By Abel Achenafe
A Note on This Response
I write this as an insider with a strong pulse on the community Girma claims to advocate for, and I contend that his approach and current strategy are misaligned with the Amhara’s genuine needs. My objections are not an endorsement of the Alliance, a defense of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), or any signatory to the Alliance, nor are they an attempt to diminish the legitimate weight of Amhara historical grievances. My concern here is solely with what best serves Amhara survival, security, and standing—including the possibility that Professor Berhanu’s framing, however well-intentioned it may seem, may not serve those interests as well as he believes.
I raise these concerns because I believe the argument advanced in Professor Berhanu’s essay, “Is the Amhara Struggle for Survival Attainable? A Tragic Scenario Unfolding Before Our Eyes,” if left unaddressed, risks consigning the Amhara community to a position of perpetual vulnerability—seen as too fragile to enter political alliances as equals, rather than as a group fully entitled to demand and enforce the same rights it extends to others.
Instead of promoting authentic healing, his approach appears to exploit grievances, weaponizing the genuine trauma and abuse experienced by the Amhara community to incite hostility, sustain group polarization, and justify zero-sum tactics against others. By using fear as a political tool, this strategy enforces rigid expectations of conformity within the Amhara community, effectively silencing dissenting voices and blocking meaningful dialogue or cross-communal understanding.
Equal Footing, Not Perpetual Victimhood: What the Amhara Survival Debate Gets Wrong
Professor Girma Berhanu’s recent essay raises an important question but ultimately frames the issue in a way that undermines the very cause it seeks to champion. Beneath its academic tone lies a flawed premise that must be addressed: it assumes Amharas are inherently vulnerable to manipulation while treating all other Alliance for Survival signatories as potential adversaries whose motives are automatically suspect. This perspective does not protect Amhara interests; instead, it subtly promotes the notion that Amharas lack the agency, strategic acumen, or collective strength to engage as equal partners in political alliances.
By repeatedly warning that others will take advantage of them, these arguments risk reinforcing a narrative of perpetual victimhood rather than empowering the community to assert its rightful place in shaping Ethiopia’s future. Imagine a skilled chess player who, after every match, insists they lost not because of their strategy, but because the other player must have tricked them. If this becomes their only explanation, they never recognize their own strengths, adapt their approach, or trust in their ability to play the game as equals. Instead of learning, growing, and seizing opportunities, they are trapped in a mindset of suspicion and self-doubt. Similarly, if the Amhara community accepts the narrative that it is always at risk of manipulation, it risks surrendering its agency and capacity to shape outcomes, rather than asserting itself as an empowered, strategic actor in Ethiopia’s political future.
That framing does a disservice to the very community it claims to defend.
The Asymmetry the Article Will Not Name
The essay meticulously details the historical grievances Amhara communities have against the TPLF and the OLA—grievances that are real and must be acknowledged in any honest account of Ethiopia’s recent past. Yet, a glaring asymmetry pervades the entire argument: it fails to subject the grievances of Oromo, Tigrayan, or other communities against Amhara-associated political and military actors to the same rigorous scrutiny. These grievances are equally documented and form an integral part of the conflict’s history. By presenting only one side, the essay risks perpetuating a selective historical narrative that undermines the credibility and moral authority of its call for justice.
The essay persistently questions what safeguards exist for Amharas within the alliance, yet never considers the reciprocal concern: what protections are afforded to other Ethiopian communities in a political order where Amhara political and military actors may wield disproportionate influence? Genuine engagement with historical grievances demands even-handed scrutiny, not selective application. If Amharas have the right to insist that their history be recognized before extending trust, then so do all other groups—Amharas included. Arguments that flow only in one direction cease to be historical reckoning and instead become tools for advancing grievance-driven leverage, ultimately undermining the possibility of a just and inclusive political settlement.
Equal Footing Is Not a Concession — It Is the Alternative to Domination
The deeper flaw is structural, not factual. The essay treats the prospect of Amharas entering an alliance with the TPLF and the OLA as inherently perilous because these are “yesterday’s antagonists” and questions whether they can “become tomorrow’s guarantors of one another’s survival.” But this question misreads what the Alliance’s declared structure is trying to do.
