July 9, 2026
Moving Beyond Hauntology and Resentment in Ethiopian Politics
Kebere Mazengia
Author’s Note
For nearly three decades, I consistently opposed the TPLF/EPRDF’s authoritarian centralization, repression, political exclusion, and above all, its institutionalization of ethnic federalism. I argued that this system dangerously fragmented our nation by elevating ethnic identity as the foremost principle of political life. However, in the eight years since that order gave way, I have come to see that national survival now demands we distinguish historical accountability from ongoing political fixation.
My focus has shifted from critiquing a vanquished adversary to advancing an approach rooted in the principle of a “sovereignty of shared destiny.” This means prioritizing our collective future and ensuring that the interests of all communities are respected within a unified national framework.
This piece is written with the conviction that resisting authoritarian injustice is essential for change, but that such resistance must be balanced with a deep commitment to national preservation. My objective is to prevent past grievances from defining our national identity and to promote a shared society in which political loss does not threaten the existence of any community.
Although the international community—including the United States and the European Union—has appropriately urged both the regime and the TPLF to resolve their disputes through dialogue, the ultimate intentions of both regarding Ethiopia remain unclear. As Ethiopians, we must channel this external pressure into urgent internal accountability and responsibility. Our priority should be to pursue national interests that break the cycle of conflict, not simply manage it. The regime’s diplomatic overtures are a calculated deception, intended to mislead the international community and conceal the reality of military buildups near Tigray.
This article serves as an urgent warning and a call to action against the regime’s relentless pursuit of war. We must not stand by as passive witnesses to another cycle of destruction and suffering like that which devastated Tigray just three years ago. All of Ethiopia—especially the Tigrayan population—cannot endure further trauma, particularly as violence now afflicts the Amhara and Oromia regions as well.
I felt compelled to write this essay by a deep sense of urgency and personal responsibility. This pivotal moment demands honest reflection and active engagement from all Ethiopians. I hope that this essay will contribute meaningfully to our ongoing national conversation.
Breaking the Cycle: From Historical Grievance to Institutional Wisdom
Great nations are not built by remaining captive to the ghosts of their past. They are built when societies acquire the moral courage to remember historical injuries without becoming imprisoned by them—and when political actors transform grievance into institutional wisdom rather than vengeance. Contemporary Ethiopian politics, however, remains dangerously haunted by unresolved memories, inherited structures, and adversarial narratives that continue to dominate public discourse. The past is not simply remembered; it is constantly reactivated, politicized, and used to explain present failures while delaying the difficult work of reconstruction.
This essay advances a simple argument: Ethiopia’s crisis will not be resolved by renewed war against a regionally entrenched political force, nor by a permanent fixation on the former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). It will be resolved only through political dialogue and structural reform—constitutional redesign, institutional restraint, and a renewed civic compact grounded in shared citizenship. Without such a shift, Ethiopia risks repeating a cycle in which enemies change names, but the governing logic of conflict remains intact.
A durable peace, therefore, requires a decisive movement from reactive animosity to forward-looking reform. This does not mean denying the gravity of the past. The twenty-seven years of TPLF/EPRDF rule left behind profound grievances: repression, political exclusion, authoritarian governance, and the constitutional entrenchment of ethnic federalism that further cemented ethnic identity as the principal framework for political engagement. These were not minor historical errors. They shaped the constitutional, territorial, bureaucratic, and psychological foundations of the contemporary Ethiopian state.
Ethiopia’s contemporary political landscape powerfully illustrates how successor regimes can manipulate the institutionalized trauma left by their predecessors to legitimize new cycles of fear and retribution. The Abiy government, while outwardly distancing itself from the long-dominant TPLF-led EPRDF by forming a new party, ultimately inherited—and intensified—the psychological apparatus of paranoia and survivalism. Rather than pursuing authentic reform or reconciliation, the leadership internalized its predecessor’s most destructive tendencies, framing the entire Tigrayan leadership as a monolithic, existential threat.
This process of moral absolutism did not merely justify state-sanctioned violence against Tigray; it normalized retributive politics as a mode of governance, blurring the lines between justice and vengeance. The regime’s reliance on punitive measures, masquerading as justice, has perpetuated a vicious feedback loop of grievance and retaliation. This analytical lens reveals that when victors prioritize retribution over structural accountability, they do not resolve collective trauma. Instead, they recalibrate it as a tool for ongoing instability, deepening the roots of future conflict. Unless Ethiopia consciously breaks this cycle, its political future will remain trapped in patterns of vengeance, with each new regime inheriting and amplifying the traumas of the past.
