By Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Monday announced he would deploy to the war front in northern Ethiopia to take the fight to his Tigrayan and Oromo opponents. It is a desperate move by an increasingly isolated leader. The prospect of losing power is a petrifying thought for tyrants, who fear national or global prosecution for crimes against humanity or genocide, and the fear can reach paralyzing levels. If there is anything that keeps Abiy awake at night, it’s the looming possibility of standing in the defendant’s box charged with atrocity crimes.
More than a year after the onset of a brutal civil war between the federal government and its allies on one side and the Tigray state on the other, reports of atrocities and ethnic cleansing still dominate international headlines. On the war front, a sudden change of fortune in favor of the government’s adversaries has forced Abiy and other party leaders to head to the battlefront. A coalition of anti-government forces – the Tigray Defense Forces and Oromo Liberation Army– has captured a series of strategic towns in the Amhara state and is advancing south into the capital, Addis Ababa, where authorities are clamoring to project a semblance of control. Meanwhile, in power corridors, talk of an imminent collapse of the newly formed central government is gaining momentum.
“There’s a relentless media campaign to plant mistrust amongst the political leadership and force us into fleeing the country,” said Abiy to a room full of supporters last week. “I have no doubt that President Mengistu’s premature departure [in 1991] was also prompted by malicious propaganda of a similar sort. We don’t have any country to run to; we will live and die on our soil.”
His invocation of former dictator Mengistu Hailemariam is not without reason. The war has claimed tens of thousands of lives and irreparably damaged the country’s social fabric, but there are no signs of truce between the warring parties. The parties rebuffed repeated calls for a cease-fire from the African Union and the international community. The situation in Ethiopia indeed appears a rerun of history from socialist Ethiopia.
Inevitably, it’s innocent civilians, mainly women and children, that are carrying the brunt of the conflict, as is attested by reports of rights groups on sexual violence against women in Tigray and Amhara states. In territories under Abiy’s loyalists’ control, authorities and vigilante groups are carrying out ethnic profiling, massacres, and identity-based arrests targeting Tigrayans and Oromos on a massive scale. How did a man that was once globally touted as a pacifist African leader of a new ilk turn into a brutal warlord with war crime accusations?
Early signs of character flaws
It was not long after Abiy assumed office that alarm bells began to ring about his conniving mindset. In a book he authored using a pseudonym, እርካብ እና መንበር, Abiy lays out a wicked strategy on how one should manipulate and steer unsuspecting political rivals into a boobytrap and climb the ladders of power. The disturbing excerpts from the book began to make the rounds on social media in early 2018.
But it was largely disregarded as innocuous remarks by an ambitious young politician amidst the euphoria generated by a series of political liberalization efforts and the Ethiopia-Eritrea rapprochement, which at the time seemed unimaginable and well-intentioned. Fast forward a few months, and he struck again.
“I’ve only had a single goal all my life, and that was to become a King,” he declared brimming with pride to a bemused audience of senior officials. “I worked precisely toward that goal to fulfill my mother’s prophecy.” He told a childhood tale of how his mother foretold that he would grow up to be the 7th king of Ethiopia. Words translated into action, and it became apparent that his only motive was power and absolute power alone.
The presence of other charismatic leaders in a position of power was considered wholly undesirable, and Oromia state president Lamma Magarsa became the first high-profile casualty. He was removed from office in April 2019. Shimelis Abdisa, an obedient former deputy to Abiy, was made Oromia state administrator while Abiy’s other close associate, Temesgen Tiruneh, was catapulted to the presidency of the Amhara State. Temesgen’s rise from relative obscurity followed the still unresolved assassination of his predecessor Ambachew Mekonnen in June 2019. Abiy handpicked the two viceroys, and the regional legislature rubber-stamped their appointments in a ceremonial process.
The young premier appeared on course to consolidate power. With submissive loyalists running the two most populous and politically critical states and a solid grip on the military-intelligence apparatus, Abiy felt an aura of invincibility. Meanwhile, he kept summoning a cross-section of professional associations to his auditorium for bizarre lectures in their fields. On any given topic, he spoke with absolute assuredness and authority.
It was, of course, patently discernible that he was tossing around superficial verbiage lifted from self-help books and Wikipedia, interspersed with allegory-laden make-believe stories with little to no relevance for solving real-world problems – all to sell a caricature of a leader well-versed on everything under the sun. The vacuousness of his parable-laced lectures was astounding, but it served the purpose; sure enough, gullible and privileged inner-city folks took him for an infallible leader sent from the heavens. The state-run and ideologically aligned private media waxed lyrical about a supremely competent leader with unparalleled wisdom and political acumen. A coordinated social media campaign painted an image of a mythical figure with superhuman capabilities.
The Ethiopian state became synonymous with Abiy, and Abiy became the Ethiopian state. A year and a half into his tenure, he was now an absolute monarch. And true to form, the 43-year-old premier spent exorbitant amounts of money, by his admission, to adorn his palace with shinny interior designs and extravagant Mont blanc chandeliers and his premises with carefully manicured gardens and exotic wild animals, as would a proper king.
