Introductory Remarks
After two years of bloodshed in northern Ethiopia (Tigray, Amara and Afar regions), a peace process was established in Pretoria, South Africa for ten days of talks and negotiations. In November 2022, a ceasefire agreement was signed and a peace agreement was reached. But the multifaceted devastation caused by the 2-year war on those communities in northern Ethiopia seems to have gone unnoticed. Hundreds of thousands lost their lives, limbs and legs. In addition, thousands have been displaced and reduced to poverty. However, there is no indication of what corrective measures will be taken as part of the remedial peace deal.
PM Abiy’s regime is facing serious political challenges from all other stakeholders that participated during the 2-year war with the TPLF. At first, there were many regional participants in the war who sided with the national defense forces. Their goals were very different from each other. However, they all had the same concerns with the Abiy’s regime and stood together with his party to jointly fight against TPLF. When the 2-year war ended, these groups felt betrayed by the Abiy’s regime. As a result, it will be very difficult for the Abiy’s regime to coordinate all these anti-TPLF-elements together to stand alongside with it and comply with the peace agreement it forged with TPLF.
The attempt made by PM Abiy’s regime to satisfy the outstanding needs of TPLF at the cost of all other stakeholders that took part in the recent 2-year war is futile because this regime is focused on scoring political gains for its own party sympathizers instead of doing justice on significant regional land controversies that worry the vast majority of the people of the regions. In particular, the decision taken by PM Abiy’s regime to instantly disarm the Amhara special forces will definitely result in repeated invasions and attacks on the Amhara people without a defender at home. The only ulterior motive behind such a partisan decision excluding all other stakeholders in the recent 2-year war, is to weaken and subjugate the Amhara community on purpose, in the same vein as TPLF did during its 27-year of reign.
Matters born from the Pretoria agreement
Since the deletion of TPLF from the national list of terrorism and the establishment of the transitional government of Tigray are matters born from the Pretoria agreement, there is no concrete information about how much action has been taken on the other detailed points of the Pretoria agreement itself.
Like most concerned Ethiopians, I am outraged by the Oromo prosperity regime’s move to disband the regional special forces. This is a cunning and dubious plan to bring the Amhara people and their special forces to the knees of the enemies in the region.
Looked at the political milieu from the national perspectives, the ownership claims and contestations over the control over Wolkait Tsegede, Raya Alamata and Raya Kobbo areas of the Amhara legitimate territories feeds into shifting political alliances between the Amhara regional state, the Oromo prosperity party, and the Tigray regional state political leaders, which actually threaten the sustainability of the Pretoria Peace Agreement struck between the Oromo prosperity party-led by PM Abiy Ahmed and TPLF-leadership in November 2022. Most of the procedures exercised to realize the Pretoria agreement accord are kept away from the attention of the domestic or global audiences. Nor did the African Union (AU) provide its conclusive observation and remarks on this sensitive matter.
Why say no to disperse the Amhara special forces?
Without much ado, the Amhara community must stand firm in order to quickly prevent the movement to disperse the Amhara special forces. In this surprising situation, when the PM Abiy regime and the Oromo Prosperity Party are showing weakness to defend and maintain peace and order in most parts of Ethiopia, the Amhara people must not accept the PM Abiy regime’s demand to disarm the special forces. We must stand tall and be able to we see further the danger coming to all of us. If the Amhara state leadership accepts the disarmament process, then it is likely that the Amhara people may become victims of an upcoming invasion once again. Besides, it is already an open secret that the TPLF is currently preparing its army to launch a war against the Amhara people in an attempt to seize once again the areas of Wolkait Tsegede, Raya Alamata and Raya Kobbo zones of the Amhara legitimate territories.
The Oromo prosperity party regime’s pursuit of peace with Tigray is likely to lead it to turn away from the Amhara region, which could possibly result in a renewed showdown between Amhara and Tigrayan forces over the contested Wolkait Tsegede, Raya Alamata and Raya Kobbo zones of the Amhara legitimate territories.
It is our recent memory that the Amhara communities bordering the Tigray region were on the verge of extinction. And the Abiy administration is equivalent to declaring war on the Amhara people just to satisfy the TPLF’s demand for the dissolution of the special force of the Amhara region and to renew the relationship. For the Amhara region, maintaining the unique power of the Amhara that already exists is the only reliable solution that will allow the region to recover from widespread suffering.
