Violent Dissolution Threatens Ethiopia: Who is Responsible?
Published April 5, 2021, 2:21 a.m. by FNN
By Moosisaa Oosaa[1]
If Ethiopia breaks up, which is looking more and more likely with every passing day, the world needs to take note that this state of affairs was initiated NOT by rightly disgruntled nations, nationalities and peoples in Ethiopia putting forward unreasonable demands. Abiy Ahmed and Amhara ethno-nationalist (neo-neftegna) political elites in the center must be held responsible for paving the path to Ethiopia’s very likely violent dissolution by subjecting it to unprecedented ethnic conflicts and internal population displacements in pursuit of hegemony over the fragile state.
Under Abiy Ahmed’s leadership, Amhara ethno-nationalists are challenging the federal arrangement, and seek to re-establish Amhara hegemony over the federal state by getting rid of Ethiopia’s multi-national federal constitution. They hate the fact that devolving power to the regions by means of a new constitution in 1995 has deprived them of their hegemony over the state. Ever since, they have worked hard to alter this state of affairs by employing two mutually reinforcing strategies.
First, they have fanned a strong ethnonational consciousness among the Amhara population, resulting in a feeling of having been suppressed under multinational federal system – a feeling they are actively manipulating. Under the guise of keeping Ethiopia united, a euphemism for returning Ethiopia to its former state dominated by one-culture, one-language and one-religion, and in the name of protecting Amhara rights, Abiy Ahmed and his cohorts are working to legitimize his “Medemer” (unionist) aims using their most powerful weapons - the Ethiopian National Defense and Security Forces, the Amhara Regional Special Forces, and an invading army from Eritrea.
Secondly, as if Ethiopia’s century old problems started just three decades ago with the introduction of the current constitution, Abiy Ahmed and his cohorts are working hard to portray, to the international community, Ethiopia’s multinational Federal constitution as the root of all evils taking place in Ethiopia. They would have the world believe violent conflicts are inherent in multi-national federal systems. To convince the world that this is the case, they have maliciously, and deliberately instigated and managed various conflicts across the empire among nations and nationalities, and have been blaming it on the multi-national federal system - which is essentially identical to the ones under which Canada, Switzerland, Belgium, India and many others not just live peacefully but prosper and thrive because of it.
A typical example of a GoE instigated and managed conflict is the one that followed the assassination of Hacalu Hundessa, in which, by one conservative estimate, 123 citizens were killed, 70% of them at the hands of GoE security forces.
[1] Moosisaa Oosaa is a student of politics as both philosophy and history, and lives in the USA.
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