However, historical responsibility must be distinguished from perpetual political fixation. While the TPLF remains politically and militarily consequential within Tigray, it no longer exercises the national dominance it once held. The central question is not only what the TPLF did in the past, but why the political system it helped build continues to reproduce crises under new rulers.
The Living Corpse: Inherited Architectures and Spectral Politics
This is the paradox of contemporary Ethiopian politics. The ruling order that succeeded the TPLF displaced it from national power, yet continues to govern through much of the constitutional, administrative, territorial, and political architecture inherited from that period. The political body changed its occupant, but not its operating logic. The old ruler has been removed from the center, but the old system remains active—contested, brittle, and repeatedly weaponized.
Borrowing from Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, Ethiopia’s crisis can be understood as a spectral condition in which the past is neither fully alive nor fully dead (Derrida, 1994). Inherited institutions continue to operate, but unresolved contradictions hollow out their legitimacy. The state still commands, regulates, and administers, yet much of its motion is powered by institutional designs that many of its current defenders publicly denounce.
At the same time, the defeated former ruler becomes an enduring specter. The more the present order relies on inherited structures, the more it benefits from keeping a ghost available for blame. Economic crisis, corruption, ethnic fragmentation, administrative paralysis, and political violence can be attributed to the lingering rot of yesterday rather than the responsibilities of today.
This spectral politics is not merely psychological; it is functional. By keeping the TPLF alive as a permanent existential threat, political actors can consolidate legitimacy around a shared enemy and discipline dissent through fear. This does not mean criticism of the TPLF is illegitimate. Serious criticism of its historical role remains necessary. However, when criticism becomes fixation, it ceases to be analysis and becomes a tool of political evasion.
This spectral politics is sustained by a pervasive discursive ecosystem—spanning state media, social media, and digital platforms—where the regime’s narrative machinery and instrumentalized opposition factions collaborate to manufacture a climate of perpetual hostility. Often masked as performative adherence to national principles, this rhetoric is frequently propelled by private gain and a deeply rooted resentment that seeks the total elimination of the “other” rather than reforming the system. This eliminationist discourse is further amplified by co-opted figures from the previous order, who now call for the utter destruction of their erstwhile associates to cement their own position within the current regime.
It is a pathetic sight to watch those who once sat at the TPLF’s table now auditioning for the role of the regime’s most brutal cheerleaders. These co-opted elites frantically try to scrub the ghosts’ blood off their own hands by demanding a new “war of annihilation” against their former associates and their own people. They are like shadow-boxers fighting a “monster that has already lost its teeth,” hoping that if they scream loud enough about the past, no one will notice they are still living in the “haunted house” they and their old masters built. Staging this “hauntological theater” from the safety of the capital, they seek favor from the regime while shifting the cost of conflict onto ordinary Tigrayans. For these turncoats, waging rhetorical battles against old ghosts is far easier than confronting the urgent and difficult realities of alleviating hunger or truly rebuilding the region or the nation. In doing so, they deepen public cynicism and further entrench the obstacles to genuine national reconciliation.
In Tigray, this means seizing power by driving out the TPLF—a move not only to erase rivals but to redefine the region’s future by installing a puppet administration loyal to the regime. For those in power, particularly the autocratic leader, such a victory would resurrect the specter of de facto partition or contested sovereignty—long imagined by the despot “(a preoccupation reflected in years of public rhetoric framing Tigray’s autonomy as an unresolved threat to national unity — and, many observers argue, an Achilles’ heel for the despot himself)” —an issue that has rendered his sovereign governance incomplete and troubled his psyche for years—and finally bring it to fruition.
This act of throwing caution to the wind is irresponsible and will lead to negative consequences. Such a path, however, is not a strategy for national salvation but a blueprint for collective ruin, as the devastating consequences of recent conflicts have already demonstrated: a politics fueled by the demand for annihilation serves only to dismantle the social fabric while leaving the foundational architecture of crisis entirely untouched.
It must also be said plainly: the TPLF built much of the haunted house that now traps even its former allies-turned-critics, having spent twenty-seven years entrenching the very authoritarian habits and exclusionary politics it now condemns in others.
