Abstract
Ethiopia’s contemporary political crisis cannot be understood solely through the language of ethnicity or through competing accounts of historical grievance. A deeper dynamic is the conversion of collective grievance into political capital. This article examines how narratives of victimhood can transform historical experiences of conquest, exclusion, marginalization, and violence into durable political identities and instruments of elite mobilization.
The argument is not that Ethiopia’s historical grievances are fabricated. Many are grounded in documented experiences and deserve serious historical examination. The problem arises when complex histories are reduced to an enduring binary of victim and perpetrator, when responsibility is transferred from political actors and institutions to entire ethnic populations, and when political elites derive legitimacy from portraying themselves as indispensable defenders of communities under permanent threat.
The article traces this dynamic from the radical student movement of the 1960s and 1970s, through the emergence of ethno nationalist liberation movements, to the institutionalization of ethnic federalism after 1991. It argues that the constitutional and political architecture of the post 1991 state made ethnicity an unusually powerful organizing principle of political competition. This created incentives for political entrepreneurs to maintain narratives of grievance and insecurity, producing a cycle in which one community’s victimhood reinforces another community’s defensive nationalism.
Breaking that cycle does not require historical amnesia or the denial of legitimate grievances. It requires a political order in which historical responsibility is assigned to identifiable actors and institutions rather than inherited collectively, citizenship is protected regardless of ethnicity, and political legitimacy derives from accountable governance rather than the ability to mobilize fear.
Introduction
Ethiopia’s contemporary political crisis cannot be understood solely through the language of ethnicity, nor can it be reduced to a catalogue of historical grievances. Beneath competing narratives of liberation, domination, exclusion, and self determination lies a broader political phenomenon: the conversion of collective grievance into political capital.
In its most rigid form, ethno-nationalism can depend on a moral binary in which one community is presented primarily as the victim of another, the past is interpreted chiefly through oppression, and political competition becomes a struggle between presumed perpetrators and victims. When this framework becomes dominant, compromise may be portrayed as betrayal, coexistence as capitulation, and political opponents as representatives of an inherently hostile group.
This mechanism is not uniquely Ethiopian. It resembles broader revolutionary traditions in which society is divided between oppressors and oppressed and political legitimacy is claimed through representation of the latter. In Ethiopia, however, ethnicity became a particularly important basis of political mobilization, alongside class, religion, region, and other forms of identity.
The consequences have been significant. Ethnic identity is socially embedded and, in many parts of the country, geographically concentrated. When political institutions reinforce ethnic categories, historical grievances can become durable political identities, while political competition can acquire an existential character.
From the National Question to Ethnic Federalism
Important intellectual foundations of contemporary Ethiopian ethnic politics emerged within sections of the radical student movement of the 1960s and 1970s. Influenced in part by Marxist Leninist theories of the national question, some student activists increasingly interpreted Ethiopian history through concepts such as national oppression, class domination, and cultural hegemony.
Walleligne Mekonnen’s 1969 essay, On the Question of Nationalities in Ethiopia, became one of the most influential expressions of this intellectual current. It challenged conventional conceptions of Ethiopia as a unified nation and argued that the country consisted of distinct nationalities whose languages, cultures, histories, and political aspirations had been subordinated within a dominant political order. Walleligne himself acknowledged that his essay contained generalizations and was intended to provoke debate.
Various political and armed movements subsequently adapted elements of this framework to their own programs.
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front, founded in 1975, described the Tigrayan struggle partly in terms of political and economic marginalization by the central state and by political structures associated with Amhara dominance. Oromo nationalist movements, including the Oromo Liberation Front, developed their own interpretations of Ethiopian history and have often described the expansion of the modern Ethiopian state into Oromo inhabited territories using concepts such as conquest, colonialism, and internal domination.
The applicability of the term “colonialism” to this history remains a matter of scholarly and political debate. Indeed, scholarship on Ethiopia’s peripheral regions has cautioned against reducing complex state society relations to a simple colonial or anti colonial binary.
