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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Editor
Ethiopian Tribune
April 26, 2026

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By E. Frashie | Ethiopian Tribune columnist

Ethiopia’s political theatre, under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, has become a masterclass in the management of appearances, whispers, and global expectations. The recent succession of high-profile international visits  the conspicuously warm hand-holding with India’s Prime Minister and the measured, almost surgical formality of Türkiye’s President Erdoğan revealed far more than diplomatic protocol. They exposed the entangled web of elite culture, public rumour, and the ordinary citizen’s bewildered gaze upon a country balancing precariously between internal fractures and external pressures.

Hovering above all of this is the rumour of the UAE president’s death  a story so vivid and so swiftly circulated across Turkish media, pan-Islamic channels, and social networks that it painted, for many, a portrait of secretive foreign influence, invisible hands, and the tantalising notion that Ethiopia’s leader might be quietly managing external chaos whilst projecting an image of unshakeable calm at home.

The contrast between India’s and Türkiye’s visits is, at its core, a study in how symbolism and substance collide. When India’s Prime Minister arrived, Abiy Ahmed received him with ceremonial grandeur  the public drive, the embraces, the hand-holding that delights both domestic media and diaspora audiences alike. Military bands performed. State dinners gleamed. The optics were unambiguous: India and Ethiopia, friends in both trade and spirit, bound by something warmer than treaty language. It was, in the most generous reading, diplomacy rendered as soft-focus emotional theatre  reassuring, photogenic, and carefully curated for international consumption.

Erdoğan’s February 2026 visit was an altogether different affair. There were no embraces, no personal driving tours, no gestures of playful camaraderie. Instead, the Turkish President delivered firm, layered statements about the Horn of Africa warning that the region must not become a battleground for foreign powers, rejecting Israeli recognition of Somaliland, and invoking shared historical and cultural ties through gestures such as the restoration of the Al-Nejashi mosque. The messaging operated on multiple frequencies simultaneously: cultural diplomacy through Islamic heritage, strategic caution against external interference, and economic signalling through Turkey’s legacy of railway investment and infrastructure ambition in the region. Abiy, for his part, navigated Erdoğan’s visit with chess-like restraint measured nods, careful phrasing, and the composure of a leader acutely aware that every gesture is being read by multiple audiences at once.

Perhaps nowhere was Ethiopia’s diplomatic complexity more visibly compressed than in the pageantry of state ceremony itself. Female Muslim ministers appeared in modest, conservative attire a calculated gesture of cultural respect towards Erdoğan’s perceived Islamic sensibility. Simultaneously, Ethiopia’s military band performed with unapologetic professionalism in ceremonial dress that bore no such concession to conservative norms. To the casual observer, it appeared a contradiction: secular and Islamic, deferential and assertive, all within the same state theatre and the same afternoon. To those inside the inner circle, it was a deliberate and nuanced display Ethiopia asserting its inclusivity, its sovereign authority, and its capacity to speak to multiple audiences without committing entirely to any one of them.

Yet even as these carefully managed ceremonies unfolded, a parallel and far more troubling drama was playing out just beyond the edges of the official frame  one that seasoned security professionals have begun to regard not merely as an embarrassment, but as a genuine and escalating threat. Wander through the corridors of any recent state function, stroll the perimeters of a parliamentary session, or position yourself anywhere near a visiting dignitary in Addis Ababa today, and you will encounter them: a new and rapidly proliferating breed of young Ethiopian digital content creators, gimbal-stabilised cameras strapped to their bodies, backpacks laden with equipment, telephoto lenses the length of a man’s forearm trained with startling intimacy upon the faces, movements, and immediate personal spaces of heads of state, senior ministers, and foreign dignitaries. They move through these environments with the breezy, unearned confidence of those who have confused a press badge  or sometimes the mere appearance of one,  with a security clearance. They possess, by all observable evidence, no formal training in the protocols, boundaries, or responsibilities that govern proximity to protected individuals. And they appear entirely unbothered by this fact.

The entitlement on display is, to anyone with even a passing familiarity with close-protection doctrine, quite breathtaking. These are not seasoned photojournalists who have spent years learning where the line is, why it exists, and what it costs when it is crossed. These are, in the main, young men intoxicated by the social currency of expensive equipment and the follower counts that footage of powerful people can generate. They materialise at parliament. They appear at state receptions. They insert themselves into the working perimeters of visiting foreign leaders with a casualness that would trigger immediate and forceful responses in virtually any other capital city in the world. In London, Washington, Ankara, or New Delhi, a man walking within arm’s reach of a head of state with a backpack, a gimbal, and a telephoto lens  without verified, screened, and closely supervised accreditation would find himself face-down on the floor within seconds, surrounded by individuals whose professional instincts had already calculated every possible implication of his presence. In Addis Ababa, he gets the shot, posts it to his channel, and collects the views.

Security analysts who have observed this phenomenon with growing alarm are not mincing their words. The convergence of several factors  the accessibility of high-resolution imaging equipment, the hunger for digital content, the culture of entitlement that pervades certain social circles in the capital, and the conspicuous gaps in how access to sensitive environments is controlled and enforced creates what one expert described, in terms that should give every responsible official pause, as a gathering storm. These young operators, operating today with apparent innocence and tomorrow with unknown motivations or under unknown influences, represent a vector of potential harm that Ethiopian security architecture has not yet adequately reckoned with. A telephoto lens that can capture the iris of a dignitary from forty metres can equally be used to gather intelligence on movement patterns, security formations, and personal vulnerabilities. A gimbal operator who has learnt, through repeated unchallenged access, exactly how close he can get before anyone reacts, has also learnt something that no hostile actor should ever be permitted to know. The question is not whether these individuals intend harm today. The question is what happens when someone who does intend harm observes that the door is open, the access is easy, and the consequences are nonexistent.

The scene at parliament is particularly instructive, and particularly galling to those who understand what they are looking at. Session after session, these self-appointed videographers wander into the sight lines of accredited international media, their enormous lenses jutting into carefully composed shots, their gimbal rigs swinging with cheerful obliviousness through spaces that ought to be controlled, their physical presence a constant, low-grade disruption to the professionals around them. To the accredited journalist trying to capture a considered, properly framed image from a respectful distance, they are an irritant the photographic equivalent of someone talking loudly on their telephone in a library. But to the security professional tasked with maintaining a protective envelope around the individuals in that room, they are something considerably more serious. They are unknowns. They are unvetted. They are close. And in the calculus of close-protection work, an unvetted unknown in close proximity to a principal is not an inconvenience it is a contingency that must be planned for, every single time, because the one time it is not will be the time it matters.

What makes this situation particularly pointed in the Ethiopian context is the class and entitlement dimension that runs through it like a fault line. These are not individuals who have fought their way into these spaces through years of professional credibility. Many have arrived there through social connections, through the reflected glamour of association with powerful figures, through the simple fact that nobody with the authority to stop them has yet chosen to do so consistently. They carry their equipment like a credential and their confidence like a clearance. They have absorbed, somewhere along the way, the lesson that in Ethiopia, if you look the part and move with sufficient assurance, the doors tend to open. It is the same lesson, expressed through a very different medium, that underlies the Feyisa Lilesa scandal the conviction, whether held consciously or simply lived unconsciously, that certain people in this country are simply not subject to the same rules as everyone else.

This same duality, so carefully choreographed on the ceremonial stage, finds a far less flattering mirror in the domain of elite accountability at home  and no case has crystallised public fury quite like that of Feyisa Lilesa. The celebrated Oromo long-distance runner, who once captured the world’s imagination and the conscience of a people with a single crossed-arm gesture on the Olympic podium in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, now finds himself at the centre of a scandal that has ignited a firestorm of outrage across Ethiopian society. According to reports circulating widely and discussed at length by Addis Mereja, Lilesa was involved in a serious road traffic collision in the Jemo Michael area of Addis Ababa  an incident that has since escalated from a tragic accident into a deeply charged political and moral reckoning.

The human cost of that collision is not abstract. A sixteen-year-old child is dead. Another individual sustained a broken bone and remains under medical treatment. These are not statistics  they are lives, and families, torn apart on an ordinary Addis Ababa street. Yet what has incensed the Ethiopian public beyond even the tragedy of the accident itself are the alleged circumstances that followed it. Reports claim that rather than submitting to police authority at the scene, Lilesa brandished a firearm and used it to intimidate officers, effectively preventing his own arrest. If accurate, this is not merely a legal violation  it is a declaration, however implicit, that certain individuals in Ethiopia exist beyond the ordinary reach of the law.

And then came the Facebook post. In the immediate aftermath of an accident that had killed a child and injured another person, Lilesa reportedly took to social media to describe the incident as a common accident, the sort of thing that could happen to anyone. The public reaction was swift and visceral. To many Ethiopians who had watched this unfold, the post read not as an expression of remorse but as a performance of nonchalance the casual deflection of a man confident that consequence would not find him. It was, to borrow the language of the streets, the message of someone who does not believe he will ever truly be held to account.

The rumours that followed were, in some ways, the most damning development of all. Widespread reports began to circulate — unconfirmed as yet by any official authority — that Lilesa had fled Ethiopia entirely, with Dubai emerging as the most frequently named destination. The Ethiopian police have not, at the time of writing, issued any official confirmation or denial of these reports. That silence, in itself, speaks volumes to a public that has grown finely attuned to the language of institutional evasion. When the state says nothing, Ethiopians have long since learnt to interpret that nothing with considerable sophistication.