While the TPLF itself acknowledges the impossibility of restoring its 1991-era national hegemony, the regime and the regime’s digital propaganda machinery relentlessly construct a narrative of the TPLF as a looming existential menace. This disconnect between rhetorical threat and material reality serves a specific function: it obscures the transformation the TPLF has undergone under the weight of its own history. Instead of pursuing political dominance in Ethiopia, the TPLF may be compelled to choose its only remaining option: serving as a centrifugal force—one that fragments rather than unifies the nation. This role is a product of calculated external pressures: the regime’s relentless tactics, the brutality and aftermath of war, lingering psychological trauma, and ongoing economic strangulation of the region.
The Ghost in the Machinery: Real Decay vs. Manufactured Menace
If the regime pursues renewed military confrontation with the TPLF, the group will likely face serious challenges, as has been the case with other armed factions in Amhara and Oromia. This situation reflects a mix of external pressures and the TPLF’s own internal weaknesses. However, external pressures are only part of the picture. The TPLF also suffers from deep internal divisions and a significant loss of public trust inside Tigray. These factors severely limit its political options.
This weakness is not accidental. Decades of a centralized-governance mentality and the legacy of historical ideology, political repression, and resistance to internal pluralism left the TPLF with a shallow reserve of public goodwill to draw on — a deficit now compounded by war, displacement, and economic strangulation. Furthermore, the notion of a TPLF resurgence ignores the profound internal erosion within the organization. Burdened by deepening ideological divisions and a precipitous loss of public trust within Tigray—compounded by the pervasive animosity it earned during its twenty-seven years in power—the TPLF lacks the moral or political capital for a national return.
In this hauntological theater, the TPLF is portrayed as a “national menace” not because it retains the capacity to rule the nation again, but because the current order requires a convenient monster to justify its ongoing failure to reconstruct the state’s crisis-ridden architecture.
It is worth recalling that Ethiopia’s crisis is not fundamentally about the TPLF’s capacity or right to resist. The organization no longer possesses the political or military strength to restore its former national dominance. Its remaining options are now limited to survival and risk mitigation. The persistent portrayal of the TPLF as a looming national threat serves a specific political function for the regime, but it does not correspond to the group’s actual weakened condition. The deeper and more enduring problem lies in the structural features of the political system itself, which continue to generate conflict under successive governments.
For many political elites outside Tigray, this fixation also resembles Nietzschean resentment: a reactive political condition in which identity is constructed through opposition to an enemy rather than through the creation of a positive project (Nietzsche, 1994). In such a condition, politics stops asking, “What kind of state should Ethiopia build?” and begins asking, “Whom must we defeat, punish, or erase?” The result is an exhausted public life that mistakes hostility for vision and revenge for renewal.
It is legitimate to oppose ethnic federalism. It is legitimate to criticize the TPLF’s role in introducing and consolidating a political order that organizes citizenship through ethnic categories and institutionalizes zero-sum competition. It is also legitimate to argue that Ethiopia’s constitutional framework requires deep reform. However, it is politically destructive to imagine that the destruction or humiliation of one political organization would resolve the structural crisis of the Ethiopian state.
When political elites become captive to historical grievances and the legacies of past regimes, they develop a strategic myopia and blind spot that impairs sound decision-making. This fixation on the past not only blinds leaders to emerging challenges but also perpetuates cycles of mistrust and retaliation, as evidenced by the preventable catastrophe of the war in Tigray. Ultimately, a nation steered by political elites fixated on history is doomed to repeat its failures, unable to confront or resolve the urgent crises of the present.
The deeper problem is not reducible to one party. It lies in a political architecture that has encouraged ethnic competition, weakened shared citizenship, fragmented national trust, and enabled elites to govern through fear. The current regime has not transcended that architecture. In many ways, it has inherited, adapted, and weaponized it—condemning ethnic fragmentation while governing through it, denouncing the old order while reproducing its most dangerous habits. The architecture is sustained not only by constitutional form but by an ethnicized patronage system, a politicized security sector, and a winner-take-all political culture that treats compromise as surrender.
This is why the politics of anti-TPLF fixation is insufficient: it attacks a ghost, while leaving both the current occupant and the haunted house untouched.
Collective Insecurity: The Peril of Conflating Party and Population
The most dangerous consequence of spectral politics is the conflation of the TPLF with the Tigrayan population. Political organizations are not identical to the societies from which they emerge. However, under conditions of external threat, this distinction collapses. When hostile rhetoric, eliminationist language, or military pressure is directed at the TPLF, ordinary Tigrayans may experience it as a threat against Tigray itself. Even those who oppose the TPLF internally may rally behind it if they believe their community is being targeted collectively. Any strategy that collapses a political organization into an entire people is morally illegitimate and strategically ruinous.
