Abiy’s Ethiopia: “A Tyrant in his stead”
Despite his lofty promises, Abiy Ahmed’s new Ethiopia looks a lot like the old one
The hand of Vengeance found the Bed, To which the Purple Tyrant fled. The iron hand crushd the Tyrants head, And became a Tyrant in his stead
- William Blake, The Grey Monk
Reddit is full of delightful little trinkets but I recently saw a meme which so brilliantly gave an insight into Ethiopian politics that I couldn’t help but share it.
In the spring of 2018 Ethiopia underwent a political revolution that would have huge implications for Ethiopia but also critically its neighbours. The country embarked on a new journey and international observers were excited to see how the new young prime minister, Abiy Ahmed’s program would unfold. In Ethiopia the desire for change was so powerfully embodied by Ahmed, that it led to a phenomenon called Abiymania and he fed the beast with the scope and ambition of his reforms and promises.
The ancien regime which had to dismantle to realise his goal was the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of ethnicity-based parties representing some of Ethiopia’s major ethnic groups. The country previously struggled with including and make space for its ethnically diverse population so the EPRDF opted for a decentralised system of ethnic federal states, where the country’s major ethnic groups. This was their innovative answer to Ethiopia’s troublesome “National Question”, the challenge of creating a nation-state the identity of which could be broad enough to make space for Ethiopia’s many of ethnic groups.
Walleligne Mekonnen, a student at the time first attempted to broach the thorny question in his widely-read essay, On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia. “What are the Ethiopian people composed of?” he asked. “I stress on the word peoples because sociologically speaking at this stage Ethiopia is not really one nation.” And he was right. There are close to eighty ethnic groups in the country, one of which — Somalis — have a neighbouring ethno-state. But as he points out only one of those identities was given a central role in defining the national character. “To be a ‘genuine Ethiopian’ one has to speak Amharic, to listen to Amharic music, to accept the Amhara-Tigre religion, Orthodox Christianity and to wear the Amhara-Tigre Shamma in international conferences.” You may even have to change your name he continued.
The EPRDF resolved this issue when they overthrew the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam by federating Ethiopia, drawing up new borders and giving the country’s major ethnic groups a piece of the pie. Though that sounded better than the political arrangement Mengistu presided over, it created a new hall of mirrors veiling the real power brokers in the coalition — the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) — which exercised authority through the parties of other ethnic groups as proxies after they captured Addis Ababa and destroyed the previous Derg regime. In Europe, Soviet-style politics was becoming passé but East Africa remained devoted to its retro allure.
The TPLF modernised Ethiopia’s authoritarian toolkit, by granting equal recognition to all of Ethiopia’s ethnic groups, whilst simultaneously concentrating actual power in the hands of a few men from one ethnic group — the new Tigrayan elite. Just like the picture above, the TPLF’s assumption of power gave Ethiopia a much need political facelift, but the revolution entrenched a new, more insidious way for a small, brutal elite to exercise control of the country’s disenchanted peripheries. Though Ethiopians were much more free to live, develop and celebrate their cultures, any criticism of the regime led to the gallows and but now you at least had the honour getting sent there by a Somali, Oromo or Afari.
The TPLF-led EPRDF with the support of Isaias Afwerki’s Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) played Herman Cohen, the US’s top diplomat for Africa when they took control of Ethiopia like a ‘“well tuned maskino” writes Theodore Vestal:
“the Marxist-Leninist skeletons in the closets of the EPLF and EPRDF were kept firmly under lock, while there leaders, Issayas Afeworki and Meles Zenawi respectively, took on the rhetorical mantle of democrats to win support of western powers.”
Early on international observers of the EPRDF’s Founders Conference suspected that the TPLF had orchestrated a mass charade to legitimise its power. And once they’d succeeded they began building the kind of government they clearly wanted to all along.
