መኸተ Is Not a Press Release

Tigray needs criticism that forces emergency institutions to become real, not commentary that reduces every crisis to one man.

I listened carefully to Tedros Tsegaye’s commentary on the Sheraro drone strike and the reactions that followed. He raised some points I agree with. Formulaic statements after an attack that kills Tigrayan youth are not enough. Leadership must be accountable. Drone deaths must not be normalized. On those points, he is right.

But I want to focus on where I think his analysis goes wrong. And I want to be direct about it, because I think the mistakes are serious.

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The first mistake is this: Tedros seems to treat weak public communication as evidence that the whole መኸተ process is empty. That is not a fair reading.

A press release is not መኸተ. A statement is not an institution. When a statement after a drone strike repeats familiar language and fails to offer new analysis, that is a failure of communication. It is a real failure and it should be named. But it does not tell us whether the Baito is functioning, whether the executive structure is being formed, whether security coordination is happening, whether diplomacy is being managed, whether the territorial restoration agenda is being pursued, or whether IDP return is being organized.

መኸተ, if it is serious, means all of those things together. It means political coordination. It means clear public communication. It means territorial clarity on Western Tigray. It means organized protection of public order. It means institutions that can speak on behalf of Tigray to the outside world with enough standing to be taken seriously. It means social cohesion that does not fracture under pressure.

If that institutional effort is underway, even imperfectly, even incompletely, then judging the whole of it through a press release is not serious analysis. It is the easiest possible reading of the hardest possible situation.

But let me be clear: weak communication is not a minor problem. In an emergency, communication is part of leadership. If the public repeatedly hears the same vocabulary after every attack, people will naturally ask whether the thinking behind the statement is also repetitive. So the current መኸተ framework cannot ask for patience without showing seriousness. It must prove itself through clearer communication, broader inclusion, visible institutional discipline, and concrete work on Western Tigray, IDP return, diplomacy, public order, and internal cohesion. My argument is not that the framework deserves blind trust. My argument is that criticism should force it to become real, not help dissolve it before something stronger exists.

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The second mistake is reducing the whole question to Debretsion.

Debretsion can be criticized. He should be held accountable where accountability is deserved. I am not here to protect him from legitimate criticism.

But Tigray’s emergency governance question is not the same as the Debretsion question. When this reading collapses everything into one name, it stops asking the institutional question: is Tigray trying to move from fragmented authority toward functional emergency structure? Is the Baito a real governing body or a ceremonial one? Is the executive formation producing coherent decision-making? Is there a plan for Western Tigray and IDP return that goes beyond statements?

Those are the questions that matter. They are harder to answer than “what did Debretsion say today.” But they are the right questions. A people under this kind of pressure cannot afford to have its most important political conversations reduced to personality verdicts.

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The third mistake involves the 2020–2022 defense, and I want to address it carefully because I think it matters for how we read the present.

The argument goes like this: the survival unity of Tigray during the war came from the people, from existential danger, from the instinct to survive. Not from TPLF. Therefore TPLF should not be given credit for the defense.

The first part of that is true. The survival unity came from the people. It was born from the depth of Tigrayan character and from the horror of what was being done to them. No party decree produced that unity. I fully agree.

But unity alone does not fight a war. Unity does not create logistics. Unity does not produce a command structure. Unity does not organize guerrilla adaptation across difficult terrain. Unity does not turn dispersed outrage into coordinated resistance that holds against a combined Ethiopian, Eritrean, and allied force with air power, artillery, and overwhelming numbers.

That organized resistance required something more. It required cadres with experience operating under extreme conditions. It required older combatants who had been through guerrilla warfare before. It required rural political networks built over decades. It required organizational memory that could be activated under fire. In Tigray’s case, a significant part of that came from TPLF’s accumulated political and military infrastructure.

But this does not mean the credit belongs only to TPLF’s older generation or to the old tegadelti. That would also be wrong. The new generation of Tigrayan youth played a decisive role in the 2020–2022 resistance. They did not only sacrifice. They learned, adapted, innovated, improved tactics, optimized battlefield methods, and in many cases rose rapidly into command responsibilities because the war demanded capacity wherever it appeared. Many surprised even those who knew Tigray well. The resistance survived because older organizational memory and new generational energy met under extreme conditions. That is the honest picture.

To recognize this layered achievement is not to excuse TPLF’s strategic failures before the war, which were grave and must be named. It is to refuse a false history in which TPLF is assigned full blame for every failure but erased from every survival achievement. We should not rewrite history because we are angry with Debretsion today.

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Now let me ask the question that this reading has not answered.

If the current emergency framework is dismissed as hollow, if the institutional effort being built around the Baito and the reconstituted executive is written off as a Debretsion operation with no real content, then what replaces it? Not eventually. Tomorrow morning.

Who defends? Who negotiates with international actors? Who manages IDP return? Who administers what remains of Tigray’s public institutions? Who holds the political space against those who are waiting, with considerable patience and considerable resources, for exactly this kind of internal collapse?

The space between dismissing what exists and building something stronger is not empty. It is the precise space in which Tigray’s enemies act. If this question cannot be answered with organizational specificity, then calling for the abandonment of the current framework before a better one is ready is not serious opposition. It is something more dangerous.

This does not mean the existing framework has a blank check. It must earn authority every day. It must widen participation beyond factional comfort zones. It must communicate with the people honestly. It must make the Baito more than a symbol. It must show that the executive structure is capable of decisions, not only appointments. It must treat opposition forces, civil society, youth, veterans, displaced communities, and the wider Tigrayan public as part of the survival architecture, not as audiences waiting for instructions.

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There is one more question I wish commentators would take seriously, and I want to raise it directly.

I have written elsewhere about Tigray’s larger political horizon: northern strategy, sovereignty, territorial integrity, Western Tigray, IDP return, and the danger of repeating the 2020–2022 cycle. I will not repeat all of that here. But I want to challenge those who are doing political commentary right now to ask a question I rarely see raised: if all indicators show that Abiy is preparing, or at least testing the ground for, another round of drone and airpower pressure against Tigray, then what is the political objective if Tigray is forced to defend itself again?

Is the objective only to survive another assault and return to another negotiation table, repeating the same cycle? Attack, sacrifice, survival, negotiation, deferral, fragmentation, and then another attack? Or is the objective to restore Tigray’s sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the safe return of its displaced people in a way that prevents the same cycle from being imposed again?

I am not saying this is simple. It is not. It requires careful reading of Addis Ababa, Asmara, Amhara forces, international actors, internal Tigrayan cohesion, and the balance between immediate survival and long-term political destiny. Nor am I saying መኸተ forces lack such a framework. I am saying this is the level of political discussion Tigray needs from its commentators. Serious commentary should not only ask whether Tigray is prepared to fight. It should ask what political horizon any forced defense is meant to serve.

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I am not asking anyone to trust Debretsion blindly. I am not defending what deserves no defense. I am not saying the current leadership has met the standard Tigray needs from it.

What I am saying is this: at this moment, in June 2026, with a drone strike on Sheraro and the threats that follow it, tearing down the only emerging emergency structure before something stronger exists is not opposition. It is a gift to the people who want Tigray finished.

Criticism must strengthen መኸተ. Not dissolve it. The difference between those two things is the difference between accountability and self-destruction.

ትግራይ ትስዕር！ሰላም ንህዝብና！