the week since the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church confirmed that sixty of its faithful had been killed in the Merti and Shirka woredas of Arsi Zone — fourteen at Gora Silingo on 20 October, forty-six across Tereta, Chole and Birbo four days later — the dead have already begun to slip from the headlines into the statistics. That drift, from atrocity to footnote, is the subject of Professor Girma Berhanu’s latest contribution to these pages.

The Tribune has documented the killing of Orthodox Christians in East Arsi for some years. The scale is no longer seriously in dispute among those who keep count: the Ethiopian Human Rights Council’s 158th Special Report, published in August, recorded at least 432 civilians killed and more than 14,000 displaced across the zone since 2021/22. What remains in dispute is who is responsible, and who is listening. The Oromia regional government has blamed the Oromo Liberation Army and its allies; sources close to the rebel alliance point back at the regional authorities. Neither claim has yet been independently substantiated. Meanwhile, Wazema Radio and BBC Amharic have reported the detention of dozens of residents and mourners in the affected districts — people whose families say they came only to bury their dead.

Professor Girma does not pretend to settle the question of perpetrators. His argument is harder and, in our view, more durable: that the protection owed to a civilian cannot depend on whether the world finds that civilian’s suffering legible. He is careful — more careful than many who share his concern — to separate the moral claim from the empirical one. That Amhara and Orthodox civilians deserve protection and justice is not, for him, a hypothesis. That the international community has deliberately ignored them is, and he says plainly that it must be tested rather than assumed.

The second half of the essay turns to the older question beneath the new one: how a people came to be cast, in parts of Ethiopian political discourse and in some foreign writing, as collectively culpable for the country’s past. Drawing on Desalegn Birara and Adamu Walelign, and on European representations of Ethiopia on the eve of the Italian invasion, he argues that the demonisation of the Amhara should be examined as a historical and political process rather than inherited as fact — while conceding, as honest historians must, that the making of the Ethiopian state involved coercion as well as cooperation.

Readers will disagree with parts of this essay. Some will find it too restrained; others will contest its reading of history. We publish it because its central demand — that every victim be recognised, every credible allegation investigated, and every perpetrator held to account, whatever the ethnicity, faith or political convenience involved — is one this publication has made before, and will go on making.

— The Editor

Synopsis

Introduction and Summary

The crisis confronting the Amhara population in Ethiopia constitutes far more than an armed conflict. It is a profound humanitarian and human rights crisis marked by civilian insecurity, forced displacement, targeted violence, and the erosion of fundamental rights. Peace is meaningless when people cannot live without fear, send their children to school, access healthcare, obtain food, or sustain their livelihoods. The central concern of this article is whether the Ethiopian state and the international community are fulfilling their fundamental obligations to protect civilians, uphold equal citizenship, and ensure accountability, irrespective of ethnic identity or political affiliation.

Particular attention is given to reports of deadly attacks against Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christians, many of whom are reportedly of Amhara identity, in Arsi Zone, Oromia. According to a statement attributed to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church’s Holy Synod, 60 people were killed between 20 and 25 October 2026, 20 homes were destroyed, and more than 20 people sustained serious injuries. These allegations demand urgent, independent, and impartial investigation. The protection of civilians, the provision of humanitarian assistance, and the prosecution of those responsible must not be subordinated to political calculations or ethnic considerations.

Developments reported as this article was being finalised raise further serious concerns. According to eyewitness accounts and local residents, more than 50 people—including doctors and other healthcare professionals who reportedly treated victims of the attacks—were allegedly arrested by Oromia security forces. Those reportedly detained also include relatives of victims and individuals who attended funeral ceremonies or helped bury the dead. These arrests would raise grave questions about the treatment of medical personnel, bereaved families, and community members providing essential humanitarian assistance. Detaining individuals for treating the wounded, mourning the dead, or assisting with burials would represent a deeply troubling violation of fundamental humanitarian and human rights principles.

The article also interrogates the apparent disparity between the suffering reported in Amhara and the degree of international media coverage, diplomatic engagement, and institutional attention it receives compared with other conflicts, including the war in Tigray. Drawing on the author’s advocacy and communications with diplomats, international organisations, and media representatives, it highlights the gap between expressions of concern and demonstrable action. This disparity raises legitimate questions about whose suffering becomes internationally visible, whose experiences remain marginalised, and whether human rights principles are applied consistently. The extent, causes, and consequences of any such disparity require systematic empirical investigation; nevertheless, the obligation to protect civilians cannot depend on the visibility of their suffering.

“The obligation to protect civilians cannot depend on the visibility of their suffering.”

A further dimension concerns the historical narratives and political representations through which the Amhara are understood. Drawing on writings by Desalegn Birara and Adamu Walelign, the article examines how broad ethnic generalisations and portrayals of the Amhara as a collectively culpable historical group may contribute to stereotyping, marginalisation, and the diminished recognition of contemporary suffering. Ethiopia’s resistance to European colonialism, particularly its victory at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, provides an important historical context, but it does not negate the complexity of Ethiopia’s internal history or the need to examine historical inequalities critically. Historical responsibility must be established through evidence and contextual analysis, not assigned collectively to an entire ethnic community. Neither historical grievances nor present political conflicts can justify discrimination, collective punishment, or the denial of equal rights.

The humanitarian consequences extend well beyond immediate violence. Displacement undermines educational continuity, healthcare access, food security, family stability, and the capacity of communities to recover. The resulting insecurity threatens not only individual lives but also the social foundations necessary for lasting peace. Addressing the crisis therefore requires more than statements of concern: it demands effective civilian protection, safe and sustained humanitarian access, support for displaced families, restoration of essential services, credible investigations into alleged abuses, and accountability consistent with international human rights standards.

Ultimately, this article argues that the Amhara crisis must be understood as a fundamental test of civilian protection, equal citizenship, human dignity, and the universality of human rights. The Ethiopian government bears responsibility for protecting people within its jurisdiction and investigating credible allegations of abuse. The international community, in turn, must respond impartially, scrutinise credible reports, support independent investigations, and resist the selective application of humanitarian concern. No community should be rendered invisible, denied protection, or deprived of justice because of its ethnic identity or perceived political significance. Sustainable peace in Ethiopia requires an unequivocal commitment to protecting every civilian, recognising every victim, investigating every credible allegation, and holding perpetrators accountable without discrimination.