The important point is not that every historical claim made by these movements was false. Many grievances were grounded in documented experiences of warfare, coercive administration, unequal political power, cultural pressure, and political exclusion. At the same time, the scale, character, and interpretation of these experiences remain subjects of historical disagreement.
The transformation occurred when historical experiences became comprehensive political identities.
After the overthrow of the Derg in 1991, the TPLF became the dominant force within the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front. The EPRDF subsequently reorganized the state around an explicitly multinational constitutional framework. The 1995 Constitution recognized the rights of “nations, nationalities and peoples,” established a federal state structure, and provided a constitutional right to self determination, including secession under Article 39.
Regional states were organized substantially, though not exclusively, around ethnolinguistic identities.
This was one of the most consequential institutional changes in modern Ethiopian history. An ideological critique of the previous political order had become an organizing principle of the new one. Scholarly analysis has subsequently argued that the federal system helped institutionalize ethnic identity as a central organizing principle of political competition.
When History Becomes Political Capital
History matters enormously in a country as old and politically complex as Ethiopia. It becomes politically contentious when it is transformed from an object of inquiry into an instrument of mobilization.
Many Ethiopian communities possess memories of suffering, dispossession, political exclusion, military conquest, cultural marginalization, or discrimination. The problem begins when one community’s historical suffering is treated as evidence of another community’s inherent guilt.
That distinction is essential.
The Oromo experience cannot be reduced to a story of perpetual victimhood. Oromo political history includes resistance, state formation, political incorporation, periods of subordination, and periods in which Oromo individuals and political formations exercised substantial influence. These facts do not negate documented experiences of dispossession or marginalization, but they complicate any account that presents Oromo history as politically uniform.
Tigrayan history likewise cannot be reduced either to permanent marginalization or to political domination. Tigrayans experienced periods of political exclusion, warfare, and severe violence, while Tigrayan political actors later occupied highly influential positions within the modern Ethiopian state. These developments should be distinguished from the experiences of Tigrayan civilians, whose interests and political views were not identical to those of governing elites or armed organizations.
Amhara history presents similar complexity. Amharas were disproportionately represented in some institutions of the imperial state and benefited, in varying degrees, from aspects of linguistic and administrative centralization. Yet Amhara individuals were not synonymous with the state, and contemporary Amhara civilians cannot reasonably be treated as collective beneficiaries or perpetrators of every policy carried out by governments associated with Amhara elites.
These distinctions matter because ethnic categories are not political actors in themselves. People are. Governments are. Armed organizations are. Political parties are. Institutions are.
Collapsing these distinctions makes ethnic victim narratives more politically useful because it converts specific historical responsibility into inherited collective identity.
The Politics of Selective Memory
Political movements rarely invent historical narratives from nothing. More often, they select particular episodes, emphasize certain victims, minimize inconvenient complexity, and connect events into a coherent story of collective destiny.
A military conquest may be described as colonialism.
A language policy may be interpreted as cultural destruction.
Political exclusion may be presented as an ethnic conspiracy.
A territorial dispute may be framed as proof of an existential national threat.
A contemporary security operation may be interpreted as confirmation of centuries of persecution.
The accuracy of each claim must be assessed separately. Some may be supported by substantial evidence; others may involve disputed terminology, selective evidence, or political interpretation.
The broader political transformation occurs when such claims are assembled into a totalizing narrative in which history appears to have one principal victim and one enduring perpetrator.
Historical narratives are not merely descriptions of the past. They also help determine who people believe they are, whom they trust, whom they fear, and what political action they consider justified in the present.
When members of a community are taught, explicitly or implicitly, that their group has been continuously oppressed by another, political disagreement can be interpreted as another episode in an ancient struggle.
The result is not necessarily historical understanding.
It is historical mobilization.
The Elite Incentive
This is where the politics of victimhood intersects with the politics of power.
Political elites may derive substantial benefits from presenting themselves as indispensable defenders of their community. When politics is framed as an existential struggle, ordinary political accountability can become secondary.
A leader may avoid sustained scrutiny over failing schools, unemployment, corruption, or weak institutions by emphasizing a more urgent political message:
Our people are under threat.
