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 one political disagreement. It is about the structure that is quietly forming underneath the current moment, and how different regional, diplomatic, military, and political developments are beginning to converge into a single strategic environment.

For readers who may not have the time to go through the entire document immediately, the central argument can be summarized simply.

The memo argues that the current danger facing Tigray is not only the possibility of another war. The deeper danger is the gradual consolidation of a political reality that hardens quietly while remaining suspended between open conflict and genuine settlement. The Pretoria Agreement reduced open warfare, but many of the core issues underneath it remained unresolved. According to the memo, this was not simply failure or delay. In many cases, carrying issues forward without resolving them became part of the governing method itself. The document describes this as a “managed space”: a condition where conflict neither fully explodes nor truly closes, while realities on the ground slowly change through time in ways that become harder to reverse. Western Tigray sits at the center of this process because delay there does not merely postpone settlement; it actively changes demographic, territorial, diplomatic, and institutional realities underneath.

The memo further argues that the different pressure points surrounding Ethiopia are no longer behaving like isolated files. Tigray, Amhara instability, Oromia insecurity, Sudan tensions, Eritrean positioning, Red Sea geopolitics, UAE and US calculations, and the June political timeline are increasingly interacting with one another. In that environment, the document warns that political substitution may occur quietly through procedure, diplomatic normalization, and narrative preparation rather than through formal cancellation of agreements. It argues that the April 2025 process surrounding the Tigray interim arrangement demonstrated how symbolic continuity can mask operational replacement. The memo therefore concludes that Tigray’s challenge is no longer only military. It is diplomatic, institutional, narrative, and temporal at the same time. The core strategic recommendation is that Tigray must move with discipline, institutional coherence, connected pressure, and urgency before the current “window of reversibility” hardens into permanent structure.
—–

The most dangerous moments are not always the moments of open war. Sometimes the more dangerous moment is the one where people slowly become accustomed to a reality that is quietly hardening underneath them.

People are asking whether the current situation will lead toward another war or whether there is still a political path left. I understand why they are asking this. After everything Tigray has passed through since 2020, people naturally look at every development through the lens of military confrontation.

But I believe the question itself is still incomplete.

The more important question is this: how does Abiy Ahmed actually behave under pressure, and what happens when the pressures around him begin converging faster than he can manage them separately? I believe this is the question that should guide our thinking now.

Because many people are still approaching this moment emotionally or procedurally. Some see every movement as immediate preparation for war. Others believe the Pretoria Agreement still sits at the center of the situation as originally designed. Others still assume that sufficient international pressure will eventually force meaningful implementation. In my opinion, none of these readings are sufficient on their own.

Before going further, one clarification is important. I am not arguing that everything unfolding around us emerges from a single centralized conspiracy or from perfect coordination among all actors. Political systems rarely function that way. Many outcomes are produced through overlapping incentives, institutional habits, and converging interests that were never formally coordinated. What matters is not whether every actor shares identical intentions. What matters is whether their actions repeatedly produce the same practical outcome. And that distinction makes the analysis I am offering more defensible, not less serious.

— —

To understand the current moment clearly, we have to look first at observable behavior. Not slogans. Not diplomatic language. Not public speeches. Behavior.

If we look carefully at Abiy Ahmed’s political conduct over time, a consistent pattern emerges.

He does not like appearing weak. At the same time, he does not like entering situations he believes he cannot control. Because of this, when pressure rises, he usually avoids direct resolution. Instead, he delays. He reframes. He absorbs pressure. He redistributes it across time. And when possible, he separates one pressure point from another so that they do not merge into a single uncontrollable crisis.

We have seen this repeatedly.

After Pretoria, the appearance of closure was created, but the core issues were carried forward unresolved. Western Tigray remained unresolved. The return of displaced people remained unresolved. Accountability remained unresolved. Constitutional normalization remained unresolved. The agreement reduced open warfare, but it did not structurally settle the political reality underneath.

This is important to understand clearly, because many people still think unresolved issues remain unresolved simply because the process is incomplete. I do not think that is the full picture. In many cases, carrying issues forward without resolving them is itself part of the governing method. It is not failure. It is design.