Central Argument

The Amhara crisis is not merely a question of armed conflict; it is a test of whether equal citizenship and universal human rights have practical meaning in Ethiopia. When civilians face violence, displacement, deprivation, and potentially arbitrary detention, the response must be grounded in evidence, impartiality, and accountability—not ethnic prejudice, political expediency, or selective international attention. The protection of human life is not conditional on ethnicity, political affiliation, or international visibility. Without credible investigations, effective civilian protection, humanitarian assistance, and accountability for abuses, sustainable peace and democratic coexistence will remain unattainable.

“The protection of human life is not conditional on ethnicity, political affiliation, or international visibility.”

When Survival Becomes a Daily Struggle

Over the past eight years, since Abiy Ahmed came to power as Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the situation of the Amhara population has deteriorated dramatically. Persistent armed conflict, civilian insecurity, forced displacement, and humanitarian hardship have placed millions of people under immense pressure. Many Amharas fear that government policies and military operations threaten their collective security and survival. The central issue is not simply the continuation of armed conflict; it is the failure to guarantee civilians the fundamental rights to life, security, dignity, and justice. Targeted violence and deliberate persecution require independent investigation rather than dismissal, denial, or political silence. For ordinary people, peace is not an abstract political promise. It means being able to walk to the market without fear, send children to school, seek medical care, cultivate land, and return home safely. In Ethiopia’s Amhara region, prolonged conflict and insecurity have severely undermined these basic conditions of human existence. When people cannot carry out the ordinary activities necessary for survival, peace has ceased to be a meaningful reality in their lives. The crisis also extends beyond the Amhara region. Amhara communities living in Oromia, particularly in the Arsi Zone, have reportedly endured repeated killings and targeted attacks. The recurrence of such violence raises urgent questions about civilian protection, the prevention of ethnically targeted abuses, and the accountability of those responsible. Recent disturbing reports have attracted international attention, but episodic concern is insufficient in the face of persistent allegations of serious abuses.

The central argument is that the Amhara crisis must be understood not merely as a consequence of armed conflict, but as a profound crisis of civilian protection, equal citizenship, and accountability. No population should be left to endure recurring violence because of its ethnic identity, political marginalisation, or geographical location. The Ethiopian government has a fundamental responsibility to protect all civilians without discrimination, investigate credible allegations of abuses, and ensure that those responsible are held accountable. The international community, too, must move beyond expressions of concern towards sustained scrutiny, independent monitoring, humanitarian engagement, and support for credible investigations. Without these measures, calls for peace and national reconciliation risk becoming empty rhetoric, detached from the lived realities of those whose lives and dignity remain under threat.

The situation in Arsi Zone, Oromia region, points to a deeply concerning pattern of targeted violence against Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Christians, particularly those of Amhara identity. Reports suggest that victims are being targeted on the basis of both their ethnic identity and religious affiliation. Serious allegations have also been raised regarding the involvement of armed forces operating in the Oromia region and the government’s awareness of these attacks. These allegations warrant a thorough, independent, and impartial investigation.

According to an announcement by the Holy Synod of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, 60 faithful were killed in a series of violent attacks between 20 and 25 October 2026, in the Merti and Shirka woredas of Arsi Zone. The Holy Synod reported that 14 people were killed in the Gora Silingo area of Merti Woreda on 20 October. A further 46 people were killed in attacks on 24 October in the Tiruta, Chole, and Birbo areas of Shirka Woreda. The reported violence also resulted in the complete destruction of 20 residential homes, while more than 20 people sustained severe injuries and remained hospitalised in critical condition, according to the Holy Synod. The Synod characterised these incidents as part of an escalating and sustained pattern of targeted violence, forced displacement, and property destruction affecting Orthodox Tewahedo Christians in Arsi Zone and other parts of Ethiopia. These reports raise urgent concerns about civilian protection, state responsibility, and the persistent failure to ensure the safety of vulnerable communities. Attacks targeting individuals because of their ethnicity or religious beliefs constitute a grave violation of fundamental rights and undermine the principles of equality, security, and peaceful coexistence. The Ethiopian government must fulfil its obligation to protect all civilians, regardless of ethnicity or religion. This requires immediate and effective measures to prevent further attacks, ensure the safety of affected communities, facilitate humanitarian assistance, and establish accountability through independent and impartial investigations. Those responsible must be held accountable in accordance with the law. Silence and impunity risk allowing this pattern of violence and displacement to continue. Protecting civilians and securing justice for victims must be an urgent national priority.

The Amhara Crisis and the Limits of International Attention

I have personally worked to raise public awareness of reported atrocities against the Amhara people in Ethiopia. In this capacity, I have communicated my concerns to numerous groups, diplomats, international organisations, current and former ambassadors, and major international media outlets. While some have expressed concern, I have seen limited evidence of sustained international engagement or media coverage commensurate with the seriousness of the allegations I have sought to bring to their attention. This experience has prompted me to examine a fundamental question: why has the suffering of the Amhara people received comparatively limited international attention, and what factors might explain the gap between reports of violence and the international response?

Reports of killings, forced displacement, destruction of property, and other forms of violence against Amhara civilians warrant systematic investigation and serious international scrutiny. Yet, based on my experience of advocacy and outreach, efforts to draw attention to these reports have often generated expressions of concern without the level of sustained public debate, diplomatic engagement, and institutional response that I had hoped to see. Although my experience cannot, by itself, establish the extent of international neglect, it raises important questions about how humanitarian crises are recognised, reported, and prioritised.

A comparison with international responses to the war in Tigray is relevant, provided that differences in the conflicts, their chronology, and the available evidence are taken into account. The war in Tigray attracted substantial international media coverage, diplomatic engagement, and public discussion. Why, then, have reports of violence affecting Amhara communities not consistently generated a comparable level of international attention? Addressing this question requires examining differences in media access, the availability and verification of information, diplomatic priorities, geopolitical interests, advocacy networks, and the capacity of affected communities to bring their experiences to international audiences.

