Addis Ababa (Commentary) — Ethiopia could possibly be peering into the abyss of break-up 31 years after Eritrea grew to become an impartial nation. Eight years earlier than the 1993 referendum in Eritrea, Paul B. Henze, a former CIA station chief in Addis Ababa, wrote a paper for the Rand Company on the political state of affairs in Ethiopia. In 1985, the Derg regime was at conflict with the Tigray Folks’s Liberation Entrance, the Eritrean Folks’s Liberation Entrance and the Oromo Liberation Entrance, amongst different Ethiopian ethnonationalist fronts. Henze made a case for sustaining the territorial unity of Ethiopia, even within the occasion of regime change. Unbeknownst to Henze, the logic he used to argue towards secession in Ethiopia would later be used to justify the secession of Eritrea.
“Ethiopia is an atypical African nation. One of many oldest states on this planet, it owes its boundaries to not colonial powers however to its personal sense of nationhood and its rulers’ potential to control colonial rivals. Ethiopia’s geographic and ethnic variety shouldn’t be mistaken for basic fragility,” wrote Henze.
Eritrea, a former Italian colony, was briefly dominated by Britain however, in 1952, grew to become part of Ethiopia after the United Nations determined to make Eritrea a federal area of Ethiopia. All Ethiopian armed fronts had been conscious of the fragility embedded within the Ethiopian polity, partly as a result of a long-reigning emperor who was overthrown by a Marxist regime. Henze urged the West to recognise and assist the “sustaining Ethiopia’s territorial integrity.” His plea to forestall secession in Ethiopia as a way to regaining American affect was overtaken by unexpected adjustments, such because the collapse of the Soviet Union and the autumn of the Derg regime in 1991. Henze later wrote in his e book Layers of Time: A Historical past of Ethiopia that he “was an observer within the 1993 referendum in Eritrea…”
Two civil wars are at present raging in Ethiopia—one in Oromia and one other within the Amhara area, the place Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has normalised the usage of Türkiye-made Bayraktar drones towards Amhara civilians, whom authorities deem sympathetic to the reason for FANO fighters. Two years in the past, peace talks in South Africa ended the battle within the Tigray area.
Abiy Ahmed, the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, has concocted an ideology based mostly on Cushitic victimhood, which has changed his earlier Medemer philosophy. “Tigrayans represent 6% of the Ethiopian inhabitants however dominated Ethiopia for 27 years with an iron fist,” mentioned an Oromo activist in Addis Ababa. He echoed the emotions of Leenco Lata, the previous OLF chief, who, in 2017, informed Professor Ezekiel Gebissa that the OLF had been sidelined within the 1991 talks on the transition from the Derg regime, granting the TPLF privileges to develop into the core of the Ethiopian Nationwide Defence Forces. Lata has not too long ago supported Abiy Ahmed’s try to illegally acquire entry to the ocean by way of the Federal Republic of Somalia, in violation of each the AU and UN Charters. Like Mengistu Haile Mariam, Abiy Ahmed is overseeing a disastrous political course of that might outcome within the break-up of Ethiopia as soon as once more. Blame Oromummaa for the trail Ethiopia has taken since 2018 when Abiy Ahmed was chosen to interchange Hailemariam Desalegn.
© Puntland Publish, 2024
