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Yosief Abraham Z.
Destined to march on deflector’s strategies of absolute incompetence, Ethiopia has now been hijacked from assessing possible and viable ways to resolve its all-round challenges. Ethno-nationalism has been crucial embodiment of it’s political discourses and is catalysing in trampling its basic national pillars; an overly stretched adventurism by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) on November 4, 2020 also dragged the country to painstaking war and it’s subsequent repercussions have still been rampant.
Even the ‘Pretoria Agreement’ between the government of Ethiopia and the TPLF forces in November 2022 has only opened doors for exacerbated uncertainties to the already fractured nation. With two factions within the circles of the TPLF leadership, Tigray region has been accumulating inescapable challenges for its own regional and the central federal government.
The possible impact of an apparent failure in disarming the TPLF’s forces, the easily indecipherable but possible moves by Eritrea in events of such political havocs, the Afars and Amhara calculations towards the Tigrayan region, the detestation of Tigray’s people to war but different paths by the faction sects, the unresolved land issues between Tigray and Amhara…have still been posing their own challenges.
The outrages in the Amhara region and the opposition from Fano militias has also now culminated to its decisive stage as Addis Ababa vows to ‘crush’ the upheavals once and for all time by turning its muscles into mass arrest and vulnerable psychological tactics. Despite the hopes by concerned nationals in commenting on Abiy’s Ahmed regime to implement strategies that heals but not wounds, deepening the entrapping quagmires is what the regime in ‘Arat Kilo House‘ has mastered in heightened senses.
Ethiopia: Replicating Modalities of the ‘Proxies of Arms of Resistances’
Despite the Iranian regime radicalised advocacies and self built images thus to recalibrate itself, relentlessly, as a ‘trusted’ protector’ of the Palestinian cause, Tehran is, however, deeply obsessed with its own insatiable appetite for maintaining unbounded influence in the Middle East, the Gulf and Straits of the Southern Red Sea.
To implement this on ground in the pretexts of ‘fighting the imperialists’ from Israel and America, Iran had been strengthening the ‘Hamas’ in Palestine, the ‘Hezbollah’ in Lebanese, ‘Hashd al-Shaabi’ in Syria, the ‘Houthis’ in Yemen and “Imam” Ali Khamenei at front of the other squads.
By similar coin, at the cost of the majority Ethiopian people, Abiy is serving as trusted minion of the United Arab Emirates and the United States. At embarrassing magnitudes, US Special Envoy to Horn Africa, Mike Hammer, is the one who is enshrined with ultimate authority in dictating what Ethiopia has to march with and not! Following to the USA footsteps, therefore, had the UAE not been obsessed with accessing –directly or through proxy– to any ports in Horn Africa as part of its ‘massive ports controlling motives’, it wouldn’t have been pumping billions to fatten Abiy’s regime’s decimated financial accounts.
While it is known that Washington’s divide and weaken policies by itself is also against any integrating attempts in Horn Africa by rejuvenating the vulnerability of Abiy’s hegemonic phantasies, Addis Ababa is dying to fulfill the ambitions of others at the costs of its own very dire situation. By abandoning the trilateral alliance by Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia, its place has now been taken by Egypt and, the alliance, is already making tremendous actions in curbing acts of mercenaries to this region.
Myopic Failure to Comprehend Neighbor Countries Policies Factors
The Ethiopian Prime Minister’s grave failure in reading the geo-politics of the world and its subsequent impacts to the four corners –Horn Africa, the Gulf, Middle East and the Nile riparian countries– has been costing the country dear opportunities for its continuation as a nation. When he slammed neighboring countries with ‘using force to ensure access to seaport,’ he missed, naively, counter possible moves.
After Abiy directed the compass to Somaliland and dared to endorse the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ with the autonomous region of Somaliland on January 1, 2024, Somalia is also cementing its realignment with Egypt, Eritrea and Turkey rushly. Resulting from consecutive consultancies between Asmara, Cairo and Mogadishu, Egypt, for the first time in its four decades of military chronicles, has enabled delivering Somalia with various military supplies.
Failure of Ethiopia –at least— to assess and comprehend the magnitude of the escalated emotions of the revived Neo-Pharaonism and the hidden role of the state in Egypt and it’s subsequent opportune ground for entertaining the ultra nationalists desire within and outside their country has dragged the country to be ‘a proxy’ neighbor of Addis Ababa.