Another important issue concerns the role of political narratives and public perceptions. How are the Amhara people represented in Ethiopian political discourse and international reporting? Do established narratives about Ethiopia’s history, ethnic relations, and political conflicts influence which victims receive recognition and which accounts are considered credible? To what extent, if any, do political alliances, competing interpretations of the conflict, or entrenched stereotypes contribute to the underrepresentation of Amhara suffering? These are questions for empirical investigation rather than conclusions that should be assumed in advance.

The consequences of delayed recognition can be profound. When allegations of serious human rights violations receive insufficient scrutiny, opportunities for prevention, independent investigation, humanitarian assistance, and accountability may be lost. The international community should therefore ensure that reports concerning the Amhara are assessed according to the same transparent evidentiary standards and human rights principles applied to other populations affected by conflict. This requires independent fact-finding, credible documentation, responsible journalism, and consistent diplomatic engagement.

The comparison with the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda raises a broader concern about the international community’s capacity to respond to warning signs before violence escalates further. The historical lesson is not that different conflicts should be treated as identical, but that the verification of credible warnings and timely preventive action are essential to protecting civilian populations.

Ultimately, the issue is one of consistency, accountability, and equal recognition of human suffering. The experiences of the Amhara people deserve rigorous documentation and serious international consideration, just as the experiences of other communities affected by violence do. The key question is whether international institutions, governments, and media organisations are applying consistent standards of attention and scrutiny to credible reports of atrocities, regardless of the identity of the victims or the political sensitivities involved.

Answering this question requires more than expressions of concern. It requires examining the available evidence, identifying gaps in reporting and response, and determining what practical measures can protect civilians and establish accountability. The objective should be neither to minimise the suffering of one community nor to diminish that of another, but to ensure that no population’s suffering is overlooked because it is politically inconvenient, insufficiently represented, or difficult to investigate.

The consequences extend beyond the immediate battlefield. Families have been uprooted, children’s education interrupted, healthcare services strained, and livelihoods destroyed. For displaced people, the danger of the conflict is often followed by a different struggle: finding shelter, securing food, accessing medical care, and protecting family members in unfamiliar surroundings. Understanding the Amhara crisis requires more than counting casualties or describing military confrontations. It requires examining how insecurity affects the fundamental rights of civilians, why displacement becomes prolonged, how accountability can be strengthened, and what measures are necessary to protect lives without deepening the suffering of the population.

The Amhara Crisis: International Silence, Historical Narratives, and the Politics of Recognition

strong>Why Has the World Forgotten the Amhara People Amid Massacres? The question is painful because it goes beyond the violence itself. It asks why civilian suffering can continue while international attention remains limited, why reports of serious abuses do not always translate into meaningful protection, and why some communities struggle to make their experiences heard. These questions are particularly urgent in light of the recent reports of violence in Arsi Zone, Oromia region.

It would be inaccurate to conclude that the world has entirely forgotten the Amhara people. Nevertheless, international media coverage, diplomatic pressure, and humanitarian responses have not always appeared commensurate with the gravity of the reported suffering. Understanding this gap requires examining media priorities, geopolitical interests, access to reliable information, the politics of international recognition, and the challenges of holding powerful actors accountable.

It is also important to distinguish between a moral imperative—that Amhara civilians deserve protection, recognition, and justice—and the more specific factual claim that the international community has deliberately ignored their plight. The latter requires evidence. The disparity between reported suffering and international attention, however, warrants serious scrutiny.

There have been some encouraging signs of international recognition. Last week, several members of the US Congress reportedly expressed concern about the latest attacks against Amhara civilians and Orthodox Christians. Congresswoman Nancy Mace, for example, condemned the reported massacres of Orthodox Christians in Arsi Zone and criticised what she characterised as inadequate Western media coverage and insufficient attention from human rights organisations.

In a statement posted on social media following the attacks, Mace expressed outrage at the reported killings and destruction of property, questioning what she described as international indifference. Her intervention is a welcome gesture of solidarity because it brings attention to suffering that many believe has received insufficient coverage. Yet an important question remains: how can expressions of concern be translated into meaningful action? Public statements matter, but their significance ultimately depends on whether they contribute to independent investigations, effective civilian protection, humanitarian assistance, sustained media scrutiny, and accountability for those responsible.

Many people have asked why the plight of the Amhara has received comparatively little international attention. Two scholarly contributions offer perspectives that may help illuminate this question: Desalegn Birara’s From Defeating Colonialism to Facing Genocide: Historical Precedents and Prospects of the Amhara Existential Struggle in Ethiopia and Professor Adamu Walelign’s Amhara Demonization: The Enduring Legacy of a Malevolent Narrative.

Although the two works differ in emphasis, both examine how historical interpretations and political narratives shape perceptions of the Amhara community. Their arguments challenge representations that portray the Amhara collectively as historical oppressors, suggesting that such generalisations can obscure the diversity of Amhara experiences and identities. They also explore how competing accounts of Ethiopian state formation, historical power, and ethnic relations have influenced contemporary political tensions. A central concern in these arguments is that when an entire ethnic community is held collectively responsible for historical injustices, its members may become vulnerable to stereotyping, exclusion, and discrimination. The authors’ perspectives suggest that prevailing political narratives deserve closer examination, particularly where they may influence how violence against Amhara civilians is interpreted, reported, or acknowledged internationally.

The broader historical debate is complex. The Amhara have played an important role in the formation and development of the Ethiopian state, while the country’s history also includes contested processes of political centralisation, regional domination, and resistance. Competing interpretations of this history have become deeply embedded in contemporary Ethiopian politics. The extent to which particular narratives contribute to present-day discrimination and violence must be examined through historical research, documented evidence, and careful analysis rather than assumed in advance. Nevertheless, these works raise an important question: can historical stereotypes and prevailing political narratives affect whose suffering is recognised, whose testimony is taken seriously, and which communities receive international solidarity? If so, understanding the Amhara crisis requires examining not only the violence itself but also the interpretive frameworks through which it is understood.

Ultimately, the issue is not whether the suffering of the Amhara should be prioritised over that of other Ethiopian communities. All civilians deserve equal protection, and serious violations of human rights warrant investigation regardless of the victims’ ethnic or religious identity. The challenge is to ensure that international responses are consistent, evidence-based, and guided by the same principles of human dignity and accountability.

“Civilian protection cannot be selective, justice cannot depend on ethnic identity, and humanitarian assistance cannot wait for political convenience.”

