Petros Dejene
In a recent online discussion, two prominent diaspora opposition figures—Jawar Mohamed and Lidetu Ayalew—made a striking and unsettling claim. Ethiopia, they argued, is not merely at risk of disintegration; it is already in the process of falling apart in a manner that would make the fate of former Yugoslavia look like a luxury. According to them, even the possibility of smaller successor states emerging intact, as happened in the Balkans, is no longer realistic.
At the other end of the spectrum, the Ethiopian government’s media continues to portray the country as standing at the dawn of a “pre–take-off” phase—on the verge of economic transformation and prosperity.
The contrast between these two narratives could not be starker. And yet, both are deeply misleading.
The reality, uncomfortable as it may be, lies somewhere in between.
There is no question that Ethiopia today faces a profound and dangerous crisis. The monopoly of violence has fractured. Armed actors operate with overlapping and competing claims to legitimacy. Political identity has become ethnicized to the point where compromise is equated with betrayal. Institutions meant to arbitrate disputes—courts, elections, parliament, and the media—have been hollowed out. War and coercion are no longer exceptional tools of last resort; they have become normalized instruments of governance.
These are not early warning signs. They are advanced indicators of state fragility.
In this sense, Jawar Mohamed and Lidetu Ayalew are right to sound the alarm. Ethiopia’s problems are severe, structural, and cumulative. Pretending otherwise does the country no favors.
But severity does not equal inevitability.
The Yugoslavia analogy, while emotionally powerful, breaks down under closer scrutiny. Yugoslavia disintegrated along clearly demarcated republican borders that were already internationally recognized administrative units. Ethiopia’s regions, by contrast, are demographically interwoven and economically interdependent. There are no clean exit lines. No Ethiopian region today possesses the administrative, fiscal, and diplomatic readiness required for viable statehood. Nor do ethno-national movements enjoy the kind of sustained external patronage that shaped the Balkan wars.
Ethiopia may be fragmenting politically and socially, but fragmentation does not automatically translate into orderly—or even survivable—state dissolution. It can just as easily lead to prolonged instability without resolution.
If the opposition’s mistake is fatalism, the government’s error is denial.
Economic “takeoff” is not achieved through infrastructure alone. It requires rule of law, investor confidence, social trust, and political legitimacy. These conditions cannot coexist with recurring conflict, politicized justice, ethnic gatekeeping, and governance by coercion. Roads and dams cannot compensate for institutional collapse. Growth narratives divorced from political reality are not optimism; they are propaganda.
The more accurate description of Ethiopia’s current condition is neither collapse nor ascent, but contested statehood. The state still exists, but its legitimacy is fractured. The country is not disintegrating at full speed, but it is losing cohesion faster than it is rebuilding it. This limbo—marked by chronic instability and episodic escalation—is often more dangerous than outright collapse, because it normalizes violence while postponing accountability.
What both extremes fail to confront is the deeper nature of Ethiopia’s crisis. It is not primarily territorial. It is moral and institutional. Politics has lost its ethical constraints. Power is no longer tethered to accountability. Violence is routinely justified as necessary, redemptive, or inevitable.
Without a new political ethic—one that reasserts restraint, responsibility, and the sanctity of civilian life—neither unity nor fragmentation will bring peace. Borders will not save a society that has normalized the destruction of trust.
Rejecting propaganda does not require embracing despair. But rejecting despair does require intellectual honesty. Ethiopia is not doomed—but it is running out of easy exits.
The greatest danger today is not that Ethiopians disagree about the future. It is that too many are being asked to choose between comforting illusions and paralyzing hopelessness. The country deserves better than both.
Editor’s Note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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“Without a new political ethic—one that reasserts restraint, responsibility, and the sanctity of civilian life—neither unity nor fragmentation will bring peace. Borders will not save a society that has normalized the destruction of trust.
Rejecting propaganda does not require embracing despair. But rejecting despair does require intellectual honesty. Ethiopia is not doomed—but it is running out of easy exits.
The greatest danger today is not that Ethiopians disagree about the future. It is that too many are being asked to choose between comforting illusions and paralyzing hopelessness. The country deserves better than both.”
Short and sweet & beautifully articulated with out implying an agenda.
Thank you!
In the norther hemisphere rapping ‘gifts’ is in high gear 10 days left to the ‘big day’, the care and attention given in the act of rapping these gifts is nerve raking & pleasing when completed. Adwa was that moment for our nation, during the ‘European scramble for Africa’ (sadly our ancestors weren’t ready when Eritrea was taken, paradoxically the “South’ 150 years later is blame them for saving them from it) and later during the Italian invasion of the late 1930’s.
Education can be a boon and curse, The late PM Aklilu Habte-Wold is a good example of the boon, a man who worked from his student bedroom in Paris as office representing his nation is an extraordinary story of ‘devotion’. On the other hand those who knew very little about the outcome of what they were about to unleash gave us all the blood-shade that came after 1974.
Just like the painstakingly done gift rapping gets ripped off with no care but for what is inside the box, some rejoice others disappointed the gift didn’t measure to their expectation. All these ‘educated’ (useful idiots) are focused on is their own ambition to ‘higher office’ regardless of the outcome.
Such deluded personalities seem to be flourishing everywhere lately, one ‘in your face’ example is playing out in the OPEN for the world to see, from the US White house (‘Venezuela’s oil is mine’) and the newly minted Nobel Prize winner (as the result of) María Corina Machado, who is advocating for her home land to be BOMBED so that the US (trump) takes Venezuela’s oil under her regime vs the current president Nicolás Maduro who stands his ground saying ‘Venezuela’s Oil is Venezuelan’s’.