This dynamic is not unique to Tigray. Across the world, external aggression often strengthens the very forces it seeks to weaken. Internal critics become silent. Reformist voices are delegitimized as collaborators—communities close ranks. Hardliners gain authority. Political pluralism shrinks under the pressure of collective insecurity. Thus, a campaign intended to weaken a dominant regional faction can, in practice, harden its social base by making ordinary people feel their survival depends on it.
For this reason, another war against the TPLF would not remain a clean confrontation with a single political organization. It would likely become—both in practice and perception—a war against a population already traumatized by devastating conflict. The war that culminated in the Pretoria process left deep wounds: mass death, displacement, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, social rupture, and profound mistrust. Reopening that wound would not solve Ethiopia’s national crisis; it would deepen fragmentation, radicalize identities, and further undermine the possibility of a shared political future.
Beyond Ideology: Maslow’s Hierarchy and the Material Reality of Survival
The current situation in Tigray should not be analyzed solely through ideological lenses, the history of the TPLF’s armed struggle, or the psychological imprint it left on its cadres. Instead, it must be recognized primarily as a question of survival, consistent with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943), in which physical safety, food, and shelter are prerequisites for the exercise of higher civic and political functions.
While the TPLF bears responsibility for its authoritarian past and governance failures, the immediate aspirations of ordinary Tigrayans are existential rather than ideological: an end to the threat of renewed war, the lifting of the regime’s economic blockade — which has severely restricted access to food, medicine, and fuel — and the safe return of displaced persons and children to schools without fear of further displacement.
At the same time, many Tigrayans demand the freedom to elect their own representatives without external interference. This aspiration for democratic accountability is not in tension with the pursuit of basic survival; the two are parallel and often converging paths. However, neither can be realized if the region remains trapped in a cycle of war and isolation.
The Pretoria Agreement created a framework for de-escalation, reintegration, and normalization. However, implementation disputes and mutual suspicion have repeatedly strained that framework, sustaining insecurity and sharpening accusations on all sides. When agreements become arenas for tactical advantage rather than instruments of national recovery, they cease to function as bridges out of war and instead become pretexts for returning to it. It is crucial to acknowledge that, in general, the government nullifies the agreement with the TPLF.
At this moment, Ethiopia is already strained by active conflicts in Oromia and Amhara. To open or reopen another major theater of war in Tigray would not merely be a regional escalation; it would be a national disaster—militarily overstretching the state, accelerating economic collapse, multiplying civilian suffering, and further normalizing politics as permanent warfare. A state that attempts to govern through simultaneous internal battlefronts eventually loses the capacity to govern at all.
The persistent political conflicts in Amhara and Oromia reflect Ethiopia’s deeper systemic crisis, further aggravated by a governing approach that favors divisive and destructive tactics over genuine statecraft and the resolution of political problems through dialogue. As the trajectory of conflict in Tigray demonstrates, the regime’s reliance on these tactics has not only magnified regional trauma but also perpetuated a broader national impasse. These compounding factors reveal a destructive feedback loop wherein local grievances and the regime’s central political failures reinforce one another, complicating the transition toward a sovereignty of shared destiny and sustainable governance.
Despite the state’s alienation, the resilience demonstrated by the Tigray people, stemming from trauma, war fatigue, and hope for a peaceful resolution, suggests that if the regime attempts to enforce its oppressive authority, it will inevitably face courageous resistance to any form of destruction. One should consider, from a first-person perspective, how to resolve a survival dilemma without resorting to combat when facing a regime that lacks any semblance of humanitarian concern.
War waged by the regime devastates not only the region’s people and infrastructure but also undermines Ethiopia’s defense forces and threatens the nation’s very sovereignty and national autonomy. The identities of potential new actors—both domestic and international—who may join the Tigray forces against the regime remain unclear. Despite the uncertainty, one thing is certain: the consequences will be catastrophic.
A renewed war plan—especially under conditions in which it would be widely perceived as a war against Tigrayans themselves—is not a solution to Ethiopia’s foundational problems. It may destroy lives, alter military balances, and temporarily silence opponents, but it cannot resolve the underlying questions of constitutional design, citizenship, regional autonomy, political inclusion, and state legitimacy. These are political questions, not merely military ones. They require negotiation, institutional imagination, and a willingness to confront the architecture of crisis rather than merely its visible actors.