This is not the first time Lilesa’s conduct has drawn public censure, and the pattern is instructive. When previously accused of public intoxication and disputes with neighbours, his reported response was characteristically defiant: “If I drink, I drink with my own money.” It was the retort of a man who had confused personal achievement with personal impunity — who had, somewhere along the road from Rio to Addis Ababa, begun to believe that fame was a form of sovereignty. His dismissive remarks about Ethiopia’s rising fuel prices — a crisis felt acutely by millions of ordinary citizens — further alienated those who might otherwise have retained residual goodwill towards him. And his controversial comments regarding the use of the Amharic language in traditional Oromo Aba Gada justice proceedings struck many as wilfully divisive, a provocation dressed in the language of cultural assertion.

The political dimension of Lilesa’s trajectory adds yet another layer of complexity to an already tangled story. When he returned to Ethiopia in 2018 following his self-imposed exile after Rio, he did so as a vocal and enthusiastic supporter of the Abiy Ahmed government — a transformation that struck many of his former admirers as jarring, even bewildering. The man who had crossed his arms above his head on the world’s most watched sporting stage, in solidarity with an Oromo people then facing brutal state repression, had become, in the eyes of some, a symbol of the very political accommodation he once appeared to resist. Whether that shift reflected genuine conviction, pragmatic calculation, or something more complicated entirely is a question that only Lilesa can answer. What is beyond dispute is that it reconfigured his public identity in ways that continue to reverberate.

For ordinary Ethiopians watching all of this unfold, the Lilesa affair is not simply about one man. It is a referendum on the question that sits at the heart of every functioning society: does the law apply equally, or does it bend for those with fame, political proximity, and the means to board a flight before the consequences arrive? Citizens observe the contrast with bitter clarity — ministers in modest attire performing deference to foreign dignitaries, military women dancing in ceremonial dress for the cameras, and a celebrated athlete who allegedly pointed a firearm at police officers and may now be sipping coffee in Dubai whilst a sixteen-year-old lies in a grave in Addis Ababa. The cognitive dissonance is not lost on anyone. It feeds rumour. It deepens mistrust. And it makes even the most outlandish whispers about foreign power brokers and shadowy elite networks feel, to many, entirely plausible — because the architecture of privilege that surrounds them is demonstrably, visibly real.

It is worth pausing here to observe that the gimbal-toting content creator shouldering his way past protocol officers at a state function and the celebrated athlete allegedly brandishing a firearm at police officers in Jemo Michael are, at some fundamental level, expressions of the same cultural pathology. Both represent individuals who have concluded, through experience, through impunity, through the repeated failure of institutions to assert boundaries,  that the rules governing ordinary Ethiopians simply do not apply to them. The content creator has learnt that nobody will stop him from walking into sensitive spaces with a backpack full of equipment and a telephoto lens trained on a foreign head of state. Lilesa apparently learnt that a firearm and a certain quality of confidence could send police officers stepping backwards. The specific expressions differ enormously. The underlying logic is identical. And it is a logic that, left unaddressed, corrodes everything it touches,  from the credibility of state institutions to the physical safety of the nation’s most protected individuals.

Addis Mereja’s coverage of the Lilesa incident concludes with a call that is as simple as it is urgent: the police must provide a transparent and timely update to the Ethiopian public. It is a demand that ought not to require stating. That it does,  that citizens must actively petition their institutions for basic accountability in a case involving a dead child and a nationally known figure,  is itself a measure of how far public trust in those institutions has eroded. Justice, in this instance, is not a complicated philosophical concept. It is a sixteen-year-old who deserved to grow up, and a family that deserves to know that their loss was not simply absorbed into the great Ethiopian silence that tends to swallow inconvenient truths.

Ethiopia’s leadership is simultaneously juggling several weighty portfolios that seldom receive the coherent public narrative they demand. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones signal military cooperation and procurement ambition. Railway investments, stalled by conflict and entangled in international arbitration, symbolise both the country’s grand infrastructure vision and its fragility in executing it. Mosque restorations gesture towards humanitarian and religious legitimacy on the international stage. Each element is deployed strategically,  showing just enough to reassure partners whilst carefully concealing vulnerabilities that a more transparent posture might expose. Yet it is arguably the vulnerabilities closest to home,  the entitled photographer at the palace gate, the athlete on a flight to Dubai,  that pose the most immediate and corrosive risk to the project of building a credible, governed state.

The rumour mill, meanwhile, does not pause for diplomatic niceties. The widely circulated story of the UAE president’s death  amplified by Turkish media and pan-Arab channels became a proxy for a broader public anxiety about foreign influence in Ethiopian affairs. For elites, it was a whispered talking point, a potential leverage in shadow conversations. For the layperson, it was fuel for outrage, suspicion, and political imagination. For the Prime Minister, it represented an opportunity: demonstrate control through public calm, measured diplomacy, and the quiet redirection of attention. In Ethiopia, as in many states where official communication is limited and political opacity is the norm, rumour does not merely fill the gaps in understanding, it becomes the primary currency of political discourse.

The satirical image almost writes itself. The Ethiopian Prime Minister, immaculately composed, nods attentively as Erdoğan’s eyes sweep the room with the cool deliberation of a general reviewing a chessboard. Behind them, a military band plays with disciplined flair whilst ministers in conservative Islamic dress murmur protocol reminders to one another. And somewhere just off to the side, perhaps three steps closer than any security doctrine would permit, a young man in a branded hoodie swings a gimbal-mounted camera towards the Turkish President’s face, his enormous telephoto lens catching the light, his backpack brushing the elbow of a close-protection officer who glances sideways with visible unease but says nothing, because nobody has yet told him definitively what to do about this. Cameras flash. Social media erupts with speculation about Arab power brokers, athletes allegedly fled to Dubai, and railway arbiters counting their fees in distant capitals. The content creator posts his footage. The views pour in. And the Prime Minister smiles, pours the tea, and holds the room, master of ceremonies, tactician, and juggler of perceptions across a stage that is, in more ways than one, alarmingly unsecured.

What this theatre ultimately reveals is the extraordinary complexity of Ethiopia’s balancing act,  both internally and externally. Domestically, the government must speak to Christians and Muslims, to Oromo and non-Oromo communities, to elites and ordinary citizens whose lived realities could not be more divergent. Externally, it must manage relationships with the UAE, Türkiye, India, Israel, China, and Western donors, each with their own expectations, their own leverage, and their own interpretation of every gesture Ethiopia makes. Every decision, from a minister’s choice of attire to the selection of ceremonial music, from a drone procurement deal to a mosque restoration, carries multiple and often contradictory signals. The art lies not in eliminating that contradiction but in holding it together long enough to keep every audience sufficiently satisfied. What cannot be held together indefinitely, however, is a security culture in which entitlement substitutes for vetting, and a social culture in which impunity substitutes for accountability.

The lessons embedded in this complex choreography are not trivial ones. Opacity, wherever it persists, breeds narrative creation,  and not always the narratives that governments would choose. Perception, verified or otherwise, shapes legitimacy in ways that policy alone cannot correct. Optics matter as profoundly as action, because the theatre of governance is watched not only by foreign partners but by citizens who are drawing their own quiet conclusions about fairness, competence, and sovereignty. And satire, in such an environment, is sometimes the only honest lens available, the only tool capable of holding the absurdity and the seriousness of it all in the same frame without flinching. But satire has its limits. A security breach does not.

Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia is, in the final accounting, many things at once,  a secular state with a deeply religious population, a military state with a taste for flamboyant ceremony, a country navigating elite favouritism and foreign influence whilst performing confidence on a world stage. The Prime Minister’s particular genius lies not in controlling every rumour, some, like the story drifting in from the Arab world, are simply beyond any government’s reach, but in managing appearances with sufficient skill that the performance itself becomes a form of power. India’s warmth, Erdoğan’s formality, the whispers from the Gulf, the contradictions of the ceremony hall, the sight of a celebrated Olympian allegedly fleeing accountability on a flight to Dubai whilst a teenager’s family mourns in Addis Ababa, and the gimbal operator who has just walked, unchallenged, to within two metres of a visiting head of state all of it intersects within a single, breathtakingly intricate and increasingly fragile theatre of governance.

For the casual observer, it may read as chaos, even farce. For the political analyst, it is a study in survival, strategy, and the calculated management of perception. For the security professional, it is something closer to a slow-motion crisis waiting for its moment. And for Ethiopia itself, the lesson endures: in a world governed as much by optics as by facts, appearances, carefully choreographed, can be every bit as powerful as the truth. But a sixteen-year-old child is dead. A foreign dignitary’s movements are being filmed from arm’s reach by someone nobody has screened. And no amount of choreography, however immaculate, can indefinitely paper over the cracks in a state that has not yet decided, with full seriousness, that its rules apply to everyone equally including those holding the most expensive cameras in the room.

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By Sewasew Teklemariam

There is something almost tragicomic about watching great powers rediscover Ethiopia every few decades, dusting off the same old script: brave ally, reliable troops, convenient geography. One might be forgiven for thinking that somewhere in Washington, a filing cabinet labelled “Break Glass in Case of Unpopular War” contains a single index card reading: “Try Ethiopia.”

And so here we are again. Seventy-four years after Ethiopian soldiers froze in Korean trenches defending a principle called “collective security,” Addis Ababa finds itself courted once more, this time for Gaza, that graveyard of diplomatic ambition and geopolitical vanity. The Americans, it seems, have run out of takers. The Arabs are squeamish. The Europeans are preoccupied. Enter Ethiopia: loyal, militarily competent, and crucially still returning phone calls.

One almost admires the symmetry.

Let us begin with an uncomfortable fact that tends to disappear from polite diplomatic conversation: Ethiopia earned its stripes as an international actor not through hashtag solidarity or conference-room grandstanding, but by sending young men to die in someone else’s war. Between 1951 and 1954, over 6,000 Ethiopian troops served in Korea under the United Nations Command, personally authorised by Emperor Haile Selassie. The Kagnew Battalions fought at Pork Chop Hill, Old Baldy, and other places whose names now exist only in military histories and fading monuments. They earned a distinction almost quaint by today’s standards: not a single Ethiopian soldier was left behind or captured. Not one (United Nations Command historical records; US Army Center of Military History).