The reports emerging from Arsi Zone make this question particularly urgent. Expressions of solidarity are important, but they must be accompanied by credible documentation, independent investigation, and practical measures to protect civilians. The international community should not wait for further escalation before taking credible reports of violence seriously.

The essential question is therefore not simply why the Amhara crisis receives limited attention, but what can be done to ensure that credible reports of abuses are investigated, victims are protected, and accountability does not depend on the political visibility of the people affected.

I would like to offer my own perspective on this matter, particularly on the historical narratives that have shaped international perceptions of the Amhara people. In my view, these narratives cannot be fully understood without examining the intersection of European colonial interests, Ethiopia’s resistance to foreign domination, and the political struggles over the country’s history and identity.

Western representations of Ethiopia and the Amhara, dating back several centuries, deserve closer historical scrutiny. Religious commitment, military traditions, patriotism, and a strong attachment to national independence have been important elements of Ethiopian history. Ethiopia’s resistance to European colonial expansion, particularly its victory over Italy at the Battle of Adwa in 1896, challenged prevailing assumptions about European superiority and became a powerful symbol of African resistance to colonialism. The prominent historical role of Amhara political and military elites in this struggle is relevant to understanding the subsequent contestation of Ethiopian history and identity.

Rudolf Rocházka’s Abyssinia: The Powder Barrel (1934) provides a useful source for examining European representations of Ethiopia during the period preceding Italy’s invasion in 1935. The book should be read critically and situated within the political climate of European imperial expansion. Its portrayal of Ethiopia’s political and social conditions raises questions about how descriptions of internal divisions and alleged oppression could be used to undermine the legitimacy of an independent African state. I believe that the international image of the Amhara has also been shaped by political struggles within Ethiopia. Some ethno-nationalist movements, including separatist currents among Tigrayan and Oromo political actors, have advanced interpretations of Ethiopian history that portray the Amhara collectively as colonisers or oppressors. Such representations are contested and should be assessed against historical evidence. My concern is that collective accusations against an entire ethnic community can obscure historical complexity, reinforce ethnic stereotypes, and contribute to the marginalisation of ordinary people who cannot reasonably be held responsible for every action of past governments or political elites.

Ethiopia’s contribution to African independence and its resistance to European colonialism are important dimensions of this debate. However, it is necessary to distinguish Ethiopia’s historical role as an independent state from the complex internal relations of power, which included both cooperation and coercion among different communities. Recognising these complexities does not justify portraying the Amhara as collectively guilty of historical injustices, just as acknowledging the suffering of other Ethiopian communities does not diminish the historical significance of Ethiopia’s resistance to colonial domination.

My central argument is that the demonisation of the Amhara should be examined as a historical and political process, not accepted as an objective description of an entire people. This requires critically investigating colonial-era representations, contemporary political propaganda, and competing nationalist accounts of Ethiopian history. It also requires distinguishing documented historical events from generalisations, allegations, and politically motivated interpretations.

“The demonisation of the Amhara should be examined as a historical and political process, not accepted as an objective description of an entire people.”

Ultimately, a more balanced understanding of Ethiopia’s past must recognise the Amhara’s historical contributions without idealising their political elites, while acknowledging the experiences of other Ethiopian communities without assigning collective blame. Such an approach is essential not only for historical accuracy but also for understanding contemporary ethnic tensions, challenging discriminatory narratives, and advancing a more inclusive vision of Ethiopia’s future.

The Humanitarian Crisis: Food, Healthcare, and Education

The right to live in safety is the foundation of all other human rights. When civilians cannot secure food, access healthcare, educate their children, or live without fear of violence and displacement, their most fundamental rights are being denied. The humanitarian crisis affecting Amhara is therefore not simply a consequence of territorial disputes, military operations, or political competition. It is a crisis of civilian protection, human dignity, and accountability. Insecurity and displacement threaten not only lives and livelihoods but also the social institutions on which communities depend for survival and recovery. Access to food, healthcare, education, and safe shelter must be understood as essential conditions for human security, not as secondary concerns to be addressed after political or military objectives have been pursued.

Reports from human rights organisations, displacement-monitoring agencies, and humanitarian bodies have documented serious protection concerns in Ethiopia. Continued armed conflict and insecurity, alongside reports of violence and displacement, underline the need for sustained civilian protection and the restoration of essential services. These conditions demand more than expressions of concern: they require effective prevention, independent investigation, humanitarian assistance, and accountability.

The central issue is whether the protection of civilians is being treated as an unconditional obligation or as a matter dependent on political interests and the identity of those affected. Amhara civilians must be able to live without fear of killings, forced displacement, or collective punishment. Orthodox Christians and other civilians in Arsi Zone deserve the same protection, regardless of their ethnicity or religious affiliation. The suffering of one community must never be used to diminish, relativise, or obscure the suffering of another.

The response must therefore be grounded in consistent principles: protect civilians, investigate credible allegations of abuse independently, hold those responsible accountable, support survivors and displaced families, and restore access to food, healthcare, and education. Equally important is addressing the political and institutional conditions that permit violence to recur.

Ultimately, the measure of a society’s commitment to human rights is not the language it uses to defend human dignity, but whether it protects people whose lives and rights are threatened—even when doing so is politically difficult. The international community and Ethiopian authorities must apply this principle consistently. Civilian protection cannot be selective, justice cannot depend on ethnic identity, and humanitarian assistance cannot wait for political convenience. Without these commitments, sustainable peace and recovery will remain out of reach.

References

Wondie, D. B. (2025). From defeating colonialism to facing genocide: Historical precedents and prospects of the Amhara existential struggle in Ethiopia. Journal of Amhara Studies, 1(1), 1–28. https://journalofamharastudies.org/index.php/jas/article/view/2

Walelign, A. (2021, 9 August). Amhara demonization: The enduring legacy of a malevolent narrative. Ethiopia Nege.

Editor’s Note

Casualty figures are as stated by the Holy Synod on 26 October 2026 and reported by the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and Addis Standard; the attacks took place on 20 and 24 October. Reported numbers of those detained since vary between outlets (Wazema Radio: 43; BBC Amharic: more than 20); the author’s figure of more than 50, and the inclusion of healthcare workers among them, rest on eyewitness accounts the Tribune has not independently confirmed. Responsibility for the attacks remains contested. A version of this essay was also published by Eurasia Review on 29 October 2026.

