Category: Opinion

Sudan and Egypt’s cynical attempts to pressurize Ethiopia using different tactics to relinquish its dream of completing the GERD is unacceptable. It is high time that Egypt and Sudan realize that Africans in the continent and the diaspora are cautiously monitoring their disrespect to AU-led negotiation processes. If they do not refrain from their belligerent acts, they will risk significant sociopolitical crisis and ultimately Africans may come to terms with the reality that they indeed stand against anti-development aspirations of the continent’s poor states.

“Those who have wrecked Libya and turned it into an anarchic nightmare are trying to put to practice their dark art on Ethiopia. The African Union and all who value peace and stability in the horn of Africa should stand with Ethiopia in resisting the neocolonial machinations of some western actors and the teorrrism of TPLF.”

Notes by the editor: On July 6th, 2021, Ethiopia notified its Egyptian and Sudanese counterparts on the start of the second filling of the massive hydroelectric power project known as Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). While Egypt has “categorically rejected” Ethiopia’s move, the latter has insisted that such infrastructure project is designed to benefit majority Ethiopians without access to electricity and being constructed in good faith; therefore, it will not be affecting future water flow and sharing to the lower riparian states. The issue is now tabled for discussion at the UNSC in an extraordinary meeting called by Sudan. Many independent observers contend that the UN body has no mandate or expertise to host a meeting of this nature.

They were several  indicators that something was wrong with the interim government in Tigray set up to administer, rebuild and rehabilitate Tigray region. It is clear from the recent outcome that the interim government failed to live up to its mandate. There were sabotages by significant elements of the Interim administration of Tigray.

It’s up to the Ethiopian people and government to safeguard the nation’s integrity and national interest from being sacrificed on the altar of the US’s newly articulated strategic objective, by holding firm the principle of independence and non-interference of others in the conduct of the nation’s affairs. 

Currently the country is under great stress and in distress as the result of pressure from outside actors working hand in gloves with their counterparts from inside. They all seem to be determined and have unleashed all their resources from their military hardware to social media to render the forthcoming election a fiasco. The situation has some similarity with the one we had experienced following the Ethiopian Revolution in the 1970’s. This unholy alliance ought to be defeated at all costs.

Indeed, a closer look at the formation of the ruling Prosperity Party reveals the thinking behind the restructuration of the EPRDF. The latter was a coalition of ethnic parties held together by the hegemonic position of the TPLF.  The restructuring of the coalition into one Prosperity Party was obviously meant to lessen the ethnic divisions and make way for a pan-Ethiopian party. Where a united party tops or crowns regional divisions, it dilutes their political impact and likens them to administrative distinctions. Since the top is where everything converges and integrates, the regional divisions appear as ramifications of one single

The Adwa test for national reconciliation is a perspective for aligning how ought we to treat each other as fellow citizens. Should we approach social reconciliation from the perspective of division and enmity, instead of as people whose destiny is inseparably tied, we’d then fail the ancestors in whose name we fight.

Ethiopia and Sudan find themselves in a similar situation: the flawed calculations of one side leads to a war that neither side really wants. As Friedrich Engels said speaking of the manner history unfolds, “there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event.”

By its own definition, the AU did not utter a word. It did not reject Sudanese violation of Ethiopia’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity.” In other words, the Arab League triumphed over the African Union. Black African nations, including Ethiopia are essentially treated as second class nations.