This was not theatre. It was war, and Ethiopia bled for it. The casualty figures, whilst modest by Korean War standards, were significant for a country of Ethiopia’s size and resources. Ethiopian field hospitals treated wounded Americans, Britons, and Turks alongside their own. Ethiopian officers coordinated with UN commanders in conditions that would test any alliance. And when the armistice was signed in 1953, Ethiopia remained in Korea for another year, because that was what collective security demanded.

Why? Because Haile Selassie, having watched the League of Nations abandon his country to Mussolini’s poison gas in 1936, believed, perhaps naively, that multilateralism might actually mean something if smaller nations upheld it. Ethiopia, he reasoned, must defend collective security abroad so that collective security might one day defend Ethiopia. It was a wager on principle over pragmatism, idealism over cynicism, the sort of bet that history tends to punish with exquisite cruelty.

It didn’t, of course. But more on that shortly.

The Korean deployment was not merely military. It was deeply symbolic. Here was an African nation, barely a decade removed from Italian occupation, standing shoulder to shoulder with the West not as a supplicant or protectorate, but as an equal partner in defence of international law. Ethiopian diplomats at the United Nations made much of this. So did American officials, who found Ethiopia’s participation useful for demonstrating that the Korean intervention was a truly international effort, not merely Western imperialism in multilateral drag.

Yet even then, cracks were visible. Ethiopian requests for military aid and modernisation assistance were met with warm words and modest gestures, but nothing approaching the largesse showered on more strategically located allies. The message, subtle but unmistakable, was clear: Ethiopia’s contribution was valued, but not valuable enough to fundamentally alter the transactional calculus of Cold War patronage.

Fast forward to December 2025. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives in Addis Ababa, all smiles and Memoranda of Understanding. Bilateral relations are elevated to a “Strategic Partnership” that most elastic of diplomatic phrases, meaning everything and nothing simultaneously. There is talk of customs cooperation, digital infrastructure, peacekeeping training, and G20 debt relief (Government of India press briefings; Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs statements). All very modern. All very multilateral. The optics are impeccable: two ancient civilisations, both asserting themselves on the global stage, forging bonds of South-South cooperation untainted by colonial baggage.

Then, almost on cue, the other shoe drops.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, according to the Times of Israel, has asked Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to consider contributing Ethiopian troops to a proposed International Stabilisation Force for Gaza (Times of Israel, 19 December 2025). Not a UN mission, mind you. Not even a particularly coherent coalition. Just a hastily assembled fig leaf for President Trump’s latest ceasefire plan, which Arab and Muslim states are treating like a radioactive briefcase (Reuters, 17 December 2025).

Pakistan has demurred. Indonesia is dodging calls. Saudi Arabia is suddenly very interested in Yemen again. Egypt, despite its own security concerns in Sinai, has made its discomfort plain. Jordan, normally America’s most reliable Arab partner, is keeping a careful distance. Even the Gulf states, usually amenable to American security requests when sufficiently incentivised, have found reasons to be elsewhere.

And so Washington, in its infinite resourcefulness, has turned to Ethiopia: that reliable old warhorse, still standing after everyone else has bolted from the stable. One might call it flattering, if it weren’t so depressingly familiar.

To be fair, Ethiopia is a serious peacekeeping nation. It currently ranks among the top global contributors to UN missions, with troops in Abyei, Darfur, and Somalia (UN Department of Peace Operations data). Ethiopian soldiers are disciplined, experienced, and, unlike certain Western contingents, unlikely to flee at the first whiff of cordite. They have earned respect in some of Africa’s most challenging environments, operating in conditions that would give European defence ministers nightmares and human rights lawyers apoplexy.

But Gaza is not Darfur. And the proposed ISF is not a UN mission.

It is a politically contested, regionally explosive, militarily ambiguous intervention in one of the world’s most volatile theatres. Trump’s ceasefire framework explicitly links stabilisation to Hamas disarmament, a condition that Hamas rejects, Arab states won’t enforce, and no serious analyst believes can be achieved without catastrophic escalation (Reuters; public statements by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar, November 2025). The very premise of the mission is contested. The rules of engagement are undefined. The exit strategy is non-existent. The political legitimacy is questionable at best.

In other words, it’s a deathtrap wrapped in a press release. And Ethiopia is being asked to walk into it.

The parallel to Korea is instructive, but not in the way American officials might hope. Korea, whatever its horrors, was a UN-mandated mission with broad international support, clear opposing forces, and a defined military objective. Gaza would be none of these things. It would be an occupation masquerading as stabilisation, a political arrangement imposed by force and sustained by the presence of foreign troops whom neither side particularly wants. Ethiopian soldiers would find themselves policing a ceasefire that nobody believes in, enforcing a disarmament that cannot be achieved, and serving as convenient targets for any faction seeking to demonstrate its resistance credentials.

Then there is Egypt, which watches all of this with the cold attentiveness of a creditor studying a debtor’s new car. Relations between Addis Ababa and Cairo are hardly warm. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam remains a source of existential anxiety for Egypt, which views Ethiopian control over Nile waters the way Britain once viewed German control of the Channel: intolerable.

Ethiopian troops in Gaza, right on Egypt’s doorstep, would be read in Cairo not as burden-sharing, but as triangulation. Ethiopia securing American goodwill in the Middle East whilst remaining immovable on the Nile. Geopolitical judo. Egypt might publicly welcome the assistance, might even offer logistical support and coordinated border security. Privately, it would seethe. And mistrust, once entrenched, is devilishly difficult to dislodge. Every Ethiopian patrol near Rafah would be interpreted through the prism of Nile politics. Every American commendation of Ethiopian reliability would be seen as a subtle rebuke to Egyptian inflexibility on GERD.

The broader Arab world would face similar contradictions. How does one explain to a restive population that African troops are being deployed to stabilise Gaza when Arab armies stood aside? The optics are appalling. The politics worse. Ethiopian participation, however well-intentioned, risks becoming a symbol not of international cooperation but of Arab impotence and Western manipulation.

To understand why many Ethiopians regard these American overtures with the enthusiasm one reserves for unsolicited timeshare presentations, one must confront an inconvenient historical truth: the West has form. The overthrow of Ethiopia’s monarchy in 1974 was not merely a domestic revolution. It was Cold War opportunism dressed in Marxist rhetoric. Haile Selassie, having served as a steadfast American ally, hosting Kagnew Station, America’s largest communications facility in Africa, supporting Western positions at the UN, maintaining open trade and diplomatic channels, found that loyalty evaporated the moment his utility did.

Western powers, suddenly squeamish about imperial anachronism and distracted by Vietnam, Watergate, and oil shocks, stood aside. The Soviets, delighted, moved in with advisors, weapons, and ideological support (Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia; declassified US and Soviet Cold War records). What followed was not liberation, but systematic dismantling. Ethiopia’s historical state structure was replaced by a Derg regime whose brutality matched its incompetence, and then by an ethno-federal system whose long-term consequences are still being violently litigated in Tigray, Oromia, and Amhara.

The lesson? Loyalty rewarded when convenient. Sovereignty negotiable when inconvenient.

Nor did the post-Cold War era offer correction. Instead, Ethiopia became a laboratory for externally endorsed political engineering, celebrated when stable, condemned when fractured. Critics argue, with some justice, that the international community prioritised short-term manageability over long-term cohesion, tolerating governance models that institutionalised division whilst ignoring their destabilising effects. Western donors pumped billions into Ethiopia during the Meles Zenawi years, praising “African Renaissance” and “developmental state” whilst carefully averting their gaze from political repression and ethnic manipulation.

When the system finally collapsed into civil war in 2020, those same donors expressed shock, shocked!that such instability could emerge from a framework they had spent decades endorsing. It is within this historical memory that fears of a “second disintegration” must be understood, not as paranoia, but as pattern recognition.

If Ethiopia commits troops to Gaza without a clear UN mandate, defined rules of engagement, and regional consensus, it risks becoming once again, the geopolitical equivalent of a hired extra: visible in the frame, expendable in the edit. The question is not whether Ethiopia can contribute to global peace. Korea answered that. The question is whether selective internationalism, driven by great-power convenience, will once again leave Ethiopia holding the bag whilst others collect the applause.

There is also the domestic dimension to consider. Ethiopia is hardly in a position of domestic tranquillity from which to project military power abroad. The Tigray conflict may have formally ended, but its political, economic, and humanitarian consequences continue to reverberate. Ethnic tensions remain acute. The economy is strained. The military itself has been stretched thin by years of internal conflict. Deploying thousands of troops to Gaza whilst Amhara and Oromia simmer would be the diplomatic equivalent of reorganising the deck chairs whilst the hull takes on water.

Ethiopia’s history, from Korea to Cold War abandonment, from peacekeeping leadership to domestic fragmentation, offers a lesson that extends beyond Addis Ababa. It is a lesson about the limits of loyalty in an international system that rewards power and punishes principle. Strategic partnerships grounded in development and mutual respect, such as the one recently signed with India, strengthen sovereignty because they assume equality of agency and mutuality of benefit. Security arrangements imposed by geopolitical necessity do not, because they assume hierarchy and instrumentality.

If there is to be another chapter in Ethiopia’s long record of international service, it must be written with historical memory as strategy, not sentiment. The Kagnew Battalions deserve better than to be remembered as a cautionary tale of loyalty unrequited. Ethiopia’s current generation deserves better than to repeat their predecessors’ mistakes in a different desert, under a different flag, for similarly nebulous reasons.