The Architecture of De-escalation: A Framework for National Trust
This does not mean the TPLF should be exempt from criticism, accountability, or democratic contestation. No political party should be placed beyond scrutiny. The TPLF’s historical role must be debated honestly, including its responsibility for authoritarian governance, the narrowing of political space, and the entrenchment of ethnic federalism. Precisely because of this history, the TPLF cannot credibly present itself as the sole legitimate custodian of Tigray’s political future. Any accountability framework worth building must hold the TPLF’s own record of authoritarian governance to the same scrutiny demanded of the federal government’s conduct.
However, accountability must be pursued through political dialogue, constitutional reform, democratic competition, and legal mechanisms compatible with peace. The purpose should not be annihilation but transformation.
Dialogue, however, cannot be one-sided. Both the federal government and the TPLF must approach negotiations with realistic positions — the regime cannot demand unconditional surrender; at the same time, the TPLF cannot expect to retain its historical hegemonic control over Tigray. At the same time, Tigray’s political future cannot be decided solely through bilateral negotiations between the regime and the TPLF. Any credible process must include non-TPLF political actors, civil society groups, and independent Tigrayan voices to determine the region’s leadership and political direction. Genuine political pluralism, rather than the dominance of a single organization, is essential for a democratic outcome in Tigray. Only when all parties demonstrate a willingness to compromise can dialogue move beyond tactical maneuvering and become a genuine path toward lasting peace.
The pursuit of dialogue is a testament to true political courage; demanding rigorous accountability from all parties at the negotiating table requires far greater resolve than resorting to armed conflict. Ultimately, a durable peace can only emerge through reciprocal concessions—the antithesis of unilateral capitulation and the cornerstone of national reconciliation.
Compelling both parties to engage in substantive negotiations is not a concession to the TPLF, but rather an unwavering affirmation of Ethiopia’s sovereignty and enduring stability. Authentic strength resides in the principled resolve to forge an enduring peace; appeasement, by contrast, results only when foundational values are sacrificed for transient and illusory calm.
A viable alternative to renewed war requires more than general appeals to dialogue; it requires a minimum framework that binds both the federal government and the TPLF to measurable obligations. In the spirit of the Pretoria agreement, such a framework would include the following:
(1) credible guarantees for civilian protection and humanitarian access; (2) a jointly accepted mechanism for de-escalation and incident prevention, with transparent verification; (3) a phased process for disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration linked to political milestones rather than unilateral demands; (4) efforts must be accelerated to safely return internally displaced persons (IDPs) to the contested Western Zone, and (5) an inclusive political dialogue on constitutional and governance reform with clear timelines and agreed facilitation.
These steps are not a reward for any actor; they are a safeguard for the public—designed to prevent Ethiopia from sliding back into mass violence while political questions are addressed through political means.
The Institutional Alternative: From Vengeance to Statecraft
The proper response to the legacy of ethnic federalism is therefore not revenge but redesign. Ethiopia requires a serious national conversation about constitutional reform, territorial and administrative arrangements, minority protections, regional autonomy, language rights, security-sector restructuring, and the balance between national unity and self-government. These questions cannot be settled through battlefield victory. They require the difficult work of statecraft.
Professor Messay Kebede offers a useful example of what a reform-oriented alternative can look like in his recent essay, “Reimagining Ethiopia,” (2026), on The Habesha. His principal assertion as a visionary thinker is that Ethiopia’s persistent crises are intensified by the entrenchment of ethnic identities—”ethnic ossification swept over the country”—into opposing political absolutes and by the lack of a cohesive national objective capable of transforming diversity into a collective purpose. Rather than treating Ethiopia as a fixed ethnic construct, he frames it as an ongoing nation-building project—a “melting pot in progress”—and calls for a renewed and modernized Ethiopianism grounded in democratic citizenship and unity in diversity.
Messay’s argument is not merely cultural but institutional. He advocates a liberal-democratic reconstruction anchored in rights and federalism, including rights-based regional autonomy and enforceable protections for minorities within regions. A distinctive element of his proposal is structural: he fiercely supports a presidential system, arguing that it can provide clearer lines of executive responsibility and help reduce the chronic instability that emerges when national power becomes a permanent object of coalition breakdown and zero-sum capture. In his framing, these reforms would help transform diversity from a trigger for rivalry into a shared national objective.
However, realizing this institutional vision requires a fundamental shift in how national unity is conceived—from the manufactured identity used to sustain power to cohesion born of genuine popular participation.
