The Treacherous Campaign to Disarm Fano and Rescue a Collapsing Regime

By Yoseph Enyew

The virtual protest staged on June 7, 2025, under the banner “100,000 Voices for Peace,” was not a grassroots call for peace, but a calculated political maneuver—one designed to co-opt and neutralize the Fano movement just as it gains traction and threatens to bring real change. Cloaked in the pacifist language of civic resistance, it was in truth a cyber-initiative crafted to halt Fano’s advance toward Addis Ababa, derail the struggle to overthrow the genocidal regime, and instead shepherd Ethiopia back to the same recycled federalist actors who helped engineer the current national crisis.

The people behind this initiative, figures like Lidetu Ayalew and other known federalist operatives, are attempting to prevent Fano from fulfilling its mission: to dismantle the current anti-Amhara regime and bring to justice the perpetrators of genocide against the Amhara. Their true aim is to pressure the regime into a transitional government in which both the TPLF and the Prosperity Party will regain relevance and a foothold in future governance. In short, this is not a peace movement—it is a shield for criminals in power.

By proposing a transitional government, the federalist camp and its collaborators aim to politically and geographically isolate Fano. They seek to present it as just one voice among many, boxed into a marginal role, stripped of its legitimacy and revolutionary momentum. Their strategy is clear: neutralize Fano through narrative warfare, brand it as extremist, and dilute its cause into a bland process of power-sharing and constitutional dialogue. But there can be no legitimate national dialogue while anti-Amhara forces remain relevant players in Ethiopia’s political arena.

The slogans chanted, “Stop the War! End Authoritarian Rule! Let Peace Prevail!”are more than confused; they are ideologically incoherent. These mantras collapse under the weight of their contradictions. No authoritarian regime in history has ever ended its reign voluntarily. It is not the oppressor they seek to disarm, it is Fano. And they mask that disarmament in the language of virtue.

For the Amhara, this is not a conventional conflict. It is an existential war. Having exhausted every constitutional and peaceful channel, and after suffering mass killings, ethnic cleansing, and systematic displacement, the Amhara had no choice but to resist. Armed struggle became not a preference, but a matter of survival. In this context, any effort to delegitimize Fano’s resistance is a betrayal of the highest order.

Just as Fano begins to regroup, consolidate, and purge its ranks of infiltrators, particularly leaders who straddle both the resistance and federalist camps, this digital campaign emerges to confuse, divide, and contain the movement. The defection of Zemene Kassie is emblematic of this betrayal. In his speech during the protest, he mentioned Abiy Ahmed 22 times and used the term “murder” 34 times, yet he referred to “genocide” only twice, and even then, vaguely. He failed to mention Oromummaa, the ideological engine driving the regime’s anti-Amhara policies.

This omission is not accidental. Naming Oromummaa would rupture the fragile coalition of ethnic federalists and anti-Amhara actors, who are bound not by shared ideals, but by common hostility toward the Amhara. The so-called civic movement rebrands the genocidal regime as merely “authoritarian,” and recasts the Amhara resistance as fragmented, uncoordinated, and unnecessary. In doing so, they sanitize war crimes into administrative failures and shift blame from oppressors to the oppressed.

Let us be clear: no dictator vanishes by decree. No justice is achieved by appeasement. The transitional government they propose is not a path to peace, it is a trap. It would provide political protection for those who committed crimes against humanity. Figures like Sibhat Nega, the architect of the ethno-federalist constitution that legitimized anti-Amhara discrimination, would again sit at the decision-making table. If Abiy Ahmed’s release of Sibhat Nega was a betrayal, then Zemene Kassie’s alignment with this coalition is an outright abandonment of the Amhara cause.

The organizers of this initiative are not new actors. They trace their lineage directly to the TPLF’s federalist fragmentation agenda. In August 2019, the TPLF called for a new alliance grounded in ethnic divisions. That alliance exists today under different banners, but with a consistent thread: opposition to Amhara identity and sovereignty. As scholars like René Lefort and William Davison have noted, these groups have never supported genuine federalism or national unity, they engineered an ethnic order for authoritarian control.

The Amhara envision a sovereign Ethiopia, rooted in its territory, culture, and history, and anchored in divine and national legitimacy. For this vision to endure, Fano must not be diluted, marginalized, or pacified. It must prevail, not for conquest, but for survival, justice, and rightful self-determination. Power must meet power. The goal is not inclusion within a failed system, but the total dismantling of structures that enabled genocide.

Fano is not one voice among many. It is the voice of the silenced majority. It is the last bulwark between a genocidal regime and national extinction. Any initiative that fails to recognize this is not a call for peace. It is a call for surrender.

Yoseph Enyew is an economist by profession. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from Metropolitan University in Canada and a Master’s Degree in Liberal Arts from Harvard University.

Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com      

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