Mogadishu (Essay ) — Abiy Ahmed reportedly said that it was now more difficult to stage a coup in Ethiopia than it was before. In 2018 he came to power on the crest of an alliance known as Oromara (Oromo and Amhara) against the former TPLF-run EPRDF regime. Abiy Ahmed had to rebrand the party as Prosperity Party. The starvation In North Ethiopia, the civil war in Amhara region and Oromo region rebranded the ruling party in the collective consciousness of Ethiopians. The new name for the ruling Ethiopian party is: Perdition Party.
The assessment by Abiy Ahmed about the impossibility of coup against him is based on the reasoning that the West prefers a bloodthirsty dictator in Ethiopia to total disintegration that will precipitate an unimaginable security and humanitarian catastrophe in the Horn of Africa. History shows that it is the policy of a megalomaniac dictatorship, rather than resistance by anti-dictatorship forces, that results in disintegration.
FANO fighters, the Amhara resistance group now waging a war against the regime of Abiy Ahmed, were close to the government for two years while the Tigray war was raging. The split with the Oromo-controlled government was caused by what Amhara leaders described as the ever-increasing ethnic hegemonic structures of the Oromo, which laid the Oromara alliance to rest. Abiy used drones and heavy artillery to bombard districts in the Amhara region. Ethiopian soldiers massacred Amhara civilians accused of being FANO sympathisers. The decision to extend the state of emergency on the Amhara region by four months, criticised by the US Embassy in Addis Ababa, indicates that Abiy Ahmed is not yet done with the killing spree in the Amhara region.
Ethnic hegemony is the foundation of the Ethiopian political system scholarly discussed in Wax and Gold by Donald N. Levine. The ruling ethnic group is always at war with other Ethiopian ethnicities. For two years that enduring political trend seemed to have faded for strategic purposes: Abiy mobilised other Ethiopian ethnic groups against Tigrayans. Abiy is unable to resort to similar tactics against Amharas.
Ethiopia has a problem of managing ethnic diversity. Without finding a solution to this problem Ethiopia will find it hard to break the cycle of mono-ethnic hegemony and recurrent civil wars. The visit to Mekelle by the Ethiopian Islamic Affairs is a good example about healing civil war traumas. Tigrayans suffered persecution, massacres, and starvation for three years. Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel Peace Laureate, still clings to the age-old Ethiopian statecraft known as collective punishment of Ethiopian civilians.
Adan M. S. Hussein teaches history at a university in Mogadishu.
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