The filing cabinet remains open. The index card remains tempting. But perhaps this time, Ethiopia might politely suggest that someone else take a turn. After all, there are plenty of nations who have benefited from American patronage over the decades. Perhaps it’s their turn to demonstrate that special relationships involve actual reciprocity, not just convenient deployment schedules.

History, as they say, doesn’t repeat itself. But it does rhyme. And Ethiopia has heard this particular verse before.

Key Sources:
United Nations Command & UN Department of Peace Operations historical records; US Army Center of Military History (Korean War archives); Times of Israel, 19 December 2025; Reuters, 17 December 2025; Government of India and Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs press releases; Bahru Zewde, A History of Modern Ethiopia

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By E Frashie Ethiopian Tribune columnist

ADDIS ABABA—Last week, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed addressed the nation with what government officials framed as a milestone announcement: the National Dialogue Commission has nearly completed its agenda-gathering phase, a process spanning over 300 districts and engaging thousands of Ethiopians. Yet within the same breath, the Prime Minister made a striking claim that encapsulates the deep polarisation surrounding this initiative. He alleged that Ethiopian opposition to the commission’s recent London consultation included not only domestic critics but also Eritreans, though he provided no validated intelligence to substantiate this assertion.

The London event itself became a theatre of Ethiopia’s broader contradictions. Ambassador Mehmud Drir, the commission’s representative, found himself in the unusual position of serving as translator for an Oromo security firm participant who thanked him for facilitating venue security. Government opponents have since characterised the gathering as “a national dialogue under siege by Oromo extremists,” praising participants who “remained defiant” despite alleged threats. Yet critics point to a different narrative: that participants used the platform to oppose the ongoing conflict in Amhara, exposing what they see as the commission’s fundamental partiality rather than its neutrality dialogue under siege.

These competing accounts of a single event heroic perseverance versus manufactured victimhood, genuine grassroots participation versus orchestrated government theatre, illustrate why Ethiopia’s National Dialogue Commission finds itself trapped in a paradox that mirrors the country’s broader crisis: everyone agrees dialogue is necessary, yet hardly anyone believes the current process can deliver it.

The commission’s predicament is not merely bureaucratic. It represents a fundamental question about political transformation in deeply divided societies: can conversation precede peace, or must peace precede conversation? As Ethiopia’s conflicts continue to smoulder in Tigray, Oromia, and Amhara, this question has moved from philosophical abstraction to urgent political reality, with consequences that will reverberate far beyond the Horn of Africa.

This debate reached a critical juncture recently through two contrasting public forums that reveal not merely disagreement over tactics but fundamentally opposed understandings of Ethiopia’s crisis. At Chatham House in London, a session distinct from the government-organised diaspora consultation, leading analysts delivered withering critiques of the commission’s fundamental structure and timing. Meanwhile, on Ethiopian state television EBC, government officials and academic supporters presented a more optimistic assessment of progress and potential.

The EBC broadcast featured Ambassador Mehmud Drir alongside Dr Roba Petros, a peace and development studies researcher, Emeritus Professor Alemayehu Gebremariam, a political science scholar and legal counsel, and Dr Teshale Tegene, a communication and public relations lecturer. The discussion provided detailed insight into the dialogue process, its philosophical foundations, and the practical challenges of implementation. Dr Teshale, notably, raised concerns about quality control of collected agendas and the difficulty of overcoming entrenched historical narratives of oppressor and oppressed, beneficiary and victim. The panel’s focus on “how” to conduct the dialogue, the role of citizens, intellectuals, and media, reflected a premise that the process itself is fundamentally sound, requiring only better implementation.

Yet this official optimism crashes against a wall of analytical scepticism articulated most forcefully at the separate Chatham House discussion titled “How to Craft a Credible and Inclusive Implementation Process for the National Dialogue in Ethiopia.” The contrast in framing is itself revealing: where EBC’s discussion presumed credibility and explored implementation, Chatham House questioned whether credibility exists at all and what preconditions might create it.

Mastewal Taddese Terefe, a lawyer and researcher based in New York City, brought formidable credentials and practical experience to her critique. A graduate of New York University School of Law with a Master of Public Policy from Oxford, she served as a legal fellow at the Federal Attorney General’s Office in Addis Ababa from 2018 to 2019, directly supporting the Ethiopian government’s justice reform efforts. Her subsequent work providing legal and policy analyses for organisations including the International Development Law Organization and the World Bank Group gave her comparative perspective on governance reform across multiple contexts. This background, including direct experience working within Ethiopian government institutions, lends particular weight to her assessment that the National Dialogue Commission currently holds “a definite no” for meaningful promise.

Mastewal’s critique focuses on what she characterises as the commission’s original sin: its exclusionary formation. Established by a parliament where the ruling Prosperity Party commands over 96 per cent of seats, with commissioners vetted and approved by this same legislature, the structure creates what she terms a “weaponised institution” one designed to provide democratic legitimacy whilst maintaining regime control. The pattern, she argues, is depressingly familiar across authoritarian contexts: announce a grand initiative with democratic rhetoric, staff it with individuals who pose no threat to power, allow it to address peripheral concerns whilst avoiding core questions of authority, then cite its existence as evidence of reform when facing international pressure. Ethiopia’s history offers ample precedent, from the Derg’s controlled mass organisations to the EPRDF’s carefully managed civil society space.

Her prescription differs markedly from calls for outright postponement. Instead, she presents the commission with an ultimatum: transform itself through dramatic internal reform or accept irrelevance. Her four non-negotiable preconditions, guarantee nationwide ceasefire, end humanitarian blockades, include all armed groups even those designated as terrorists, and establish genuine independence from executive control should not be topics for future discussion but immediate demands the commission itself champions. This approach embodies what might be called transformative institutionalism: the belief that institutions can earn legitimacy through courageous action rather than formal legal status. If the commission publicly demanded these preconditions, challenging the very government that created it, this would constitute proof of independence more convincing than any constitutional provision. The courage to bite the hand that feeds becomes the foundation for credibility amongst those currently boycotting.

Dr Goitom Gebreluel offers perhaps the most withering assessment at the same Chatham House forum. Ethiopia, he argues, suffers from what he terms “first-order problems” active insurgencies, compromised territorial control, mass displacement, and what credible reports describe as ethnic cleansing. These are not policy disagreements amenable to deliberation but existential challenges to the state’s basic functions. “The core demands of the opposition are power sharing and security guarantees,” Dr Goitom states bluntly. “The current dialogue, limited to discussions, is ill-equipped to meet these demands.”

His prescription is stark: postpone the entire exercise and replace it with third-party mediation focused on establishing the security preconditions:- ceasefires, humanitarian access, political prisoner releases that would make genuine dialogue possible. The current approach, he warns, wastes scarce political capital whilst deepening the very cynicism it seeks to overcome. Each failed consultation, each boycott by major opposition groups, each continuation of violence during the dialogue process reinforces the perception that peaceful political transformation is impossible, making future reconciliation efforts exponentially more difficult.

This analysis finds resonance in the recent history of peace processes. Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement succeeded only after decades of preparatory work establishing basic security arrangements and building trust through incremental confidence-building measures. South Africa’s negotiated transition required external facilitation and explicit security guarantees that protected all parties from the consequences of their participation. The precedents suggest that rushing to comprehensive dialogue whilst armed groups still control territory and civilians still face violence may be not merely premature but actively counterproductive.

The divergence between the Chatham House analytical session and both the EBC discussion and the government-organised London diaspora consultation is instructive. The EBC panel, whilst including academic critique from Dr Teshale regarding historical narratives and media responsibility, operated within parameters that presumed the dialogue’s fundamental legitimacy. Questions focused on optimising implementation rather than interrogating foundational premises. The absence of organised political opposition voices or civil society representatives known for opposing the current framing meant the discussion remained, as one analysis noted, focused on “how” rather than “if” how to conduct the dialogue successfully rather than whether the commission as constituted can succeed at all.

Similarly, the London diaspora event, where Ambassador Mehmud reportedly congratulated the a-fan Oromo speaker who facilitated security personnel for the venue and translated that for participants, appears to have attracted primarily government supporters or at least those willing to engage within the commission’s framework. The Prime Minister’s characterisation of opposition as including Eritreans, whilst unsubstantiated, suggests an attempt to delegitimise domestic critics by associating them with foreign interference. Yet the fact that participants felt compelled to express grievances about the Amhara conflict even within this controlled setting hints at the depth of dissatisfaction that even sympathetic audiences harbour.

This reflects broader patterns in Ethiopian state media, which has historically shown bias towards federal government narratives. Whilst the EBC panel was not simply promotional acknowledging challenges in agenda quality control and the difficulty of bridging deep historical divisions, it lacked the voices that could offer fundamental challenge to the process itself. Major opposition groups including the Oromo Liberation Front and Oromo Federalist Congress refuse participation, labelling the commission a “government project.” Their perspective, essential for truly balanced assessment, was absent from both the state television discussion and the London diaspora consultation.

The Chatham House forum, by contrast, centred precisely these critical perspectives. Both Mastewal and Dr Goitom operated from the premise that the commission’s current structure and political context render it incapable of achieving stated objectives. Their debate concerned not whether the process is flawed but what remedies might salvage it postponement for external mediation versus radical internal transformation. This represents a fundamentally different conversation, one that questions legitimacy rather than presuming it.

The official response emphasises context and complexity. No peace process begins with perfect conditions, proponents argue. Northern Ireland’s dialogue occurred alongside continuing violence. Colombia’s peace talks with FARC proceeded whilst armed conflict continued. The act of dialogue itself creates constituencies for peace, gradually shifting incentives away from violence even when security remains imperfect. Waiting for ideal conditions means waiting forever, allowing conflicts to deepen and grievances to multiply. From this perspective, the critics demand an impossible standard whilst offering no realistic pathway to achieve it, external mediators cannot materialise overnight, and opposition groups might use any postponement simply to consolidate military positions.