Girma Berhanu is Professor in the Department of Education and Special Education at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a regular contributor to The Ethiopian Tribune.

Analysis

The Red Line That Moved

Abiy Ahmed says the ministers he dropped this week were under scrutiny for a year. The public record supports part of the case against them. What it does not yet show is a single referral to a prosecutor.

By E. Frashie ·October 2026

When Abiy Ahmed presented his first cabinet in April 2018, he drew a line. Graft and maladministration, he told lawmakers, were “a red line that has to be enforced.” Eight years and several reshuffles later, he returned to the House of Peoples’ Representatives on 8 October to begin his second full term with a new Council of Ministers, and with his own account of why some of the old one had gone.

The House approved the new cabinet unanimously: twenty-two ministers and a returning Deputy Prime Minister, Temesgen Tiruneh. Seven ministers kept their portfolios and ten newcomers joined. Among those who did not return were four whose departures now carry more than routine significance: Belete Molla at Innovation and Technology, Muferiat Kamil at Labour and Skills, Kassahun Gofe at Trade and Regional Integration, and Alemu Sime at Transport and Logistics.

The Prime Minister was unusually candid about how he had arrived at the list. “ሌብነትን በሚመለከት ሁሉም ሚኒስትሮች እና ሚኒስትር ዴኤታዎች ቢያንስ ላለፈው አንድ ዓመት ከፍተኛ ሚስጥራዊ ክትትል ሲደረግባቸው ነበር,” he told the House, according to the transcript published by Tikvah Ethiopia. On the matter of theft, every minister and state minister had been under top-secret surveillance for at least the past year. The monitoring, he said, was backed by intelligence and covered their activities at home and abroad, their children, their wives, their uncles and every wealthy person they dealt with. “The reshuffle,” he added, “was not done for nothing.”

Each minister was then made to defend himself against what was said about him, and the Prime Minister read the charges out as they had been put: you are suspected; you drink; you have improper ties with the rich; you scheme rather than support; you do not follow things up; you are never in the office. A minister need not be a thief himself, he said. Failing to control theft around him, ignoring tip-offs, or clinging to an attitude of “don’t come near me, don’t touch my area” had counted against him too.

Then came the most revealing passage of the session. Some of the complaints, he acknowledged, might have been nothing more than grievance or accusation, and in some cases sufficient evidence had not been found. “But those with any tendency of suspicion,” he said, “whether in themselves or around them, we did not make cabinet members.”

It was a remarkable admission, twice over. A head of government told Parliament that the state’s intelligence services had spent a year watching not only his ministers but their wives, their children and their uncles. On whose legal authority, under what oversight and with what safeguards that was done is a question in its own right, and one the House did not ask. And he conceded, in the same breath, that some of those left out were left out on suspicion where the evidence fell short.

He named none of the ministers who had failed. He did not need to. Within days, Meseret Media, citing government sources, had published a detailed account of the grounds for removing four of them, and it maps onto the Prime Minister’s own list almost point for point: improper ties to the rich, failure to police theft and, in one case, drinking.

The Tribune has tested Meseret’s claims against the public record. A consistent pattern emerges. In every case there is a documented failure that Parliament, the Auditor General or the press had already recorded. In every case, the alleged conduct that would turn a failure into a crime rests, for now, on unnamed sources. And in no case has any authority announced a charge.

The audit nobody prosecuted

The case against Belete Molla is the best documented. Parliament’s Standing Committee on Public Expenditure Management and Control found a budget gap of more than half a billion birr at his ministry, together with unauthorised reallocations, payments outside legal provisions and inflated salaries, and gave the ministry fifteen days to account for them. Belete conceded before the committee that audit deficiencies had occurred. The Federal Auditor General separately found that the ministry had completed only eleven per cent of its planned projects.

The ministry also administered the World Bank’s $200 million Digital Foundations project, and it is there that Meseret Media’s government sources place the gravest charges. According to Meseret, money from the facility was used to pay high monthly advisory fees, in dollars, to individuals whose qualifications bore no relation to the sector. It cites a veterinary doctor retained on an annual salary as a digital consultant, and another adviser paid $120,000 a year who, Meseret says, spent most of his time in the United States.

▶ Watch Meseret Media’s report on the Digital Foundations fees (from 08:07)

Meseret further reports that the ministry awarded a contract worth 21 million birr, without a tender, to a company whose owner had drawn public attention for importing a Tesla Cybertruck free of duty. None of these specific allegations has been publicly confirmed by the ministry, the World Bank or any investigating body, and the Tribune has not independently verified them. The audit findings, by contrast, have been public for months.

▶ Watch Meseret Media’s report on the 21 million birr contract (from 08:58)

The brokers’ bill

Under Muferiat Kamil, the Ministry of Labour and Skills drafted an overseas employment bill that would have required recruitment agencies to lodge bonds of between $50,000 and $250,000 in blocked accounts, prompting open resistance from the agencies’ own federation. A separate ministry directive confining agencies to four named banks was challenged as straying into territory reserved by law for the National Bank. In Parliament, one MP told the minister plainly that overseas employment was in crisis.

Meseret Media’s account goes considerably further. It reports that two senior officials serving under the minister, the chief executive of Foreign Employment, Ermias Tekle, and the head of the Labour Market Information System Project Office, Birhanu Adal, were arrested by security forces in connection with human trafficking. Meseret also describes the ministry’s draft proclamation as an attempt to make the ministry the sole registration body, reducing licensed agencies to brokers, and to double the mandatory agency bank guarantee from $100,000 to $200,000 under the ministry’s direct control. The Tribune has found no official confirmation of the arrests, and the published draft reported by Addis Fortune sets the bond on a sliding scale rather than at a single figure. If the arrests occurred, the public is entitled to know who was charged, with what, and in which court.

▶ Watch Meseret Media’s report on the proclamation (from 10:16) · the arrests (from 19:10)

A red line that ends at the door of the cabinet room is not a red line at all.

