Ethiopia is currently trapped in a violent feedback loop that its leaders seem unable or unwilling to break. While the 2022 Pretoria Agreement officially ended the catastrophic Tigray War, the nation has not found peace. Instead, the conflict has merely mutated, spreading into the Amhara and Oromia regions with a familiar, sickening rhythm. The fundamental tragedy of this cycle is that the most potent warnings are coming from the very people who built the previous era of Ethiopian stability: the female combatants of the 1970s and 80s. These women, who fought to overthrow the Derg military junta, now watch as a new generation of leaders makes the same fatal mistakes they once bled to correct.
The current instability is not an accident of history. It is the result of a deliberate dismantling of the multi-ethnic consensus in favor of centralized power plays. When we look at the escalating drone strikes in Amhara or the persistent insurgencies in Oromia, we are seeing the exhaustion of a political model that prizes total victory over sustainable coexistence. The veterans of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and other revolutionary movements from decades ago recognize this pattern. They know that when a government stops talking and starts shelling its own peripheries, the state itself begins to crack.
The Ghost of the Derg and the Myth of the Quick Strike
Modern military strategists in Addis Ababa frequently fall into the trap of believing that superior technology—specifically Turkish and Iranian drones—can substitute for political legitimacy. This is a delusion. The Derg, under Mengistu Haile Mariam, possessed the most formidable conventional military in sub-Saharan Africa, backed by the Soviet Union. They had the tanks, the MiGs, and the sheer numbers. Yet they were defeated by a grassroots insurgency fueled by rural grievance and a sense of existential threat.
The women who served in those insurgent trenches were not just cooks or nurses. They were front-line infantry, radio operators, and tactical planners. They understood a truth that the current administration seems to have forgotten: you cannot kill an idea with a Hellfire missile. When the federal government uses heavy weaponry in densely populated areas of the Amhara region today, it isn't just neutralizing "extremists." It is creating a new generation of martyrs and a fresh set of grievances that will take decades to heal. The veterans see the current rhetoric of "law enforcement operations" as a haunting echo of the Derg’s "Red Terror" era, where dissent was equated with treason and met with industrial-scale violence.
The Gendered Cost of Armed Mobilization
Women in Ethiopia have historically been the backbone of both war and the agonizing recovery that follows. During the fight against the Derg, female participation was a badge of progressive revolutionary ideals. It promised a future where ethnic and gender hierarchies would be flattened. That promise was largely betrayed.
In the recent Tigray conflict, we saw the weaponization of sexual violence on a scale that defies easy categorization. This wasn't just a byproduct of war; it was used as a tool of ethnic degradation. Veterans from the older wars look at this with a specific kind of horror. In their era, while the fighting was brutal, there were codes of conduct—however imperfect—that prioritized the ideological winning of hearts and minds. Today, the brutality is the point. The goal is no longer to incorporate the "enemy" into a better version of the state, but to break them so completely that they can no longer function as a political entity.
This shift in strategy has deep implications for Ethiopia’s social fabric. When women are targeted so specifically, the "peace" that follows is merely a state of suppressed trauma. It is not a foundation for a functioning country.
The Ethnic Federalism Trap
To understand why the warnings of these veterans are being ignored, one must look at the wreckage of the ethnic federalist system. Designed to give autonomy to Ethiopia's diverse "nations and nationalities," it has instead become a series of fortified silos.
The Amhara Pivot
For years, the Amhara elite were the junior partners in the federal arrangement. Now, feeling betrayed by the federal government’s perceived tilt toward Oromo interests and the fallout of the Tigray War, they have mobilized. The Fano militias are not a unified army; they are a decentralized response to a perceived existential threat. The veterans know that fighting a decentralized, ideologically driven force in their own heartland is a recipe for a forever war.
The Oromia Internal Fracture
The Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) continues to fight a grinding insurgency that the government claims to have suppressed dozens of times. Each claim of victory is followed by a new ambush or a fresh wave of kidnappings. The government’s inability to secure the roads just a few hours outside the capital is a damning indictment of its "strongman" image.
The Economic Engine of Conflict
War in Ethiopia is not just about identity; it is about resources. The nation is grappling with a massive debt burden and a shortage of foreign exchange. By continuing to pour a massive percentage of the national budget into military hardware and the maintenance of a bloated security apparatus, the government is starving the very development projects that could provide an alternative to joining a militia.
A young man in the rural highlands faces a choice: scratch a living out of a degraded plot of land with no access to credit or fertilizer, or pick up a Kalashnikov and earn a salary—or at least the license to loot. Until the economic incentives change, the supply of fighters will be inexhaustible. The female veterans of the 80s fought for "land to the tiller." Today’s youth fight simply for the hope of a meal or a moment of power in a world that has discarded them.
The Failure of International Mediators
The international community, led by the African Union and the United States, has been consistently behind the curve. They celebrated the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, failing to see the warning signs of the coming conflagration. They then treated the Tigray War as an isolated incident rather than a symptom of a systemic collapse.
Current diplomatic efforts focus on "national dialogue," but these sessions are often staged-managed events that exclude the most potent critics of the government. True dialogue requires the participation of those who have held the guns. The female veterans who now live in poverty in Mekelle, Bahir Dar, or Addis Ababa are rarely invited to these high-level summits. Their lived experience of how wars actually end—through painful, messy compromise rather than total annihilation—is viewed as an inconvenience to the "modern" political narrative.
Why the Warnings Matter Now
We are witnessing the "Somalization" of Ethiopia. This is not a hyperbolic claim. When the central government loses the monopoly on violence and regional states begin to form their own foreign policies and buy their own weapons, the state is no longer a state; it is a collection of warring fiefdoms held together by a fading map.
The veterans warn that once the genie of ethnic mobilization is fully out of the bottle, it cannot be put back by a decree from the Prime Minister's office. They remember the years of chaos before the TPLF-led coalition brought order in 1991. They know that "order" bought with blood is fragile.
The current path leads to a fractured highland, a besieged capital, and a series of regional wars that will draw in neighbors like Eritrea, Sudan, and Somalia. The warnings from the women who fought before are not just nostalgic reminiscences; they are a diagnostic report of a dying political system.
The only way to stop the slide is a genuine, unconditional devolution of power and an immediate cessation of the use of heavy weaponry against domestic populations. Anything less is just a pause before the next, even bloodier, chapter begins.
Stop the drones. Open the roads. Talk to the people who actually know what it costs to win a war they eventually lost.