There is genuine force to this counter-argument. Ethiopia’s conflicts are not frozen, awaiting resolution at some optimal future moment. They are active, escalating, generating new atrocities and grievances daily. The humanitarian toll grows whilst political actors debate procedural questions. The Prime Minister’s announcement that agenda-gathering nears completion represents, from the government’s perspective, tangible progress despite extraordinary obstacles. Hundreds of civil society organisations, religious institutions, and community groups are engaging with the current process despite its imperfections, and their courage deserves recognition rather than dismissal as regime collaboration.

Yet acknowledging the costs of delay does not negate the critics’ core insight: legitimacy matters, and legitimacy cannot be proclaimed into existence. When the Oromo Liberation Front, Oromo Federalist Congress, and numerous smaller parties refuse participation, they are not merely being obstructionist. They are responding rationally to an institution whose structural dependence on the ruling party makes genuine independence implausible. When armed groups designated as terrorists are excluded whilst the government claims inclusive dialogue, this is not peripheral detail but fundamental contradiction. When participants at a government-organised event feel compelled to express grievances about ongoing conflict in Amhara described by supporters as defiance under siege, by critics as exposure of the commission’s partiality, it suggests the process has not created the safe political space necessary for honest conversation.

The international community’s role in this debate remains contested but consequential. Western governments and multilateral organisations have generally adopted cautious endorsement welcoming the dialogue, encouraging broader participation, providing financial support whilst avoiding direct criticism of structural flaws. This diplomatic approach is understandable but potentially complicit. By treating the commission as legitimate regardless of its performance on inclusivity and independence, external actors may inadvertently enable precisely the “weaponised institution” dynamic that Mastewal identifies. The provision of resources and diplomatic validation without clear conditionality tied to measurable progress on preconditions reduces incentives for genuine reform.

A more constructive international engagement might involve honest brokerage that acknowledges failures alongside successes, graduated support calibrated to progress on specific benchmarks, ceasefire verification, humanitarian access improvements, opposition participation, and readiness to facilitate external mediation if domestic processes prove inadequate. The uncomfortable truth is that sustained international pressure, whilst resented as interference, has historically been essential to successful transitions in comparable contexts. South Africa’s negotiations occurred under sustained external scrutiny. Colombia’s peace process received crucial support and verification from international observers. The fiction that purely domestic processes operating without external accountability can succeed in deeply polarised contexts has little empirical support.

Perhaps the deepest wisdom lies in recognising that all parties to this debate are partially correct. The government officials and academic supporters on EBC are right that Ethiopia cannot afford indefinite postponement whilst conflicts escalate, and that dialogue processes can themselves create momentum for peace. Dr Roba Petros and Professor Alemayehu’s contributions highlighted comparative examples and philosophical foundations that demonstrate serious intellectual engagement with the dialogue’s potential. The participants in London who braved alleged threats to engage with the process deserve acknowledgement for their courage, whatever one thinks of the commission’s structure.

Yet the critics at Chatham House are equally right that current conditions make genuine dialogue nearly impossible and that structural flaws in the commission’s formation undermine its credibility. Mastewal’s insider experience working within Ethiopian government institutions gives particular credibility to her assessment of how institutions can be weaponised whilst maintaining democratic appearances. Dr Goitom is right that attempting comprehensive dialogue before establishing minimal security wastes political capital and deepens cynicism. The fact that even government-supportive participants at the London event felt compelled to express grievances about ongoing conflict suggests the process has not yet created conditions for the open, honest conversation its architects envisioned.

The synthesis of these partial truths requires precisely the political humility and willingness to embrace complexity that authoritarian politics systematically eliminates. What Ethiopia requires is neither blind faith in process nor counsel of perfection on preconditions, but something more difficult: conditional proceeding. The commission must continue whilst simultaneously transforming its mission from consultation facilitator to precondition champion, using its platform to demand ceasefires, humanitarian access, and inclusive participation. The government must demonstrate political will through concrete actions, prisoner releases, ceasefire orders, media openings that allow critical voices equal platform alongside supportive ones, not merely rhetorical commitments or unsubstantiated allegations about foreign interference.

Opposition groups must reciprocate good faith reforms with genuine engagement rather than indefinitely moving goalposts. But the burden of proof lies primarily with the commission and the government that created it. The Prime Minister’s unsubstantiated claim about Eritrean involvement in London opposition, rather than strengthening the commission’s position, reinforces critics’ concerns about a government more interested in delegitimising dissent than addressing its root causes. Ambassador Mehmud’s dual role as commission representative and security facilitator at diaspora events, whilst perhaps practically necessary, symbolises the uncomfortable reality that a process claiming national inclusivity requires security arrangements to protect participants from fellow Ethiopians.

The stakes extend far beyond Ethiopia. In an era when authoritarianism resurges globally and many nations face challenges of managing diversity, Ethiopia’s experience will influence regional and global debates about conflict resolution and democratic development in multi-ethnic contexts. If Ethiopia succeeds in negotiating peaceful transformation through inclusive dialogue, it provides a model for other divided societies. If it fails, if violence continues, the state fragments, or authoritarian consolidation proceeds under democratic pretence, the lesson drawn will be that force, not dialogue, determines outcomes in contexts of profound division.

The commission, having nearly completed its agenda-gathering phase according to the Prime Minister, now faces its moment of truth. Will it proceed to drafting recommendations based on consultations conducted primarily amongst government supporters and civil society willing to work within existing parameters? Or will it heed the calls from Mastewal and others to pause, confront its legitimacy deficit, and champion the preconditions necessary for genuinely inclusive dialogue? The gap between the EBC panel’s focus on implementation and the Chatham House forum’s questioning of legitimacy, between the London diaspora event’s managed participation and the broader opposition’s boycott, represents not merely different tactical assessments but incompatible visions of what constitutes legitimate political process in a fractured state.

The nation watches, caught between the cautious optimism of state media and the structural pessimism of external critics, wondering whether this pursuit of consensus will ultimately bridge divisions or deepen them. The answer will depend less on the elegance of constitutional amendments or policy documents than on whether Ethiopia’s political leaders can summon the courage to embrace uncertainty, accept compromise, and prioritise national survival over factional advantage. Whether that possibility remains alive depends on choices being made, or deferred, in Addis Ababa today, and on whether allegations of foreign interference, claims of dialogue under siege, and managed consultations can somehow transform into the genuine national conversation Ethiopia desperately needs before its conflicts render all dialogue impossible.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Ethiopian Tribune or its editorial board.

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By Sewasew Teklemariam, Ethiopian Tribune columnist

There’s a particular ache that comes from reading a memo that doesn’t say what it means. A memo that tells you your child’s education is being “adjusted,” when what it really means is: you can no longer afford it. A memo that speaks of “sustainability,” while quietly unsustaining your life.

Lebawi Academy’s tuition hike didn’t arrive with a confrontation. It arrived with a smile. A polite document, dressed in institutional English, citing “currency adjustment” and “operational realities.” The new fees over 20,000 birr per child per month landed like a slap disguised as a handshake. For many parents, it wasn’t just unaffordable. It was humiliating.

Mulu, a civil servant, stared at the paper for an hour. She earns 30,000 birr a month. Her son’s tuition now consumes two-thirds of that. She didn’t cry. She didn’t protest. She just folded the memo, placed it in a drawer, and began searching for another school. One that doesn’t speak in riddles.

This is the quiet violence of euphemism. It doesn’t shout. It whispers. It doesn’t confront. It evades. And in Ethiopia, it’s becoming the dominant dialect of power.

While Lebawi rebrands exclusion as adjustment, the Ministry of Finance is busy rebranding desperation as mobilisation. Its latest revenue strategy reads like a hymn to modernisation—digital receipts, harmonised codes, ambitious targets. But the reality is less hymn, more hustle. The state is broke, and it’s rifling through the pockets of those least able to protest.

The Addis Fortune piece, “Squeezing Stones for Silver,” exposes the farce. Ethiopia’s tax system isn’t a system it’s a scavenger hunt. In Addis, enforcement is ruthless. In Hawassa, it’s optional. Traders in Merkato unplug their e-tax machines to avoid surveillance. Civil servants in Bahir Dar pay income tax while their counterparts elsewhere enjoy exemptions. It’s not governance. It’s improvisation.

And yet, the state persists. It wants obedience without explanation. It wants compliance without conversation. It wants citizens to pay up while pretending they’re partners. But partnership requires trust, and trust requires truth. Ethiopia has neither.

What it does have is a growing population of quietly broken people. Parents who feel ashamed for not affording what they once could. Traders who feel hunted for trying to survive. Teachers who watch their classrooms shrink as fees rise and hope recedes.

Selam, a teacher at a mid-tier private school, told me she’s lost five students this term. Their families couldn’t keep up with the “adjustments.” She doesn’t blame the school. She blames the silence. The way decisions are made without dialogue. The way lives are rearranged without consent.

This is not just economic erosion. It’s emotional erosion. The slow, grinding loss of dignity. The feeling that you are being governed by people who do not see you, do not hear you, and do not care to learn your name.

And the language keeps lying. “Currency adjustment” instead of fee hike. “Revenue mobilisation” instead of tax squeeze. “Operational sustainability” instead of institutional abandonment. It’s as if the country has outsourced its conscience to a spreadsheet.

But language is not neutral. It shapes what we feel, what we fight, what we forgive. When institutions speak in code, citizens lose the ability to respond. They become objects of policy rather than subjects of history. And that, more than any budget deficit or tuition spike, is the real crisis.

There is a way forward. It begins with truth. With institutions that speak plainly, act justly, and listen deeply. With tax systems that reflect local logic, not imported templates. With schools that consult before they charge. With governments that build trust before they demand sacrifice.