A ‘renegade’ with an insatiable lust for power
Abiy’s subsequent move to consolidate political power by dismantling the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), and creating a new unitary party out of its ashes, was met with resistance from within and outside the ruling coalition. While reforming the party was not in and of itself objectionable, the rhetorical and ideological positioning of the prime minister was a trite far-right vision of returning Ethiopia, metaphorically and in many ways practically, to its nonexistent “glory years.”
From the outset, with the tag of a “former EPRDF spymaster” on his back, it would take a herculean convincing effort for Abiy to gain widespread approval in Oromia. It’s safe to say his reincarnation as the proponent of a reactionary assimilationist ideology all but completely extinguished any hopes for popular support. Abiy’s regressive unitarist political rhetoric, disdain for the multinational federal arrangement, and ambition for centralized control faced stiff opposition primarily in his backyard, Oromia.
To make matters worse, in his first few months in office, he commissioned and erected at his palace elaborately crafted wax sculptures of former emperors with ferociously contested legacies. This was followed by derisory comments toward Oromo nationalism and the demands of the youth movement in Oromia that had propelled him onto power out of oblivion.
To this date, none of the demands of the 2014-2018 protest movements that led to a change of government in April 2018 have been addressed by the Abiy administration. Among the key demands of the Oromo protest were making Afaan Oromo a federal working language; ending Oromo political repression; halting the prolonged eviction and displacement of farmers in and around Addis Ababa; codification of the economic and political relationship between the capital and the state of Oromia; commitment to more devolution rather than centralization; respecting the right to democratically elect representatives and so forth. All have been shoved under the rug.
Abiy’s reluctance to address grievances and his outdated political persuasions caused massive consternation amongst a new generation of youth who resisted attempts to eventually dismantle the federal system and return to a unitary political dispensation.
Indeed, Abiy’s habit of tossing “yegosa politika” (clan politics), a dysphemistic parlance he appropriated from his newfound allies in Ezema, to ridicule the prevailing multinational federal arrangement put him on a collision course with Oromo and Tigrayan politicians and activists.
Abiy’s urbanite benefactors grew anxious about the rise of opposition to his leadership and urged him to act fast and decisively and put out the fire in Oromia. For Abiy, however, it wasn’t yet time to act with a globally prestigious prize awaiting him just around the corner. As the frontrunner for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, he had to be careful not to let the cat out of the bag too early and jeopardize his chances of winning the coveted gong.
Fast forward a few weeks and the peace prize now comfortably in his pocket, Abiy took a leaf out of his Machiavellian playbook and set about destroying internal political detractors, key opposition figures, and public intellectuals critical of his government. While he was being revered as a peacemaker on the world stage, his true colors were beginning to unravel internally. In his line of fire stood Oromo nationalists within his party and the members and leadership of Oromo Federalist Congress and Oromo Liberation Front, the two major political parties in Oromia.
The Prosperity Party then purged the prime minister’s one-time close ally, Lamma, and a host of skeptics from its ranks. The assassination, in suspicious circumstances, of iconic musician and rights activist Haacaaluu Hundeessa, in June 2020 presented a perfect pretext to put Abiy’s main political rival Jawar Mohammed and other prominent opposition figures behind bars.
Authorities enlisted the services of co-opted former activists and a jingoistic cabal espousing a distinct brand of cultural hegemony to paint an image, in Jawar, of a radical ethno-nationalist rabble-rouser who deserved to rot in jail. Excessive vilification campaigns at the behest of media executives with direct links to Abiy meant that the Stanford graduate became a bogeyman to people who hadn’t even heard him speak. Stale, out of context, soundbites from the past were rerun ad nauseam by pro-government media outlets to portray an image of a person hellbent on dismantling the Ethiopian state. Nothing could be further from the truth.
In actual fact, if there was anyone who strived hard to bring the country together and insisted on a more amicable, peaceful, and consensual path forward, it was Jawar Mohammed. Upon his return from the U.S., Jawar initiated a conversation with the head of the Tigray State, Debretsion Gebremichael, to discuss potential avenues for a peaceful resolution to the political stalemate between Tigray and the federal government. He traveled to the seat of the Amhara state, Bahir Dar, to bring the political elites of Oromia and Amhara states closer and held a town hall meeting with the youth to discuss a political future that would work for everyone. He traveled to southern and western Oromia to try to bring armed Oromo combatants and the Abiy administration to a negotiating table.
Jawar held a series of town hall meetings with the public in Asosa, Jigjiga, Samera, Harar, Hawassa, and many parts of Oromia. He came back with suggestions for Abiy to address the discontent palpable across the nation. Alas, Abiy had no interest in engaging him in good faith; his path was to resolve all political differences through the barrel of the gun.