The same pattern appears internally. Look at FANO. The conflict remains active but structurally unresolved. Look at OLA. The same dynamic. Economic pressure is managed but not fundamentally corrected. And regionally, look at Sudan. The tensions with Sudan, including the role of RSF, are acknowledged but managed through positioning rather than durable settlement. This is not inconsistency. It is a way of governing pressure without committing to decisive outcomes.

— —

But now something important is changing.

The different pressure points are beginning to interact with one another. And this matters because Abiy’s governing method works best when each file remains isolated.

The Tigray question, Amhara instability, Oromia insecurity, economic strain, the Sudan confrontation, Eritrean unpredictability, and the coming election cycle are no longer behaving like separate files. They are beginning to compress into a single strategic environment.

And the events of the past week have demonstrated this convergence more clearly than any analysis could.

On May 4 and 5, Sudan’s government accused Ethiopia and the UAE of involvement in drone strikes on Khartoum’s international airport. Sudan presented what it described as conclusive evidence that the drones were launched from Ethiopia’s Bahir Dar airport. Sudan recalled its ambassador from Addis Ababa. Sudan’s Foreign Minister stated that the country was ready to “enter into open confrontation with Ethiopia if it becomes necessary.” Sudan has since deployed additional troops and anti-aircraft equipment to the Al-Fashaga and Gedaref border regions. The International Crisis Group warned that this dynamic is making both conflicts more regionalized and that US diplomatic efforts to de-escalate have yet to gain traction.

Ethiopia’s response on May 5 is analytically significant beyond its diplomatic surface. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry did not only deny the drone allegations. It introduced TPLF explicitly into the Sudan narrative, describing Sudan as a hub for anti-Ethiopian forces and accusing the Sudanese Armed Forces of providing arms and financial support to what it called TPLF mercenaries facilitating incursions along Ethiopia’s western frontier. I want us to sit with this for a moment. Because this is not a defensive posture. This is a narrative construction. TPLF is being repositioned in federal government communications from a regional political actor with a constitutional dispute into a cross-border destabilizing agent with external military backing. I will come back to why this matters and what must be done about it.

On May 4, the US announced it would lift the sanctions against Eritrea that were imposed specifically because of PFDJ’s role in the Tigray war. Those sanctions targeted the Eritrean military, the ruling party, and senior security officials for their documented involvement in atrocities. They are now being removed not because Eritrea has met any accountability standard, but because the Iran war and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have elevated Eritrea’s Red Sea coastline as a strategic priority for Washington. I have spoken many times about how larger geopolitical interests override Tigray-specific accountability when the portfolio calculation shifts. This is that mechanism operating in real time, and it has direct consequences for Western Tigray that I will also address.

These events did not happen in isolation. They happened within 72 hours of the Baito reconstitution on May 5. That is not coincidence. That is convergence.

— —

Before I continue, I want to define precisely what I mean when I speak about a managed space, because I think ordinary political language does not explain the current situation adequately.

What I mean is simple. Imagine a wound that is neither healing nor killing. It is being kept alive in that condition deliberately, because the person managing it benefits from keeping it exactly there. Not better. Not worse. Just chronic. That is what a managed space feels like from the inside. The conflict does not explode. But it also does not close. And while it stays open, reality slowly changes underneath it in ways that become very difficult to reverse.

This is also what I mean by a narrowing window of reversibility. I am not speaking about one thing. I am speaking about four things that close at different rates and through different mechanisms. The physical reality on the ground. The way international actors have learned to read and describe the situation. The governing structures that are or are not recognized as legitimate. And the capacity to extract real concessions through pressure. These four things do not close together. And knowing which one is closing fastest right now tells us where we must act most urgently.

Drift inside a managed space is not neutral. It has direction. And in Tigray’s case, that direction is consolidation against our interests.

— —

This is where Western Tigray becomes central to everything.

Many people still treat it as one file among many. I do not see it that way. Western Tigray is the issue that determines whether the broader political situation remains reversible at all.

Because on most political questions, delay simply postpones settlement. On Western Tigray, delay changes the reality itself.

