How has Abiy Ahmed Ali blindfolded the Ethiopian people and the international community?

Getahun Assefa¹

Key messages

The key conclusions from this article are that (a) dictators and despots who do not respect human rights at home and cause untold misery to citizens will never be friends and allies of the outside world; (b) it is the duty and responsibility of the international community particularly advanced democracies to deter dictatorships and despotism from ugly and inhumane practices; (c) an adage of the West that Africa is not ready for or does not deserve democracy- the assertion that,  for Africa, the priority is bread before democracy, seriously devalues the moral standing of the West and erodes the very principles of democracy; (d) Western countries who trade democracy for political stability and selfish economic interest will get neither; and (e) the United Nations and regional intergovernmental bodies will lose credibility and relevance if they continue to protect or absolve dictators and despots from accountability and responsibility for their actions and inactions. 

In short, in present-day Ethiopia, nationalism and Pan-Africanism that defined “Ethiopianism” has now been effectively replaced by ethno-fascism and unhinged ethnic entrepreneurship. At the same time, social media and the gutter internet community have fueled information, misinformation, and disinformation with the Government of Abiy recruiting a massive social media army to wedge technology-driven lies and misinformation campaigns. Unfortunately, due to the war in Ukraine and Gazza and the preoccupation of the Western media and political leadership with these, the ongoing brutal killings, ethnic cleansing, and genocide in Ethiopia have gone unnoticed or deliberately ignored.

How has Abiy Ahmed Ali blindfolded the Ethiopian people and the international community

Abiy Ahmed Ali (henceforth Abiy), the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia, came to power in 2018. His rise to power follows decades of unprecedented political repression, upheavals, and economic collapse in Ethiopia. A widespread uprisal of the youth disgruntled by unemployment, poverty, and political malaise played a critical role in the demise of the previous government. The combination of these and the internal political decay of the previous regime facilitated Abiy’s easy ascendance to power from within the rotting system. Abiy was a member of the Oromo Peoples’ Democratic Organization (OPDO) which was the Oromo wing of the ruling coalition of the Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). In other words, he was responsible for widespread political repression and gross human rights violations even before his rise to the current position. 

 In less than three years, his camouflage was uncovered as he continued with his old habits of ethnic-based intimidation, killings, and divide-and-rule policy.  In a short period, his popularity has plummeted from the climax of hope and transformation to a calamitous nadir of despair and disappointment.   The man who everyone thought had learned enough from the country’s preceding systemic malaise and collapse, has further aggravated the problem and made Ethiopia and the people divided, polarized, vulnerable, and fragile more today than ever before. That is, he was expected to pull Ethiopia out of years of socioeconomic and political quagmire by bringing the rule of law, democracy, and improved standards of living. Instead, he has further pushed the country off the edge of the cliff after his rise to power in 2018. Since Abiy’s rise to power, Ethiopia has continued to be marred by protracted interethnic conflicts, mass internal displacement, rampant malnutrition, hunger, illiteracy, and starvation. In the face of these miserable failures, the Ethiopian regime has become totalitarian and despotic. It perpetrated the most heinous crimes and gross human rights violations, including the mass imprisonment of political figures, parliamentarians, academics, and civilians. He muzzled all forms of freedom including freedom of expression. For Abiy and his regime, mass killings of citizens based on ethnic identity are no longer crimes punishable by law. What is shocking or disturbing is the deafening silence of the international community, including the United Nations, the African Union, and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Consequently, Abiy has grown from a cheap pathological liar to a fascist dictator partly due to the blind eyes of the international community, and partly because of the lack of organized and effective opposition at home. 

