{"id":6856,"date":"2026-06-22T04:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/?p=6856"},"modified":"2026-06-22T04:59:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-22T04:59:05","slug":"suppose-they-are-right-then-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/2026\/06\/22\/suppose-they-are-right-then-what\/","title":{"rendered":"Suppose They Are Right. Then What?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is probably the longest article I have published in a very long time.<\/p>\n

I hesitated before writing it, and I hesitated again before publishing it.<\/p>\n

Not because the subject is unimportant, but because it touches one of the most sensitive debates in Tigrayan political life today.<\/p>\n

I am not asking anyone to agree with me.<\/p>\n

I am only asking for the patience to read the argument in full before judging it.<\/p>\n

Many of the questions raised in this article have been sitting in my mind for months. This was my attempt to think through them honestly and openly.<\/p>\n

If you find value in it, discuss it with friends.<\/p>\n

If you disagree, tell me why.<\/p>\n

If you believe I have missed something important, I would genuinely like to hear it.<\/p>\n

Thank you for taking the time to read.<\/p>\n

\n

Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n

Part I \u2014 Why I Am Writing This<\/a><\/p>\n

Part II \u2014 Let Us Grant Every Assumption<\/a><\/p>\n

Part III \u2014 The Argument in Its Strongest Form<\/a><\/p>\n

Interlude \u2014 What I Am Not Arguing<\/a><\/p>\n

Part IV \u2014 The Command Question: Who Holds TDF?<\/a><\/p>\n

Part V \u2014 The Negotiation Table: Who Sits There?<\/a><\/p>\n

Part VI \u2014 Western Tigray and the Displaced<\/a><\/p>\n

Part VII \u2014 The External Dimension<\/a><\/p>\n

Part VIII \u2014 The History We Keep Forgetting<\/a><\/p>\n

Part IX \u2014 What a Serious Transition Would Actually Require<\/a><\/p>\n

Part X \u2014 Testing the Structural-Liability Argument<\/a><\/p>\n

Part XI \u2014 Suppose the Transition Succeeds<\/a><\/p>\n

Part XII \u2014 Why So Many Good People Find This Argument Persuasive<\/a><\/p>\n

Part XIII \u2014 A Word to Those Who Believe They Are Right<\/a><\/p>\n

Conclusion \u2014 The Question That Remains<\/a><\/p>\n

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The question is not whether Tigray needs change. It does. The question is whether, under these extraordinary circumstances, anyone has shown how Tigray can survive the change being proposed.
<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

PART I \u2014 WHY I AM WRITING THIS<\/strong><\/p>\n

For months now, a growing chorus of Tigrayan voices, many associated with SAWET, TIP, and affiliated activist circles, has been telling Tigray that the path forward requires a new political arrangement: \u1265\u1204\u122b\u12ca<\/strong> \u12d8\u1270<\/strong> (National Dialogue), <\/strong>\u1265\u1204\u122b\u12ca<\/strong> \u1309\u1263\u12a4<\/strong> (National Congress), <\/strong>\u1235\u130d\u130d\u122d<\/strong> \u1218\u1295\u130d\u1235\u1272<\/strong> (Transitional Government), <\/strong>\u1213\u124b\u134b\u12ed<\/strong> \u1218\u1295\u130d\u1235\u1272<\/strong> (Inclusive Government).<\/strong> Their formal language differs, and some may reject the phrase “removal of the TPLF.” But in much of the public argument surrounding these proposals, the practical conclusion is the same: Tigray cannot move forward while the TPLF remains at the center of Tigrayan political life.I have listened carefully to this argument. In many respects, I remain one of the TPLF\u2019s sharpest critics. I have written openly about its mistakes, its organizational culture, and the costs that culture has imposed on Tigray. But as I watched this argument gather momentum, as I watched more ordinary Tigrayans begin to nod along with it, I found myself asking a question that none of its advocates seemed willing to answer: Suppose they are right. Then what?<\/p>\n

I did not want to write this article.<\/p>\n

Not in the way that a writer hesitates before a difficult subject. I mean something more stubborn than that. Something closer to refusal.<\/p>\n

I had tried to say something about this question before, in a piece I called The Morning After: No Alternative Is Serious Without a Survival Plan<\/a>. I had argued there that the transition argument was not serious because it came without a survival plan. I still believe that. But after I published it, something in the responses I received, and something in the conversations that followed, made me understand that the argument needed to go further. People had read the piece. Some had agreed. And still the debate was moving in the same direction, pulling people I respected toward a conclusion that the piece had not managed to stop. I began to think the issue was not only the absence of a plan. The issue was deeper. This piece is the attempt to go deeper.<\/p>\n

For weeks, every time I sat down and considered putting these thoughts in writing, something in me pushed back.<\/p>\n

Because my honest first instinct was this: a significant part of what is being said in this debate is not driven by a genuine strategic vision for Tigray. It is driven by accumulated personal grievance, factional loyalty, and in some cases, something that can only be described as political hatred dressed in the language of democratic theory.<\/p>\n

I said this to myself for weeks.<\/p>\n

And I am telling you this at the beginning because I want you to understand something important: I did not arrive at this exercise naturally. I forced myself into it. Against my instincts. Against my judgment about where much of the energy behind this argument comes from.<\/p>\n

I am asking something of you in return: a few minutes of patience before you decide what this article is trying to do.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

But something happened that made me reconsider.<\/p>\n

It was not an argument. It was an observation.<\/p>\n

I started noticing the people who were listening<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Not the loudest voices. Not the ones with the most consistent online presence. Not the ones whose political biography I could trace to older grievances and older wounds.<\/p>\n

I mean the ordinary Tigrayans. The ones who are not ideologically committed. The ones who do not spend their evenings on political forums. The ones who have been through the war, through the displacement, through the loss, and who are now simply trying to understand what is happening to their people and where things are going.<\/p>\n

These people are listening.<\/p>\n

Some of them are nodding.<\/p>\n

Some are quiet, but something in their silence suggests they are not entirely unconvinced.<\/p>\n

A neighbor. A colleague. A relative who called from Mekelle. A friend in the diaspora who used to talk about Mekete with certainty and now asks careful, measured questions about “the bigger picture.”<\/p>\n

Watching this\u2014this gradual, quiet drift\u2014changed something for me.<\/p>\n

Because these people are not motivated by hatred. They are not settling factional scores. They are not part of any coordinated political project. They are simply Tigrayans who are exhausted, who have been disappointed, who have watched sacrifices go unrewarded, who have seen their people suffer without adequate explanation of why the suffering continues.<\/p>\n

And into that exhaustion, an argument is flowing.<\/p>\n

The argument says: the problem is the TPLF. Remove that obstacle, and a better path opens. A more democratic Tigray. A more accountable leadership. A politics that serves the people rather than demanding that the people serve the politics.<\/p>\n

It is a seductive argument. It is clean. It identifies a single cause and promises a clear direction.<\/p>\n

And for a people who have been living in the complexity and pain of Tigray\u2019s situation for years, something clean and clear has an enormous emotional appeal.<\/p>\n

That is when I understood that dismissing the argument was no longer enough.<\/p>\n

If many ordinary, well-meaning Tigrayans are being drawn toward a narrative, then that narrative needs to be examined\u2014not because it deserves the compliment of my attention, but because they do.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

Before I continue, I want to say something directly to any reader who shares in the Mekete\u2014the organized Tigrayan resistance, the determination to refuse submission and restore what was taken from us.<\/p>\n

I ask your patience with this exercise.<\/p>\n

This is not a betrayal of the Mekete. It is not an attempt to weaken our collective stance. It is not a concession to the political project of those who would have Tigray surrender its territorial claims, accept its displacement as permanent, or adapt itself to a humiliation that it has every right to refuse.<\/p>\n

I am committed to those positions.<\/p>\n

But there is another group I want to speak to before I continue, and I want to speak to them carefully, because they are the people I am most afraid of losing to this argument.<\/p>\n

I am thinking of the Tigrayans who carry the war inside them in a way that does not leave. I am thinking of the woman whose son came back from the front changed in ways she cannot name. The man in the diaspora who could not sleep for two years after the siege, who still wakes at night with the weight of it. The young person in Mekelle who watched things happen to people they loved that they have never put into words and probably never will. These are not abstract people. I know some of them. You know some of them. They are among the most loyal Tigrayans alive, and they are exhausted in a way that is not political. It is physical. It is carried in the body.<\/p>\n

When an argument comes along that says the war happened because of a political failure, and that removing the source of that failure will prevent another one, this group hears something the rest of us sometimes miss. They hear: it will not happen again. That promise, spoken or unspoken, is what gives the transition argument its deepest emotional power. Not the democratic theory. Not the accountability demand. The promise that what was survived once does not have to be survived again.<\/p>\n

I understand that. I want to say directly to anyone who recognizes themselves in that description: I wrote this piece for you especially. Not to dismiss what you feel. Not to tell you that your fear is wrong. Your fear is one of the most rational responses available to a person who lived through what Tigray lived through. I wrote it because I believe the argument being offered to you as relief does not actually protect you from the thing you are afraid of. And I think you deserve to understand why, in full, before you decide where to place your trust.<\/p>\n