By underscoring the retreat by former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from the Horn Africa politics after a failed assassination attempt over him in Addis Ababa as outrageous and miscalculated, Egypt has now succeeded in exploiting the provocations of Ethiopia in Horn Africa as golden opportunity thereby to enforce its determining role in the region. The apparent and hot movements of Egypt at Berenice Military Base, the country’s largest military base, and other coordinated developments in Sudan, Djibouti, South Sudan and Yemen, are just waiting for the right moment thus to tell the results of miscalculated calculations.
In a time when Horn Africa and the Middle East are, currently, in their worst juncture, myopically inspired policies like the regime in Addis Ababa are not consistent to the current and future world trends. Why Israel has closed its embassy in Asmara in 2022? And why is it at cross roads with Eritrea as Asmara has been mounting its condemnation against Tel Aviv’s indiscriminate acts of ‘collective punishment’ over Palestinian? What are the possible hidden impacts of such political shortcomings?
Why does Djibouti, at this time, reiterate its readiness to re-establish its relationship with Eritrea? The Sudanese Army and allied forces have now succeeded in launching offensive attacks against the Rapid Support Forces. Why at this time and who are those allied forces? What are the certain provocations of the United Arab Emirates in aligning with the Paramilitary Forces in Sudan, the regime in Addis Ababa, Somaliland and others? How the rings of military engagements by the Houthi in Yemen and retaliatory response by Israel and the United States are complicating possible factors of destabilisation to Horn Africa?
With the American presidential election at the door, what possible scenarios are on the table for Sudan, Ethiopia, Somalia (Somaliland), South Sudan and Uganda? Are there any possible moves by Mogadishu and its allies thereby to ‘recognize’ one or two regions of Ethiopia as ‘sovereign states’ if Addis Ababa continues with its ‘Somaliland’ syndromes? The questions are endless but failures to read neighbors and the global geo-politics working frames has now left Addis Ababa in certainty of uncertainties.
Somaliland and Ethiopia: Crippled Action for Muscled Challenges
When Somaliland inked the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ thus to allow Ethiopia to establish naval base on January 1, 2024, the triggering causes that engulfed both leaders from Addis Ababa and Hargeisa is one and similar: externalise internal problems and deflecting it to other horizons of political drama.
Somaliland’s autonomous region President, Muse Bihi Abdi, who signed the MOU with Ethiopia, is in office on an expired mandate. If not only to armor actions of deep desperation for he lost more than a third of the land he used to rule to unionist groups who want to rejoin Somalia, of course, he might have never expected such scenarios to backlash against his ‘miscalculated’ soughts to this level.
Though Somaliland was expected to read the geo-politics in Horn Africa, the impacts of the emerging multi-lateral forces, overt and covert policies of the Gulf power houses and possible intervention from neighbor countries, its maniac for perceived sovereignty reversely garnered armoured support to the central government of Somalia.
Refrain or Exacerbate: The Illusion of the Political Allegories
Addis Ababa has still been continuing its exacerbating moves. Sending arms to Puntland is just adding salts to an already exacerbated and endemic wound. Puntland, however, underscored that ‘its contravention with the Somalia government is not over the Prime Minister position in Mogadishu.’ Somalia is also retaliating to such chaotic situations by mobilising all possibilities to its sovereign and valued benefits. The recent stance of the ‘QUINT’ quartet — Qatar, USA, UAE and Turkey– which have bolstered their stance in support of Somalia is an encouraging trend.
The government of Hassan Sheikh Mohammed which had been inflicted by normalised corruption and nepotism therefore started, after the political allegories of Ethiopia and Somaliland, sparking its grave concerns, ascending his validation as guardian of ‘Somalia’s sovereignty.’ In fact, the allegories rewarded Hassan Sheikh Mohammed with opportunities to galvanize international support, inking military pacts, bringing Turkey and Egypt to the shores of his country’s maritime beds. Punitive measurements over Somaliland and others is also harnessing the power of Mogadishu, an opportune means for catalysing the Central government.
Chauvinistic Speeches, Aggravating Strategic Political Dimensions
In a region full of open-ended trajectories, a leadership built on giving credence to his own chauvinist speeches than pragmatic approaches is a challenge, an enigma within complexities of dangerous puzzles. Abiy Ahmed, who believes that he is the ‘mercenary of God’ has been –like Joseph Kony of Uganda and Felix Tshisekedi from Democratic Republic of Congo– unwavered excellent guy in enforcing ‘renewal Christian mysticism’ in the place of effective strategies. This in return has been widening the political vacuum in Ethiopia and, apparently, is galloping the country into losing all-round major battles.