The precipitous decline of political stability and absence of peace and democracy as well as gloomy prospects for tangible socioeconomic progress frustrated the Ethiopian people (both at home and in diaspora). The majority rejected Abiy’s failed policies. With the growing interethnic tensions, conflicts, bad governance, and the emergence of a diehard dictatorship in Ethiopia, development partners also shunned Ethiopia.  The USA removed Ethiopia from the Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) granted to many countries of sub-Saharan Africa. This had a disastrous consequence for the manufacturing sector of the country, exports, employment, and foreign direct investment. Abiy Ahmed has, nevertheless, continued his gimmick with the Western partners by oscillating between China, Russia, and a few Arab states. Later, in a desperate attempt to seek the attention of the West, he unilaterally took the brazen decision to join BRICS. To date, development partners including multilateral creditor institutions refused to provide much-needed development aid to Ethiopia other than a spell of humanitarian assistance. However, refusing to provide aid does not replace or substitute demanding accountability for the most degrading treatment of citizens and for waging wars that cost millions of innocent lives, displaced many more millions, and devastated the economy.

 The United States of America, one of the major donor countries for Ethiopia was the first to make a public statement demanding urgent reforms. USA’s statement was predicated on Ethiopia’s persistent political turmoil and socioeconomic crises. The US statement can also be regarded as a shift in the administration’s longstanding policy of supporting ethnic-based political federalism to solve interethnic polarization, rivalry, and conflicts in Ethiopia. It seems that the USA has finally realized the consequences of its blind support and mistaken views on fostering peace in Ethiopia and Africa in general.  Bringing the warring factions alone to a peaceful resolution is no longer a determinant of the fate of the democratization process in Africa. Nor is it the only viable means to the restoration of lasting peace with political stability and democracy. Available evidence shows that such an approach, instead of bringing democracy and stability, can lead to rampant ethnic fragmentation, polarization, and conflicts. It also entrains anemic dictatorship, corruption, and ethnic entrepreneurship. All these are well-known attributes and characteristics of failed states. In short, the USA’s recent statement on Ethiopia and the call for “all-inclusive political dialogue” can be regarded as a step in the right direction.  

Statements on the USA’s position towards the regime in Addis Ababa have already caused havoc in the political establishment in the country. It is a stern warning for the system that has been feeding itself for so long on interethnic conflicts and violence. It is a red light for Abiy’s futile attempts to superimpose the interest of one ethnic group over the rest of the country’s ethnic groups. USA’s seemingly changing stances in dealing with Abiy have already forced the Prime Minister to reshuffle his envoys and make cosmetic changes in ministerial portfolios. However, as in the past, the new changes are not structural, pointing in the wrong direction and to more entrenched positions. Abiy’s radical and diehard ethnocrats, once again, replaced moderate functionaries and political appointees. The USA’s statement is also an indication of a major departure from past approaches. It departs from past practices of dealing with despotic leaders who camouflaged themselves under the fallacy of democratic governance while exercising dictatorship, rampant human rights violations, and a divide-and-rule policy on the ground. However, it is not enough to bring the rule of law, judiciary independence, democracy, and freedom of expression. 

Instead of taking correcting steps, Abiy has leveled perverse accusations against the USA including interference in the country’s internal affairs as if dictatorship, guiltless arrests, and lawless trials of prisoners of conscience are solely internal affairs. The regime killed not only civilians and opponents from rival ethnic groups but also severely weakened institutions, particularly the judiciary and the army by making them subservient to ethnic political agenda and power-mongering. The judiciary continued to ignore the abysmal human rights situation in the country including the Government’s epic violation of civil liberties, and the use of torture in extracting evidence from detainees and prisoners of conscience. The Government often levels, against opponents and dissenters, perverse accusations and dubious charges such as “treason, lawlessness, conspiring to undo legitimately elected government, and supporting groups fighting to topple the government by force”, among others. 

What should the international community know or understand about Abiy Ahmed Ali?

