A Tigray without northern strategic depth is a Tigray that depends on others’ goodwill. The record of others’ goodwill in this region is not encouraging. The short-term battle over Western Tigray must be fought through law, history, and political pressure, without compromise and without illusion about who benefits from its continued unresolved status. But Tigray’s long-term survival requires a northern…

How TPLF helped transform Tigray — and Ethiopia — and why its achievements and failures must be held in the same frame The main argument of this essay is simple. TPLF is not just a party name. For more than five decades, it has been part of Tigray’s political life, social organization, sacrifice, and survival. During the armed struggle, it…

Eritrea, Tigray, and the Reckoning History Will Not Let Them Escape Eritrea and Tigray were made politically separate, but they were never made civilizationally foreign to each other. Eritrea can stand as Eritrea, and Tigray can stand as Tigray. Two flags can remain. Two political realities can remain. But beneath them, one people can recover the organic bond that history…

Tigrayan media is not wrong to engage anti-Abiy Oromo voices. But engagement is not analysis. The suffering of Oromo opponents of Abiy Ahmed does not dissolve the Oromo-centered structure of the state project, it only makes the project harder to see. I have been watching Ethiopian politics for a long time. What I keep seeing troubles me. I see analysis…

Tigray’s challenge is not only to prepare for danger, but to do so without breaking the moral bond between the youth, the people, and the national cause. Tigray is again being pushed into a dangerous moral and strategic debate. On one side, there is a legitimate fear that young people may be treated as expendable instruments of political or military…

Many Tigrayans have been asking why TPLF was moving so slowly. That question has not disappeared. It has changed form. On May 5, Tigray’s reinstated Baito (State Council) formally elected Debretsion Gebremichael as president, in defiance of federal warnings and in open tension with the Tadesse Worede interim administration. The Pretoria framework has entered a visibly contested phase, no longer…

When actors who helped make Tigray’s destruction possible return as architects of Ethiopia’s next political order, Tigray’s task is not to reject every conversation. ጽምዶ began as Tigray’s own survival project, a public-to-public insulation against mistrust, manipulation, and collective self-erasure among communities that share history, geography, kinship, and pain. The task is to protect it from capture, to read who…

The danger of Tigray’s splinter politics is not only that some actors want power. It is that they seek political relevance without carrying the full burden of Tigray’s national question. That is not a national program. It is political homelessness. —– In a recent Brake Show event, Tegadalay Godefay described the current splinter politics as a desire to return to…

The next negotiation will not be decided only by what Tigray demands, but by whether it enters the room as a political party seeking accommodation or as a governing institution asserting constitutional rights. —– Some of what I write here may sound familiar to readers who have followed my recent essays. I repeat these arguments deliberately, not because they have…

The danger is not simply that the Horn is being rearranged without Tigray in the room. The deeper danger is that Tigray may fail to read that rearrangement in time to convert its institutional reconstitution into political leverage. —– Washington is helping rearrange the Horn of Africa around interests that are larger than Tigray, and in some cases larger than…

On pressure, the opponent, and the logic of the decisive moment This memo is long, and intentionally so. It was not written for quick consumption or for emotional reaction. It was written for patient and focused reading. Some parts may need to be read more than once, because the argument being made is not about one event, one actor, or…

On collective responsibility, structural failure, and what genuine political reconstruction requires I would say this “What happened to Tigray was not the failure of a single party or a single leader. It was the failure of a system we all sustained, and until we name that honestly, we will remain trapped in explanations that cannot produce a future.” On May…

Tigray cannot afford to let its internal debate do what its enemies could not. There is a conversation happening inside Tigrayan households, in diaspora living rooms, on social media timelines, and in quiet exchanges between people who love Tigray deeply and disagree about what that love requires right now. It is not a comfortable conversation. It is often not a…

Frameworks may define how others interpret our actions. They must not define how we understand our own survival. The Pretoria Agreement remains the central reference point through which the current situation in Tigray is interpreted externally. It is invoked in diplomatic language, reaffirmed in international statements, and repeatedly presented as the primary path toward stability. In that sense, its role…

If Tigray does not define its own necessity, others will label its survival as provocation. We are entering a moment where actions are already understood, but their meaning is being shaped in advance. What matters now is not just what happens next, but who defines it first. For months, the political environment surrounding Tigray has been reshaped, not through open…

This is not just another political moment. It is a decisive window in which Tigray must either reassert its capacity to act or risk losing it under conditions it does not control. Before going into the details, I want to be clear about one thing: what should we expect from these new emergency power structures that Tigray is now putting…

This is not a competition for political space. It is the work of assembling a foundation that can carry the weight of our collective survival. Tigray has entered a phase that many are observing, few are fully understanding, and not all are interpreting in the same way. Over the past weeks, the discussion has been dominated by extensions, statements, and…

The loudest calls for “peace” today are not about preventing war: they are about preventing Tigray from reorganizing itself into a position where it cannot be manipulated, a narrative pushed from Addis Ababa and amplified by aligned elements within Tigray and across the diaspora. What we are witnessing today is not confusion, and it is not coincidence. It is a…

The window is narrow: act before Ethiopia’s የጨረባ (sham)  election cycle locks today’s realities into tomorrow’s structure. Activate internal political capital: Bring together the remaining strength Tigray still has. Act before the cycle locks: Move before the election cycle makes today’s reality permanent. Force a settlement: Create pressure while it still carries a political cost. Demand movement: Begin real action…

If Ethiopians are serious about revival, they must begin not with slogans or emotionally charged lyrics of unity, but with repentance, apology, and a clear demand for justice, beginning with Tigray, and extending to all those who have suffered under these cycles of violence. I found myself listening to Teddy Afro’s new album this week, not casually, but with attention.…