What I am doing here is something narrower and, I believe, more urgent: I am trying to stress-test a narrative before it gathers enough momentum to lead people somewhere dangerous without their fully understanding where they are going.<\/p>\n

I have watched Tigray navigate enough political moments to know that the most dangerous traps are not the ones that look like traps. They are the ones that look like doors.<\/p>\n

Forgive me for the exercise. Stay with me through it.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

There are moments in a people\u2019s history when certain debates feel misplaced.<\/p>\n

There are moments when the house is still burning, the wounded are still lying on the ground, the displaced are still outside their homes, and the enemy is still watching from the fence. In such moments, discussions about internal rearrangements can feel detached from the urgency of the situation.<\/p>\n

Tigray today remains in such a moment.<\/p>\n

Our territorial questions remain unresolved.<\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of our people remain displaced.<\/p>\n

The Pretoria Agreement remains only partially implemented.<\/p>\n

The threat of renewed war has not disappeared.<\/p>\n

Powerful actors, both inside and outside Ethiopia, continue to calculate their interests around Tigray\u2019s weakness rather than its recovery.<\/p>\n

This is not politics as usual.<\/p>\n

This is not a routine contest over who should occupy which office.<\/p>\n

Whether we like it or not, Tigray remains in a struggle whose central question is still one of survival.<\/p>\n

Because of this reality, I have often found myself impatient with the growing chorus of voices whose primary political project seems to be removing the TPLF from the picture.<\/p>\n

To be clear, I am not speaking about legitimate criticism of the TPLF.<\/p>\n

No serious person can deny that the organization made grave mistakes.<\/p>\n

No serious person can deny that aspects of its political culture, particularly its vanguard-party tradition, imposed heavy costs on Tigray.<\/p>\n

No serious person can deny that many Tigrayans have genuine grievances.<\/p>\n

That is not what I am arguing about.<\/p>\n

What I am arguing about is something different.<\/p>\n

I am increasingly encountering people who speak as if the removal of the TPLF is not merely one political objective among many, but the central prerequisite for solving almost every problem facing Tigray. As if, once that obstacle is cleared, the rest follows naturally.<\/p>\n

The rest does not follow naturally.<\/p>\n

It never does.<\/p>\n

Because removing something is not the same as building something. Delegitimizing a framework is not the same as replacing it. And a people that tears down what it has before it has constructed what comes next is not marching toward a better future. It is walking into an unmanaged gap.<\/p>\n

That gap\u2014the interval between here and there, between rejection and reconstruction, between what exists and what should exist\u2014is the real subject of this article.<\/p>\n

And my fear, which grew in me slowly and then suddenly with great urgency, is that many well-meaning Tigrayans are being invited to cross that gap without being shown how wide it is.<\/p>\n

The argument they are being offered is a destination.<\/p>\n

What it is not offering\u2014what it has consistently failed to provide\u2014is a map.<\/p>\n

That is the problem I want to spend time on.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

I want to be direct about the questions that began to form in me as I listened to this debate.<\/p>\n

Not the ideological questions. Not the historical questions. Not the questions about who was right and who was wrong over the last several decades of Tigrayan political life.<\/p>\n

The practical questions.<\/p>\n

Suppose these voices are completely sincere.<\/p>\n

Suppose they genuinely want what is best for Tigray.<\/p>\n

Suppose they are not motivated by personal grievances, factional loyalties, revenge, or hatred.<\/p>\n

Suppose they are right.<\/p>\n

Then what?<\/em><\/p>\n

What happens the day after?<\/p>\n

How does Tigray move from what exists today to what they believe should exist tomorrow?<\/p>\n

What is the process?<\/p>\n

Who manages it?<\/p>\n

Who secures it?<\/p>\n

Who guarantees it?<\/p>\n

Who pays the price if it fails?<\/p>\n

I found that whenever I asked these questions, the answer I received was more declaration than plan. More principle than mechanism. More statement of where we should go than explanation of how we safely get there without losing what we cannot afford to lose.<\/p>\n

And that gap between destination and road is not a secondary concern.<\/p>\n

In Tigray\u2019s current circumstances, it is the question that matters most.<\/p>\n

PART II \u2014 LET US GRANT EVERY ASSUMPTION<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to do something that I suspect will surprise some readers.<\/p>\n

I want to give the argument for transition every possible advantage.<\/p>\n

Not because I am persuaded by it. Not because I have changed my assessment of what motivates many of its loudest proponents. But because the people I am trying to reach\u2014the ordinary Tigrayans who are quietly being drawn toward it\u2014deserve to see the argument tested on the most favorable terms possible.<\/p>\n

So let me grant the assumptions.<\/p>\n

All of them.<\/p>\n

Let us assume that the voices calling for a new political order are completely sincere. That there is no personal agenda, no factional calculation, no external hand in their politics. That their anger at the TPLF is legitimate, earned, and rooted in genuine patriotic concern.<\/p>\n

Let us assume that the alternative they are proposing\u2014whether it is called an inclusive transition, a national conference, a new political arrangement, or something else\u2014is not a cover for Addis Ababa\u2019s agenda. Let us assume it is what it claims to be: a genuine attempt to create a more accountable, more democratic, more effective Tigrayan political order.<\/p>\n

Let us assume that the TPLF itself behaves responsibly. That it does not resist. That it does not sabotage. That it does not insist on protecting its institutional position at the expense of Tigray\u2019s interests. Let us assume it genuinely agrees to step back, to participate as one actor among many, to place no conditions on the process beyond protecting Tigray\u2019s core survival interests during the transition.<\/p>\n

Let us assume there is no revenge politics. No score-settling. No attempts to purge, humiliate, or exclude. Let us assume the transition is managed with the maturity and restraint that Tigray\u2019s situation demands.<\/p>\n

Let us assume the international community is supportive. That the African Union, the United States, and Tigray\u2019s other diplomatic partners recognize the new authority quickly and transfer their investment to it without interruption. Let us assume the diplomatic relationships built over years do not need to be rebuilt from scratch.<\/p>\n

Let us assume the people proposing the transition are competent. That they have thought through the sequencing. That they have prepared for the contingencies. That they have done the work that responsible political leadership requires.<\/p>\n

Let us assume good faith on every side.<\/p>\n

I am granting all of this.<\/p>\n

Every advantage.<\/p>\n

Every reasonable doubt resolved in their favor.<\/p>\n

Now.<\/p>\n

Even after granting all of those assumptions\u2014even after handing the argument everything it asks for\u2014the questions remain.<\/p>\n

Because the questions are not about intentions. They are not about sincerity. They are not about who loves Tigray more or who has the more legitimate grievance.<\/p>\n

The questions are about mechanics<\/em>.<\/p>\n

About the gap between declaring a new political order and actually having one that can function under the pressure Tigray faces.<\/p>\n

About what happens\u2014concretely, operationally, on a specific morning\u2014when the old framework steps back and the new one has not yet fully stepped forward.<\/p>\n

About who commands Tigray\u2019s defense during that interval.<\/p>\n

About who sits at the negotiating table and whose commitments Addis Ababa is bound to honor.<\/p>\n

About who maintains the diplomatic pressure on Western Tigray and IDP return when the political authority pressing that claim is preoccupied with establishing its own legitimacy.<\/p>\n

These are not hostile questions designed to protect the TPLF.<\/p>\n

They are the questions that any responsible political actor\u2014anyone who genuinely cares about whether the transition succeeds rather than simply whether it begins\u2014must be able to answer.<\/p>\n

I have been listening for those answers.<\/p>\n

I have not found them.<\/p>\n

That is what this article is about.<\/p>\n

PART III \u2014 THE ARGUMENT IN ITS STRONGEST FORM<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I subject any argument to scrutiny, intellectual honesty requires that I state it at its strongest.<\/p>\n

Not the weak version. Not the version that says TPLF made mistakes and stops there. The strategic case, not just the grievance.<\/p>\n

The argument, stated with its full force, goes something like this:<\/p>\n

The TPLF is not simply a flawed organization. It has become a structural obstacle. Its presence at the center of Tigrayan political life is the single most important reason Tigray cannot build the coalitions it needs\u2014internationally, regionally, within Ethiopia\u2014to recover what was taken from it. The TPLF carries too much history. Too much resentment. Too much association with the EPRDF era and its methods. Key actors who might otherwise support Tigray\u2019s legitimate claims\u2014Western governments, African Union member states, potential Ethiopian partners\u2014use the TPLF\u2019s presence as a convenient shield behind which to hide their hesitance. As long as Tigray is identified with the TPLF, those actors can treat its demands as the demands of a defeated party seeking restoration rather than as the legitimate claims of a people seeking justice. Remove the TPLF, and that shield disappears.<\/p>\n