Every month displacement continues, conditions change further. Every month demographic entrenchment deepens, conditions change further. Every month administrative normalization expands, conditions change further. Every month international fatigue grows, conditions change further. Time is not neutral there. Time itself is doing the work, without requiring any additional action from Addis Ababa.

And the US rehabilitation of PFDJ makes this worse in a specific and immediate way. Eritrean forces remain present in parts of Western Tigray. The sanctions that constrained them were imposed for their documented role in atrocities in that zone. Those constraints are now being removed. A normalized Eritrea is a less constrained Eritrea in Western Tigray. And the Sudan troop deployments to the Gedaref border region, the same area where Tigrayan fighters are known to be present, mean that any escalation in that zone would immediately activate the TPLF-mercenaries narrative Ethiopia has already constructed. The justification for federal military action in that zone has been pre-built. That is not accidental. It is preparation.

I want to say this clearly: Western Tigray is a redline. Not a preference. Not a maximalist opening position. The threshold below which no arrangement, however internationally endorsed, constitutes a real settlement. The erasure being conducted there, the deliberate demographic replacement, the militia control, the normalization of displacement, is not a territorial dispute in the conventional sense. It is the slow destruction of Tigrayan identity in that land. And every month it continues is a month in which that destruction advances.

— —

I also want to correct a misunderstanding about how political substitution happens internationally, because I think many of our people still do not fully grasp the mechanism.

Most people imagine that agreements disappear only through open rejection or formal cancellation. But this is not always how political reality operates.

Sometimes agreements remain alive symbolically while being replaced operationally underneath. And the April 2025 episode demonstrated this very clearly.

When the conflict between Getachew Reda and Debretsion Gebremichael created an institutional vacancy in Tigray, Abiy moved immediately. But he did not move clumsily. It is important to remember that Tadesse Worede himself had already emerged from internal Tigrayan discussions and had been recommended by TPLF as a compromise figure within the already agreed provisions governing TIRA continuity, even before Abiy staged the process publicly. This matters, because what followed was not the creation of legitimacy from nothing. It was the capture and redirection of an already existing Tigrayan political process.

Before formally installing anyone, he staged a public consultation, asking Tigrayans on Facebook to nominate their choice for the new regional president. But the important thing was never the consultation itself. The important thing was the political atmosphere it created. It gave the process the appearance of public participation and Tigrayan ownership in a political arrangement that had already been determined. By the time the ceremony happened, the narrative had already been prepared: this was not being presented as a federal imposition, but as a response to the people’s own expressed preferences. He then amended the governing proclamation in a single parliamentary session, shifting extension authority to the Speaker of the House alone. He staged a handover ceremony in Addis Ababa with the full diplomatic corps in attendance. The new appointee, Tadesse Worede, signed a covenant drafted entirely by his government, containing eight mandates that bear no direct relationship to the Pretoria Agreement. Those mandates did not implement Pretoria. They replaced it. And the diplomatic community, by their presence, became the endorsement.

The Pretoria Agreement was not broken in that room. It was replaced. Quietly, procedurally, and in full view of the cameras.

Now some people focus on whether diplomats consciously endorsed what happened. I do not think that is the most important point. The more important point is that diplomatic presence was converted into practical legitimacy regardless of conscious intent. And here is why this happens.

Most diplomats do not enter such situations searching for legal precision. They enter searching for immediate stability. They want de-escalation. They want continuity. They want avoidance of collapse. Inside that frame, procedural substitution can happen quietly while preserving the outward appearance of continuity.

The mechanism follows a recognizable sequence. A crisis frame is established first. Procedural speed then limits scrutiny. Ambiguity prevents early objection. Diplomatic attendance creates practical normalization. And the substitute arrangement gradually becomes the new operating baseline.

What followed confirmed this entirely. When TPLF eventually moved against the arrangement, the EU directed its pressure at Tigray, calling for de-escalation of a response to a process that had already violated Pretoria twelve months earlier. The US sent diplomats to Mekelle with warnings for TPLF leaders. The international community had been positioned on Abiy’s side before the argument even began.