The implication can be powerful. Criticism of the leadership may be portrayed as weakening the community at a moment of danger, even when the criticism concerns governance rather than ethnic identity.
This creates a potential political asymmetry. Leaders who govern poorly may nevertheless preserve support by repeatedly redefining political competition as a question of ethnic survival.
Such claims are not necessarily fabricated. Communities may face genuine threats. The concern is that real insecurity can also be politically amplified, selectively presented, or used to discourage accountability.
Ethnic federalism may intensify these incentives because political authority, territorial administration, language policy, security institutions, and access to public resources are often connected to ethnic and regional structures. Under such circumstances, losing political power can appear to mean losing control over one’s homeland or exposing one’s community to insecurity.
That perception makes compromise more difficult.
It may also create incentives for political entrepreneurs to emphasize threats rather than reduce them. A population that believes it faces an existential danger is generally easier to mobilize than one that believes its problems can be addressed through ordinary institutional politics.
The Mirror Effect
One of the most destructive features of Ethiopia’s political trajectory has been the emergence of competing victim narratives.
The narrative of one group’s historical domination can contribute to another group’s narrative of existential persecution.
Oromo nationalist narratives have often emphasized domination, dispossession, and political exclusion.
Tigrayan narratives have emphasized marginalization, insecurity, and exclusion from central political power during particular periods.
Amhara political movements have increasingly emphasized post 1991 territorial fragmentation, political exclusion, and attacks against Amhara civilians.
These descriptions refer to broad tendencies rather than uniform positions. Oromo, Tigrayan, and Amhara political movements are internally diverse, and not every member of any community accepts the dominant narrative associated with its ethnic label.
Each narrative contains grievances that deserve examination. Some are supported by documented events; others involve disputed interpretations, competing historical memories, or claims that require further evidence.
But each can also become a mirror image of the others.
One community’s historical victimhood becomes another community’s justification for defensive nationalism. Defensive nationalism is then interpreted as evidence of hostility, and that hostility is used to confirm the original grievance.
The cycle repeats.
This is how a political system can move from competition to mutual suspicion and, under certain conditions, from mutual suspicion to violence.
From Political Competition to Ethnic Security Dilemma
The deeper problem is that ethnic politics can transform ordinary political competition into a security dilemma.
If one group fears that another will control the central government, it may seek greater regional autonomy or stronger local security institutions.
Another group may interpret that autonomy as separatism or as a threat to national cohesion.
The first group may then interpret the response as repression.
The second may interpret resistance as confirmation of its fears.
Both sides begin preparing for the worst case.
At that point, even defensive behavior can become destabilizing.
This does not mean that all parties are equally responsible in every conflict. Responsibility must be assessed through evidence concerning decisions, actions, command structures, and the treatment of civilians.
It does mean that reciprocal fear can help create conditions in which escalation becomes more likely.
Ethiopia’s recent cycles of armed conflict demonstrate the human consequences of this dynamic. The war in Tigray, continuing violence in parts of Oromia, and the conflict in Amhara have produced displacement, destruction, and serious allegations of abuses against civilians.
The civilian costs are substantial, even where the scale, perpetrators, and legal characterization of particular incidents remain subjects of investigation and dispute.
Civilians frequently pay the price for political narratives they did not create.
A farmer does not become responsible for the actions of an emperor because they share an ethnicity.
A young Oromo is not responsible for imperial conquest.
A young Tigrayan is not responsible for the policies of the TPLF.
An Amhara civilian is not responsible for every policy undertaken by an imperial government.
Collective ethnic guilt is therefore not merely intellectually defective.
It is politically dangerous.
Grievance Is Not the Problem. Grievance Without Limits Is.
A serious rejection of ethnic victimhood cannot mean denying history.
Ethiopia has genuine historical grievances that deserve honest examination. State expansion involved warfare and coercion. Political institutions were unequal in important respects. Cultural and linguistic policies were not politically neutral. Communities experienced dispossession, discrimination, and violence. The post 1991 constitutional order created new forms of inclusion for some groups while also generating insecurity, exclusion, or political dissatisfaction for others.