Moreover\u2014and this is where the argument reaches its deepest emotional register\u2014the TPLF\u2019s internal culture has created a trust deficit that cannot be repaired. Its habit of demanding loyalty before demonstrating accountability. Its difficulty in reckoning honestly with its own errors. Its tendency to treat the organization\u2019s interests and the people\u2019s interests as one and the same. These have produced a political environment where a significant portion of Tigray\u2019s own population approaches its leadership with exhaustion and distrust. This forces Tigray to fight on two fronts simultaneously\u2014against external adversaries and against internal resentment\u2014and a people in existential danger cannot afford two fronts. Remove the structural obstacle, close the two-front problem, and Tigray can finally move forward as a unified and credible force.<\/p>\n

I am stating this argument in its strongest form because it deserves nothing less. Not because I think it is right\u2014I don\u2019t, or I would not be writing this piece\u2014but because engaging only the weak version while ignoring the strong one would be intellectual dishonesty.<\/p>\n

So let me engage the real argument. I will approach it at two levels.<\/p>\n

The first level is the process question: can Tigray navigate the interval between the old framework stepping back and the new one fully stepping forward\u2014what I will call T1\u2014without creating the institutional gap that its adversaries would immediately exploit? That question is specific and important, and Parts IV through IX of this article deal with it directly.<\/p>\n

But the second level is, I believe, the deeper one\u2014and it is the one the transition argument most consistently avoids. Even if the process goes perfectly. Even if T1 is managed without fracture. Even if the new authority is constituted, recognized, and operational within an acceptable timeline.<\/p>\n

What changes?<\/em><\/p>\n

Not: is transition risky? It is. But: what does it actually solve? For each of the actors Tigray must deal with\u2014Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa, the forces holding Western Tigray, the families in displacement camps, Eritrea, the international community, the political currents within Tigray itself\u2014what changes about their calculations because of who governs in Mekelle?<\/p>\n

That question\u2014\u201cWhat changes?\u201d\u2014is the one I will return to throughout the rest of this piece. It is, I believe, the most important strategic question Tigrayans can ask of the transition argument.<\/p>\n

INTERLUDE \u2014 WHAT I AM NOT ARGUING<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before I turn to the analysis, I want to put something on the table directly\u2014because the argument I am making is vulnerable to a legitimate counter-question: Fine. What is the current path? What is your roadmap?<\/em><\/p>\n

I am not arguing that the current path is adequate. The pace of Pretoria implementation is unacceptable. The continued displacement of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans is unacceptable. The absence of a credible timeline for Western Tigray is unacceptable. These are failures that belong to the political reality Tigray currently navigates, and anyone who defends the status quo as satisfactory is not paying attention to what that status quo costs real people every day.<\/p>\n

I am not arguing that the TPLF deserves indefinite trust or is beyond serious criticism. The organizational culture concerns raised by transition advocates are real. The demand for genuine accountability\u2014for leadership that answers to the people rather than the reverse\u2014is legitimate and should be pressed continuously, from within existing institutional spaces as well as from without.<\/p>\n

I am not arguing that patience is a strategy. Saying \u201cnot yet\u201d without specifying when, and through what mechanism, is not a political position. It is a postponement. The current framework must answer for that urgently.<\/p>\n

What I am arguing is narrower: that replacing a flawed structure requires a credible replacement structure; that the transition argument has not yet provided one; and that in Tigray\u2019s current circumstances the consequences of getting that wrong fall not on the architects of the argument but on the people who are already bearing the heaviest costs. That is all I am arguing. But it is not a small thing.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART IV \u2014 THE COMMAND QUESTION: WHO HOLDS TDF?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of all the questions raised by a political transition, none is more consequential than the question of military command.<\/p>\n

And none is more consistently avoided in the public arguments of those calling for change.<\/p>\n

This is not a coincidence. It is because the command question, honestly confronted, reveals the deepest vulnerability in the transition argument.<\/p>\n

The Tigray Defense Forces did not emerge from a political agreement. They were not constituted by a party congress or appointed by an administrative process. They were forged in existential war. Their legitimacy derives from shared sacrifice, from a culture of command earned under fire, and from a cohesion built across years of extraordinary pressure.<\/p>\n

TDF is not a Tigrayan army in the conventional sense. It is a composite force. It draws from former members of the Ethiopian National Defense Forces who chose Tigray when the moment came. It draws from regional police and militia who crossed into regular defense formations. It draws from youth volunteers who mobilized after November 2020 without being asked. It draws from veterans of the original armed struggle whose institutional memory goes back decades. And it draws from communities across Tigray who gave their sons and daughters with the understanding that this force existed to protect them.<\/p>\n

This composite origin is TDF\u2019s greatest strength. It is also the reason why its command cannot be transferred by political declaration.<\/p>\n

I have spoken with men who built that force from almost nothing. Not commanders\u2014soldiers. Men who came from farms and classrooms, who picked up weapons they had never used, who learned what they had to learn because the alternative was not an option they could live with. What I take from those conversations is something you cannot get from a political communiqu\u00e9: the cohesion that makes TDF what it is did not come from a political arrangement. It came from shared choice under the worst possible conditions. You cannot legislate that into existence. You cannot transfer it by executive decree.<\/p>\n

When a new political authority emerges\u2014however legitimate, however well-intentioned, however broadly endorsed\u2014and declares itself the political command authority over TDF, it will encounter a question that no rhetoric can answer: Have you earned it?<\/p>\n

That question will be asked not in public forums but in the field. It will be asked by commanders who have commanded battalions under bombardment. It will be asked by soldiers who watched colleagues die while following a chain of command they trusted. It will be asked in silence, through compliance or through hesitation, through unity or through fracture.<\/p>\n

A fractured TDF is not merely a military problem. It is the end of Tigray\u2019s deterrent capacity.<\/p>\n

What the federal project against Tigray requires is not a military victory\u2014the war demonstrated that is beyond reach\u2014but a Tigray that can no longer present a unified, credible defense. A TDF divided between competing political authorities, uncertain about its chain of command, hesitant about its mandate, would achieve precisely that result.<\/p>\n

No transition plan that does not answer the command question is serious. Not because the question cannot theoretically be answered, but because none of the voices currently proposing transition have yet answered it.<\/p>\n

Those proposing transition owe Tigray an operational answer\u2014not a statement of democratic commitment, not an assurance that TDF will respect civilian authority, but a specific mechanism, negotiated with TDF command, for how authority transfers and how the cohesion that TDF\u2019s effectiveness depends on is maintained through T1.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART V \u2014 THE NEGOTIATION TABLE: WHO SITS THERE?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tigray\u2019s most urgent political challenge is not internal. It is the relationship with Addis Ababa, and through Addis Ababa, with the wider international community that has invested political capital in the Pretoria process.<\/p>\n

That relationship requires a recognized, authoritative negotiating partner on Tigray\u2019s side. Not a collection of voices. Not a transitional committee still debating its own mandate. A partner whose authority is clear, whose commitments are binding, and whose continuity can be relied upon across a negotiation process that will not be resolved in days or weeks.<\/p>\n

Now consider what happens to that relationship during T1.<\/p>\n

Addis Ababa observes that Tigray\u2019s institutional framework is being contested from within. What is the rational response of an adversary watching this happen? It is not to accelerate negotiations. It is to wait.<\/p>\n

Why negotiate with a framework that may not exist in its current form next month? Why make concessions to an authority that its own people are challenging? Why absorb the domestic political cost of implementing Pretoria when the other side is too distracted by internal rearrangements to hold you accountable?<\/p>\n

Addis Ababa has never needed to act in bad faith on Pretoria. The federal center has only needed patience. And Tigray\u2019s internal divisions have been among the most reliable sources of that patience.<\/p>\n

During that period of consolidation, the negotiation over Pretoria does not pause. The situation of Tigray\u2019s displaced population does not pause. The diplomatic calendar does not pause. The new authority will be negotiating from scratch on issues that require institutional memory, established relationships, and a track record that demonstrates credibility\u2014assets that cannot be transferred by political declaration and must be rebuilt. That rebuilding takes time Tigray does not have.<\/p>\n

There is a second dimension to the negotiation question that is rarely addressed. The Pretoria Agreement was signed between specific parties. Its implementation framework has been constructed around specific actors and their institutional relationships. When those actors change, the international community does not simply transfer its investment to the successor. It reassesses. It seeks assurances. It asks questions about continuity.<\/p>\n

Western governments, the African Union, regional actors\u2014all of them have calibrated their engagement to the current framework, however imperfect. A transition that creates uncertainty about Tigray\u2019s governing authority creates uncertainty about Tigray\u2019s negotiating commitments. That uncertainty is not costless. It can translate into reduced international pressure on Addis Ababa, reduced willingness to hold the federal center accountable for non-implementation, and reduced diplomatic support for the specific demands on Western Tigray and IDP return that are Tigray\u2019s core interests.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART VI \u2014 WESTERN TIGRAY AND THE DISPLACED: WHO PRESSES THE CLAIM?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western Tigray is Tigray\u2019s most urgent unresolved territorial question. Every significant political formation in Tigray\u2014including those calling for transition\u2014declares it non-negotiable.<\/p>\n

