“Medemer” to Murder More: the Failed Abiy Ahmed Experiment

Three years ago, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was presented with a golden opportunity after the terrorist EPRDF regime that was a front company for the TPLF junta finally succumbed to internal and external pressure. After 27 years of brutalizing Ethiopians and maintaining power with iron fists, the party founded by Meles Zenawi fell from disgrace in 2018. Seemingly out of nowhere, a previously unknown co-founder of the Information Network Security Agency, Ethiopia’s version of the NSA, scaled the political ladder and became Ethiopia’s Prime Minister.

From the outset, Mr. Ahmed captured the imagination of tens of millions of Ethiopians back home and millions more scattered around the world. His telegenic smile, youthful disposition and charm exhilarated a people who had been demoralized by decades of tyrannical rule and legions of political “activists” who promise change only to embezzle their supporters. While public serpents like Birhanu Nega, Jawar Mohammed and Alula Solomon kept feasting on the finest kitfo and drinking black labels, our people back home were being ground into dust. Abiy Ahmed was kryptonite to the super-cowardice of the EPRDF, or so we thought as he pretended to be the polar opposite of the regime that revived apartheid in Ethiopia.

Mr. Ahmed cunningly glommed on to Ethiopiawinet—the essence that we are one people above our differences—as he leveraged the political slogan “medemer” to offer unity to a country that was being torn apart by political and social strife. The focus on oneness and his insistence that we are greater together than we are when we are latching on to ethnocentrism is the reason why legions of Ethiopians flocked to his side. We were in desperate need of a leader who would put an end to division and instead lead a national conversation based on truth and reconciliation.

Ethiopians were so hungry for change that we accepted his check without confirming if there was money in his bank account. The same way Barack Obama electrified Americans who were ready for a radical departure from eight years of Bush’s incompetence and criminality, Mr. Ahmed seized the hearts and minds of countless millions of Ethiopians by promising to turn the page of the EPRDF’s playbook of divide and murder. Almost overnight, Mr. Ahmed was canonized and elevated to the position of saint before he did anything worthy of note. Just like Obama, Mr. Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and showered with praise from the international community.

Even though he was an integral part of the ruthless TPLF regime that rebranded itself as the EPRDF, Mr. Ahmed deftly transformed himself from a vulture into a dove overnight in ways that would impress a reformed prostitute. When he flew to America and held court at the Washington Convention Center, tens of thousands of Ethiopians stood in line for hours to get a glimpse of a man they thought would revive their homeland. The minute he embraced Tamagne Beyene, a hard core TPLF opponent, I became personally invested and thought Mr. Ahmed was the change we have been waiting for. Twice in ten years, I got bamboozled by charlatans who professed to be about the people when they were actually well-spoken scam artists.

The honeymoon lasted as long as unrefrigerated injera; within a year people who were not beset by idol worshiping woke up to the fact that Mr. Ahmed was all flash and no substance. Instead of addressing root causes of poverty and strife by revamping the economy to empower Ethiopians, he decided to turn to the failed “privatization” schemes that have decimated the working and middle-class in America and countless nations around the world. His greatest economic accomplishment to date is handing over 40% of Ethio Telecom to multinational corporations. Far from a visionary leader, he revealed himself to be a stooge of globalists.

As he was turning Ethiopia into a destination of choice for corporations who want to profit by indenturing workers into a life of minimal-wage oppression, he gave a cold shoulder to Tigaru people during the same time he was giving a warm embrace to most ethnic communities. Even though he visited countless areas of Ethiopia and jaunted around the world to bask in the glow of his adoring fans, he barely set foot in Tigray. He could have followed in the footsteps of Nelson Mandela by extending an olive branch to the Tigaru community, including forgiving TPLF officials who have blood on their hands in an effort to mend a country that was on the precipice of an implosion after nearly three decades of ethnic separatism. Tragically for Ethiopia, Mr. Ahmed decided to follow in the footsteps of Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi.

What is now abundantly evident is that Mr. Ahmed’s shuttle runs between Addis Abeba and Asmara were more motivated by military considerations than they were about peace and rapprochement. He realized from the outset that if a day ever came where a conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and the TPLF broke out, it was imperative to make the Tigray Defense Force (TDF) fight a two-front war. After all, the TPLF ruled Ethiopia for 27 years; during that time they hoarded all kinds of high-tech weaponry and trained local forces in ways that ensured near parity with the ENDF. More interested in maintaining power and reaping financial gains, Mr. Ahmed and Debretsion Gebremichael both knew a day of reckoning was coming.