The EPRDF had representation from Amhara, Oromia, Tigray & Southern Nations and Nationalities Region which looked great on paper compared to the Derg regime which worked to destroy the cultures of non-Amhara ethnic groups viewing them as a threat to the Ethiopian state. That was a tradition Mengistu had inherited from Emperor Haile Selassie’s reign. However a quick survey of all major government posts, state positions (particularly the security sector) and jobs in public companies were more often than not in the hands of TPLF members or loyalists.
Whilst there is no doubt that senior TPLF figures were well-educated, a brief look at the glowing CV’s of its leadership reveals a lot about how they organised Ethiopia. Meles Zenawi, the TPLF’s leader became prime minister and spent almost two decades in charge before he died in power. Seyoum Mesfin who was recently killed by Ethiopian forces was Ethiopia’s longest serving foreign minister, Getachew Assefa was spy-chief and the list really does go on.
EFFORT was a multimillion dollar TPLF-linked business empire built partially through the embezzlement of state funds. Granted the TPLF gave seed money for the creation of other similar ethnicity pseudo-conglomerates its own exploits went much further. Ethiopia formally distributed power more equitably among its ethnic groups but as with other socialist federations, the rhetoric didn’t match reality. All of us together holding hands and singing Kumbaya is what the EPRDF tried to show the world. The butt of the joke was that if you weren’t Tigrayan, that Kumbaya dance almost certainly happened on your head. What eventually transpired reminds me of a remark by a Polish anti-Communist politician who in an interview with Gazeta Wyborcza after replacing the Soviet puppet regime said teraz kurwa my, or “now it’s our fucking turn.”
Abiy Ahmed, recognising how unpopular the EPRDF was, astutely rode anti-TPLF sentiment to power, often adding fuel to the fire where convenient. If there was anything wrong with Ethiopia, it was the TPLF and Ahmed didn’t hold back in associating the country’s intractable problems with its old leadership. Ahmed must have astonished Ethiopian lawmakers when he admitted the government had sanctioned torture of its citizens. He knew because he was probably involved.
In a really heated and contentious interview with German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, short-lived prime minister Hailemariam Desalegn (who served just before Ahmed) said Ethiopia was in need of “deep renewal.” Having been in charge he was an eye-witness of how bad things had gotten which gave Abiy Ahmed a ready made boogeyman and Ethiopian media spared no blows in taking the TPLF to task especially after the Meskel Square bombing at the end of September 2018. A young Tigrayan woman I spoke to said after that day there were attacks on Tigrayan businesses and neighbourhoods. We caught up much later during the early phase of what Addis Ababa dubbed the “Law Enforcement Operation”, and I asked if it’s true that Tigrayans are being fired from their jobs. She laughed at me and said “definitely, thats old news now.”
Ahmed christened Ethiopia’s new trajectory when he dismantled the EPRDF and founded the Prosperity Party. Ahmed reincarnated as a pro-business, Christian, anti-China prime minister with slick new corporate branding. He even introduced deceptively innovative new institutions, like the ministry of peace. His promise was solemn; we are leaving our past of violence, torture and marginalisation behind and are heading toward a new horizon. All of us together, or “medemer” as Abiy Ahmed said. On paper the party is far more inclusive than the EPRDF as governing parties from many more regions have joined the ruling coalition for the first time. All except one of course, which was the first signal alerting us all to the slow moving train wreck that would become the “Law Enforcement Operation” in November 2020.
The campaign in Tigray has been bloody. Reports of rape, looting, indiscriminate killing of civilians and damage to both private property and Ethiopia’s historical sites are widespread. Ethiopia has made some effort to prosecute guilty members of its military, but this moment is eerily harks back to a more troubled past for many others. I interviewed one Tigrayan professor who recalled the horrors of Menigstu’s violent campaign in the Tigray region in the 1980s.
EPRDF is no more. The TPLF is now a guerrilla outfit putting up a vicious rearguard action in the country’s north. Some of the old faces are gone. But as Hailemariam Desalegn said in that very candid interview with Deutsche Welle where he acknowledged his government was complicit in torture, Abiy Ahmed and many of his current acolytes were there with them. But Abiy Ahmed unlike his predecessors has a new acronym.
Originally published at https://noenchantedpalace.substack.com.