But non-negotiable, stated without a mechanism, is not a strategy. It is a position. And positions, without the capacity to enforce them, erode over time.<\/p>\n

The displacement of hundreds of thousands of Tigrayans from Western Tigray and from other areas of conflict is not only a humanitarian crisis. It is a political and legal claim. The restoration of those individuals to their homes, with their property rights intact and their physical safety guaranteed, requires sustained political and diplomatic pressure maintained over months and years.<\/p>\n

That pressure requires continuity.<\/p>\n

It requires an authority that can sustain engagement with international human rights mechanisms, with the African Union, with bilateral diplomatic partners, and with the Ethiopian federal government across a negotiation timeline that the parties on the other side will try to stretch indefinitely.<\/p>\n

Now I want to ask a question that I think deserves a direct answer from those proposing transition:<\/p>\n

What happens to the Western Tigray claim and the IDP return demand during T1?<\/p>\n

Does it advance? Does it hold steady? Does it regress?<\/p>\n

The honest answer, given the analysis above, is that it is most likely to regress.<\/p>\n

Not because the new authority would intend to abandon these demands. But because the new authority will be preoccupied with establishing its own legitimacy, managing the command question, rebuilding international relationships, and preventing the internal fractures that T1 creates. Under those conditions, sustained, strategic pressure on Addis Ababa for Western Tigray and IDP return is not the primary item on the agenda. It becomes one of many urgent items competing for the attention of an authority that is not yet fully functional.<\/p>\n

Let me be precise about what drifting means in practice.<\/p>\n

It does not mean a dramatic reversal. It means months in which no new steps are taken. Months in which the diplomatic community\u2019s attention is occupied by Tigray\u2019s internal politics rather than by Addis Ababa\u2019s obligations under Pretoria. Months in which the people living in displacement camps continue to live in conditions that are not only unsustainable but structurally degrading.<\/p>\n

Each such month that passes without forward movement is not a neutral event. It is a cost paid by real people in real places.<\/p>\n

The displaced do not have the luxury of waiting for a new political authority to find its footing.<\/p>\n

Those proposing transition owe the displaced population an honest answer about what protects their claim during T1. Not a declaration of commitment. An operational answer.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART VII \u2014 THE EXTERNAL DIMENSION: WHO RECOGNIZES WHAT, AND WHEN?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political transitions do not occur in isolation. Tigray\u2019s current framework, for all its weaknesses, is a known quantity to the international actors who matter. The African Union brokered Pretoria with it as counterpart; the United States, the European Union, and the broader diplomatic community have calibrated their engagement around it. When they observe a political leadership change in Tigray\u2014not knowing whether the new authority will honor prior commitments, whether the military command has transferred cleanly, whether this represents consolidation or fragmentation\u2014the rational response is caution. Not hostility. Caution.<\/p>\n

And caution, in diplomatic terms, means waiting to see how things settle before reinvesting political capital. For Tigray, that wait-and-see posture is a period in which the pressure built against Addis Ababa\u2019s non-implementation is allowed to dissipate\u2014a period in which federal calculations can proceed with reduced accountability.<\/p>\n

There is also the Eritrean dimension.<\/p>\n

The relationship between Tigray and Asmara is in a delicate state of construction. The Tsimdo process has opened something real at the people-to-people level. But the state-level architecture of that relationship is still being defined. Isayas Afeworki moves through tactical silences, calculated openings, and parallel tracks he never fully discloses.<\/p>\n

A leadership transition in Tigray resets that calculation entirely. Asmara does not know the new authority. It does not have a history with them. It has not tested their positions through the accumulated exchanges of the last several years. From Asmara\u2019s perspective, a new Tigrayan authority is an unknown\u2014and Asmara treats unknowns with the same instrument it applies to everything else: patience, observation, and strategic ambiguity.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

This is not the first time that political energy has accumulated in Tigrayan and Ethiopian politics without finding the institutional home it needed. History has a pattern here, and Tigray has lived inside that pattern before.<\/p>\n

PART VIII \u2014 THE HISTORY WE KEEP FORGETTING<\/strong><\/p>\n

For years, the Ethiopian opposition defined itself primarily through its opposition to the EPRDF\u2014and more specifically to the TPLF. The grievances were real. Some of the criticisms were accurate. The demand for change was understandable.<\/p>\n

When the EPRDF finally weakened\u2014through its own internal failures, through regional pressures, through the accumulated costs of its errors\u2014the result was not democratic renewal.<\/p>\n

The result was Abiy Ahmed.<\/p>\n

I remember the moment clearly. There was an immediate flood of optimism\u2014and I understood it. Years of genuine grievance had accumulated energy that needed somewhere to go. What I watched, with increasing unease, was that energy flowing into a narrative before it had filled an institutional plan. The opposition had spent years saying what was wrong. Very few had spent equivalent effort constructing what would be right. When the moment came, the answer to \u201cwhat now?\u201d was whatever was standing closest. The rest is Tigray\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

The popular energy that had accumulated did not flow into institutional alternatives, because no serious institutional alternatives had been prepared. It flowed instead into a project that was more dangerous, more centralized, and more willing to use violence than anything that had preceded it. The anger was real. The pain was real. The hope was real. But the institutional preparation was not.<\/p>\n

Tigray should not repeat this mistake in its own form.<\/p>\n

Anti-TPLF anger, however justified in parts, cannot substitute for a serious architecture of authority, defense, negotiation, and public order. The energy of opposition is not the same thing as the capacity for governance. The legitimacy of a grievance is not the same thing as the readiness to carry a people through a period of dangerous uncertainty.<\/p>\n

The lesson is not that opposition is wrong. It is that opposition becomes dangerous when it destroys confidence in an existing order before constructing an institution capable of carrying what comes next.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART IX \u2014 WHAT A SERIOUS TRANSITION WOULD ACTUALLY REQUIRE<\/strong><\/p>\n

I am not arguing that political change in Tigray is inherently wrong or impossible. I am arguing that a serious transition\u2014one that protects Tigray\u2019s interests, preserves its organized capacity, and does not create opportunities for its adversaries\u2014requires preparations that have not yet been made.<\/p>\n

The first requirement is an answer to the command question. Not a statement of democratic principle but a specific mechanism, negotiated with TDF command, through which military authority transfers in an orderly, unambiguous, and uncontested way.<\/p>\n

The second requirement is a period of parallel operation\u2014not a sudden handover\u2014in which the incoming authority builds its capacity and its relationships while the existing framework maintains operational continuity. This is not a concession to TPLF privilege. It is the minimum requirement for preventing T1 from becoming a security vacuum.<\/p>\n

The third is a defined, operationally embedded position on Western Tigray and IDP return. Not a statement of principle but a mechanism: who maintains the diplomatic and political pressure on these issues during T1, and through what specific channels and on what timeline.<\/p>\n

And fourth: prior international engagement. Not announcement of a transition and then management of the international reaction, but pre-transition consultation with the African Union, key Western governments, and regional actors to secure at minimum some assurance that the transition will not be read as institutional collapse.<\/p>\n

These are not abstract standards. They are the minimum architecture for a transition that does not convert Tigray\u2019s political choices into strategic gifts for its adversaries.<\/p>\n

Anything less is not a transition. It is political improvisation under existential pressure.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART X \u2014 TESTING THE STRUCTURAL-LIABILITY ARGUMENT<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let me now do what honest analysis requires: take the strongest version of the argument apart, piece by piece. Its two pillars each deserve careful examination. I want to be precise about where their insight ends and their error begins.<\/p>\n

The first part of the argument\u2014that the TPLF\u2019s presence makes it harder for Tigray to build international coalitions\u2014is worth examining carefully, because it contains a grain of truth wrapped around a fundamental error.<\/p>\n

The grain of truth is this: there are international actors who use the TPLF as a convenient excuse to maintain distance from Tigray\u2019s cause. That is real. I do not deny it.<\/p>\n

But the fundamental error is the assumption that removing the TPLF would cause those actors to change their calculation.<\/p>\n

Why would it?<\/p>\n

The governments and institutions that have been most reluctant to press Addis Ababa on Pretoria implementation, on Western Tigray, on IDP return\u2014their reluctance is not primarily a function of who leads Tigray. It is a function of their own interests in Ethiopian stability, their calculations about the costs and benefits of engagement, and their assessment of what is achievable without fracturing their relationship with Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n

A new Tigrayan leadership, democratically constituted, internationally presentable, free of the TPLF\u2019s historical associations, would still be pressing the same demands. Demands that are inconvenient for the same actors who find them inconvenient today. The packaging changes. The inconvenience does not.<\/p>\n

And there is a harder version of this point.<\/p>\n

The TPLF\u2019s organizational capacity, its institutional networks, and its demonstrated willingness to defend Tigray when no international actor was willing to do so\u2014these are precisely the assets that give Tigray any leverage at all. The countries and institutions that responded most seriously to Tigray\u2019s situation did not do so because of sympathy for the TPLF. They did so because TDF existed and had demonstrated that Tigray could not simply be eliminated by military force. That demonstration is the basis of Tigray\u2019s bargaining position.<\/p>\n

