By Yoseph Enyew
Updated on December 18, 8:34 A.M. Toronto Time to fix error in editor’s note
Introduction: Unity Must Be Built on Truth
In recent months, the Amhara Fano People’s Organization (AFPO) and the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) have held a series of clandestine meetings aimed at forging unity within the Amhara resistance. As part of this process, the two groups jointly produced a document titled “Foundational Principles of the Joint Struggle Program for the Establishment of Amhara Fano Unity, to Be Implemented through a Joint Operational Force of AFPO and AFNF” (hereafter “the Joint Struggle Program”).
Unity among Amhara forces is not only legitimate, it is necessary. But unity built on false history is fragile, misleading, and ultimately self-defeating. One section of the Joint Struggle Program, presented as historical background, advances a dangerous claim: that the suffering of the Amhara people and the crisis of the Ethiopian state are fundamentally the result of long-standing external “civilizational conflicts” spanning nearly two thousand years.
This claim is not merely wrong. It is actively harmful. It replaces responsibility with fate and evidence with mythology. It trains Amharas to interpret the crimes committed against them as an inevitable “historical law,” rather than a set of deliberate choices made by identifiable actors.
From Civilizational Myth to Political Crime
Civilizations do not commit massacres. States do. Ideologies do. Armed movements and ruling elites do. A “clash of civilizations” is a specific concept implying confrontation between two mature civilizational systems. Each with deep institutional continuity, a coherent worldview, and durable governing structures. That is not what Ethiopia’s modern crises represent.
When ethnic cleansing and state violence are labeled “civilizational conflict,” atrocities are normalized as destiny, perpetrators are absolved of accountability, and the Amhara are subtly reframed as a historical problem rather than victims of crimes. This is why the civilizational thesis functions as ideological sabotage, not neutral analysis.
If the Amhara struggle is to be morally coherent and strategically effective, it must be grounded in truth: Ethiopia’s tragedies are products of political projects, ideological extremism, state breakdown, and ethnically targeted violence within a shared Ethiopian civilizational space.
The sixteenth-century wars associated with Ahmed Gragn were religiously motivated and amplified by Ottoman military technology and regional geopolitics. They were devastating, but they were not a “civilizational clash.”
At the time, Ethiopian civilization was already characterized by centuries of Christian–Muslim coexistence. Muslims and Christians lived within the same civilizational space, traded across regions, negotiated governance, and coexisted under overlapping political arrangements. The conflict was therefore a militarized rupture within a civilization that had long accommodated religious plurality.
A correct reading of this period points to state vulnerability, external sponsorship, military innovation, and sectarian mobilization, patterns seen globally. Calling it civilizational conflict misreads both Ethiopia and history.
The Derg: Ideological Destruction, Not Civilizational Conflict
The Derg regime was a Marxist-Leninist military dictatorship that sought to erase Ethiopia’s historical civilization altogether. Communism is not a civilization; it is an imported ideology hostile to religion, tradition, and historical continuity.
The regime attacked the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, dismantled customary authority, centralized coercion, and attempted to refashion society through fear and propaganda. The Red Terror was not a civilizational contest; it was ideological extermination.
The Derg did not represent an alternative Ethiopian civilization. It produced civilizational destruction, an assault on social fabric, moral order, and institutional continuity.
TPLF and Ethnic Federalism: Civilizational Self-Sabotage
Ethnic federalism is a modern political engineering project rooted in Soviet nationality theory. It is bureaucratic, not civilizational. It fragments society and weaponizes identity.
The Tigrayan people were foundational to Ethiopian civilization. TPLF did not inherit a rival civilization; it turned against its own civilizational inheritance by designating the Amhara as the principal enemy.
The attempted erasure of the Amhara undermines the very civilizational architecture of Ethiopia. This was not civilizational conflict but civilizational self-negation.
The Prosperity Party and Oromummaa: Authoritarian State Violence, Not Civilization
What the Amhara face today: ethnic cleansing, mass displacement, collective punishment, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial violence is not a civilizational conflict. It is authoritarian state violence reinforced by exclusionary ethno-nationalist mobilization.
Oromummaa, as a modern nationalist ideology, is not a civilization. Civilizations are plural, institutional, and durable; coercive dominance is not civilization.
The historical Oromo expansion was not a civilizational war but demographic and political expansion followed by assimilation. Today’s violence is modern state coercion justified through selective historical narratives.
Conclusion: Civilization Is Not the Enemy, but False History Is
The greatest danger facing the Amhara struggle today is intellectual disarmament. Adopting the language of “civilizational conflict” turns crimes into destiny and perpetrators into abstractions.
Unity built on falsehood is unity destined to collapse. The Amhara are not victims of civilization. They are victims of political crime. Political crimes demand truth, accountability, and justice, not mythology.
Footnote
“Foundational Principles of the Joint Struggle Program for the Establishment of Amhara Fano Unity, to Be Implemented through a Joint Operational Force of AFPO and AFNF” is an internal coordination document developed following a series of unity consultations between the Amhara Fano People’s Organization (AFPO) and the Amhara Fano National Force (AFNF) during 2025, and circulated among leadership circles as a basis for organizational and strategic alignment.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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