It also begins with remembering that Ethiopia is not a ledger. It is not a memo. It is not a strategy document. It is a nation of people thinking, feeling, struggling people who deserve more than euphemism and extraction. They deserve clarity. They deserve dignity. They deserve a future.

Until then, we will keep squeezing stones for silver. And wondering how long we can bleed before someone calls it loss.

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Review: A Compelling Look at Chinese Influence in Eastern Africa

By Murtada Elfadl

Popular on Variety 

Colorful characters and rebel workers collide in directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan’s Ethiopia-focused documentary.

In “Made in Ethiopia,” directors Xinyan Yu and Max Duncan take the macro issue of China’s influence in Africa and present it provocatively through the micro lens of its effect on a few Chinese and Ethiopian individuals striving for a better life. The film is set at a Chinese industrial complex in Dukem, a small town southeast of Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. It follows an ambitious Chinese businesswoman trying to expand the complex with the help of Ethiopian bureaucrats and the consequences this expansion has on a factory worker and a farming family that lives nearby.

The businesswoman is Motto Ma, a delusionally ambitious outsider who says things like, “The industrial complex is a tourist hotspot. We are considering selling tickets.” She makes up the lie, believes and then hypes it. Motto (the film refers to all the subjects with just their first names) is both charming and wily, the type of person who would sing at her company’s function despite not having any talent. At one point, she announces to the camera, “I starved myself to death for two days to fit this dress.” She’s willing to cajole, threaten and push anyone to get what she wants. She thinks she understands what Ethiopians need, but she’s all hubris. All of this makes her the perfect subject for a documentary.

Motto is such a loud and colorful character that she overshadows her Ethiopian counterparts. Contrasting Motto is Betelihem “Beti” Ashenafi, a quiet factoryworker with modest dreams. Motto claims that her work would make Ethiopians realize their dreams within their lifetime. Something unattainable without her industrial complex expansion. But in Beti, we see how wrong and far-fetched those claims are. Despite working hard and trying to elevate herself, she’s stuck in a never-ending circle of thwarted aspirations. However, because Motto dominates most of the film, Beti’s story comes through as an afterthought.

Providing a stronger counterpoint to Motto is Workinesh Chala and her family. They are farmers whose land was taken by the government so the Chinese industrial complex can expand. They were promised replacement land which they never received. As “Made in Ethiopia” unspools, Workinesh and her young daughter Rehoboth give the film its most compelling scenes. As Rehoboth describes the source of her mother’s resilience, “Made in Ethiopia” gets to show the Ethiopian side of this complicated quandary clearly. With this family’s story, the film finally demonstrates how cultural differences and power imbalance can impede even the most generous of intentions.

“Made in Ethiopia” is ostensibly a film about clash and conflict, and it doesn’t disappoint in that regard. Indeed, it presents an epic scene in which some of the Ethiopian factory workers rebel against the hard working conditions. The scene is deepened by focusing on Edae, the factory translator who mediates between the workers and their supervisor. Centering Edae shifts the narrative from a straight David and Goliath story with clear heroes and villains into a complicated morality tale of ever-changing priorities and loyalties.

The film includes many provocative images. While showing the wedding of a Chinese man and an Ethiopian woman, the camera pans to a stash of cash being presented on a silver tray to the bride’s parents. The filmmakers also show Beti and her friends feeding each other and the farmers praying under a huge tree for the rain to come. Since these are traditions and customs of Ethiopian people, in presenting them juxtaposed with a Western gaze, the film ends up exoticizing the same people it claims to realistically depict.

Despite an imbalance in perspectives, “Made in Ethiopia” ends up presenting a compelling narrative about how Chinese influence in Ethiopia impacts both expats and native people. The camera is patient and probing, and the story weaves in political and social context successfully. The film, recently was premiered in London on October 29th 2024. The author of the article sighted that the films was premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, should be able to start many conversations about these topical issues.

Source: variety.com

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Ethiopia’s push to attract tourism and investment has seen the demolition of a historic district in the capital, with people’s homes and livelihoods destroyed

In the heart of Addis Ababa, the historic, ramshackle neighbourhood of Piassa once teemed with shops and cafes. People would come from across Ethiopia’s capital city to buy anything from jeans to jewellery.

Today it lies in ruins. Its distinctive stone houses, with their wooden balconies and slanting metal roofs, are almost all gone. In their place are jagged fields of rubble, picked over by workers with sledgehammers.

People stop to stare at the wreckage. Some take pictures. But they do not stay long: the ruins are guarded by police carrying clubs. “I’m angry,” says a former resident. “It’s my heritage that’s been destroyed in front of my eyes, without any consultation at all. We were never told the plan.”

For years there had been vague talk of demolishing Piassa, sweeping away the densely packed shantytowns that had sprung up between its historic buildings. The area has witnessed small-scale demolitions. But when the bulldozers moved in last month, it was unexpected. One person says they were given five days’ notice that their family home of more than 50 years would be knocked down. The water and power were cut off after three days.

“Many of our belongings were damaged or stolen during the chaotic process of vacating,” they say.

Like everyone in Addis Ababa the Guardian spoke to, they talked on the condition of anonymity, citing fear of reprisals. Several former residents and heritage experts declined to be interviewed at all.

A new building stands at the heart of Piassa: the recently inaugurated Adwa Victory Memorial Museum. A low-slung complex of orange stone, constructed to commemorate Ethiopia’s historic defeat of Italian colonialists in 1896, it is the latest large-scale project built by Abiy Ahmed, the prime minister since 2018.

His other projects include a national library, a science museum and a host of manicured parks. Abiy’s administration has also renovated Meskel Square, Ethiopia’s most important public space. The biggest venture is a palace complex on a hill above the city, reported to cost $10bn (£8bn). The financing of the grand palace is opaque, though most western diplomats in the city suspect it is being bankrolled by the United Arab Emirates, which has been expanding its influence in the Horn of Africa. When questioned by MPs last year, Abiy said it did not concern them because it was not part of the official budget.

“This is a leader who uses built space as a political tool,” says an architect. “Every time people ask about these projects, they are just shut down.”

Piassa was torn down as part of a “road-widening project”. Other demolitions are also taking place. A tailor in a neighbouring district to Piassa said they were given one hour to clear their shop, with no explanation. They later discovered it is due to be replaced by a cycle path.

Piassa was built by Emperor Menelik II, the father of modern Ethiopia, soon after he founded Addis Ababa in the 1880s. It was developed by the Italians, who gave it its current name – it is sometimes called Piazza – during their occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s. People in the capital considered it their Old Town, but it was also a hub of modernity throughout the 20th century, the place where new technologies first arrived in the country.

“It was the seat of modern Ethiopian history,” says a heritage expert. “They wouldn’t have wiped out their own heritage if they understood this.” Marco Di Nunzio, an anthropologist at the University of Birmingham who studied Addis Ababa’s inner city for several years, says: “There’s no doubt the area needed renovation. But the question is how to do that. The demolitions have not only destroyed old buildings that needed upgrading. They have disrupted livelihoods, displaced residents and damaged part of the soul of the city.”

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Like the people cleared from other city neighbourhoods, those uprooted from Piassa have been relocated to new housing. This is often on the outskirts of the city, far from their schools and workplaces. Much of it is unfinished. A video shared by one person removed from Piassa of their new apartment shows a concrete husk, with no plaster on the walls, and no flooring, glazing or plumbing. “There were people who were more unfortunate than us, who were told they would be living in blocks of apartments which don’t exist,” she says.

Experts say Piassa’s destruction broke Ethiopia’s heritage law and urban planning regulations, though the government denies this. Thirty-six of the neighbourhood’s 42 listed buildings have either been destroyed or earmarked for demolition, say heritage experts. Abiy believes it is necessary to remove poverty from Addis’s centre to attract foreign investment and tourism. Earlier this month, he suggested Dubai as a model.

“While some individuals may be disappointed that their fences are being demolished, the country will not change unless we take bold measures,” Abiy said. “In a year’s time, we will witness a transformed Addis Ababa. Tourists will start to come, increasing the value of your property.”

Yet some in the city are questioning if these projects are the best use of public funds. Ethiopia is struggling with soaring inflation and a foreign currency crunch. It is also facing a reconstruction bill of nearly $23bnfrom a two-year civil war in Tigray, which ended in 2022. Millions of Ethiopians rely on food aid, but the humanitarian response plan to help them was only 34% funded last year.

The city is now coming to terms with its loss. “You don’t have to choose between heritage and development,” says a resident. “Piassa should have been protected and conserved, and this could have easily been done.”

Source: The Guardian

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The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission has called for an end to what it calls arising trend of enforced disappearances in the country. The Ethiopian government has yet to respond to the commission’s report, which says at least 12 people have been arrested or abducted under unclear circumstances.

In a report released June 5, the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission said the enforced disappearances have happened across Amhara and Oromia regions, as well as in the capital, Addis Ababa.

Imad Abdulfetah, regional director for the commission, said the disappearances seem to be related to the war in the northern Tigray region, which ended last year following an African Union-brokered peace deal, and ethnic conflicts elsewhere.

“Primarily, these became more common in the aftermath of the conflicts in the country,” Abdulfetah said. “These incidents are connected to the conflict in one way or the other. So, this one year or a half — at most not more than two years — since this became widespread.”

The commission’s report says victims of enforced disappearances include members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, as well as opposition political parties.

The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC), an opposition political party, said four of its members have gone missing over the past few years.

Party chief Merara Gudina said attempts to locate them have failed.

“It looks to me like the government has decided to rule by force,” Gudina said. “And we have been meeting and talking with government officials, but they have not taken any meaningful steps.”

The OFC’s secretary-general, Tiruneh Gamta, said the party has confirmed the death of Melesse Chala, a local-level party official who was missing for more than two years.

