Author: admin

Ethiopians of Tigrayan descent, residing both inside and outside of Tigray, have contacted this researcher to request greater scrutiny of grassroots Tigrayan opinion on the ongoing conflict in Northern Ethiopia. These “silenced voices” have been characterized by many Western analysts and English-language media as supportive of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a vanguard armed group that exercises authoritarian control of both the “Tigray government” and the “Tigray Defense Forces.”

Structural violence is the root cause of the ongoing political crisis in Ethiopia. To understand the full picture of the current crisis, therefore, it is important to fully understand the historical, contextual, sociopolitical, and cultural dynamics of where Ethiopia is heading. Doing so makes it evident that the current debacle stems from the self-proclaimed apartheid constitution that segregate the diverse Ethiopian people along ethnolinguistic lines.

While no one questions the plight and suffering of the Tigrayan population, the displaced northern Afar communities can literally watch aid trucks drive past them and through their region, to hand over aid to the very leaders who are destroying their lives.  Humanitarianism should not discriminate across ethnicity. The Afar, shaken by the same lack of basic services as Tigray but, at the same time, suffering grave atrocities, destruction of their assets and displacement from their lands, still wait for their turn – both from national and international institutions – of receiving greater help. Selective outrage is outrageous indeed. 

Ethiopians have now been in pain as this war and the destruction it caused continue to linger. And it is very painful for all to watch. Moreover, TPLF’s history of corruption and divisive rule, recent atrocious actions, pro-war rhetoric, and political vision show that what it is attempting is not take over Ethiopia. Because its elites already understand that an Ethiopia that accepts its second coming is nonexistent. But its objective is to dismantle the Ethiopian state as we know it, which in turn takes the Horn of Africa towards unchartered territories of violence, displacements, and even potential war of all against all.