This mechanism will be used again. And reaction after the ceremony is always too late. The real intervention point comes before normalization hardens. This means documentation before events, briefing before ceremonies, legal clarity before ambiguity settles, and institutional preparation before diplomatic positioning is complete.

— —

At the same time, I want to correct another misunderstanding. Because studying Abiy’s tendency toward delay and management can create the impression of a fundamentally cautious actor.

I do not think this is correct.

Abiy is ደፋር. He is bold to the point of recklessness. He is ጨካኝ. He is capable of cruelty without hesitation. He has demonstrated, repeatedly, willingness to initiate destruction when he believes he holds material advantage and when he calculates that the international response will be condemnation without consequence. The Tigray war was not accidental drift. It was a deliberate escalation decision made under a specific strategic calculation. The humanitarian catastrophe that followed, the economic damage, the diplomatic isolation, he absorbed all of it. And he survived. That survival has shaped how he reads risk ever since.

The Amhara operations demonstrated the same logic. Former allies became targets almost overnight. He went further than expected and bore the reputational cost without flinching.

The one moment he visibly recalculated was not in response to diplomatic pressure. It came when the regional environment itself suddenly became less predictable and variables appeared that could no longer be managed through his usual methods of delay and compartmentalization. As the US-Israel-Iran confrontation began reshaping the Red Sea environment and uncertainty around Eritrea increased, he quietly reduced the pressure around the Eritrean frontier without public acknowledgment. The lesson matters. He recalculates not when condemnation becomes louder, but when genuinely uncontrollable external consequences begin entering the equation.

This means Tigray cannot assume June is the initiating threshold. He may move before June, precisely because a political structure that is mid-assembly is harder to defend than one that is consolidated. He knows this. He has acted on exactly this kind of calculation before.

— —

Now I want to speak about the narrative dimension, because I believe this is the area where Tigray is currently most exposed and where immediate action is most necessary.

Before any major coercive action, narrative environments are usually prepared gradually. Political actors are repositioned from legitimate actors into destabilizing agents. Institutional reorganization becomes framed as a threat to regional stability. Constitutional restoration becomes reframed as escalation.

This mechanism is operating in real time right now.

Ethiopia’s Foreign Ministry has publicly named TPLF as mercenaries operating from Sudanese territory. Once that framing enters international briefing cycles, it converts a constitutional dispute under the Pretoria Agreement into a cross-border security threat under Ethiopian sovereign authority. Every subsequent Tigrayan movement, every political reorganization, every contact with actors in the region will be read through that frame automatically, regardless of actual intent.

So what must be done?

I believe the counter must operate on two tracks simultaneously, not in sequence.

On the first track, TPLF must place on record, in writing, circulated to diplomatic missions before the narrative enters their briefing cycles, a specific and legally framed position on the Sudan conflict. That position must clearly distinguish between the presence of Tigrayan individuals in Sudan, which is a documented humanitarian consequence of the war the federal government initiated, and any claim of TPLF operational coordination with Sudanese armed forces. And every deployment of the mercenaries narrative by Addis Ababa must be met with an equally specific response that pulls the argument back to Pretoria. The question is not what Tigrayans are doing in Sudan. The question is what the federal government has and has not implemented under Pretoria. The Sudan narrative must not be allowed to displace the Pretoria accountability story. The two must be held in the same diplomatic sentence at every opportunity.

On the second track, Tigray’s institutional reconstitution is itself the most powerful counter-narrative available. A people that has reconstituted its legitimate governing structures, that has a functioning parliament and an elected regional leadership, is not a mercenary force operating from foreign territory. The Baito reconstitution is not only a political act. It is a direct counter to the destabilizing agent framing. Tigray must make this visible, actively and specifically, to every relevant diplomatic actor. An actor with a functioning legislature electing a regional president cannot simultaneously be framed as a regionalized mercenary organization. The federal government’s narrative depends on Tigray remaining institutionally invisible. Institutional visibility breaks that dependency.