The authoritarian regime currently attempts to enforce strict, mechanical conformity by incessantly invoking the name ‘Ethiopia,’ wielding it as a sedative or a paralyzing instrument designed to exert control and consolidate power—a tactic that ultimately deepens national divisions. In contrast, the most resilient and democratic forms of social cohesion are rooted in organic solidarity, fostered by social inclusion—including civic and political participation and acceptance of diversity—and by social capital built on institutional trust and shared values. This model further requires social mobility through economic fairness and equality of opportunity. In such a framework, the people of Ethiopia can be united beyond ethnic boundaries through mutual interdependence rather than centralized coercion. The urgent question remains whether the political elites, who wield significant influence even without holding direct power, are prepared to set down the baggage of the past and advance the people’s aspirations for genuine unity and progress.
The Fallacy of Illusory Reform: A Hypothetical Analysis
Should the regime move toward a presidential system, redraw administrative boundaries into ‘geographic and economic’ clusters, or amend the constitution unilaterally for the sake of deception, such actions would not represent genuine reform but rather a deceitful illusion—a hauntological fallacy. Such acts would not be born of visionary statecraft; they would be tactical performances in a haunted theater, calculated to entrench an authoritarian logic under the guise of change. This is the paradox of continuity: a regime proclaims reform while intensifying its most corrosive practices—governing by fear, erasing dissent, and reducing politics to a zero-sum battle for survival.
A regime that has already dismantled the press, shuttered opposition offices, and imprisoned its rivals would not be reforming by imposing a state-controlled presidential system—it would be perfecting authoritarian centralization. Should the release of prisoners be timed for maximum spectacle, this would not be justice but calculated deception—an attempt to mask ongoing domination with a fleeting gesture of mercy. Their freedom is cause for happiness, yet it cannot erase the injustice of their original imprisonment. The very fact that they were detained unjustly continues to fuel our anger toward the regime. This would not herald the birth of a “sovereignty of shared destiny,” but the consolidation of zero-sum power.
Similarly, geographic clustering intended to pacify or fragment the opposition would be a cosmetic change rather than substantive reform. Unless there is a radical embrace of shared citizenship and a renewed civic compact, any redrawing of boundaries will merely recycle old tools of division—fueling suspicion and conflict among communities, entrenching ethnic patronage, and perpetuating a winner-take-all political culture that treats compromise as defeat.
This hypothetical must be weighed against the regime’s actual record, one in which its logic of rule has already crossed from political error into systemic criminality. This is a government that has presided over mass death, sexual violence, and extrajudicial killings in Tigray, while continuing to unleash devastation upon civilians in Amhara and Oromia. Administrative reshuffling cannot erase these crimes or absolve the regime of responsibility. These are not bureaucratic missteps—they are atrocities and war crimes that have carved deep wounds into the national consciousness. Should the hypothetical reform proceed under these conditions, it would produce not a sovereignty of shared destiny. Still, a sovereignty of exclusion—one in which authority is defined by the destruction and humiliation of citizens, and the state becomes a living corpse animated only by perpetual violence.
Ultimately, should such reforms materialize as anticipated here, they would be nothing more than a spectacle—designed to impress foreign observers, fracture or pacify the opposition, and lure the disillusioned into the ruling party, all while preserving the architecture of crisis. Such dramas would serve only to satisfy the caprice and the “prophecy” of a single despot. No boundary redrawing or constitutional shift could absolve a regime of the devastation it has already wrought.
Hollow maneuvers of this kind will not banish the specter of crisis, but only when the regime and its enabling structures are dismantled by the people, in the name of dignity and survival for all. Power is not bestowed upon the people; it belongs to them by right—and no theater of illusory reform can substitute for its return. There will be no moral or legal redemption in such a theater. The only path forward is through institutional wisdom, truth, and accountability for every life shattered and every region scarred.
To be clear, this call for dismantlement is not a call for annihilation. It is not directed at a people, an ethnicity, or even the individuals who currently staff the machinery of the state—it is directed at the structures that make authoritarian rule possible: impunity, ethnicized patronage, a politicized security sector, and a constitution that has been weaponized against the very citizens it claims to protect, rather than reformed through their will and participation.
The distinction matters. Annihilationist politics aims to erase the Other as a category of person, while dismantling authoritarian structures aspires to end a system of domination—making it possible for all citizens, including members of the ruling party and those who served the regime, to live in a society where survival is not dependent on obedience. If, in the future, a truth and reconciliation commission identifies individuals responsible for crimes and holds them accountable through due process, this is not vengeance. It is the principle that guides this essay: accountability without annihilation, reform without revenge.