Plates from an unnamed supplier

Alemu Sime’s ministry oversaw the national switch to new vehicle licence plates. Motorists objected loudly to the price, with Addis Fortune reporting fees of around 56,000 birr at the capital’s licensing bureau. The ministry imported roughly four million plates from a Chinese manufacturer whose identity officials declined to disclose. According to Meseret Media, after the public outcry over the plates, intelligence services monitored possible direct ties between the minister and the foreign supplier. Meseret’s sources also accuse him of inappropriately close dealings with investors, alleging that he accepted holiday gifts of cattle from them and told them he expected a diplomatic posting to China. None of these claims has been confirmed, and the Tribune has not verified them. The refusal to name the supplier of four million state-mandated plates, by contrast, is a matter of record, and it should be answered whoever now holds the portfolio.

▶ Watch Meseret Media’s report on the investor ties and the plate supplier (from 17:23)

Queues, and the 658

Kassahun Gofe presided over a fuel market in chronic disorder. In December 2024, as queues stretched through Adama and Hawassa, he insisted there was no actual shortage of supply. By March this year, with Middle Eastern imports disrupted, his ministry reported that 658 people, officials among them, had been detained over illegal fuel trading. Meseret Media links him directly to the disruption. According to its sources, rather than allocating market share among distributors by logistical capacity, he favoured a single, less experienced company for personal gain, and the dispute grew heated enough to play out in front of the Prime Minister’s macroeconomic adviser, Girma Birru. Meseret also links a mid-June accident in Addis Ababa involving an excavator to widespread rumours of drinking, a point it ties to the Prime Minister’s own remarks about officials who drink. These allegations are unproven, and the Tribune has not verified them. But the contrast it draws is already on the record: hundreds detained at the pump, and no minister so much as questioned in public.

▶ Watch Meseret Media’s report on fuel distribution (from 06:22)

Removal is not accountability

The Prime Minister closed with a warning to the new cabinet. Its members, he said, had come through a month and a half of training and repeated examinations, sleeping no more than two or three hours a night, and what awaited them was “an era of suffering” in which sleep and idle joking would not be permitted. “ሥልጣን ኮፊያ እንጂ ጭንቅላት አይደለም,” he said: power is a hat, not the head. And the rule was simple: “Work, and if we do not work, leave.” It was meant as a show of resolve. It also marked the limit of his ambition. A hat is taken off; it is not put on trial. The sanction he named for failure, and for theft, was departure. He did not mention prosecution.

None of this establishes guilt, and this newspaper does not assert it. That is precisely the point. If the government has spent a year assembling evidence of embezzlement, procurement abuse and links to trafficking, that evidence belongs before the Attorney General and the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission, not in a parliamentary speech followed by briefings to friendly outlets. And where, as the Prime Minister himself conceded, the evidence fell short, a public account of misconduct by unmistakable implication is a verdict delivered without a trial.

Either way, due process is owed twice over: to the citizens whose money, fuel and livelihoods were at stake, and to the former ministers themselves, who are entitled to answer the case against them in a forum that can test it. A quiet reshuffle satisfies neither.

The Tribune is putting four questions to the Office of the Prime Minister, the Attorney General and the Federal Ethics and Anti-Corruption Commission. Has any of the four former ministers been referred for investigation? Have the arrests at the Ministry of Labour and Skills been confirmed, and on what charges? Who manufactured the new licence plates, and under what contract? And what has become of the misspent sums identified at the Ministry of Innovation and Technology?

In 2018 the Prime Minister promised that corruption would not be tolerated. A promise of that kind is measured not by who leaves the cabinet, but by who is made to answer for what happened while they sat in it.

Right of reply: The Ethiopian Tribune invites Belete Molla, Muferiat Kamil, Kassahun Gofe and Alemu Sime to respond to the allegations reported by Meseret Media and referred to in this article. Any response received will be published in full and without editing.

The Ethiopian Tribune

Profile · Diaspora & Technology

The Daughter Ethiopia Expelled

Timnit Gebru left Addis Ababa as an enemy alien and became the conscience of an industry. What, exactly, is ours to claim?

By E. Frashie

Every few years the Ethiopian press rediscovers Timnit Gebru, and every few years it makes the same small error. She is announced as one of ours, a daughter of Addis Ababa who conquered Silicon Valley, a scientist whose name is set in Amharic and Tigrinya alike, a source of national pride to be filed beside the marathoners and the coffee. The claim is warm, and it is not quite honest. For the plain fact at the centre of her biography is that the Ethiopian state did not nurture Timnit Gebru. It drove her out.

She was born in Addis Ababa in 1982 or 1983, the youngest of three daughters. Her father, an electrical engineer with a doctorate, died when she was five; her mother, an economist, raised the three girls alone. Both parents were Eritrean! and in the Horn of Africa that single sentence is a fate, not a footnote. When the Eritrean–Ethiopian War erupted at the end of the 1990s, families of Eritrean descent living in Ethiopia became suspect by blood. Some of her relatives were deported to Eritrea and conscripted to fight. At fifteen, Gebru fled the only country she had known.

The journey out was not the triumphant emigration of legend. Denied a United States visa, she lived for a time in Ireland before she was finally granted political asylum in America a process she has described, without softening, as miserable. She joined her mother and sisters, who had gone ahead, and finished her schooling near Boston. The refugee, not the prodigy, is the first identity the record gives her.

The Ethiopian state did not nurture Timnit Gebru. It drove her out.

The ascent

What followed is the part the celebratory profiles prefer. She went to Stanford and stayed for three degrees of bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in electrical engineering, under Fei-Fei Li, one of the architects of modern computer vision. She designed circuits at Apple in the years around the first iPhone and iPad. Then, in 2018, with Joy Buolamwini, she published “Gender Shades,” the study that showed commercial facial-recognition systems misclassifying darker-skinned women at rates approaching a third, while erring on lighter-skinned men less than one per cent of the time. It was the paper that forced an industry to concede its mirrors were warped.

By the time Google recruited her, she was the most senior Black woman on its Ethical AI team and a co-founder of Black in AI, the network that has done more than any diversity office to change who sits in the room where these machines are built. She had arrived at the summit of the field she had been taught, as a refugee, to trust as a neutral meritocracy. She was about to discover it was neither.