Both tracks must reach the second-tier analysts who write the briefing notes that senior diplomats read before every meeting. A narrative that enters that cycle unchallenged becomes the frame through which every subsequent event is interpreted automatically. The counter must enter that same cycle first.

— —

Before I speak about what connected pressure looks like, I want to say something honestly about Tigray’s own situation.

Any serious strategic reading must acknowledge that Tigray’s current vulnerability was not produced only externally.

Institutional rigidity, narrowing of political space, failures of internal correction, strategic misreading, and excessive concentration of political authority all contributed to conditions within which the catastrophe of 2020 became possible. This does not redistribute responsibility for the war. But it matters strategically.

Because systems that lose the ability to internally correct themselves become vulnerable when confronted by adaptive external pressure. The lesson of the post-2005 period is that narrowing internal political space reduced Tigray’s ability to stress-test assumptions, detect strategic shifts, and adapt before pressure became existential.

Internal cohesion is essential. But cohesion and intellectual closure are not the same thing. What is being built now must include both: institutional coherence and the genuine capacity for internal correction. Without both, even justified resistance risks becoming strategically rigid.

At the same time, I want to answer directly a question I know some of you are asking internally. Given everything I have described, given the Eritrea sanctions lifted, the Sudan confrontation escalating, the diplomatic space compressing, does Tigray still retain meaningful leverage?

My answer is yes. But the leverage is constrained, uneven, and narrowing. And that distinction matters.

Tigray’s leverage does not come primarily from overwhelming material strength. It comes from the fact that the environment itself remains incompletely consolidated. Ethiopia still requires the appearance of political continuity before and after June. External actors still cannot afford a second Horn of Africa catastrophe on top of Sudan. Constitutional ambiguity creates long-term complications for every actor seeking normalized relations with Addis Ababa. Western Tigray remains difficult to normalize fully internationally given the documented Human Rights record. And the Baito reconstitution has created a legitimate institutional structure that changes the terms on which Tigray engages the outside world.

The danger is that we misread either side of this reality. Overestimating our position and moving without adequate preparation. Or psychologically surrendering our leverage before the environment itself has fully consolidated. Both errors produce the same outcome.

— —

So let me speak directly about what connected pressure means in practice, because I think the concept is often misunderstood.

I am not talking about emotional escalation. I am not talking about louder rhetoric. I am talking about four connected disciplines that must operate simultaneously.

The first is integration. The constitutional question, Western Tigray, displacement, institutional legitimacy, humanitarian conditions, and international legal obligations must be raised together, consistently, not managed through separate channels as if they were unrelated files. When they are disaggregated, each can be absorbed, postponed, or selectively addressed. When they are connected and treated as a single indivisible argument, fragmentation loses its value.

The second is time discipline. And I want to explain it through the same metaphor I used for the managed space, because I think it makes the urgency concrete in a way that dates and deadlines do not.

June is not primarily an electoral marker. It is the moment when the wound becomes scar tissue.

Let me explain what I mean. We have been speaking about a managed space, about a wound being kept alive deliberately. But wounds do not stay wounds forever. If they are managed long enough without treatment, the body begins to incorporate them. Scar tissue forms, layer by layer, quietly, while everything else continues functioning normally. And once that scar tissue is deep enough, it is no longer a wound to be healed. It has become part of the anatomy.

This is what procedural substitution does over time. Each covenant that replaces Pretoria without naming it. Each ceremony that converts diplomatic presence into endorsement. Each framework that carries forward what it was meant to resolve. These are not individual events. They are layers of scar tissue forming over the unresolved obligations of the agreement that should have been the foundation. By June, if federal consolidation proceeds without movement on Western Tigray, enough layers will have accumulated that the international community will no longer read the situation as a wound requiring treatment. They will read it as existing anatomy. As the baseline from which any future engagement must begin.

That is the specific danger of June. Not that a door closes on a particular date. But that what has been forming quietly underneath, the demographic entrenchment, the procedural substitution, the diplomatic normalization, consolidates into permanent structure. After that point, reversibility does not disappear entirely. But it becomes far more costly than preventing consolidation in the first place.