Instead of refraining from allowing religious ploys to stir political games of the country, the hidden hands of Abiy’s circles have created apparent rifts among different parties of the country. Over the verifiable impacts on the ground, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister and members of his inner circle speeches have been both confrontational and immaturely dispersed thoughts.
Abiy’s October 13 of 2023 speech to parliament, for instance, has triggered diplomatic rows and, reversely, heightened Red Sea littoral countries alignment for common purposes. Even Al-Jazeera framed it as “imperial ambitions” which is “bad news for Africa and the World.” BBC also resisted the Primer’s naive speech by underscoring that his false claims had its rootage on misguided interpretation to international law rules on access of seaport by ‘large’ countries.
While political contradictions have already been embedded in the discouraging legacies of Ethiopia, the speeches by the Prime Minister and his ‘trusted’ guardians of the regime are also responsible for mounted negations to policies of the naked ‘Prosperity Party.’
Speeches regarding the Orthodox Church, the Amhara people, satires on the Tigrayan region, undermining neighbor countries leadership approaches, speeches that have devalued Ethiopian national sentiments, colossal attempts thus to legitimate the ascendancy of the ‘Orommuma’ hallucinatory ‘state’ over the old Abyssinia…have all been well fruited aggravating factors in mounting Ethiopia’s horrific destinies.
Social Media Armies and Psychological Ploys
Ethiopia is one of the countries in which the negative side of social media has been flooding unequivocally. Accusations of some activists on Meta’s (the former Facebook) for its role in spreading hatred feelings among some members of the country in the fall of 2022 is mentionable; yet, hate speech that resurfaced following to presumptive accounts against Facebook has still been continuing in other forms and different corners.
Despite the controversial law that was passed in February 2020 by aiming at curbing hate speech, Abiy Ahmed is at the forefront of the aggressive violators rank of this bill by fueling stereotyped and polarising statements. Funneled by armies of the social media squads, the experiences of the crippled Oromo activist, Johar Mohammed, in polarising other sects is also now apparent.
Though Ethiopia marched through three historical stages –imperial, socialist and federal– and constantly tried to evolve into a multi-ethnic polity, but the armies of social media are only proliferating the polarization between those who sweat and quest for real self-determination by nations and nationalities, and the other is the quest for strengthening national identity. Compounded by other determining factors, a country with contravening historical annotations is also already mired in the dirty politics of the feelings of ‘those’ consecutively ‘oppressing’ ethnic groups and ‘those oppressed and deprived of’ such power. Result?
Sharp Economy Woes Aggravating Initiatives
The mode of extravagance in accomplishing lavish parks, government palaces and similar projects, yet, accompanied by intermittent civil strife and war, inflation and political pressure, Ethiopia’s economy is dwindling to its low ebbs and the prevalence of inequalities is widening. With the challenges that have been amassed since 2021 in liberalising the economy, the cost of war that demands about 20 billion dollars for post conflict developmental schemes in the Northern part of the country and other conflict hit areas, economic power of the country is depleting to rotten levels.
By disregarding the stringent conditions and potential risks that comes with loan packages from International Monetary Fund (IMF), Abiy’s leadership agreement to secure a $ 3.4 billion loan is another economic gamble. To IMF, loan packages is a two edge swords as it’s styles of modalities are framed upon the formulation of the developed countries. Higher costs of living, rising inflation, corroborated weakened purchasing power, skyrocketed unemployment rates and, over all, its impacts on long term fiscal policies of the country are evident marks of the challenges Ethiopia is facing.
Without avoiding major internal wars that have been absorbing the country’s critical resources, possible interventionism mechanisms of the IMF in putting budgetary decisions and other monetary policies under its own austere measures is just to have substantiated ushers to the few kleptomaniacs at the cost of the majority poor Ethiopians who have to bear the gruesome impacts.
Indeed, Ethiopia is at a critical point while waiting for a time bomb blast. But it is complex to emphasize if the devastation in economy or the reckless military campaigns in different corners of the country or the encirclement by resolutely allied neighbor countries is to foster the failure of the regime in Addis Ababa first and foremost.
Yosief Abraham Z. is former Executive Director of HorMid Media and Art Center and now he is freelancing to various international media outlets with specific concerns on Horn Africa, the Gulf and Middle East. He can be reached at josiabraham29@gmail.com
Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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You are absolutely right