Mekelle, February 10, 2025 (Tigray Herald)
Our Dilemma as Tigrayans
Bereket Kiros
The last five years represent the most significant challenge and are hard for Tigrayans to swallow. I realize now and then, at home and in diaspora, the pain, agony, and fear about the fate of our Tigrai. We all hurt when we witness injustice and genocide committed against our brothers/sisters, for we feel the pain as if it inflected on us personally wherever we live. Millions of our people were uprooted and thrown into shelters.
On the streets of cities, many of our displaced have become permanently displaced, squatting in makeshift plastics in significant towns. After the Pretoria agreement, they lost hope and have not yet been able to rebuild their lives.
They are in a desperate situation while TPLF leadership continues to prioritize the party over the untold suffering of our people. One would expect that TPLF would feel responsible for the messy politics orchestrated by Abiy Ahammed.
We have expressed heart-wrenching disappointment when we felt abandoned by so-called political leaders. Thus, the expectations for the basic security of the people were neglected, and the Pretoria agreement was put on the back burner.
A vicious circle has taken hold in Tigrai, where the Interim government is crippled and less able to act. I cannot possibly include all the different problems affecting Tigrai. Still, I focus on why our voices and concerns do not deserve attention and decide our fate by a party in a terrible social-political crisis.
The rift has been simmering for some time beneath the surface, resulting in chaos and further division after the army decided to side with TPLF. This came as a shocking surprise from decades of senior army officials. How will such a decision affect the economy, fuel, monetary, transportation, and political environment? They have precipitated a crisis of unprecedented magnitude, at least in a short time.
Why did TPLF leaders betray their people who offered anything they asked and continue to take away our dignity with no remorse for their political miscalculation? Political parties should provide leadership by floating news ahead of their time, building public opinion in favor of such ideas, and acting as change agents for implementing ideas. In any democratic society, change or review of the constitution is a long-term issue that needs voters’ vision, commitment, and perseverance.
TPLF lacks a party vision but has chosen to serve the people. TPLF polity today faces a bankruptcy of the mind; it has become a theater of the absurd. Too much had happened in the meantime, and too much was still happening as a promise or a threat to Shabia’s alliance.
I honor all those young men and women who fought for the freedom of all of us against brutal dictators and Genociders. The rift in the Interim administration simmered after Getachew was elected to serve the transitional government for some time. It was overshadowed by the person responsible for leading Tigrai.
The culture that served TPLF well in the past is crumbling and failing to answer the young generation’s demands for change. This has caused widespread cynicism among Tegaru at home and in the diaspora. We could argue that resolving internal politics was and has been only determined through the barrel of a gun, from incurable diseases of political culture eliminated foes by force.
The wave of protests that swept Tigrai cities set in motion a process of regime change by sending a powerful signal that there should be no more meaningless war. War is not an option; One should be able to take a risk for peace. No responsible leadership can be impulsive; One must see the long-term consequences.
As Tegrau, we have to move towards a better understanding of our checkered history with TPLF and not sweep it all under the rug as if nothing had happened in the last fifty years. The act of disclosure will help us to remove all deceit, corruption, nepotism, and Aweragism.
We need to undergo to clean our souls from deeply buried mistakes and a sense of guilt. Only after such honest acknowledgment will we be able to work in unionism as responsible people. What is happening in Tigrai by our leadership? We are fuming with anger, but that will not take us anywhere. We need to find a solution to our misery and establish in its place a system that will be just and fair to all Tegaru.
Thus, below, I have outlined the core principle we should uphold where we stand on issues of the Pretoria Agreement, i.e., the Territorial integrity of Tigrai before the Genocidal war and the return of our displaced people. We could not move forward through semantics arguments in such a critical time. Enemies surround us, and we do not have true friends, so we fight on many fronts within Tigrai and the diaspora. In the end, however, our history and that of other societies show again and again that it is only when we people organize strong advocacy that real change can be won.
The TPLF general’s move against the Interim government will exacerbate the situation and not be used to cover TPLF policies. Their role must be to help build and mobilize trust. It is ridiculous to seek legitimacy through intimidation and force. It is undoubtedly contempt of the constitution of the Tigrai State.