The rupture and the money that was not hers

In late 2020 Gebru co-authored “On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots,” a paper warning that ever-larger language models would launder bias, devour energy and mimic understanding they did not possess. Google’s management demanded she withdraw it or strip the Google authors’ names. She refused, set conditions, and left for a holiday. Her superiors announced they had accepted a resignation she says she never tendered. On 2 December 2020 she was gone. More than two thousand six hundred employees signed a letter of protest; directors and engineers resigned in her wake.

Here the Ethiopian Tribune must correct a figure that circulates in her name. Readers have seen the headline “Google pays $50 million” attached to Gebru’s story, and inferred a personal windfall. It is not so. That settlement, granted final approval in 2026, resolved a separate class action brought in 2022 by Black Google employees alleging systemic discrimination; Google admitted no liability, and the sum was shared across a class. Gebru’s case echoed through that litigation, but she was not its plaintiff and did not collect its proceeds. As for her own departure, no severance figure was ever made public. Anyone who tells you what Google paid Timnit Gebru to leave is inventing it. On a beat this contested, the absence of a number is itself the finding.

Anyone who tells you what Google paid Timnit Gebru to leave is inventing it.

What she built, and what it is worth

Exactly one year to the day after her firing, 2 December 2021, Gebru launched the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, DAIR, an independent body founded to conduct “community-rooted” research free of Big Tech’s hand. It opened with roughly 3.7 million dollars in commitments from the Ford, MacArthur, Rockefeller and Open Society foundations and the Kapor Center. It is a non-profit, not a company; its “worth” is measured not in a valuation but in the grants that keep it independent and those have continued, including a further half-million dollars in 2026 from a pooled philanthropic AI fund, alongside general operating support from MacArthur and Ford.

DAIR is deliberately small and deliberately awkward. It is building its own modest computing cluster rather than rent the cloud from the very companies it critiques. Its work runs along three lines: equipping marginalised communities with data to argue their own case; devising research methods that do not extract from the people they study; and imagining technological futures in which those people are designed for rather than around. From this base Gebru has become the field’s sharpest dissident coining, with the philosopher Émile Torres, the term “TESCREAL” to name the tangle of futurist ideologies she argues underwrite the race to build artificial general intelligence, a race she calls, flatly, a scam.

The accolades have accumulated in proportion to her heresy: Nature’s ten people who shaped science, the TIME 100, Fortune’s greatest leaders, the Carnegie Great Immigrants award, the BBC’s hundred women. A memoir, “Deep Unlearning,” is due from a major New York house, and a documentary, “Ghost in the Machine,” has carried her argument to cinemas. She is, by any measure, among the most influential people the Horn of Africa has produced this century.

The debt, and the return

Which returns us to the uncomfortable question of what she owes the country of her birth, and what it owes her. Gebru’s tangible contribution to Ethiopia is real but modest against her global weight: she sits on the board of AddisCoder, the programme founded by the mathematician Jelani Nelson that teaches algorithms and programming, free of charge, to Ethiopian high-school students. She did not merely lend her name; during her doctoral years, in 2016 and again in 2018, she returned to Addis to teach the cohorts herself. Hundreds of young Ethiopians have met the discipline through a scheme she helps steward.

It would be easy, it is the season’s reflex, to wish for more: a laboratory in Addis, a repatriated fortune, an institute on Ethiopian soil. But that wish quietly repeats the original presumption. It treats her as a resource the nation may draw upon, the same logic, dressed in pride rather than suspicion, that once treated her family as aliens to be expelled. Gebru does not owe Ethiopia her genius as reparation for having survived it.

She is a daughter of Addis and a casualty of Addis in the same breath.

The honest posture, then, is neither to annex her nor to ignore her, but to hold both truths at once. She is a daughter of Addis and a casualty of Addis in the same breath made by this city’s schools and unmade by this state’s wartime paranoia, and now returned to it, on her own terms, as a teacher rather than a trophy. The diaspora’s most consequential technological conscience was manufactured, in part, by one of the Horn’s ugliest wars. That is not a matter for national congratulation. It is a matter for national reckoning which, as ever, is the harder and the more necessary thing.

The Ethiopian Tribune · Established 2012

An Open Door onto a Wall

Ecobank spans more of Africa than any bank alive, and it will enter almost anywhere. Its refusal to cross into Ethiopia’s newly liberalised banking sector is the sharpest verdict yet on a reform built to be announced rather than completed.

By E. Frashie

There is a kind of silence that carries further than any refusal, and Ethiopia’s financial authorities are now living inside it. In March 2025, after more than half a century in which no foreign lender could hold so much as a single share in an Ethiopian bank, Parliament threw the sector open. The Banking Business Proclamation No. 1360/2025 permitted foreign institutions to establish subsidiaries, open branches, plant representative offices, and acquire equity in domestic banks. It was celebrated — most loudly by the government that drafted it — as a historic act of opening, the financial keystone of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s liberalisation agenda. More than a year on, the number of foreign banks to have actually walked through that open door stands at precisely zero.

Among the absentees, one name should unsettle Addis Ababa more than the rest. Ecobank Transnational Incorporated operates in more than thirty African countries; it is the nearest thing the continent possesses to a genuinely pan-African lender, an institution whose entire identity rests on entering the markets others deem too small, too poor, or too fraught. If any bank alive was built to walk into Ethiopia, it is this one. Yet Ecobank — which has kept a representative office in Addis Ababa since before the reform — has studied the terms on offer and chosen to remain in the doorway, watching.

That choice is not timidity. It is a reading, and a pitilessly accurate one, of what Ethiopia’s liberalisation actually is.

The queue of the reluctant

Ecobank’s wariness might be dismissed as the disposition of a single cautious firm, were it not so completely shared. The roll-call of interested-but-unmoved now reads like a directory of African and international banking. Kenya’s KCB Group, which has held a representative office in Addis since 2015, still speaks of full entry — and still, tellingly, hunts for a local partner and contemplates asking the regulator to exempt it from the ownership ceiling before it will file. Equity Group, Kenya’s most profitable lender, held talks with the Ethiopian Investment Commission and then declined to commit. Absa has bound its entry explicitly to a further easing of the rules. Standard Bank, Stanbic, Nigeria’s Zenith and FirstBank — all have circled, professed interest, and kept their capital at home.