Abiy came from nowhere in the political and intellectual landscape of Ethiopia. He was born in one of the country’s relatively backward and marginalized provinces. As with many of his generation, he is from a less fortunate family. In terms of education, available official records show that he completed only grade 7 but later obtained a certificate from a little-known private technical and vocational training (Microlink Institute). His PhD is a strawmen’s degree that is difficult to justify as real, simply because he has not followed legitimate academic steps and processes. Reviews by prominent academics found his PhD thesis to be inadequate and of inferior quality to warrant a bachelor’s degree, let alone higher-level certificates. While a PhD is not a requirement or a guarantee for progressive leadership, how he got his degree is worth noting. Moreover, Abiy does not seem to understand his weakness and limitations as well as his lack of knowledge and skills on fundamentals in governing countries as diverse, large, and populous as Ethiopia. He tries hard to cover up his lack of knowledge on basic issues or subject matters. He plagiarizes statements of renowned experts and personalities as well as spends days lecturing professionals and experts from various fields and areas of expertise or competencies. For him, an economist means a successful businessman, a medical doctor, a psychologist, an engineer, an electrician, a hydrologist, an irrigation expert, a sociologist, a demographer, etc.

Professionally, Abiy grew up in the army as a radio technician and was promoted to the rank of colonel. Later, he served as a senior officer in the national security agency until the death of Meles Zenawi in August 2012. According to his public narration or declaration, his mother had dreamed of him becoming the seventh king of Ethiopia. There is no justification or clarification as to how the magic number seven arrived or was quoted. In traditional societies of poor nations such as ours, mothers usually dream of their children having longer life expectancy after birth, given the high incidences of infant and maternal mortality rates.  The maximum that Ethiopian mothers wish for their children is better education and decent jobs. In that context, whether true or not, the proclaimed dream of Abiy’s mother can be regarded as exceptional or extraordinary.

Abiy Ahmed Ali’s persona

Abiy is a man who loves power by trading civil liberties at all costs and by playing scaremongering to the outside world. He harbors innate hate towards the Amhara ethnic group and, by implication, the Ethiopian unity. He committed atrocious and despicable human rights violations, particularly in the Amhara and Tigray regions. He imprisoned thousands of opponents, parliamentarians, public figures, and potential or perceived rivals; torched thousands; instigated ethically and politically motivated killings; and ordered countless extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances. In parallel, he has also cropped up ethnic cronies and ethnic entrepreneurship at the expense of investing in public goods to the benefit of citizens at large. Not surprisingly, the West turned deaf ears and blind eyes to the gross human rights violations and crimes against humanity in Ethiopia. They shamelessly continued to treat Abiy with “kid gloves”. The United Nations Human Rights Commission, the US Department of State, and major human rights-affiliated organizations could not go beyond issuing annual reports on the “human rights situation in Ethiopia”. They dismally failed to sanction the perpetrators of grave human rights violations and degrading treatment committed by Abiy’s regime. These behaviors confirm characteristically glaring duplicity and habitual double standards leveled against the West, especially when it comes to Africa’s affairs. In continuing with ethnic politics Abiy left Ethiopia multifurcated which has been in never-ending interethnic turmoil. Unfortunately, Western countries which have poured billions of dollars into countries such as Ethiopia, did not see the stability and prosperity they have been illusioned or dreamed about for several years. Nor did they see democracy, the rule of law, and the so-called “Western values” expanding in Africa. Instead, what has happened was fast shrinking democratic space and continuously declining hope for stability, rule of law, and prosperity.  As time passed by, understandably, the West grew nervous, impatient, desperate, and hapless as it had been expecting a pigeon from the serpent’s egg. 

As with many dictators in the past, Abiy hugely invested in government media including the print press. However, he has demonstrated that he is an archenemy of the private and independent media. He hugely invested in training millions of pro-government social media army, but he deprived the majority in Amhara and Tigray regions of access to the internet. He imprisoned hundreds of journalists while forcing many more into exile. He is ruthless in annihilating and eliminating opponents and dissenting views. He is a pathological liar and a die hard ethnocrat with anemic corruption and ethnic entrepreneurship. The man is coldblooded, espouses complete disregard for the rule of law, and harbors contempt for the parliament which he molded like a playdough.  He publicly incites one ethnic group against another and one religious group against another. He leaves no stone unturned to prolong his stay in power under all circumstances and at all costs.