“A person who … had closed his eyes, and prepared his dead body, has informed us,” Gamta said. “So, even though the government has not publicly announced this, we have heard from others.”

Such actions hurt the democratic process and push people to take up arms instead, said Merera.

“If the government is narrowing and stifling the political playground, those who have the capacity and the force will think, ‘Let me go into the forest and try my luck instead of being imprisoned and wasting away.’”

Victims of these enforced disappearances sometimes show up weeks or months later, still alive, but in locations far from where they were last seen, and often in poor physical condition, according to the report.

The government-established commission said it is investigating allegations that some of the victims were tortured.

The Rights Commission has called for the Ethiopian government to adopt and ratify the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance in order to ensure the protection of civilians.

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ባለፉት ቀናት ፓስተር ዮናታን የኢትዮጵያ ኦርቶዶክስ ተዋሕዶ ቤተክርስቲያን ሥርዓተ እምነት (ዶግማ)፣ ቀኖና፣ ትውፊትና ታሪክን በሚያንቋሽሽ መልኩ የሰነዘራቸው እኩይ አስተምሕሮዎች መነጋገሪያ መሆናቸውን እየተመለከትን ነው። ለእነዚህ እኩይና ነገር ጫሪ ምልከታዎቹን በኹለት መንገድ መመልከትና መመከት ይቻላል። አንድም ከእምነት አንፃር አንድም ከምድራዊ ሕግጋት አንፃር። በምድራዊው ሕግጋት የአንድ ኃይማኖት (እምነት) መጋቢ ወይም መምህር በማያምንበትና በማይከተው እምነት ሥነ መለኮታዊና ቀኖናዊ አስተምሮዎች በመነሳት ማንቋሸሽ፣ ማዋረድ፣ መዝለፍና መንቀፍ አይችልም። ካንቋሸሼ፣ ከዘለፈና ጠብ አጫሪ ከሆነ አንድም በሕገ መንግሥቱ አንድም በኃይማኖት ተቋማት የጋራ ምክር ቤት አስፈላጊውና ሕጋዊው ርምጃ ይወደሰድበታል። ከእምነት አንፃር ደግሞ ተንቋሻሹና ተዘላፊው የእምነት ተቋም ለተሰነዘሩበት ትችቶችና ስድቦች ከእምነቱ ዶግማዊና ቀኖናዊ አስተምሕሮዎች ግብረ መልስ መስጠትና እንደ ሕጋዊ የእምነት ተቋም ለሚመለከተው የመንግሥት ተቋም አቤት ማለት ይችላል።

የፓስተር ዮናታን ፀረ ተዋሕዶ ዘመቻ ሥነ መለኮትን፣ ነገረ ማርያምንና ትውፊትን መሠረት ያደረገ ሳይሆን ፖለቲካዊ ማናለብኝነትን መርሕ ያደረገ ፖለቲካዊ ትንኮሳ ነው። ምናልባት የሌሎች እምነት መጋቢያን ከእስልምናም ሆነ ከካቶሊክ፣ ከወንጌላውያንም ሆነ ከይሖዋ ምስክሮች ይህን ያህል የጥላቻ ጠብ አጫሪነት በአደባባይ የማይሰነዘረው ፖለቲካዊ ከለላ ስለሌላቸው ብቻ ሳይሆን የዘመናት አብሮ ኖሪነትንና ደም አፋሳሽ ጠብ አጫሪነትን በእምነት ሽፋን በሀገርና በሕዝብ መካከል ላለማውረድ ነው። ፓስተር ዮናታን ከነገረ ኃይማኖት እውቀቱ ይልቅ ለጊዜው ያለው ፖለቲካዊ ከለላ ስለሚበልጥበት እንጂ ይህን ያህል በድፍረት አይወራጭም ነበር። ዛሬ ዛሬ ነው። ነገ ደግሞ ስለራሱ ያውቃልና ዛሬ የሚሰነዘሩ ምናለብኝነቶች የነገና የከነገ ወዲያ ፖለቲካዊ ከለላዎችን ፓስተሩና የፓስተሩ አንጋቾች የተረዱት አይመስልም።

ፖለቲካዊ ከለላ ለማለት የሚያስችለው የሌሎች እምነቶችን አስተምሕሮዎች አይደለም በአደባባይ በመዝለፍ የራሳቸውን እምነት አስተምሕሮዎች ለማራመድ በሞከሩ የኦርቶዶስ ተዋሕዶ ሰባኪያነ ወንጌል፣ የእስልምና ኡስታዞችና የወንጌላውያን አብያተ ክርስቲያናት መጋቢያን ወሕኒ ሲወርዱና አካላዊ ጥቃት ሲፈፀምባቸው ስለተመለከትን ነው። በዘመነ ኢሕአዴግ መጅሊሳችን ይከበር ያሉ የድምፃችን ይሰማ አባላትና ደጋፊዎች በእስር፣ በዘመነ ደርግ ቤተክርስቲያናችን ትከበር ያሉ ኦርቶዶክሳዊ ሊቃነ ጳጳሳት በእስርና በግፍ ሲገደሉ፣ ዛሬም የሌሎችም እምነቶች መምህራን ተመሳሳይ ድርጊት ሲፈፀምባቸው በታሪክ መነፅር ስለተመለከትን ነው። የሁሉም ዕምነት አባቲችና መምህራን የእስርና ለሞት የበቁት ለኃይማኖታቸው ቀናኢ ስለሆኑ ብቻ ሳይሆን በሰሙነኛው መንግሥት ስላልተወደዱ ነው።

ፓስተር ዮናታን በየአዳራሹ ለሚያካሂዳቸው ጉባኤያት በመንግሥት ከፍተኛ አመራሮችና ተቋማት የመዋዕለ ነዋይና ሌሎች ተዛማች ድጋፎችና ማበረታቻዎች ስለሚደረግለት ራሱን የመንግሥት ንስሐ አባት አድርጎ መቁጠሩ ትክክል ሊመስለው ይችላል። ግን ይሄ አይዞህ ባይነት ሰሙናዊ እንጂ ዘመን ተሻጋሪ ሆኖ አይቆይም። የአንድ እምነት መምህር የራሱን እምነት ከማስከበር በዘለለ የሌሎችንም እምነቶች አስተምሕሮዎች ባያምንባቸውም ባይተገብራቸውም ሊያከብራቸው ግን ግድ ይላል። በዘለፋና በስድብ፣ በሰይፍና በጦር ሰውን ወደ እምነቱ መሳብ ጊዜ ያለፈበት መንገድ ነው። የእምነት ሰው የትናንቱንም የዛሬውንም የነገውንም በተለይም ከሞትና ከተፍፃሜተ ዓለም በኋላ ስለሚኖረውና የሰው ልጆች በዕምነት ተስፋ ስለሚያደርጉት የእግዚአብሔር መንግሥት በማሰብ፣ መለኮታዊውን ብቻ ሳይሆን ዓለምና የሰው ልጆች በሰላምና በመከባበር ለመኖር በጋራ የሚተዳደሩባቸውን ምድራዊ ሕግጋት ሊረዳና ሊያስረዳ ይገባዋል። አንድ የተዋሕዶ ኦርቶዶክሳዊት ቤተክርስቲያን ምዕመን የቤተክርስቲያኗን መሠረታዊ ዶግማና ቀኖናዊ አስተምሕሮዎችን ተምሮ፣ አምኖና ተረድቶ መኖር ግዴታው ነው። ለእምነቱ አጋዥ ግንዛቤ ለማግኘትም አዋልድና ሌሎች ድጋፍ ሰጪ መጻሕፍትን በማንበብ፣ ከመምህራን እግር ስር በመማርና በመጠየቅ ግንዛቤን ማሳደግ፣ በእምነትና በምግባር መጠንከር ጥያቄ የሌለው የምዕመኑ ተግባር ነው። ከዚያ በተረፈ የሌሎችንም እምነቶች አስተምሕሮዎች ለማነፃፀሪያና ለጠቅላላ ግንዛቤ ማንበቡና መረዳቱ ሙሉ ሰው ያደርጋል እንጂ ወንጀል አይሆንም። ወንጀል የሚሆነው የማያምኑበትን ሌሎች ግን የሚከተሉትን እምነት መዝለፍና ለጠብ ማነሳሳት ነው። በግሌ የሌሎች ዕምነቶችን አስተምሕሮች አቅሜ በፈቀደው ለመረዳት መሞከሬ ሰፋ ያለ ግንዛቤን እንጂ ጠላትነትን አልጫረብኝም። ከ 15 ዓመታት በፊት ትውልደ ጋናዊው የፕሮቴስታንት መጋቢ ሜንሣ ኦታቢል
(Mensa Otabil) በእንግሊዝኛ ቋንቋ ያሰራጨውን Buy the future የተሰኙትን ባለ ኹለት ክፍል የስብከት ሲዲዎቹን አዳምጫለሁ ብዙም ተምሬበታለሁ። ፓስተር ሜንሣ በስብከቱ በተለይም የይስሐቅ መንታ ልጆች የሆኑት ዔሣውና ያዕቆብን መንገድ በስፋት ይተነትናል። ዔሣው የያዕቆብ መንትያ ወንድም ቢሆንም ከእናቱ ማኅፀን ቀድሞ በመውጣቱ ብኩርናን የራሱ አድርጓል። ብኩርና የራሱ የሆኑ ኃይማኖታዊና ዓለማዊ ጠቀሜታዎች ( privileges) አሉት። ዔሣው ጊዜያዊ ብኩርናው የሚሰጠውን ወቅታዊ ጥቅማጥቅም እንጂ ብኩርናውን በማጣቱ ወደፊት የሚያጣቸውንና የሚቀሩበትን ኃይማኖታዊና ዓለማዊ ጥቅማጥቅሞች አርቆ አልተመለከታቸውም ይላል ፓስተር ሜንሣ በስብከቱ። የወደፊቱን መፃዒ ክስተቶችን ከግንዛቤ ያስገባው ታናሹ ያዕቆብ ግን ጊዜያዊ ረሀብና ጊዜያዊ የበታችነትን ወደፊት በሚያገኛቸው በረከቶች ለውጦ ብኩርናን ከታላቅ ወንድሙ በጊዜያዊ የምስር ወጥ ገዛ ይላል። ዔሣው ብኩርናውን ብቻ ሳይሆን ወፈፊት የሰው ልጆች በስሙ ዔሣው ተብለው እንኳን እንዳይጠሩ ስሙን አሳደፈ። ሜንሣ በመቀጠልም ያዕቆብ የምስር ወጥ ለወንድሙ ሽጦ ዮሴፍና ብንያምን ጨምሮ አሥራ ኹለት ልጆችን ወልዶ ለወደፊት የስሙ መጠሪያን የገድሉ መዘከሪያን ሸመተ። በኋለኛው ዘመንም ጌታ ከያዕቆብ ልጆች ተወልዶ ዓለምን ነፃ አወጣ። የያዕቆብ ስምም ከትውልድ ወደ ትውልድ እየተሻገረ ሲታዎስ ይኖራል ይላል። ከእስልምና አስተምሕሮዎች ቁርዐንና ሐዲሳትን በማንበብም ሰፋ ያለ ግንዛቤንና ዕውቀትን እንጂ ጠበኝነትን አልገበየሁም። እንደውም በቤተክርስቲያኔና በመስገድ ጫማ ማውለቅን፣ ጾምን አውጆ መጾምን፣ ዕለትን በሰዓታት ከፍሎ መጸለይና መስገድን፣ ምፅዋትንና ዘካትን፣ ፀበልና ዘምዘምን የሴቶች የራስ መከናነብንና ሂጃብን፣ መፃዒው ዓለምንና ውመል ቂያማን ተገንዝቤባቸዋለሁ።
የፓስተር ሜንሣ ስብከቶችን ከፓስተር ዮናታን ዘለፋዎች ጋር እያነፃፃረ ለሚከታተል ሰው ሜንሣ በተለያዩ ስብቶቹ ስለ መጪው ዓለምና የእግዚአብሔር መንግሥት ዮናታን ሰሙነኛ ፖለቲካን አጋዥ በማድረግ የወደፊት ጥልን ሲጠነስስ መረዳት ይቻላል። ለዚህ ነው በአንድ እምነት ውስጥ የሚገኙ ምዕመናንንና መጋቢዎቻቸውን በጅምላ መውቀጥ ተገቢ አለመሆኑንና ጠብ አጫሪና የሰሙነኛ መንግሥት ብረት ለባሽ የሆኑትን ለመለየትና የሜንሣና ዮናታንን አስተምሕሮዎች በማገናዘብ በምሳሌነት ማቅረቡ አስፈላጊ የሚሆነው።