Acknowledging that complexity is compatible with rejecting the political use of collective guilt.
Indeed, truth requires more complexity, not less.
The proper question is not simply:
Who oppressed whom?
It is also:
Who exercised power?
Under what institution?
During which period?
Against whom?
For what political purpose?
Who resisted?
Who collaborated?
Who benefited?
Who suffered?
What evidence establishes the claim?
What alternative interpretations exist?
These questions make history more difficult to weaponize because they replace collective identity with individual actors, institutions, chronology, evidence, and uncertainty where uncertainty is warranted.
Beyond the Victim and the Oppressor
Ethiopia does not need to choose between romanticizing the past and demonizing it.
A mature national political order must be capable of holding several truths simultaneously.
The imperial state contributed to state formation and administrative consolidation while also employing coercive methods and producing unequal political relationships. The balance between these features varied across regions and periods.
The Derg undertook revolutionary transformations in land policy and state organization while also carrying out extraordinary repression and mass violence.
The EPRDF expanded education, infrastructure, and regional autonomy according to many assessments, while also concentrating political power, restricting political competition, and maintaining a dominant party system.
Ethnic federalism recognized important questions of identity and representation while also embedding ethnicity more deeply into the architecture of the state. Whether its benefits outweighed its costs is a political and scholarly question, not a settled historical fact.
None of these realities cancels the others.
The alternative to ethnic nationalism is therefore not necessarily the restoration of an idealized centralized past. It is the construction of a political order in which citizenship is more politically consequential than ancestry.
That requires constitutional equality, credible rule of law, accountable government, protection of individual and minority rights, impartial security institutions, freedom of historical inquiry, and political competition that does not require ethnic mobilization.
It also requires a different conception of Ethiopian history.
The country needs historians willing to investigate conquest without turning descendants into criminals; to document discrimination without turning entire populations into perpetrators; and to acknowledge resistance without transforming every historical conflict into an uninterrupted liberation struggle.
Breaking the Political Economy of Victimhood
The central challenge is ultimately not historical.
It is institutional.
As long as political power is closely tied to ethnic representation, territory, patronage, and control over regional institutions, political entrepreneurs may have incentives to maintain ethnic mobilization.
As long as leaders can convert fear into political loyalty, victimhood can remain valuable political currency.
And as long as citizens believe that losing political power means losing physical security, compromise will remain extraordinarily difficult.
Breaking this cycle requires changing the incentives.
Political legitimacy should come from governing effectively, protecting citizens, respecting constitutional rights, and delivering public goods rather than from demonstrating who can produce the most compelling narrative of historical suffering.
Historical truth should be pursued because it is true, not because it is politically useful.
Justice should be directed at individuals and institutions responsible for abuses, based on evidence and due process, rather than inherited collectively by ethnic populations.
And citizenship must become the foundation of political belonging.
Conclusion
Ethiopia’s tragedy is not that its people remember too much history.
It is that too much of that history has been converted into political weaponry.
Victimhood can begin with a legitimate grievance. It becomes dangerous when grievance is transformed into identity, identity into political entitlement, entitlement into permanent mobilization, and mobilization into justification for violence.
The cycle is self reinforcing.
Every community produces memories of suffering. Every community can find evidence of the hostility of others. Every political entrepreneur can therefore present himself as the defender of a threatened people.
That is the trap.
Ethiopia will not escape it by deciding which ethnic group is the eternal victim or which is the eternal oppressor. It will escape it by rejecting the premise that political rights, dignity, security, or historical responsibility can be assigned collectively according to ethnicity.
The country needs neither historical amnesia nor historical mythology.
It needs historical honesty: a willingness to distinguish documented facts from interpretation, acknowledge uncertainty where evidence is incomplete, and hold political actors, rather than entire populations, responsible for their actions.
Above all, it needs a political system in which no elite can make itself indispensable by convincing its people that another Ethiopian is their permanent enemy.
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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