Abiy exceeded Meles Zenawi’s games by shameful and utter lies, incompetence, deceit, and camouflage of his true nature. He played the ” savor of a nation” game while destroying the foundation of democratic principles and values. He narrates unity among the diverse ethnic groups while cutting the very fabrics that connected more than 83 ethnic groups (and languages) for centuries. He sounded a benevolent peacemaker while igniting and fueling interethnic, interreligious, and interregional conflicts in Ethiopia and the greater Horn of Africa. He sounded reformist while exceeding all African dictators by a factor of ten in ethnic cronyism, entrepreneurship, and colossal corruption just in a matter of five years. The apex of his manipulation of the West was when he was awarded the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize. Since then, Abiy has waged (on his people) one of the most devastating wars in the world. However, to date, there has not been accountability for the havoc he caused on the people, the economy, and the country at large.

Abiy plays multiple cards. Beyond fostering interethnic multifurcation, he has been pitching two major religions of the country: Orthodox Christians and Muslims. In addition to repeated onslaughts on the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church (EOTC), Abiy’s hidden agents have been consistently bombing and destroying mosques, particularly in Addis Ababa city and the Amhara regional state. The objective is to instigate interreligious conflicts in the country on top of the simmering interethnic polarization and conflicts. He waged one of the most catastrophic wars in modern history that killed millions of Ethiopians with hundreds of thousands of women being victims of gang-rape by his army. Several millions have been deliberately starved to death. Amhara children, women, and the elderly were indiscriminately killed in the Oromia region, his ethnic and political base. A report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) released in May 2024, revealed that as many as 9 million school-age children are not in school in Ethiopia, a significant majority of whom are in war-ravaged Amhara, Tigray, and Afar regions. Today, Ethiopia has the most illiterate people in the world. Moreover, tens of millions of civilians were internally displaced, evicted, and uprooted from their ancestral lands and nearly 30 million went hungry or depended on food handouts. 

Credible reports including by the United Nations concluded that, [under Abiy Ahmed’s reign] ethnic cleansing has become a norm rather than an exception. There are well-documented and confirmed cases of targeted genocide being perpetrated under the eyes of the international community. What is more disturbing is the continued belligerence of the State machinery of Abiy to quell any political dissent or opposition to the regime. Reuters in its 23 February 2024 investigative report revealed the existence of an underground “hit and eliminate” force created, financed, and armed under the direct command of Abiy Ahmed Ali. The hidden hit squad is believed to be composed of high-ranking government, security, and army officials. It is called Koree Nageegnya, an Oromo name equivalent to the Secrete Security Committee. The secretive hit squad is behind extrajudicial killings, arbitrary detention, and forced disappearances of political opponents, journalists, and dissenting voices. While hundreds of thousands, notably Amharas are being held in state-guarded prisons, there are many more languishing in unknown prison cells, including private homes without the due process of the law. The system produces and, at the same time, feeds on predatory criminals and ethnic gangs who are bent on ethnic cleansing and superimposing the interest of one ethnic group over the rest of the population.

With Ethiopia, a nation of 120 million people (second most populous after Nigeria), becoming more vulnerable, poor, and unstable; the hope of ensuring political stability in the Horn of Africa has become elusive. It has also remained political clichés or scapegoats for the West’s dismal failures in Africa. As with known and well-documented cases of dictatorship, Abiy Ahmed Ali is no stranger to playing gimmick with the international community. He offers a cocktail of false hope of prosperity, wealth, and democracy while suffocating individual freedoms and communal liberties in his own country at all costs. He is a willing player in ethnic politics, cronyism, and ethnic entrepreneurship while portraying himself as a nationalist, reformist, and globalist at will.