Intent on seizing the initiative—as a high-level TPLF official Sekuture Getachew admitted on Dimtsi Weyane TV—the TDF struck in the dead of night on November 4th and killed countless hundreds of ENDF’s Northern Command soldiers. It was based on this admission and TPLF’s long history of crimes against humanity that I initially supported Mr. Ahmed’s campaign against TPLF leadership. No country would abide extremist elements within its borders acting with such wanton disregard for the rule of law and initiating a war of terror against civilians and military personnel alike.

My support came with preconditions, as long as the campaign was limited in scope and only went after combatants, I felt compelled to endorse Mr. Ahmed’s efforts. The alternative would have been anarchy as other ethnic nationalists would have followed suit and led Ethiopia into the abyss. However, within a couple of weeks, it became evident that Mr. Ahmed’s aims were not limited and that he was intent on exacting collective punishment. By turning off the internet for the whole of Tigray, depriving Tigarus of electricity and bombing civilian centers, he radicalized Tigarus and drove them into the arms of the TPLF.

I withdrew my increasingly tepid support the minute Mek’ele was repatriated yet Mr. Ahmed made the foolish decision to keep the internet and electricity turned off. I went from a supporter of a limited military campaign to an outright and vocal critic the minute he invited a foreign power into Ethiopia and allowed Eritrea to attack fellow Ethiopians. What is taking place now was predictable; anyone who has studied insurgencies would tell you that when you attack civilians, you only serve as a recruiter for the foes you are trying to defeat. That is exactly what Mr. Ahmed did as he allowed, either explicitly or implicitly, the torture, raping and mass-killing of Tigarus.

What is going on in Ethiopia is germane to the rest of the world; the fires that are burning in my homeland will arrive at the doorsteps of America and beyond.

Mr. Ahmed eventually understood the lesson that America learned in Vietnam and Russia realized in Afghanistan, you can’t kill your way out of a guerilla war. Ethiopia would not be here today had he immediately announced a humanitarian effort when Mek’ele fell and made it a priority to tend to the civilian population throughout Tigray. At best he chose inaction, at worse he decided to commit a genocide in an effort to quell a restive population. This is why he pulled the ENDF from Tigray, he chose retreat over the untenable step of declaring total war against the whole of Tigray.

This is not to exculpate TPLF; as I noted in countless interviews, leaders like Debretsion Gebremichael and Getachew Reda deserve to be tried for war crimes instead of being lauded as heroes by Western governments and mainstream media. If America, the UK and the international community truly cared about peace and stability in Ethiopia, they would stop funding and arming ethnic factions. The bogus indignation and counterfeit outrage from the likes of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and his ilk are nothing more than theatrics; they have zero interest in the wellbeing of Tigarus, their only aim is to keep Ethiopia destabilized and lock my birth land in a perpetual state of strife.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkTMO4eidOY&t=348s

If Ethiopia has any hope at all, it will not come by way of foreign intervention or UN Security Council votes; neo-colonial powers only care about siphoning off the wealth of Africa and inciting our people to hack each other to death. Neither will any solution emerge from the likes of Messrs. Ahmed and Gebremichael; the political class in Ethiopia are as lethal as Covid-19 mixed with anthrax. The only chance we have to redeem Ethiopia and to save our people from an incoming inferno is if we stop falling for the identity politics of the West, dismantle ethnic federalism and treat each other as fellow humans and children of God. Failing that, buckle up because the next 6 months could turn our home Ethiopia into Hotel Rwanda.

“We Must All Hang Together, or Most Assuredly, We Will All Hang Separately.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

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Teodrose Fikremariam

Writer at Ghion Journal

Teodrose Fikremariam is the co-founder and editor of the Ghion Journal. Prior to launching the Ghion Journal, he was a political organizer who once wrote a speech idea in 2008 that was incorporated into Barack Obama's South Carolina primary victory speech. He is originally from Ethiopia and a direct descendent, seven generations removed, of one of Ethiopia's greatest Emperors Tewodros II.

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