When every prospective entrant behaves identically, the explanation is not to be found in the character of the banks. It is in the design of the invitation.

The reform was announced in 2025. It was engineered, across the year that followed, not to happen.

The forty-nine per cent ceiling

Begin with the arithmetic of ownership, because it is here that the door narrows to a slit. Proclamation 1360/2025 permits foreign capital, but only within a lattice of caps: a single strategic investor may hold up to 40 per cent of a domestic bank, a foreign juridical person up to 10 per cent, a foreign individual up to 7 per cent — and the cumulative foreign stake in any one bank may not exceed 49 per cent. At least 51 per cent must remain in Ethiopian hands, always and by law.

For a portfolio investor content to clip a dividend, this is tolerable. For Ecobank it is close to disqualifying. The group’s competitive advantage — the very thing it would bring to Ethiopia — is its “One Bank” model: a single technological and operational spine, developed centrally and pushed out uniformly across its network. That model presupposes control. A permanent minority position, subordinate to domestic shareholders and to a central bank that reserves sweeping discretion over boards and management, offers Ecobank all of the risk of Ethiopian entry and almost none of the command it would need to make that risk pay. The ownership cap does not merely tax foreign entry; it forecloses the specific strategy that makes a pan-African bank pan-African.

Consolidation before competition

Had the ownership architecture stood alone, it might have been read as caution. Set beside the regulator’s conduct over the past year, it reads as strategy. For the National Bank of Ethiopia spent the first year of “liberalisation” not clearing a path for foreign banks but fortifying domestic ones against their arrival.

The instrument was capital. The NBE raised the minimum paid-up capital demanded of every bank tenfold — from 500 million birr to five billion — with full compliance required by the end of 2026, forcing the smaller domestic lenders to scramble for fresh equity or fold into their larger rivals. Layered atop this came Directive No. SBB/95/2025, issued in November 2025, marching the sector towards Basel II and Basel III: the minimum capital-adequacy ratio lifted from 8 to 11 per cent, a Tier 1 floor of 7 per cent, and fresh capital charges for credit, market and operational risk — in an economy whose data infrastructure and supervisory capacity are, by the regulator’s own quiet admission, not yet equal to frameworks of such complexity.

The sequencing is the argument. A government impatient for foreign banks fast-tracks their licences. A government that wishes to be seen opening while it consolidates does exactly what Ethiopia has done: announce the opening, then spend the interval thickening the walls the new entrants will eventually have to scale. The reform is real on the page and deferred in practice, and the deferral is not an accident of bureaucratic slowness. It is the policy.

A government impatient for foreign banks fast-tracks their licences. Ethiopia has spent the year thickening the walls instead.

The macroeconomics of hesitation

Even were the regulatory door flung fully open tomorrow, the ground beyond it would give any prudent banker pause. Ethiopia’s headline growth remains formidable — the IMF projects real GDP expansion above 9 per cent — but the figure sits atop a structure of alarming fragility.

The 2024 float of the birr, undertaken to unlock IMF and World Bank financing, did what floats do: it revealed the currency’s true weakness. By January 2026 banks were selling dollars near 151 birr while the parallel market ran beyond 180 — a gap that is itself a confession that the “market-based” rate is not yet trusted by the market. That same depreciation drove the external debt-to-GDP ratio from 23.8 per cent in 2024 to 33.9 per cent a year later, as hard-currency obligations swelled in local terms. Inflation, briefly coaxed into single digits, crept back to 11.7 per cent by April 2026, with food prices rising faster still. Public debt approaches 52 billion dollars; the 2023 Eurobond default remains unresolved, with private creditors weighing legal action after rejecting a proposed haircut. And beneath the aggregates sits the market a retail bank must actually serve: a population whose poverty rate, the World Bank warns, may have climbed towards 43 per cent.

For a bank contemplating entry, these are not abstractions. They are the twin spectres of balance-sheet risk and blocked repatriation — the fear of earning profits in a currency one cannot reliably convert, and of lending into a consumer base too impoverished to sustain the growth the headline numbers promise.

The regulator’s tell

The most revealing evidence, however, is not in the directives but in the language of those who wrote them. The National Bank has fretted, openly, that foreign banks might “import economic crises” into Ethiopia, and has warned of their “cherry-picking tendencies” — the suspicion that international lenders will skim the profitable urban corporate custom and leave the developmental heavy lifting to the domestic sector.

Set that language beside the invitation and the contradiction becomes the story. A regulator confident in its opening does not, in the same breath, describe the guests it has invited as vectors of contagion. The vocabulary of Ethiopia’s banking authority is not the vocabulary of a market being opened; it is the vocabulary of a market being defended. Ecobank has simply taken the regulator at its word.

The wall behind the door

Here the banking file rejoins the larger pattern this newspaper has traced across every domain of Ethiopian governance. For the liberalisation, examined closely, is not producing a more open sector at all — it is producing a more concentrated one, and concentrated around the state. The Commercial Bank of Ethiopia, state-owned, still commands more than half of all banking assets; the NBE’s own stability reporting has flagged the danger that reform is nudging state control back towards dominance rather than away from it. The private domestic tier is squeezed between the five-billion-birr capital wall and the Basel transition; the foreign tier is held at the threshold by the ownership caps and the sequencing. What emerges is not competition but a managed enclosure — an opening choreographed to leave the essential architecture of state and incumbent power precisely where it was.

This is the familiar Ethiopian manoeuvre, transposed from the political to the financial register. It is the form of liberalisation without its substance, exactly as the June 2026 elections offered the form of competition without its substance. The IMF receives its headline — a market opened after half a century — and the government retains every lever that matters. Reform becomes a performance staged for an external audience, its choreography designed to alter as little as possible behind the announcement.

Ecobank’s refusal, then, is worth more than a dozen ministerial communiqués. The bank engineered to enter the unenterable has looked past the rhetoric of opening, read the subtext of the caps and the capital rules and the regulator’s own anxious vocabulary, and concluded that the door leads not into the market but into a waiting room. Ethiopia’s banking sector, the proclamation insists, is open for business. For Ecobank and its peers, the more honest formulation is that it has been opened for announcement — and that the path beyond the threshold has been left, deliberately, unswept.

E. Frashie — The Ethiopian Tribune