This means that if the Oromo Prosperity Party regime stubbornly asks the Amhara regional authorities to disband the Amhara Special Forces, this action can be considered as a declaration of war against the Amhara people. In this situation, the Amhara region is forced to respond above all else and protect the security and unity of the state. In particular, the people of Wolkait Tsegede area should defend against any attack by any foreign forces, including the TPLF army.
Determined sets of OLF and its joint Oromo prosperity party leadership
From the beginning, OLF-leadership and its sympathizers, (including those within the Oromo prosperity part) plan to de-construct Ethiopia by war-monger slanders and by labeling the Amhara people as the main enemy and by threatening to wipeout all the Semitic foes from the political showground all together. Herein below is a quote in length taken from Guideline for Oromo Elites.
“It is nice to observe what a good job the OLF in three directions (as rebel OLA, opposition OFC and ruling OPP) is doing, slowly but surely… now genuine Oromo nationalists with OLF mindset of bilisummaa/freedom are influencing Biltsiginna of Dr. Abiy, so that the ruling party is favoring Oromo struggle by undermining the three cunning forces of Abyssinia (the Naftegna, Shabiya and Woyane). It looks like the OLF is doing its job using Biltsiginna. The OLF infiltrating Biltsiginna seems to be determined to destroy these three forces of Abyssinia one by one. Then, the wonderful Cushitic Ethiopia with Afaan Oromo and Agawigna as main working federal languages and having red see as its see coast shall emerge. Oromia led Horn of Africa is surely the real anticipated future. If Dr. Abiy is ready to realize this modern vision of the Oromo, he can be welcomed by all genuine Oromo nationalists… The lion is now struggling against the three cunning mini scavengers in three directions: being in the regime of Finfinne palace (in OPP), acting as opposition (in OFC) and fighting as rebel (in OLA). The lion already killed the fox, severely injured the hyena and surely it will start to bite the wolf. The lion is not only attacking the three scavengers directly, but instigate them so that they fight each other. The three small beasts never trust each other and they surely will destroy one another. Already the hyena and the wolf started to chase the fox, but the two also can never be true friends. Especially, the hyena is just waiting for the suitable time to chase and kill the wolf in order to invade its territory. Now is a nice opportunity for the wounded OLF to get rid of the three scavengers from the area and to rule the region peacefully… Our foes like it or not, the OLF is leading us step by step to our kayyoo/goal. By dismantling the monarchy, we moved one step towards our goal of freedom and sovereignty. By kicking out Mengistu/Derg, we moved two step forward. By getting rid of Meles/Woyane, we were three step nearer to the kayyoo. Now, when we either bring back or remove the traitor, Meshrefet/Abiy, we will surely complete our journey and with that both the OLF and the Oromo finally shall get victory. But, as long as Abiy is undermining the Naftagna (hyaena), Shabiya (wolf) and Woyane (fox), he can be supported by Oromo nationalists. Let’s help the three scavengers destroy each other and may Waaqa help the lion!” [1]
The Guideline for Oromo Elites further depicts that:
“Oromo liberation effort is now in its 3rd and last phase. In the 1st phase we defeated unitary Amhara Naftagnas in 1991. During the 2nd phase we got rid of Tegaru Naftagnas in 2018. Now, we are struggling against Oromo Naftagnas led by Abiy Ahmed. The common denominator of all the three Naftagnas is that they dictatorially promote domination of Amharigna and Amharanet at the cost of Oromiffa and Oromumma in that cursed empire.” [2]
So, by taking the true historical text out of context, each liberation group aspires to create what each of them call “Greater Tigray” and / or “Greater Oromia”/ “New Ethiopia” as they see it fit to their missions, values, purpose and values. They manifest exaggerated sense of talent and self-importance; fantasies of power and beauty; a tendency to take advantage of others; and a deep need for attention and admiration.
Besides, Oromo liberation activists attempt to enforce reliving the horrible emotions of earlier traumatic war driven experiences in the general public’s mind.
These and similar other falsely fabricated textual claims labeled against the Amhara society are as old as the TPLF and OLF movements claiming to stand for the liberation of the Tigray and Oromo people respectively and ascertaining “Greater Tigray” and “Greater Oromia” respectively.
Why is PM Abiy’s five-year reign deemed as a failed regime?
The 27 years of TPLF-led tribally divisive and tyrannical reign resulted in social anxiety among Ethiopians that brought Abiy Ahmed, who practically served his entire political life within the same TPLF-political party, yet, as a gesture of change, he promised to save Ethiopia from its past political miseries.