በአንድ እምነት ዶግማዊና ቀኖናዊ ተአስተምሕሮዎች ለሚነሱ ጥያቄዎች ሕጋዊና ተገቢ ግብረ መልስ የሚሰጡ ተቋማት አሉ። በኦርቶዶክሳዊት ተዋሕዶ ቤተክርስቲያን ዙሪያ ለሚነሱ ቅዱስ ሲኖዶስና በስሩ ያለው የሊቃውንት ጉባኤ፣ በእስልምና ለሚነሱ መጅሊስና የዑለማዎች ምክር ቤት፣ በካቶሊክና በወንጌላውያን አብያተ ክርስቲያናት ዙሪያ ለሚሰነዘሩም ግብረ መላሽ ተቋማዊ አካላት አሏቸው። እነዚህ አካላት ሕጋዊ በመሆናቸው ተአማኒነታቸውና ውክልነታቸው ተቋማዊ በመሆኑ እንጂ ተራው ምዕመንም እንደ ግንዛቤውና የእውቀት መጠኑ ግብረ መልስ ለመስጠት ያንሳል ማለት አይደለም መልሱ ግን ተቋማዊ ውክልና ከሌለው ሌላ አተካሮ እንዳይፈጥር በሚል ነው እንጂ።
ፓስተር ዮናታን በተለይ በኦርቶዶክሳዊት ተዋሕዶ አዋልድ መጻሕፍት ላይ የተጠቀሱ አንቀጾችን በመንቀስ የሰነዘራቸውን ጠብ አጫሪ ዘለፋዎች እንደማኝኛውን የማኅበራዊ ድረ ገጽ ተከታታይ ተመልክቻቸዋለሁ። ምንም ተቋማዊ ውክልና ባይኖረኝም ፓስተሩ በሰነዘራቸው ዘለፋዎች ዙሪያ እንደ አንድ ምዕመን በመረጠው ቋንቋ በአማርኛም ሆነ በእንግሊዝኛ፣ በመረጠው የመገናኛ ብዙኃን እንደ ተዋሕዶ ኦርቶዶክስ ምዕመን በገባኝና በተረዳሁት ያህል ልወያየው ፈቃደኛ ነኝ። ልከራከረው ያላልኩት በኃይማኖት ውይይት እንጂ ክርክር ስለማያስፈልግ ነው። ለማንኛውም ወንድም ዮናታን ነቢየ እግዚአብሔር ሰሎሞን እንዳለው ኹሉም ጠፊና ኃላፊ በመሆኑ አሰላለፉንና መንገዱን ከሰማያዊው አምላክና ከማይሻር መንግሥቱ ጋር እንጂ ከኃላፊውና ተሻሪው ምድራዊ መንግሥት ጋር እንዳያደርግ፣ በሰው ልጆች ሰላም፣ አብሮነትና መቻቻል ዙሪያ እንዲያተኩር አንጋፋ የቤተ እምነቱ መምህራን ሊመክሩትና ሊገስፁት ይገባል።

በሥነ አዕምሮና (philosophy ) እና ሥነ አመክንዮ ( logics) ሥርዓተ ትምሕርት ለተዛባ ኢምክንያታዊነት የሚዳርጉና የሚሰነዘሩ 20 ፋላሲዎችን ወንድሜ የኔታ Betemariam Abebaw Bekele ዛሬ የቀዳሚት ሰንበት ማለዳ ላይ ዘርዝረዋቸው ተመለከትኩና ከዚህ ጽሑፍ ጋር ላያይዛቸው ወደድኩ።

The 20 Most Common Logical Fallacies

1. Appeal to ignorance – Thinking a claim is true (or false) because it can’t be proven true (or false).
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2. Ad hominem – Making a personal attack against the person saying the argument, rather than directly addressing the issue.
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3. Strawman fallacy – Misrepresenting or exaggerating another person’s argument to make it easier to attack.
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4. Bandwagon fallacy – Thinking an argument must be true because it’s popular.
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5. Naturalistic fallacy – Believing something is good or beneficial just because it’s natural.
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6. Cherry picking – Only choosing a few examples that support your argument,
   rather than looking at the full picture.
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7. False dilemma – Thinking there are only two possibilities when there may be other alternatives you haven’t considered.
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8. Begging the question – Making an argument that something is true by repeating the same thing in different words.
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9. Appeal to tradition – Believing something is right just because it’s been done around for a really long time.
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10. Appeal to emotions – Trying to persuade someone by manipulating their emotions – such as fear, anger, or ridicule – rather than making a rational case.
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11. Shifting the burden of proof – Thinking instead of proving your claim is true, the other person has to prove it’s false.
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12. Appeal to authority – Believing just because an authority or “expert” believes something than it must be true.
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13. Red herring – When you change the subject to a topic that’s easier to attack.
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14. Slippery slope – Taking an argument to an exaggerated extreme. “If we let A happen, then Z will happen.”
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15. Correlation proves causation – Believing that just because two things happen at the same time, that one must have caused the other.
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16. Anecdotal evidence – Thinking that just because something applies toyou that it must be true for most people.
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17. Equivocation – Using two different meanings of a word to prove your argument.
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18. Non sequitur – Implying a logical connection between two things that doesn’t exist. “It doesn’t follow…”
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19. Ecological fallacy – Making an assumption about a specific person based on general tendencies within a group they belong to.
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20. Fallacy fallacy – Thinking just because a claim follows a logical fallacy that it must be false.

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በፈረንሳይ፣ ስፔን፣ፖርቹጋል ፣ ሞናኮ እንዲሁም UNSECO #የኢትዮጵያ አምባሳደር ሄኖክ ተፈራ የስራ ጊዜያቸውን እንዳጠናቀቁ አሳውቀዋል።

አምባሳደር ሄኖክ በተረጋገጠ የማህበራዊ ትስስር ገፃቸው ላይ ባሰራጩት ፅሁፍ ፤ በፈረንሳይ፣ ስፔን፣ ፖርቹጋል፣  ሞናኮ እና UNSECO በአምባሳደርነት ሀገራቸውን ያገለገሉበት የስራ ጊዜ ማብቃቱን ገልጸዋል።

ኢትዮጵያን በውጪ ሀገር ከወከል የበለጠ ትልቅ ነገር እንደሌለ የገለፁት አምባሳደር ሄኖክ ፤ ጠቅላይ ሚኒስትር ዶ/ር ዐብይ አህመድ ሀገራቸውን የማገልገል እድል ስላመቻቹላቸው ምስጋናቸውን አቅርበዋል።

በተጨማሪ የውጭ ጉዳይ ሚኒስቴር ፣ ፓሪስ የሚገኘውን የኢትዮጵያ ኤምባሲ እና ማህበረሰቡን አመስግነዋል ፤ ሰላምና ብልፅግናን ለኢትዮጵያ ተመኝተዋል።

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