A new authority, however democratically constituted, inherits that bargaining position only if it also inherits the capacity that made it possible. And that capacity\u2014as we have already discussed\u2014cannot be transferred by political declaration.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

The second part of the argument\u2014that the TPLF\u2019s internal culture has created an irreparable trust deficit\u2014is the part I find hardest to dismiss. Because I have seen it. I have lived near it. I have watched capable people become frustrated and withdraw. I have watched the party\u2019s culture of demanding loyalty before demonstrating accountability push away precisely the kind of people Tigray needs most.<\/p>\n

That is a real cost. I am not minimizing it.<\/p>\n

But I want to ask a question that I think the argument systematically avoids:<\/p>\n

Is the trust deficit a function of the TPLF\u2019s existence, or is it a function of a political culture that other Tigrayan actors have also inherited and would also reproduce?<\/p>\n

Political culture is not a property of a party. It is a property of a political system. The habits of mind, the relationship to authority, the instinct toward hierarchy and loyalty\u2014these did not originate with the TPLF in 1975. They run deeper than that. They are embedded in how Tigrayan political life has operated for generations, reinforced by struggle, by emergency, by the constant pressure of external threat.<\/p>\n

Political systems formed under prolonged emergency tend to reproduce hierarchy regardless of which actor occupies the center. This is not unique to Tigray. It is observable across political histories from Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia to the Horn. Organizations that formed under sustained existential pressure develop command cultures that new entrants, once in the same position, frequently replicate.<\/p>\n

If that is true\u2014and I believe it is at least partially true\u2014then removing the TPLF does not remove the culture. It transfers it to whoever inherits the political space. A new authority, facing the same existential pressures, operating within the same institutional patterns, managing the same relationships between organized political life and a society under threat, will reproduce many of the same tendencies. Perhaps with different faces. Perhaps with different rhetoric. But with recognizably similar structures.<\/p>\n

Changing political culture requires something more than replacing the organization that currently embodies it. It requires sustained institutional reform, time, and the kind of accumulated public experience that allows a society to develop different expectations of its leadership.<\/p>\n

None of that can be delivered by a transition decree.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART XI \u2014 SUPPOSE THE TRANSITION SUCCEEDS<\/strong><\/p>\n

The first time I came to Mekelle with real attention\u2014not just passing through\u2014was in the years of early reconstruction, when the signs of recovery were still modest and the confidence still had that particular fragility that comes from having almost nothing to fall back on. What struck me then, and has stayed with me since, was how much the visible rebuilding depended on an invisible infrastructure: the conviction that continuity was possible, that tomorrow\u2019s effort would build on today\u2019s, that the accumulated work of governance would not be interrupted by the next crisis. That invisible infrastructure\u2014institutional memory, political coherence, the belief that Tigray\u2019s organized capacity was durable\u2014was worth more than any single project or policy. It is still worth more. And it is still fragile.<\/p>\n

I want to push the thought experiment all the way now.<\/p>\n

I have spent several sections examining the risks of T1\u2014the dangerous interval of the transition itself. But there is a deeper level of the question that I have been circling and have not yet confronted directly.<\/p>\n

So let me confront it.<\/p>\n

Suppose T1 is managed perfectly.<\/p>\n

Suppose the command question is resolved. Suppose TDF transfers its political authority cleanly, without fracture, to the new structure. Suppose the international community accepts the transition without a diplomatic pause. Suppose the TPLF steps aside gracefully and plays no spoiler role. Suppose the new authority is constituted, recognized, and operational within a reasonable timeframe.<\/p>\n

Suppose, in other words, that everything goes right.<\/p>\n

Now we are in a moment I will call T2: the morning after the transition succeeds.<\/p>\n

The new authority exists.<\/p>\n

The TPLF is gone from the center.<\/p>\n

The new democratic order is in place.<\/p>\n

And I want to ask, with all the calm I can bring to the question:<\/p>\n

What problem has been solved?<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

Addis Ababa<\/strong><\/p>\n

Abiy Ahmed is still in Addis Ababa.<\/p>\n

He still controls the federal army.<\/p>\n

He still controls the airspace.<\/p>\n

He still controls the communications and the roads.<\/p>\n

He still has the same calculation about Tigray that he had the morning before the transition: that Tigray must be kept weak, contained, and unable to reassert itself as a political force in Ethiopian national life. That calculation does not change because of who governs in Mekelle. It changes only if the balance of costs and benefits facing Addis Ababa changes.<\/p>\n

So the question becomes: what changes in Addis Ababa\u2019s calculation after the transition?<\/p>\n

The advocates of transition would say: legitimacy. A more democratic Tigray is harder to dismiss internationally. A leadership not associated with the TPLF\u2019s history removes the federal center\u2019s most convenient rhetorical shield.<\/p>\n

I have already addressed part of this argument above. But let me add something specific.<\/p>\n

The federal government is not primarily using the TPLF\u2019s history as a rhetorical weapon against Tigray in international forums. It is using Tigray\u2019s internal divisions as evidence that Tigray\u2019s political order lacks the cohesion required to be a reliable partner\u2014or a credible threat. Every public expression of Tigrayan internal conflict strengthens the narrative the federal center deploys most effectively: that the Pretoria process is hostage to Tigray\u2019s own instability, not to Addis Ababa\u2019s unwillingness to implement it.<\/p>\n

A transition that is publicly contested, that generates its own resistance, that creates visible fractures in Tigrayan political life, does not weaken that narrative. It extends and deepens it. And even a clean transition\u2014one that proceeds with remarkable smoothness\u2014signals to Addis Ababa that Tigray\u2019s political priorities have shifted inward. That the new authority is preoccupied with its own consolidation rather than with advancing the demands that Addis Ababa has been avoiding.<\/p>\n

The federal center does not need Tigray to be defeated militarily. It needs Tigray to be distracted long enough for the political window to close.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

Western Tigray<\/strong><\/p>\n

Western Tigray is still occupied.<\/p>\n

The Amhara special forces and the Fano militias who entered Western Tigray during the war did not do so on behalf of the TPLF. They did so with the direct encouragement and support of Addis Ababa, as part of a project to change the demographic and territorial facts on the ground in ways that would be difficult to reverse.<\/p>\n

The new Tigrayan authority will face exactly the same actors in exactly the same positions.<\/p>\n

It will press the same demands. Return of Western Tigray. Withdrawal of external forces. Safe return of displaced Tigrayans. Restoration of property rights and administrative control.<\/p>\n

Those demands will be resisted by the same coalition of interests: Amhara regional elites who regard Western Tigray\u2019s current status as a territorial gain that must be defended, a federal center that has shown no willingness to compel that coalition to withdraw, and international actors who would prefer not to engage with the question at all.<\/p>\n

What does the new authority possess that the current framework does not?<\/p>\n

This is the question I have asked repeatedly in conversations about transition, and I have not received a satisfactory answer.<\/p>\n

The answer cannot simply be \u201cmoral legitimacy.\u201d Moral legitimacy is valuable. But moral legitimacy without coercive capacity\u2014diplomatic, legal, economic, or military\u2014does not move the actors who currently control Western Tigray. Those actors respond to costs. The question is what new costs the post-transition Tigrayan authority can impose on them that the current framework cannot.<\/p>\n

I do not see an answer.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

The Displaced<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hundreds of thousands of displaced Tigrayans are still in camps.<\/p>\n

I want to be personal for a moment. When I say \u201chundreds of thousands,\u201d I am talking about families\u2014many of them children who have spent years in conditions that will mark their development in ways they will carry for the rest of their lives. I have spoken with some of these families who cannot tell their children when they will go home, because they genuinely do not know. Their situation is not an abstraction to me. And when I ask \u201cwhat changes?\u201d for them, I am not asking as a political analyst. I am asking as someone who cannot accept that their displacement has become the stable background of a political debate that does not reach them.<\/p>\n

They are not waiting for a political theory. They are waiting to go home.<\/p>\n

Their situation is not a function of who governs in Mekelle. It is a function of the security situation in Western Tigray, the political will of Addis Ababa, and the willingness of international actors to press for implementation of the relevant commitments under Pretoria and subsequent agreements.<\/p>\n

The new authority will face the same obstacles. The same reluctance from Addis Ababa. The same international community that has been making the same statements about IDP return for years without creating the conditions for it to actually happen.<\/p>\n

What changes?<\/p>\n

I am asking this question sincerely, not rhetorically. If there is a specific mechanism by which a post-TPLF Tigrayan authority can do more for the displaced than the current framework has been able to do, I want to understand it. The people in those camps deserve an answer that goes beyond political symbolism.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

Eritrea<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eritrea is still Eritrea.<\/p>\n