Across Oromia, anyone who presented a semblance of political threat was swiftly expunged from the political space in a manner that would make the most authoritarian leaders go green with envy. However, the only transgression of those targeted was holding an alternative political view that was massively favored by the public than that of Abiy’s.
Two years into Abiy’s tenure, detention centers and school compounds were overcrowded with political prisoners accused of sympathizing with opposition parties. It became common for farmer homesteads to be set ablaze at the slightest suspicion of dissent; young men got executed in public squares in front of spectators. Extrajudicial killings became rampant, with politicians openly justifying brutal public executions. Under Abiy’s Prosperity Party (PP), Oromia turned into a living hell. In more ways than one, for the Oromo, Abiy became a problem child wallowing in the abyss of political doom.
Desperate pursuit of electoral legitimacy
All the while, the national electoral board was preparing to hold the sixth general election in 2020 – later postponed to 2021 due to COVID-19 – although all major political parties pulled out of the polls. Calls for it to be canceled or delayed due to growing repression and the closing of the political space fell on deaf ears. Eventually, a sham election was held with no credible opposition competing against PP, particularly in Oromia, Somali, Sidama, and Benishangul Gumuz states.
What started three years ago as a globally touted “reform process” produced a familiar electoral outcome. The electoral board declared a landslide victory for Abiy and his party in the June polls. The ruling party won 410 of 436 seats in the federal parliament in a mockery of the notion of democratic reforms. It was all too predictable.
In the lead up to the deeply flawed polls, the international community turned a blind eye to the harassment, jailing, and forced disappearance of Abiy’s political opponents and continued to pump in funds, hoping that the new government would – by some stroke of magic – bring about much-needed peace and stability to Ethiopia and the troubled Horn region. It was naïve. If anything, the situation shifted from bad to worse. For example, in Oromia, with prominent opposition politicians sent to jail on trumped-up charges and all peaceful avenues wholly exhausted, the youth began to join an insurgent army led by Kumsa Diriba, popularly known by his nom de guerre Jaal Marroo, in significant numbers. The election proved to be an exercise in futility.
With all of Abiy’s formidable adversaries in Oromia eliminated from the democratic space, some forced into the bushes, and his legitimacy supposedly on solid grounds after the electoral victory, it was now time for the showdown with the state of Tigray, with the grand prize of controlling its capital Mekelle. The final checkmate, or so it was believed.
Toward a mutually assured destruction
In the morning of November 4, 2020, Abiy announced ordering a quick “law enforcement operation” in response to “a blitzkrieg attack” by Tigrayan forces on a federal army base in Mekelle and three weeks later declared victory. However, a year on, what started as a quick military offensive has morphed into a bloody civil war involving multiple local and international actors, with victory becoming ever more distant by the day for Abiy and his government. The intricate details of what transpired on November 4 will be a subject of future inquiry, as nonpartisan accounts are few and far between at the moment.
The war, however, did not suddenly break out on that fateful day. There had been alarming levels of highly polarized political rhetoric in the months and war preparations leading up to the conflict. The war has unleashed dehumanizing language, hate speech, secretive collusion with a foreign state, starvation crimes, extended road blockages, among others, cornering an entire group of people into an existential siege. A considerable portion of the blame falls at Abiy’s feet for allowing and encouraging these tactics as a weapon of political warfare against his adversaries.
It is not up for debate that the TPLF-dominated EPRDF ruled Ethiopia with an iron fist for 27 years, and its leaders had committed egregious crimes and rights abuses. It is nevertheless disingenuous to completely absolve TPLF’s then-junior partners – now assembled under PP – of any wrongdoing and point fingers in a single direction. If there is a need to prioritize transitional justice, it must not be selective.
At present, Abiy finds himself in a precarious situation and may have exhausted all efforts to stop his government’s impending downfall. With his chances of getting out of the war unscathed slim, he may as well follow Mengistu’s footsteps and flee the country. A wise thing to do for Abiy will be to relent and release all political prisoners, create an enabling environment for an inclusive dialogue, make way for a post-PP political settlement, and most importantly, permit a bloodless transition for the good of citizens. Regardless of the course of action he takes, Abiy’s eventual fate may not be different from Mengistu, who was convicted of genocide in absentia in 2007. Considering the tremendous anguish and misery Abiy has caused ordinary folks in Tigray, Oromia, and the rest of Ethiopia, chances of redeeming himself are slim to none. His insatiable lust for power and archaic vision of the future has brought the country to the precipice of a violent dissolution.
As for key players in the ensuing interim and transitional arrangement in whatever way, shape, or form it comes – it’s essential to understand that any nostalgic attempt to roll back the years and choreograph a return to pre-eminence of any one group will only lock the country on a path to mutually assured destruction. To avoid total implosion, Ethiopia needs a truly democratic but more devolved multinational federal dispensation that works for everyone, perhaps with a reconfiguration of the geographies of certain regional states in the federation. With his insatiable thirst to become a modern-day monarch, Abiy has squandered a rare opportunity to manage Ethiopia’s transition into a democracy and must now step aside.
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