Mekhete saved Tigray. Now it must evolve to achieve what survival alone cannot: the return of the displaced, the restoration of occupied territories, justice for genocide, and the recovery of Tigray’s full national rights. Recent exchanges in Ethiopian political and parliamentary discourse have once again illustrated something that many Tigrayan observers like me have been tracking for some time. The…

The question is not whether Tigray should be flexible. The question is: flexible about what, under what conditions, and in whose strategic interest? When the United States announced visa restrictions on what it called “hardline members of the TPLF,” I decided to wait before responding. Not because I had no views. But because within hours of the announcement, every camp…

The most important political question facing Tigray today is not who should lead us next. It is whether we have built a society capable of continuously producing people worthy of leading us at all. On the night of November 4, 2021, police came to my house in Addis Ababa at around nine o’clock. Seven of them. Two secret service agents…

Why Tigray Must Think More Carefully About Political Renewal Politics is often consumed by events. History is shaped by institutions. At a time when political developments in and around Tigray are moving quickly, this may seem an unusual moment to write about political organization rather than current events. That choice is deliberate. Events will continue to unfold, and there will…

Before Tigray decides what it owes Ethiopia, it must decide what it owes itself. There is a case for putting Ethiopia first. It is not a weak case. It deserves to be stated honestly before it is examined. Ethiopia remains Tigray’s largest market. It remains the framework within which Tigray’s trade, its infrastructure, its financial relationships, and its administrative connections…

This is probably the longest article I have published in a very long time. I hesitated before writing it, and I hesitated again before publishing it. Not because the subject is unimportant, but because it touches one of the most sensitive debates in Tigrayan political life today. I am not asking anyone to agree with me. I am only asking…

For decades, Egypt sought to manage the Nile equation through Ethiopia and Eritrea. The actor that repeatedly altered regional outcomes was neither — it was Tigray’s organized political capacity. The lesson is not about Egypt. It is about Tigray. If Tigrayans fail to understand their own strategic weight, others will continue to calculate it more clearly than they do themselves.…

Tigray has emerged from its most dangerous internal test more consolidated than many expected. The task now is not merely to preserve that consolidation, but to convert it into diplomatic strength: entering every room with one clear message, one clear objective, and the discipline to distinguish restoration from adjustment to loss. Tigray has spent the past months passing through one…

Tigray’s trauma has amplified its disagreements so deeply that many Tigrayans now struggle to recognize how much shared ground still remains. The task is to recover that ground, organize it, and turn friction into cohesion before others turn it into fracture. እዚ ፅሑፍ፡ ናይ ድሕረ-ፕሪቶሪያ ትግራይ ፖለቲካዊ ምስሊ ብቐሊሉ ኣብ መንጎ “ደለይቲ ሰላም”ን “ደለይቲ ኲናት”ን ወይ ኣብ መንጎ “ደገፍቲ ፕሪቶሪያ”ን…

Obasanjo’s re-engagement will have meaning only if it moves Pretoria from process to enforceable chronology. But that will happen only if Tigray enters the room with sharper demands, documented positions, and a second track that does not depend on the goodwill of those who benefit from delay. Obasanjo’s arrival in Mekelle comes at a consequential moment. It follows Ethiopia’s June…

No political alternative becomes serious until it explains who protects Tigray during the dangerous interval between rejecting the current framework and building a stronger one. I have been following, with real unease, the voices now filling the social media space against the current Tigrayan መኸተ authority. I did not follow them to dismiss them. I followed them because I wanted…

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…

When a people is under pressure, the first test of its political class is not whether it can condemn past failures. It is whether it can hold together long enough to survive them. This brief reflection follows questions raised by many readers after my recent piece, The Generation That Demands More Is TPLF’s Achievement. Some asked whether a generation that…

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…