Just for the record, the number of people killed, internally displaced, and starved to death in Ethiopia, by far exceeded the victims of the 1994 Rwanda Genocide. The 1994 Genocide remained a scare on the moral high standing and the consciousness of the modern world. And yet, the international community remained ambivalent, unconcerned, unrepentant, or unperturbed by what was going on in Ethiopia. The developed world joined forces to bring Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia to the International Criminal Court (ICC); captured and killed Sadam Hussein and Muammar Gaddafi for challenging the West’s hegemony and supremacy, nevertheless, kept silent or refused to take any concrete actions against virulent dictatorships in Ethiopia. Instead, they intentionally chose to provide much-needed financial, humanitarian, political, security, and military support to successive brutal dictatorships in Ethiopia. The West’s moral high ground and psychological burden in sustaining dictatorship and prolonging the anguish and suffering of millions of Ethiopians remain the darkest dots of history. Still, it is not clear as to why the West chose to trade civil liberties and human rights with regional stability which it has not seen in half a century in Africa.

Fractured global governance…….

The United Nations was created in 1945 replacing the League of Nations.  The latter failed to save the world from recurrent interstate wars and conflicts. The United Nations Charter, which begins with “We the people of the world”, has failed to protect the same people from atrocities, gross human rights violations, and degrading treatment by their governments. The UN was designed to serve global citizens better than the League of Nations.   However, now, there is growing public apathy, revulsion, and resistance towards the Organization. This is because the majority of citizens view the UN as a symbol of fractured global governance, one which remains a bystander in a world ravaged by internal, interreligious, and interethnic conflicts as well as gross violations of human rights by the organization’s very member States.  It is important to note that the League of Nations was replaced by its successor (the UN) due to its inability to prevent interstate wars. Now, the glaring failures and inability of the United Nations to protect human rights nationally and globally could bring its relevance down and accelerate its eventual demise. This may lead to a search for new, dynamic, and responsive global governance architecture that protects and responds to the interests of global citizens. In the current age of information driven by digital and communications technologies, the legitimacy and relevance of international governance depend on its steadfastness. How quickly it responds to protect human rights, promote freedoms, and improve the standards of living of citizens will determine the relevance, timeliness, and necessity of the global institutional architecture. These noble objectives should also be achieved without compromising the well-being of the future generations. This means that the era of traditional deliberations and consensus-building judged by political declarations and resolutions that define the existence of the United Nations has quickly become outmoded and irrelevant. What is needed in today’s world is robust, swift, and impactful institutional arrangements ready for collective action to save people and the planet. With the growing anger and frustration of the global citizens at large and with the current lame-duck global governance, a radical change in such obsolete and dysfunctional institutional mechanisms has become inevitable. The UN has only one choice remaining: reform or vanish into thin air!

Impotent regional institutions….

The repercussions of citizens’ unhappiness with global governance architecture will inundate and wash away incompetent and impotent regional institutions as well- be they in Africa, Asia, or Latin America. Regional institutions playing hide and seek with the public in defending and protecting killer regimes will have a short lifespan in the 21st century. Institutions such as the African Union (AU) will eventually be forced to side either with the people they are purported to serve or with their killer regimes everywhere on the continent. Which way the AU goes determines its survival and relevance.

Conclusion

Ethiopia is a proud nation that has successively defended itself from colonial aggression, stood up against the apartheid regime in South Africa, and contributed to the liberation of several African countries from the yolk of colonialism. The country has also contributed to global peace and stability including by joining a few developed nations in the Korean War. It produced world-class athletes and erected rock-hewn churches and monolithic monuments. The country is regarded as the origin of mankind. As if all these monumental features define the Ethiopian identity and attract international attention, the country’s terminal crises and the suffering of its population have fallen on deaf ears and blind eyes. The death of millions, widespread ethnic cleansing, and rampant human rights violations by the Government, could not get the attention of a usually responsive gutter and sensational journalism, let alone interest from political leaders of major countries and international organizations.  It is time for the world and global citizens to view a violation of human rights and state vandalism in one corner of the world as a violation of liberties and state cronyism everywhere. The international community could not afford to permanently ignore the rights and freedom of Africans by trading off civil liberties and rights for the hope of regional peace and stability, which are not mutually exclusive. Abiy is a threat to regional peace and global stability. He must be fixed and should not be allowed to continue waging wars against his population; violating individual and civil liberties; killing civilians and imprisoning political opponents, journalists, and academics perceived as enemies of the state.

 ¹Concerned citizen

Editor’s note : Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com

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