The Tsimdo process has opened something real at the people-to-people level\u2014I have said this already and I believe it. But PFDJ\u2019s state-level calculations are driven by Isayas Afeworki\u2019s assessment of what serves the survival and the strategic position of his regime. They are not driven by who leads Tigray.<\/p>\n

What PFDJ watches is capacity. What it respects is the ability to impose costs. What it exploits is weakness and uncertainty.<\/p>\n

A Tigray in transition, preoccupied with internal political reconfiguration, uncertain about its military command, rebuilding its diplomatic relationships from scratch\u2014that is not a Tigray that PFDJ will approach with more respect. It is a Tigray it will approach with more calculation.<\/p>\n

And any Tigrayan political actor who has staked a claim to leadership by publicly criticizing the framework that Eritrea spent two years helping to destroy will face an adversary that understands, with perfect clarity, the value of continuing to exploit that division.<\/p>\n

What makes the new authority harder to exploit than the one it replaces?<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

The Getachew\u2013Tsadkan Question<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Getachew and Tsadkan question does not go away either.<\/p>\n

This is a point that tends to be avoided in the transition argument, because addressing it honestly complicates the picture.<\/p>\n

Getachew Reda and Tsadkan Gebretensae represent a political current that has already, in the post-Pretoria period, demonstrated a willingness to accommodate Addis Ababa\u2019s preferences at Tigray\u2019s expense. Their continued presence in the political landscape\u2014with their networks, their relationships with certain international actors, their capacity to offer Addis Ababa a version of Tigray that is more manageable\u2014is not erased by a transition. It is, in some configurations, potentially elevated by one.<\/p>\n

A political opening that weakens the current framework without simultaneously clarifying the relationship to this current creates a vacuum that it is well-positioned to fill. Not because it is stronger than the current framework. But because it is the version of Tigrayan leadership that Addis Ababa would most prefer to deal with, and Addis Ababa has demonstrated its willingness to invest in political outcomes it prefers.<\/p>\n

I am not accusing any transition advocate of knowingly advancing this outcome. I am saying that a transition that does not have a precise and public answer to this political variable is a transition that may produce an outcome its architects did not intend.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

Pretoria<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Pretoria Agreement is the least visible of these questions and, in some ways, the most consequential. It is where institutional memory matters most, and where a transition would do its quietest damage.<\/p>\n

It remains partially implemented. The most consequential provisions\u2014on Western Tigray, on IDP return, on the disarmament sequencing that was meant to accompany territorial restoration\u2014remain either suspended or entirely unaddressed. The path to fuller implementation runs through sustained, credible, organized political pressure on Addis Ababa. That pressure depends on institutional continuity: a political authority that knows the file, knows the specific ambiguities in the text, knows the history of every promise made and evaded, knows which international interlocutors have been engaged and how their concerns can be leveraged.<\/p>\n

A transition that interrupts institutional memory does not merely slow this process. It resets it. During the period of rebuilding, Addis Ababa operates with reduced accountability pressure. The political window that exists to advance Pretoria implementation is not infinite\u2014the international community\u2019s attention moves, political configurations shift, crises elsewhere displace Tigray from the agenda. Time spent rebuilding what was disrupted is time that cannot be spent advancing what was stalled.<\/p>\n

What changes about Addis Ababa\u2019s willingness to implement Pretoria because of who governs in Mekelle? I have asked this question. I have not received an answer that survives scrutiny.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

I come back, finally, to the question that the title of this piece asks.<\/p>\n

Suppose they are right.<\/p>\n

Then what?<\/p>\n

The answer I keep arriving at, after following the question through every level of the argument, is this:<\/p>\n

The strategic situation facing Tigray\u2014Addis Ababa\u2019s project, Western Tigray\u2019s occupation, the IDPs\u2019 suffering, Eritrea\u2019s calculations, the international community\u2019s hesitance, the Amhara elite\u2019s territorial ambitions\u2014none of these are primarily driven by who leads Tigray. They are driven by the interests and calculations of actors who will continue to pursue those interests and calculations regardless of Tigray\u2019s internal political arrangements.<\/p>\n

What changes Tigray\u2019s strategic situation is not the identity of its leadership. It is the balance of capability, credibility, and costs that Tigray can maintain against the actors it must deal with.<\/p>\n

That balance depends on TDF\u2019s cohesion.<\/p>\n

It depends on diplomatic continuity.<\/p>\n

It depends on the sustained, focused, credible demand for Western Tigray and IDP return maintained over time.<\/p>\n

It depends on Tigray\u2019s internal coherence, which is not a product of political unanimity\u2014no one is asking for that\u2014but of the absence of the kind of destructive internal contest that allows adversaries to exploit the gaps.<\/p>\n

A transition that preserves and strengthens those assets could, in theory, improve Tigray\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

A transition that disrupts them\u2014even temporarily, even with the best of intentions\u2014makes things worse.<\/p>\n

And the transitions being currently proposed would disrupt them. That is not a partisan conclusion. It follows from the mechanics of what is being proposed and the environment in which the proposal would have to be executed.<\/p>\n

That is what worries me most.<\/p>\n

Not that the advocates are wrong about TPLF\u2019s flaws.<\/p>\n

But that they are right about TPLF\u2019s flaws, and wrong about what follows from that rightness.<\/p>\n

PART XII \u2014 WHY SO MANY GOOD PEOPLE FIND THIS ARGUMENT PERSUASIVE<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have spent most of this article asking whether the transition argument is strategically sound. Before the conclusion, I want to ask a different question: why does it resonate so powerfully with people who are neither fools nor enemies of Tigray?<\/p>\n

Because it does resonate. I see it. I would be dishonest if I did not say so.<\/p>\n

The clearest example of this political homelessness is the post-Pretoria trajectory of Getachew Reda.<\/p>\n

I have watched, with genuine attention, the political career of Getachew Reda in the post-Pretoria period. I say this not to relitigate old debates, but to observe something that I think is analytically important.<\/p>\n

Getachew\u2019s trajectory after Pretoria came to be understood by many as an accommodation with a reduced political reality. Whether that reading is entirely fair, the observable effect was a posture that\u2014at least as perceived by a large number of Tigrayans\u2014treated the non-negotiable as negotiable. What began as strategic pragmatism appeared, to many, to drift toward acceptance of outcomes that the Tigrayan consensus had rejected.<\/p>\n

Many young Tigrayans who had placed hope in him withdrew their trust precisely because of this trajectory.<\/p>\n

But then, having withdrawn their trust from Getachew, they did not fully return to TPLF. They found themselves in a political space without a home.<\/p>\n

This is the crisis beneath the crisis. Not a crisis of objectives\u2014on Western Tigray, on the displaced, on territorial integrity, Tigrayans remain remarkably united. But a crisis of confidence in the instruments available to pursue those objectives.<\/p>\n

And into that gap, into that space of distrust and frustration, the argument for rapid transition has flowed.<\/p>\n

I understand why.<\/p>\n

But understanding why does not make the argument correct. It only explains its emotional appeal.<\/p>\n

The starting point is exhaustion. Not the exhaustion of people who are tired of fighting for Tigray\u2014most Tigrayans are not that. But the exhaustion of people who have watched extraordinary sacrifice produce inadequate results. Who gave their sons and daughters and brothers and sisters, who endured displacement and starvation and bombardment, who survived what should not have been survivable\u2014and who then watched the political process after the war produce outcomes that feel, at best, like incomplete justice, and at worst, like accommodation with an adversary that still holds Tigrayan land and still keeps Tigrayan families from their homes.<\/p>\n

That exhaustion is real. I feel it too. And into exhaustion, simple explanations are welcome. The transition argument offers one: the obstacle is inside Tigray, and it has a name. Remove it, and the path opens.<\/p>\n

There is also what I would call leadership fatigue\u2014and I want to say this carefully, because it is easy to misunderstand. The issue is not simply that the TPLF made mistakes, though it did. The deeper issue is the absence of a convincing forward vision. Not a defense of what exists. Not an explanation of why the hard things have not yet happened. But a credible, specific account of where Tigray is going, on what timeline, through what steps, and with what honest acknowledgment of how far the gap remains between aspiration and reality. In the absence of that forward vision, the transition argument fills the space. It says: the reason there is no compelling path forward is the organization blocking it. Remove the blockage, and the path can emerge.<\/p>\n

I understand the logic. I have watched it work on people I respect.<\/p>\n

There is a particular dimension to this among the diaspora\u2014those who carry Tigray in their hearts from a distance. They carry a particular kind of pain: the helplessness of watching from outside, of contributing what they can but never being fully present for the struggle, of loving a place they cannot protect from where they stand. When an argument arrives that says the problem has an answer and you can help apply it, that argument has an emotional pull that is hard to resist from a place of grief and distance.<\/p>\n

I also want to acknowledge something that is true regardless of whether the transition argument is strategically correct: the underlying demand it speaks to is legitimate. The demand for genuine accountability. For leadership that answers to the people rather than demanding the people answer to it. For political life organized around the advancement of the people, not the survival of the organization. These demands are right. They deserve to be taken seriously. The failure of the transition argument is not that it raises these demands. It is that it provides an incomplete answer while promising a complete one.<\/p>\n

