Ever since Abiy Ahmed Ali became the Prime Minister of Ethiopia Amhara chauvinists have been entertaining the dream to annex Eritrea to Ethiopia.
It is dream symbolised by Goshu Wolde’s 1991 statement in which he resisted the idea of breaking up Ethiopia into two countries. Goshu compared EPLF to invaders. At the same event organised House Foreign Affairs subcommittee Professor Mesfin Wolde-Mariam said that EPLF and TPLF “enjoy uncontested military supremacy in Ethiopia“.
Amhara extremists have drawn a map of Ethiopia incorporating Eritrea. It is second time some Amharas nostalgic for feudal Ethiopia have unfurled a flag of Ethiopia that treat Eritrea as a part of “Imperial Ethiopia”.
Eritrea seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after more than 98% of Eritreans voted for independence. The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), which the defeated the Soviet-backed former Derg regime of Ethiopia, waged a 30 year long war against Imperial and subsequently communist Ethiopia. Tigray People’s Liberation Front and EPLF defeated the Mengistu regime in May 1991.
“This amounts to slap in the face. A puzzled friend asked why do ‘such weird things only happen in … [the] Amhara region'” tweeted Professor Gaim Kibreab of South Bank University in London.
© Puntland Post Monthly, 2020
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