Imagine what kind of transformation would unravel that potentially change the lives of ordinary people if Debretsion Gebremichael divert is attention say to mass ‘Tree planting, ‘water conservation’, farmland carving out of the mountains of Tigray using the hundreds of thousands of his armed-militia instead of prepping them for yet another waist of human life similar to the 2 year war he inspired and gained nothing but brought immense suffering death in 3 reigns, sadly he hasn’t learnt a thing from it.
“Little things please little minds”.
Meanwhile the world is changing (while we are bogged down with the ‘PAST’ for the last 50 + years) FAST !!!
Similar to 1880s–1900s ‘The scramble for AFRICA’, the 2020s – 2030s “AI Domination of the WORLD’ is upon us! Building our own “Digital Wall” (as did China and Russia) is VITIAL to our survival or we WILL end up being the PRODUCT.
‘”We have 900 days left.” | Emad Mostaque’
Link = youtube.com/watch?v=zQThHCB_aec
#2)
ZERO TO HERO
– AI learning by Andrej Karpathy
Link =youtube.com/@AndrejKarpathy
These ABCs of AI learning should become part of the curriculum fro grade 5 al the way up, and FAST (like yesterday) .
#3)
FREE AI Courses:
Fast.ai – ‘Making neural nets uncool again’
link = fast.ai
#4)
For those beyond school…:
‘You’re Not Behind (Yet): How to Learn AI in 29 Minutes’
Link = youtube.com/watch?v=9c7zh2MkslY
“Ethiopia is not doomed’; but birthing (in labour).
Be well.
Interesting discussion among Tech leaders Microsoft) , Physician, Educators (MIT, Harvard…), Entrepreneurs:
The future of AI (the road towards Artificial General Intelligence (AGI))
– Regulations
– Politics
– Education ( is college, PhD worth it?)
– Hunan AI (Terminator effect)
– Legal right to AGI resembling or equal to human right?
– Economic disparity
– Governance – (Hidden Agendas & Lies, in an AI information armed general public ( in their cellphone..)
– Commercial viability of Big Tech AI, in an equally powerful Opensource Large Language Models ( LLMs) environment. And many many more.
‘Microsoft Wants to Build Self-Sufficiency: $1M AI Agents, Proprietary Chips, and The AGI Race’
Link = youtube.com/watch?v=XWGnWcmns_M
At these stage of AI development it is too late to debate Pros & Cons, because of its global adoption is underway and boycotting or seclusion is not a positive option where every cellphone or personal computer comes already loaded with full blown (in built ) AI.
Incorporating AI in the Education system curricular IMMEDIATELY become vital.. And unlike the ‘Education’ systems we taken as necessary for human development, AI will become THE EQUALIZER across boundaries beyond any other form progressive methods we adopted before or up to now.
What makes it so powerful and and very simple to MASTER working with this technology takes a short period of time since the basic foundation we call LLMs (Open Source versions) are already accessible to all. And the mastering doesn’t require deep learning that takes decades ( as are existing Educations) but months of CONSTRUCTING INSTRUCTIONS in a simple but STRUCTURED & REFINED paragraph called ‘PROMPT’. No technical inclination or understanding of the inner working but CLEAR UNDERSTANDING of the derriere OUTCOME. (RESULT).
Here is a useful resource to help understand and how to design “PROMPT’ (S).:
Link = promptingguide.ai
The same Prompt generates slightly different response every-time on the same platform (LLM)) and among all the other platforms ( LLMs) which helps to further refine the Prompt to get a better (desired ) outcome.
Be well.
AI in 2026, the ‘Brave New World”
‘GPT 5.2 Release, Corporate Collapse in 2026, and 1.1M Job Loss.’
Link =youtube.com/watch?v=z6U-jqHzBqY
“AI will kill Capitalism.”
Emad Mostaque
Hiking trials to be crowded…and hiking gears to be in short supply… in 2026 & forward.
Be well.
After a long struggle within, Isaias Afwerki with the help of TPLF managed to create his own little Kingdom by cutting off the people of Eritrea from their motherland. Thirty plus years on his throne, the country is isolated, cut off not just only from Ethiopia but from the rest of the world, once a vibrant capital of the province Asmara is a dilapidated old city in a state of disrepair or deterioration, the newest buildings in the city are those built in the 60s and earlier, no cellphone service, no internet & nothing that indicates this is the 21st century anywhere in this ‘new’ country.
The people’s faces both the young and old tell the same and identical story of despair and disillusionment. Those in the diaspora know and say Eritrea is ‘a failed state’ who’s lifeline of survival is permanently linked to the rest of Ethiopia, without an economic integration with Ethiopia, Eritrea remains a sea side settlement with no viable economic potential or possibilities of its own to sustain it. There is nothing here that indicates this is Eritrea, except the the people and the language they speak & the letters they use to write it (that links them back to Ethiopia), all the rest speaks of Italy and only Italy and the people and culture they disrupted & cut off from Ethiopia.
You can see that for yourself, and Eritrea’s undeniable permanent link to Ethiopia @1:45 in the following 2025 video
‘Visiting Africa’s Most Isolated Country ERITREA’
youtube.com/watch?v=BuB8jY_nYOg
The burning questions here are ‘… all these for what?’; ‘… what is the dream?’, and ‘….in this chosen line of travel what would Eritrea be like another 30, 40, a 100 years from now?’…
The current squabbles we have been experiencing for decades in Ethiopia since 1974 has been instigated by the same outsiders, the so called “the West”, their economic prosperity has been linked to their continuous disruptive behavior & activities in the ‘global south’. However, everything that as a beginning must have an END; and we are witnessing their End unraveling warp speed, and nothing can stop it now, the last page of their final chapter is being written & read in real-time…
Be well.