Understanding why good people find an argument persuasive does not make that argument strategically sound. But it does change how we should engage with those who hold it. The right response to exhaustion is not dismissal. It is to take the underlying demand seriously\u2014for accountability, for forward vision, for a politics worthy of the sacrifice\u2014and to insist that these demands be met through paths that do not require dismantling what Tigray cannot afford to lose.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

PART XIII \u2014 A WORD TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE THEY ARE RIGHT<\/strong><\/p>\n

I want to close this exercise not with a conclusion about who is right, but with a direct address to those who are most convinced of the argument for change.<\/p>\n

You may be right about many things.<\/p>\n

You may be right that the TPLF\u2019s political culture has costs that Tigray can no longer afford to carry.<\/p>\n

You may be right that the trust deficit surrounding the current framework is real and cannot be wished away.<\/p>\n

You may be right that Tigray needs a more plural, more inclusive, more accountable political order.<\/p>\n

You may even be right that, under different circumstances, a transition would be possible and beneficial.<\/p>\n

But being right about the destination is not the same thing as being ready to manage the journey.<\/p>\n

And this is where I ask you, with respect and without condescension, to hold yourselves to the same standard you apply to those you criticize. If you demand accountability from the current framework, demand accountability from your own proposal. If you insist that the current leadership answer for its failures, insist that your alternative answer for its preparations. If you ask Tigray to trust a new direction, give Tigray a reason to trust that the new direction has been thought through.<\/p>\n

The most valuable contribution you can make right now is not to intensify pressure for transition. It is to do the work that makes a transition survivable: the command architecture, the diplomatic pre-engagement, the operational plan for Western Tigray and the displaced that does not depend on the transition succeeding in order to function. Enter the existing institutional space\u2014the reconstituted Baito, the executive structures in place\u2014and use it to force accountability from within. Not because the existing framework is perfect. But because reform from within produces less T1 risk than replacement from outside, and T1 risk in Tigray\u2019s current circumstances is not an abstract political cost. It is a cost measured in territory, in displacement, in security, and in lives.<\/p>\n

I want to say one more thing before I close, and I want to say it honestly, the way you say something honest to people you have known long enough to stop pretending with.<\/p>\n

For months now, I have been writing about this question publicly. I have put my arguments in writing, with my name on them, on a platform where anyone can read them and respond. I have not been subtle about what I am asking. I have been asking the people who believe most strongly in the transition argument to engage with the questions I am raising. Not to agree with me. Not to abandon their position. Just to engage, in writing, with the specific questions that I keep asking and that keep going unanswered. What is the plan for TDF command? What happens to the Western Tigray claim during T1? What changes in Addis Ababa’s calculation at T2?<\/p>\n

I am still waiting. Not one of the people most publicly committed to this argument has come back with a written response that engages the substance. I have received messages. I have received reactions. I have had conversations where people tell me privately that the questions are fair but complicated. Complicated is not an answer. It is an acknowledgment that the answer has not been found.<\/p>\n

I am not saying this to embarrass anyone. I am saying it because the silence itself is part of the argument. If the transition case were as ready as its advocates suggest, the questions in this piece would have answers. Detailed ones. Operational ones. The kind you write down and share because you want people to trust the road you are asking them to walk. The absence of those answers, after months of public debate, tells us something. It tells us the work has not been done. And the people who will pay the cost of that undone work are not the people doing the arguing. They are the ones who have already given everything, and who are being asked, quietly and with great confidence, to trust the road one more time.<\/p>\n

\u2014 \u2014<\/p>\n

CONCLUSION \u2014 THE QUESTION THAT REMAINS<\/strong><\/p>\n

I began this piece by asking a simple question: Suppose they are right. Then what?<\/p>\n

I have followed that question through every level of the argument. Through the process risks that are real and specific. Through the strategic matrix\u2014asking, for each actor Tigray must deal with, what changes about their calculations because of who governs in Mekelle. Through the morning after the transition succeeds, and the discovery that most of Tigray\u2019s hardest problems are generated by actors whose incentives are not primarily shaped by Tigrayan internal political arrangements.<\/p>\n

What I keep arriving at is this: the transition argument is incomplete in precisely the ways that matter most. It locates the source of Tigray\u2019s problems primarily inside Tigray\u2014in the TPLF\u2019s structural liabilities, in its trust deficits, in its organizational culture. But most of Tigray\u2019s actual strategic problems originate outside Tigray, with actors whose calculations will continue after the transition regardless of who holds power in Mekelle.<\/p>\n

The argument promises to unlock doors that are held shut from the outside by actors with their own keys. Changing the lock inside Tigray does not change their calculation about whether to open.<\/p>\n

There is a larger frame I want to place around this before I finish. Tigray\u2019s predicament is not only a product of its own decisions. It is embedded in an Ethiopian political landscape that continues to generate recurring crises because foundational questions remain unresolved: about the relationship between federal authority and regional sovereignty, about who controls legitimate violence, about whose territorial and identity claims the state will recognize. Ethiopia experiences political earthquakes not primarily because of any single leader\u2019s character, but because the ground beneath the political system is structurally unstable. Tigray\u2019s struggle for its rights is inseparable from this larger question of whether Ethiopia can construct a political order that resolves, rather than suppresses, its foundational conflicts. A leadership transition in Mekelle does not change that landscape. It simply determines who must navigate it\u2014and in what condition.<\/p>\n

I want to be honest about what this means\u2014and what it does not mean.<\/p>\n

It does not mean that the TPLF is beyond criticism. It is not. The trust deficit is real. The organizational culture concerns are real. The demand for greater accountability and political pluralism is legitimate. I do not dismiss any of it.<\/p>\n

What I am saying is that being right about the diagnosis is not the same thing as being right about the remedy. And a political argument that cannot answer \u201cwhat changes?\u201d for Abiy Ahmed, for Western Tigray, for the families in displacement camps, for Eritrea\u2019s strategic calculation, for the stalled implementation of Pretoria\u2014that argument has not yet done the work that the seriousness of Tigray\u2019s situation demands.<\/p>\n

I have been asking this question\u2014Suppose they are right. Then what?\u2014for a long time now. I am still waiting for an answer that goes beyond aspiration. Beyond the promise of legitimacy, the hope of international reception, the prediction of coalition-building that offers no mechanism.<\/p>\n

Let me say directly what this argument is not: it is not a defense of stasis. The right question is not whether Tigray needs a more accountable, more forward-looking political life\u2014it does. The right question is what conditions would make a transition survivable rather than destructive. Those conditions include a resolved command question, a period of parallel operation, pre-transition international engagement, and an operational plan for the displaced that does not depend on the transition succeeding in order to function. None of those conditions currently exist. When they do, the conversation changes.<\/p>\n

Let me state the position that follows from this argument as clearly as I can. With all its defects, Tigrayans should defend the Mekete\u2014not as a call to seek war, and not as an endorsement of indefinite one-party rule, but as the organized capacity through which Tigray can protect its people, return the displaced to their homes, recover occupied territories, preserve deterrence, and prevent another catastrophe while those national tasks remain unfinished.<\/p>\n

Defending the Mekete during this emergency does not suspend accountability. It obligates the institutions that currently carry Tigray\u2019s organized capacity to reform, to widen participation, to answer the public honestly, and to prepare the ground for a political order larger than any one organization.<\/p>\n

Nothing in this essay should be read as an argument against political change in Tigray, or as a claim that the current order is the final destination of our national journey. Tigray needs a broader and more competitive political life. Our people deserve to debate different visions of governance, development, security, and national strategy.<\/p>\n

That process had already begun before the war. The 2020 election showed that Tigrayans were beginning to test different political ideas, parties, and leaders. It was not the end of democratic development in Tigray. It was an opening that the war interrupted, and one that should return with greater maturity.<\/p>\n

The question is not whether Tigray should eventually choose among competing political visions. It will. The question is whether that choice should be made from a position of national recovery or national emergency. The disagreement with the transition camp is about sequencing, not about democracy itself.<\/p>\n

When the displaced have returned home, when occupied territories have been recovered, and when Tigrayans can deliberate without existential insecurity hanging over every disagreement, different political views should compete openly for the right to govern. That competition will be strongest if it emerges from national recovery rather than national fragility, from security rather than a vacuum, and from a people choosing freely rather than reacting under pressure.<\/p>\n

Tigray is a people that has already paid extraordinary costs for questions that were not answered before the journey began. They deserve better than to be invited into another one.<\/p>\n

That is a counsel of seriousness, not paralysis. Answer the questions that remain: operationally, specifically, honestly. Tigray has already given everything once. The least it deserves is an honest answer before the road begins again.<\/p>\n