This is why time discipline is not a procedural recommendation. It is a recognition that the body is already forming scar tissue. And the window during which that process can still be interrupted is narrowing. Every relevant diplomatic actor must understand June as a real structural threshold, not an ambiguous political moment, before they attend the next ceremony.

The third is pre-documentation. Before any signing, any handover, any framework announcement involving international witnesses, Tigray must have already placed on record, in writing and circulated to every relevant diplomatic mission, precisely what the Pretoria Agreement requires, what has not been implemented, and what any new arrangement must include to constitute genuine progress. And this documentation must reach not only ambassadors but the second-tier analysts who prepare their briefing notes. Documentation that enters the briefing cycle before the ceremony breaks the conversion mechanism at its source.

The fourth is narrative counter-discipline. Both tracks I described earlier, the Pretoria accountability argument and the institutional reconstitution visibility, must reach the analytical level before the federal government’s framing sets. This is not optional. It is the fourth operational requirement.

That is what connected pressure looks like. Not louder. More structured. Not escalation. Discipline with a deadline, a doctrine, and a narrative posture that does not cede the frame.

— —

I want to address three objections I know are present in this room, because they deserve honest answers.

The first is that Tigray’s leverage is being overstated. I acknowledge that leverage is constrained, uneven, and narrowing. But the argument is not that we hold a strong hand. The argument is that the hand is not empty. And misreading it in either direction, overestimating or prematurely surrendering, produces the same outcome: unmanaged drift that completes the project against us without requiring Addis Ababa to pay the cost of direct escalation.

The second is that sustained pressure risks triggering escalation. This is a real concern. But the alternative to structured pressure is unstructured drift, which is itself a form of escalation. It escalates through procedural substitution, demographic entrenchment, and narrative hardening rather than military force. The question is not whether Tigray faces danger. It is whether that danger is shaped deliberately or absorbed passively.

The third is that external actors will ultimately prioritize regional stability over unresolved justice questions regardless of what we do. This is partly true. But I am not arguing that external actors will choose justice over stability. I am arguing that the terms on which stability is defined can still be influenced. Pre-documentation, narrative counter-discipline, and integration of arguments do not change what external actors ultimately prioritize. They change what information is available to those actors when they make their calculations, and they change the institutional cost of normalization. That is meaningful even when it is not decisive.

— —

So where does all of this leave us?

The central issue now is no longer whether Tigray faces danger. That is already established. The real issue is whether the remaining political space before deeper consolidation can still be shaped deliberately.

The goal is a concrete, verifiable path toward restoration. Toward the return of displaced people. Toward territorial reversibility. Toward restoration of institutional legitimacy and meaningful political agency. Not a declaration. Not another framework that carries forward what it was meant to resolve. A path real enough that what follows it is movement, not managed stagnation.

If that path is secured, the costs that follow are costs incurred while moving toward restoration. If it is not secured, Tigray will not wait. The alliances are being built. The capacity is being assembled.

The window of reversibility is closing not only from the June electoral timeline. It is being closed from the outside, by actors rearranging the regional architecture around their own priorities. The Sudan-Ethiopia confrontation, the ambassador recall, the troop deployments to the border, the public naming of TPLF as mercenaries, the lifting of Eritrea sanctions, all of this happened within 72 hours of the Baito reconstitution. These are not unrelated events. They are the convergence I have been describing, now operating in real time.

The four disciplines I described are not optional refinements. They are the only tools we have to hold the diplomatic space open against a current that is actively running in the other direction. They must operate simultaneously, and they must be in motion before June, not after.

The external environment is already being rearranged around priorities larger than Tigray. That reality must be understood soberly.

And this is exactly why unmanaged drift, procedural ambiguity, delayed institutional consolidation, and internal fragmentation carry growing strategic cost.

The danger is not only that the window narrows naturally.

The danger is that it narrows deliberately, through procedural substitution, diplomatic normalization, demographic entrenchment, and regional rearrangement occurring faster than we organize ourselves to respond.

That is why this moment matters.

Not because outcomes are predetermined.

But because windows of reversibility eventually stop behaving like windows.

And become structure.

ትግራይ ትስዕር！ሰላም ንህዝብና！