Abiy Ahmed’s Destabilization of Ethiopia

 

Ethiopia is in serious turmoil and another historical political transition is, perceptibly, impending. Ongoing conflicts in different parts of the country, state-facilitated starvation, fresh nationwide anti-government uprisings – and the Horn of Africa nation is once again in mayhem and the future is dreadfully uncertain. Ethiopia is at a bloodcurdling juncture; multiple crises threaten the foundational stability of Africa’s second-largest country.

However, between 2016 and 2018, popular protests initially sparked by legislation meant to regulate the uprooting of Oromo farmers by expanding the capital city known as the ‘Addis Ababa Master Plan’ would continue to exceptionally confront Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF); discontent was particularly pronounced in the Amhara and Oromo regions, at the time directly administered by the Amhara National Democratic Party (ANDM) and Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organization (OPDO). This period was also marked by increasing inter-regional tensions including a border war between the Oromo and Somali Regions that produced over a million Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) that have yet to be resettled to their former hometowns or sufficiently supported.

 Unfortunately, there were countless early signs indicating the distinctive democratic ambitions of the Ethiopian people would not be realized or implemented under Abiy Ahmed’s transitional administration. For instance, while the administration’s swift overturning of the ‘anti-freedom’ laws were widely celebrated, they were as quickly replaced by new repressive legal frameworks. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the UN Security Council, and many other credible entities and international governments have expressed concern over the return of oppressive practices and are calling for an end to atrocities in Ethiopia

The unsolved and controversial killings of senior officials and superstar Hachalu Hundessa, arrests of predominant opposition members and the unwarranted ousting of political colleagues who resisted or debated the mendacious transitional leader’s impulsive declarations (i.e. the premature formation of Prosperity Party or the dissemination of the groundless “Medemer” concept) subverted Ethiopia’s efforts toward becoming a democratic middle-income country in the next couple decades. These mentioned occurrences activated enduring political infighting and continue to alarm Ethiopians and the international community.

Expected reforms through dialogue, public consensuses and democratic processes were conclusively hijacked by the self-acclaimed “reformist” transitional Prime Minister and his underlings; Abiy Ahmed engineered a civil war, facilitated a famine and, throughout the landlocked country, dynamically deployed almost-irreversible measures of political insecurity. The Ethiopian people, for the past two to three years, are witnessing intense inter-ethnic conflicts, ethnic profiling of Tigrayans and Oromos, federally-endorsed land grabs, arming of farmers and rural communities, a staggering increase in religious and ethnic extremism, mass rape of women and children by Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), and a mainstreaming of ultra-right perspectives that seek to reverse institutional gains in the accommodation of diversity – and reformulate the Ethiopian nation-building process toward a more unitary vision under the fallacious slogan ‘one people, one language, one religion’.

Short-term solutions:

1. Ceasefire: Withdrawal of Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF), Eritrean, Amhara and other regional forces from Tigray Region
2. Protection of all civilians and unhindered humanitarian access to Tigray Region and other conflict-ridden areas of the country such as Western Oromia
3. Independent investigations into human rights abuses, accountability for those responsible for war crimes and gender/sexual-based violence against women and children
4. Free all political prisoners
5. Inclusive national dialogue and reconciliation based on deference for the constitutional order and the rights of the nations, nationalities and peoples of Ethiopia to exist