\u1275\u130d\u122b\u12ed \u1275\u1235\u12d5\u122d\uff01\u1230\u120b\u121d \u1295\u1205\u12dd\u1265\u1293<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 the patience to read the argument in full before judging it. Many of the questions raised in this article have been sitting in my mind for months. This was my attempt to think through them honestly and openly. If you find value in it, discuss it with friends. If you disagree, tell me why. If you believe I have missed something important, I would genuinely like to hear it. Thank you for taking the time to read. Contents Part I \u2014 Why I Am Writing This Part II \u2014 Let Us Grant Every Assumption Part III \u2014 The Argument in Its Strongest Form Interlude \u2014 What I Am Not Arguing Part IV \u2014 The Command Question: Who Holds TDF? Part V \u2014 The Negotiation Table: Who Sits There? Part VI \u2014 Western Tigray and the Displaced Part VII \u2014 The External Dimension Part VIII \u2014 The History We Keep Forgetting Part IX \u2014 What a Serious Transition Would Actually Require Part X \u2014 Testing the Structural-Liability Argument Part XI \u2014 Suppose the Transition Succeeds Part XII \u2014 Why So Many Good People Find This Argument Persuasive Part XIII \u2014 A Word to Those Who Believe They Are Right Conclusion \u2014 The Question That Remains The question is not whether Tigray needs change. It does. The question is whether, under these extraordinary circumstances, anyone has shown how Tigray can survive the change being proposed. PART I \u2014 WHY I AM WRITING THIS For months now, a growing chorus of Tigrayan voices, many associated with SAWET, TIP, and affiliated activist circles, has been telling Tigray that the path forward requires a new political arrangement: \u1265\u1204\u122b\u12ca \u12d8\u1270 (National Dialogue), \u1265\u1204\u122b\u12ca \u1309\u1263\u12a4 (National Congress), \u1235\u130d\u130d\u122d \u1218\u1295\u130d\u1235\u1272 (Transitional Government), \u1213\u124b\u134b\u12ed \u1218\u1295\u130d\u1235\u1272 (Inclusive Government). Their formal language differs, and some may reject the phrase “removal of the TPLF.” But in much of the public argument surrounding these proposals, the practical conclusion is the same: Tigray cannot move forward while the TPLF remains at the center of Tigrayan political life.I have listened carefully to this argument. In many respects, I remain one of the TPLF\u2019s sharpest critics. I have written openly about its mistakes, its organizational culture, and the costs that culture has imposed on Tigray. But as I watched this argument gather momentum, as I watched more ordinary Tigrayans begin to nod along with it, I found myself asking a question that none of its advocates seemed willing to answer: Suppose they are right. Then what? I did not want to write this article. Not in the way that a writer hesitates before a difficult subject. I mean something more stubborn than that. Something closer to refusal. I had tried to say something about this question before, in a piece I called The Morning After: No Alternative Is Serious Without a Survival Plan. I had argued there that the transition argument was not serious because it came without a survival plan. I still believe that. But after I published it, something in the responses I received, and something in the conversations that followed, made me understand that the argument needed to go further. People had read the piece. Some had agreed. And still the debate was moving in the same direction, pulling people I respected toward a conclusion that the piece had not managed to stop. I began to think the issue was not only the absence of a plan. The issue was deeper. This piece is the attempt to go deeper. For weeks, every time I sat down and considered putting these thoughts in writing, something in me pushed back. Because my honest first instinct was this: a significant part of what is being said in this debate is not driven by a genuine strategic vision for Tigray. It is driven by accumulated personal grievance, factional loyalty, and in some cases, something that can only be described as political hatred dressed in the language of democratic theory. I said this to myself for weeks. And I am telling you this at the beginning because I want you to understand something important: I did not arrive at this exercise naturally. I forced myself into it. Against my instincts. Against my judgment about where much of the energy behind this argument comes from. I am asking something of you in return: a few minutes of patience before you decide what this article is trying to do. \u2014 \u2014 But something happened that made me reconsider. It was not an argument. It was an observation. I started noticing the people who were listening. Not the loudest voices. Not the ones with the most consistent online presence. Not the ones whose political biography I could trace to older grievances and older wounds. I mean the ordinary Tigrayans. The ones who are not ideologically committed. The ones who do not spend their evenings on political forums. The ones who have been through the war, through the displacement, through the loss, and who are now simply trying to understand what is happening to their people and where things are going. These people are listening. Some of them are nodding. Some are quiet, but something in their silence suggests they are not entirely unconvinced. A neighbor. A colleague. A relative who called from Mekelle. A friend in the diaspora who used to talk about Mekete with certainty and now asks careful, measured questions about “the bigger picture.” Watching this\u2014this gradual, quiet drift\u2014changed something for me. Because these people are not motivated by hatred. They are not settling factional scores. They are not part of any coordinated political project. They are simply Tigrayans who are exhausted, who have been disappointed, who have watched sacrifices go unrewarded, who have seen their people suffer without adequate explanation of why the suffering continues. And into that exhaustion, an argument is flowing. The argument says: the problem is the TPLF. Remove that obstacle, and a better path opens. A more democratic Tigray. A more accountable leadership. A politics that serves the people rather than demanding that the people serve the politics. It is a seductive argument. It is clean. It identifies a single cause and promises a clear direction. And for a people who have been living in the complexity and pain of Tigray\u2019s situation for years, something clean and clear has an enormous emotional appeal. That is when I understood that dismissing the argument was no longer enough. If many ordinary, well-meaning Tigrayans are being drawn toward a narrative, then that narrative needs to be examined\u2014not because it deserves the compliment of my attention, but because they do. \u2014 \u2014 Before I continue, I want to say something directly to any reader who shares in the Mekete\u2014the organized Tigrayan resistance, the determination to refuse submission and restore what was taken from us. I ask your patience with this exercise. This is not a betrayal of the Mekete. It is not an attempt to weaken our collective stance. It is not a concession to the political project of those who would have Tigray surrender its territorial claims, accept its displacement as permanent, or adapt itself to a humiliation that it has every right to refuse. I am committed to those positions. But there is another group I want to speak to before I continue, and I want to speak to them carefully, because they are the people I am most afraid of losing to this argument. I am thinking of the Tigrayans who carry the war inside them in a way that does not leave. I am thinking of the woman whose son came back from the front changed in ways she cannot name. The man in the diaspora who could not sleep for two years after the siege, who still wakes at night with the weight of it. The young person in Mekelle who watched things happen to people they loved that they have never put into words and probably never will. These are not abstract people. I know some of them. You know some of them. They are among the most loyal Tigrayans alive, and they are exhausted in a way that is not political. It is physical. It is carried in the body. When an argument comes along that says the war happened because of a political failure, and that removing the source of that failure will prevent another one, this group hears something the rest of us sometimes miss. They hear: it will not happen again. That promise, spoken or unspoken, is what gives the transition argument its deepest emotional power. Not the democratic theory. Not the accountability demand. The promise that what was survived once does not have to be survived again. I understand that. I want to say directly to anyone who recognizes themselves in that description: I wrote this piece for you especially. Not to dismiss what you feel. Not to tell you that your fear is wrong. Your fear is one of the most rational responses available to a person who lived through what Tigray lived through. I wrote it because I believe the argument being offered to you as relief does not actually protect you from the thing you are afraid of. And I think you deserve to understand why, in full, before you decide where to place your trust. What I am doing here is something narrower and, I believe, more urgent: I am trying to stress-test a narrative before it gathers enough momentum to lead people somewhere dangerous without their fully understanding where they are going. I have watched Tigray navigate enough political moments to know that the most dangerous traps are not the ones that look like traps. They are the ones that look like doors. Forgive me for the exercise. Stay with me through it. \u2014 \u2014 There are moments in a people\u2019s history when certain debates feel misplaced. There are moments when the house is still burning, the wounded are still lying on the ground, the displaced are still outside their homes, and the enemy is still watching from the fence. In such moments, discussions about internal rearrangements can feel detached from the urgency of the situation. Tigray today remains in such a moment. Our territorial questions remain unresolved. Hundreds of thousands of our people remain displaced. The Pretoria Agreement remains only partially implemented. The threat of renewed war has not disappeared. Powerful actors, both inside and outside Ethiopia, continue to calculate their interests around Tigray\u2019s weakness rather than its recovery. This is not politics as usual. This is not a routine contest over who should occupy which office. Whether we like it or not, Tigray remains in a struggle whose central question is still one of survival. Because of this reality, I have often found myself impatient with the growing chorus of voices whose primary political project seems to be removing the TPLF from the picture. To be clear, I am not speaking about legitimate criticism of the TPLF. No serious person can deny that the organization made grave mistakes. No serious person can deny that aspects of its political culture, particularly its vanguard-party tradition, imposed heavy costs on Tigray. No serious person can deny that many Tigrayans have genuine grievances. That is not what I am arguing about. What I am arguing about is something different. I am increasingly encountering people who speak as if the removal of the TPLF is not merely one political objective among many, but the central prerequisite for solving almost every problem facing Tigray. As if, once that obstacle is cleared, the rest follows naturally. The rest does not follow naturally. It never does. Because removing something is not the same as building something. Delegitimizing…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6856"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6866,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6856\/revisions\/6866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tigrayinsights.net\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}