All of these hypotheses emerge from shadows and fragments of information—not from concrete deduction or certainty. They are abductive: conclusions formed by assembling the most plausible explanations through observation and a nuanced grasp of the regime’s patterns and characteristics. The regime’s opacity and crafty steps compel vigilance and skepticism, reminding us that layers of calculated maneuvering often obscure truth. It is important to remember that everything depends on the whim of one person; here, borrowing the concept of “bullshit” from philosopher Harry Frankfurt, the autocrat’s bullshitter nature demands constant vigilance.
This uncertainty at the heart of autocratic rule becomes even more pronounced when we examine the figure at its center. To many observers, Ethiopia appears to be governed by a leader whose public persona reads as a confederation of souls: a Pentecostal soul, a Muslim soul, a soul seen as having wounded the Orthodox Church, a benevolent soul in moments of celebration, an ageist soul, a divisive soul, a deceptive and lying soul, and a soul inclined toward everyday violence, among others. This layered identity resonates with Antonio Tabucchi’s notion in Pereira Maintains that the self is not singular but a ‘confederation of souls’ governed by a ruling ego. In this formulation, authority within the self is provisional rather than fixed: one ego temporarily assumes dominance, reorganizing competing identities until another displaces it.
This raises an open question — one this essay does not claim to resolve — as to which impulse or soul will prevail after his anticipated assumption of the presidency.
From Righteous Anger to Nation-Building
The point here is not to settle every political and institutional question in this essay, but to underscore the essential direction: Ethiopia’s alternative to renewed war is a serious political redesign. This agenda must be debated, refined, and negotiated without turning disagreement into existential conflict.
Political movements face a serious risk when their focus lingers on an enemy that no longer poses a threat. Adapting from G. K. Chesterton’s famous paradox, Ethiopia’s political actors must hate injustice, poverty, repression, and destructive political structures enough to work for change, while also loving the nation and its people enough to believe they are worth saving (Chesterton, 1910). This dual impulse is vital. Without moral anger, societies tolerate oppression; without political civility, anger devolves into vengeance.
The purpose of struggle, then, is not to endlessly pursue defeated adversaries or invent new enemies, but to rebuild a wounded political community. Righteous anger is necessary to expose systemic failure, but it becomes dangerous when it remains fixated on a former adversary who no longer holds power. At this stage, the regime and some elites substitute obsession for genuine statecraft. This fixation allows political actors to evade the more challenging tasks of reform: building organizations capable of driving change, rebuilding trust, generating ideas for redesigning systems and institutions, healing historical wounds, and aiming for a political environment in which no group fears annihilation.
On a lighter yet profound note, consider the classic parable of “The Two Monks and the Woman.”
“A senior monk and a junior monk arrive at a raging river where a woman is afraid to cross. Despite their vows forbidding them from touching women, the senior monk picks her up, carries her across, and sets her down on the other side. Hours later, the junior monk, still seething with frustration, finally asks how his mentor could break their sacred vows. The senior monk calmly replies, “Brother, I set her down on the riverbank hours ago. Why are you still carrying her?”
In the context of the hauntological theater described in this article, many of Ethiopia’s political elites resemble that junior monk. They remain cathected to historical injuries and adversaries that have long since been “set down” by the material realities of history. This refusal to “empty the cup” of historical grievances traps the nation in a cycle of spectral politics, in which the energy required for the future is diverted to fuel a fixation on the past. True statecraft requires the wisdom to distinguish historical memory from psychological imprisonment, allowing a society to release the heavy baggage of its history and focus instead on the innovation, well-being, and survival of the current generation.
Ethiopia cannot nourish its people, heal its wounds, or build a fairer society by fighting ghosts. Expending energy on past conflicts and adversaries diverts critical resources from addressing current and future challenges. An analytical approach recognizes that fixation on historical grievances undermines strategic focus and impairs the ability to respond effectively to present threats. The true task is to acknowledge past injuries without letting them define the nation’s future. Ethiopian politics must be strong enough to confront injustice and resist autocracy, yet generous enough to rebuild a shared national home.
To move beyond hauntology, Ethiopia must stop allowing the past to govern the present through fear. To move beyond ressentiment, political elites must stop defining themselves only by what they oppose. A mature political project must be able to say both that the inherited order is deeply flawed and that the people living under that order must not be punished for its flaws. The task is not to erase history, but to prevent history from becoming destiny.
True victory does not lie in the humiliation of a defeated adversary, nor in preserving a decaying system under new ownership. True victory lies in building a democratic political architecture in which former opponents can compete without fear of annihilation, communities can coexist without domination, and political defeat becomes survivable. Without such transformation, the nation remains condemned to repeat the same patterns of conflict and suffering, trapped in an endless loop of history.