Since holding his premiership Abiy played the Ethiopian awareness very well by feeding what the general Ethiopian public yearned to hear from him as the head of a newly inaugurated régime, persuading the Ethiopian public to trust him hastily to cross the troubled political water safely. Yet, on his fifth year in office, tragically, PM Abiy is propelling the winds of politics backward to the same TPLF-led archaic tribal politics so gravely in the rough midcourse of Ethiopia’s political move.
Currently, five years after the end of TPLFs brutal regime, there are threatening signs of disastrous situations occurring time and over again under PM Abiy’s reign. Primarily, there has been widespread Ethnic genocide of innocent Amhara farming communities within Oromia, government-sponsored ethnic cleansing crusades carried out by eviction of rural families and knocking down of homes within Oromia region and within greater Addis Ababa, civilian hostilities, abject-poverty, colossal-corruption among members of the prosperity party system, and a sense of privilege among the Oromo ruling elites to do what they see fit to the party’s aspiration and mission.
As a result, during the last five years in Ethiopia, there have been exceptionally turbulent political scene that kept Ethiopia under constantly occurring challenges and a series of endless cycles of turbulent crises. The Oromo prosperity regime’s partisan, unjust, and consequently non-progressive and turbulent politics have carried out its regime-sponsored covert and overt attacks on the Ethiopian orthodox church. Likewise, the Oromia regional state have sponsored blatant actions of surrounding Addis Ababa city and block travelers from coming into the city. These non-peaceful, régime-backed actions have further sharpened the political crises to enormous level of public tension and unrests.
Indications of signs of PM Abiy’s regime failure
Under PM Abiy’s regime:
- unusually, the administrative system conducts strange operations to evict hundreds of thousands of its citizens by destroying their habitations.
- Often times, the Oromo prosperity party establishments are caught-up in high-class bribes, corruption, robbery, kidnapping, ransom-demanding and assassinations- and doing so with outright independence or determination of vengeance.
- Government appointed security personnel indefensibly turn guns on fellow Ethiopian citizens on speculative grounds.
- The public has no assertion for peaceful habitation in any parts of Ethiopia. Routinely, thousands of rural farming residents are persistently executed just for who they are, and no one withinPM Abiy’s administrative structure admits these tragic routine incidents.
- Millions of people are displaced simply for who they are, and yet, not even a single agency of is taking blame for expelling or permanently transferring them.
- Individual citizens who don’t share governmental views are persistently thrown into jail as political detainees.
- The five-year Oromo prosperity party regime’s reign has transformed Ethiopia into a nation with frequent mass-killings, more bloodbaths, more cruelty, more dislocation, and more poverty-ridden situations than it was under the 27-year-reign of TPLF, with the same background of economic surrender, of misappropriation of what belongs to all.
Among the solidly clear failures of PM Abiy and his Oromo prosperity party officials’ manner of regime management are marked with the following twelve points of public worry:
- PM Abiy’s inability (or unwillingness) to get rid of the TPLF established constitution (or even reform it) that propagates ethnically based divisive apartheid political policy.
- PM Abiy’s failure to come-up with (or find out) a working procedure on how to implement democracy in a stable way in a country with diversified communities and cultural traits.
- PM Abiy’s political malice that has now hurt millions of trusting Ethiopians who trusted PM Abiy to bridge the gaps and carry Ethiopians over the troubled political water to attain change and prosperity.
- PM Abiy regime’s weakness to defend and maintain peace and order in most parts of Ethiopia; and especially in border areas adjoining Western Ethiopia with the Sudan.
- PM Abiy’s contempt pertinent to tragic events occurring in parts of Ethiopia. Usually, pretending to be a positivist, PM Abiy continues his daily leadership routines with deplorable calmness, as if no life has been killed and no trouble has been faced by innocent rural habitants, while continuing Amhara genocide takes place under OLF-combatants operations within the Oromia region. The evil spirited OLF-tribal combatants trained as Oromo liberators continue to purify Amhara farming families within the Oromia region by genocide, while PM Abiy and his appointees calmly conform with the continuing Amhara genocide. This has become the new normal.
- PM Abiy’s adamant refusal to stop or condemn, among others, the continuing genocidal annihilations of ethnic Amhara farming families within the Oromia region.
- PM Abiy’s unbending partisan party politics in conducting the Tigray crisis, by excluding all other stakeholders in the peace settlement procedures.
- Still worse is PM Abiy’s disdain for and betrayal of the sacrifices made by the Amhara and Afar special forces alongside the Ethiopian Defense Forces, who have shown patriotic offense against the invading TPLF combatants, and instead, he opted to reward the TPLF with a political victory that ensures not only its mere survival, but also, its ability to triumph over areas of the Amhara territory of Raya and Welqait zones.