The Alliance for Survival does not depend on blind trust or goodwill among signatories. Instead, it is—at least in principle—designed to require every participant, including Amhara-affiliated forces, to adhere to the same binding constraints: no exclusive territorial control by military force, no unilateral constitutional decisions, and the establishment of a transitional charter rooted in popular sovereignty that no single armed group can overrule. This is not naïve faith in adversaries; it is replacing domination with mutual submission to enforceable shared rules—the very alternative to the dangers the essay highlights.
The relevant question is not whether the TPLF or OLA can be trusted as individuals—no one should be asked to trust any armed actor on that basis, Amhara-affiliated groups included. The relevant question is whether all signatories, without exception, accept binding limits on their own power. Framed this way, Amharas are not a vulnerable party seeking protection from stronger, more cunning partners. They are one equal party among several, entitled to the same guarantees they ask of others and bound by the same restraint they demand of others.
An essay that genuinely wanted to protect Amhara interests would make exactly this argument: insisting that Fano, alongside every other signatory, accept independent monitoring, prohibitions on retaliatory violence, and a time-bound transitional mandate—not because Amharas are uniquely at risk, but because everyone is, and because equal restraint is the only form of protection durable enough to survive a shift in the balance of power.
The Trap of Perpetual Historical Litigation
One interpretation of “never forget” instills vigilance and resilience; another traps a people in perpetual suspicion, effectively denying them real political agency. When the standard for coalition-building becomes the complete resolution of every past grievance, it creates an impossible barrier—rendering genuine cooperation unattainable now and in the future. Such an approach ensures that collective action is forever hamstrung by historical scorekeeping, to everyone’s detriment.
Every community in Ethiopia has grievances against every other. If that fact alone forecloses cooperation, then the current authoritarian order, which benefits from exactly this paralysis, wins by default. The essay claims not to be arguing for paralysis, but it offers no mechanism, no threshold, and no answer to its own repeated question of “what guarantees would suffice”—only the question itself, asked four times in different sections. A people cannot build a political strategy out of an unanswered question asked with increasing alarm.
What Genuine Protection Would Actually Require
None of this diminishes the legitimacy of Amhara concerns regarding the TPLF and OLA’s historical conduct. These concerns are real and warrant the same robust institutional response owed to every community’s grievances: independent investigations into abuses, enforceable safeguards against retaliatory violence and displacement, a charter that binds all signatories equally, and a constitutional process where no group’s history—Amhara, Oromo, Tigrayan, or otherwise—is treated as uniquely authoritative or uniquely dismissible. True protection rests on equal standing before the law and in the political process. This framework empowers Amharas not as perennial victims, but as equal stakeholders whose security is guaranteed by universal principles, not by perpetual skepticism.
The Amhara people do not need to be warned, one more time, that they might be victims. They need what every Ethiopian community needs: a transition bound by rules that apply equally to all its architects, and the standing to help write those rules as an equal party rather than a perpetually endangered one.
Ultimately, a just and stable Ethiopia will not emerge from cycles of selective memory or entrenched mistrust, but from a collective commitment to equal accountability and authentic partnership. Progress depends on rejecting narratives that cast any community as perpetual victim or suspect and instead embracing a vision in which all are protected by the same laws, subject to the same institutions, and empowered to shape the country’s future together. The true measure of any alliance or political settlement is not whether it privileges one group’s security above all but whether it establishes a durable foundation of mutual trust and enforceable rights—ensuring that every Ethiopian is safer and stronger within the shared framework than alone.
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
__
Join our Telegram Channel: t.me/borkena
Like borkena on Facebook
To submit a press release, send the submission to info@borkena.com
Add your business to Ethiopian Business Listing / Ethiopian Business Directory
Join the conversation. Follow us on X (formerly Twitter) @zborkena to get the latest Ethiopian news updates regularly.