Hatred is not inherently harmful, as it enables us to identify areas requiring transformation. Hatred and anger are fundamental components. The challenging aspect is to rise and commence transformative action. One must possess considerable compassion for Ethiopia and its entire people to effectuate change. We must first ascertain what necessitates transformation: the existing authoritarian regime, consumed by vengeance and drunk on power.
The specter will not be exorcised by hatred. It will be exorcised only when the system that keeps it alive is transformed. The challenge before Ethiopia is not merely to move beyond the TPLF, but to move beyond the conditions that made the TPLF’s ‘dominance’ possible, the resentments that keep its ghost alive, and the authoritarian practices that continue to reproduce the same crisis under different names. Only then can Ethiopia begin to build a future no longer ruled by the ghosts of its past.
We cannot build tomorrow’s political system using yesterday’s outrage. True progress demands that we transform old grievances into a vision for the future—one rooted in unity, hope, and a willingness to imagine something better than what came before. Ethiopian politics and some political elites remain attached to the past and to adversaries long gone, making it difficult to move forward. Only by releasing this fixation can the nation progress, focus on the present, and boldly shape its future.
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” — Buckminster Fuller.
Conclusion
A Sovereignty of Shared Destiny: Building the Common Home
Ethiopian politics remains dangerously confined within a “hauntological theater,” where many elites are fixated on historical injuries and adversaries that no longer wield the power they once did. This pervasive fixation on the past distorts not only the national discourse but also the practical approaches to current political challenges.
It is in this context that the question of Tigray’s future arises: resolving such critical regional issues should not rest solely on negotiations between the regime and the TPLF, but demands the genuine inclusion of diverse Tigrayan political actors and independent voices. This spectral fixation allows the regime to evade the urgent tasks of statecraft by attributing present failures to the “ghosts” of the past. Breaking this cycle requires a decisive shift from a culture of zero-sum blame to one of mutual goals, grounded in shared citizenship and national trust.
Confronting the burden of history demands truth-seeking and accountability—not as tools of annihilation or vengeance, but as pathways to institutional wisdom and the healing of our fractured political community. By moving the national narrative beyond obsolete adversaries and expanding political participation, Ethiopia can finally shift from a “sovereignty of exclusion” to one of “shared destiny.” Only by relinquishing this negative fixation can the nation focus its energies on present crises and intentionally shape a future where “history is remembered without becoming destiny.”
The catastrophic suffering endured by the Amhara and Oromia regions—three years and seven years respectively—marked by mass casualties, infrastructure destruction, and the collapse of essential services, stands as an unequivocal warning against the regime’s present trajectory. Reigniting conflict in Tigray would not merely escalate regional tensions; it would constitute a national disaster, compounding trauma and accelerating the disintegration of the state’s already fragile capacity to govern.
A vision of “sovereignty of shared destiny” and national prosperity is unattainable so long as the regime turns every political arena into a battleground for annihilation. The government must be pressured to cease reopening Tigray’s wounds and to end the devastating wars in Amhara and Oromia. Only through a deliberate choice for peace and reconciliation can Ethiopia advance. Renouncing this “governing logic of conflict” is essential to embarking on the difficult but necessary work of building a shared home, where political setbacks are survivable, and the dignity of all citizens is safeguarded.
Achieving a “common home” and a “sovereignty of shared destiny” demands more than rhetoric from political elites—it requires strategic organization, principled compromise, and the courage to enact genuine transformation. Citizens of all backgrounds must transcend entrenched allegiances and ethnic divides, forging solidarity to dismantle the institutional and ideological structures that perpetuate conflict and poverty. Only through such collective resolve can Ethiopia escape the cycle of crisis and create an inclusive, resilient future. This shared commitment to citizenship is the foundation for moving beyond historical burdens and for building an Ethiopia where everyone’s survival and dignity are permanently secured.
A meaningful diagnosis of our crisis requires separating systemic analysis from the emotional forces of resentment. Ethiopian politics has long been driven by affective biases and spectral fixations that resist evidence and reason. Adopting analytical rigor and a problem-solving orientation is not merely an option, but an imperative. Structured objectivity must take precedence over the emotional reactions exploited by the current ‘hauntological theater.’ Only by sustaining this empirical logic can we create the intellectual space needed to realize a ‘common home’ and a ‘sovereignty of shared destiny’—a future where history is remembered, but never allowed to become a cage.
Editor’s Note: Views in the article do not necessarily reflect the views of borkena.com
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