- The emergence of a dominant political group within the Oromo prosperity party that desperately attempts to control the state power and society through what it calls as: “the Oromoization phase in the process of making “the New Ethiopia / or Greater Oromia/”. By gas-lighting, these tribal oppressed political leadership groups enforce their victimized tribe (in this case the Amhara) to surrender to their manipulative demands and enter into questioning one’s own sanity, experience, memory, and even reality for fear of avoiding abusive relationships.
- The meddling of the Oromia region pushing into Addis Ababa city’s premises. A case in point is the recent huge evictions of poor households inhabiting in and around Addis Ababa (or what the Oromo prosperity party labeled as removal of illegal squatters from the Sheger City zone that encircles the good old Addis Ababa city).
- The continuing attacks on innocent civilian travelers coming from different parts of Ethiopia into Addis Ababa has turned-off PM Abiy’s initial good status in the eyes of the public.
- The resolute brainwashing and subversion of public institutions via “convincing and confusing approaches” fit for the Oromumma political gains, and the inhuman cruelty (sometimes riddance) of opposition groups (journalists and other activists); all these and other issues not specified here, have been pushing Ethiopia to the edge of breaking into tribally-led mini states.
Concluding remarks
Currently continuing chaos in Ethiopia has to do with the Oromo Prosperity Party’s refusal to amend the tribally divisive constitution implemented by its predecessor, TPLF-regime, to which PM Aby’s regime just gave life and continuity without any change what so ever. If the country’s chaotic tribal operations continue as is, then the Oromo Prosperity Party and PM Abiy Ahmed as a leader of this party, are mainly accountable for contributing Ethiopia’s final collapse and the trauma that this tragic event leaves on the Ethiopian citizens of all walks of life.
PM Abiy’s regime and his Oromo prosperity party leadership group has transformed especially Ethiopia’s Western Oromo region (Wollega) into a human rights nightmare. Mass murder and displacement of innocent Amhara inhabitants has become the new normal or an accepted social norm, in which overtly, PM Abiy’s regime is mostly a silent observer of the tragic events, as if routinely keeping peace and order is not its prime responsibility; and covertly, government officials collaborate with OLF-armed-combatants by stretching their long arms of assurance to the existing state of affairs.
In recent weeks, the general public is observing PM Abiy’s continued love-bombing of the TPLF leadership with financial and material supports and even lavish compliments by appointing some of the former TPLF executives to higher positions while grooming others for better global positions. This sudden, trauma-bonding betwixt TPLF and PM Abiy’sregime, who once were persistently fighting for a period of two years, until the Pretoria Peace Agreement was concluded, have now started sharing with each other their experiences of trauma, and common affairs that bonds them closer in the sense of forgiving and forgetting the recent past horrific episodes and starting a renewed common political-relations.
Amidst this event however, it is in our recent memory that the nearly one million innocent rural Amhara and Afar dwellers who were displaced, dehumanized and perished without any notice during the 2-year war between PM Abiy’s government and the TPLF combatants deserve justice be given on their behalf.
It is time to demand for constitutional reform and establishment of a transitional government that can eye on all Ethiopian citizens on equality, fraternity and fairness, and that can transform Ethiopia into a stable, peaceful nation for all its inhabitants.
Finally, for its own survival and human rights preservation sake, the Amhara must instantly devise a lasting procedure and structure that will enable the Amara community and the rest of the Ethiopian people to firmly protect themselves from any sorts of ethnically motivated havoc and genocidal atrocities by providing its moral, financial and advocacy support to Fano Special Forces and the All Amhara leadership circles.
References:
[1] – Posted on March 9, 2023 by Fayyis Oromia. The Wounded Lion (OLF) is Healing Itself and Killing the Fox (Woyane), the Hyaena (Naftagna) and the Wolf (Shabiya) One by One! Political Guideline for Oromo Elites. Source: https://fayyisoromia.wordpress.com/2023/03/09/the-wounded-lion-olf-is-healing-itself-and-o-killing-the-fox-woyane-the-hyaena-naftagna-and-the-wolf-shabiya-one-by-one/.
[2] – Posted on March 13, 2023 by Fayyis. Dr. Abiy Has to Give up Maintaining Great Amharia and Give in Fostering Great Oromia! Political Guideline for Oromo Elites. Source: https://fayyisoromia.wordpress.com/2023/03/13/dr-abiy-has-to-give-up-maintaining-great-amharia-and-give-in-fostering-great-oromia/.
Eskinager Bellow
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