In my article of February 2, 2024, entitled “The Perils of Haste” and published in Eurasia Review, I noted that, “The region needs to address the actual needs of the population and not the needs of ambitious politicians making history for themselves, for good or bad. It actually needs to watch for the perils that accompany haste in the decision-making processes of the region.” Nothing really much has changed in the region since then.

All the actions of the ambitious politicians of the region have only aggravated the region’s situation and put it in more peril than it ever faced before. The actions of the Ethiopian regime were the main cause of the worsening problems of the region and are marked by an untested Oromo ethnic hegemony over the vast populations of the region. The regime has since January of this year 2024, been pursuing wars within its own country and exporting it to others and most particularly Somalia whose territories and seas the regime covets, but which remain as distant as they ever were.

The continuous wars of the regime and threats they pronounce on its own people and neighbors have, indeed, put Ethiopia’s Prime Minister on the limelight without achieving anything but this maybe what he is looking for – to be in the limelight. An artist could have presented the melodrama in the whole matter in a better picture than I could ever do in writing.

The Prime Minister has been playing a ZERO-SUM GAME and the consequences for the region and the world will be not only negative but disastrous and deadly. It will certainly cull a large portion of the region’s innocent population and it will maim many more.

How was Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed ever awarded a Nobel Peace Prize? In an article in the New York Times by Rick Gladstone on Nov. 12, 2020, and updated Oct. 8, 2021, it was noted that, “At least six times in recent decades, the Norwegian committee that awards the annual prize has picked recipients whose actions and behavior — either before or after the honor was given — have been viewed as unworthy or in some cases even absurd.”

These included the Prize of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who soon after he was awarded the prize launched in his own Tigray State a war, killing and maiming hundreds of thousands and sending off millions more into starvation trails across the vast spaces of the region. It cost Ethiopia and its people heavily. But that was not the end. He again started the war on the Amhara State, which is still going on and, in the process, killing more of his own compatriots.

The Prime Minister without taking a breath again launched an offensive assault on Somalia, a neighbor which is suffering from its own idiosyncrasies ever since the collapse of the state in 1991. He signed an illegal MoU with one of the regions of Somalia.

There are also other regions the Prime Minister has torched. There are troubles and turmoil in the Benishangul-Gumuz State of Ethiopia and the Afar State and the Somali State are at war with each other and now the Ethiopian Federal State is about to start, so they report, another war with the Somali State within Ethiopia. These are all wars within the Ethiopia Federal State that was forged by Menelik II and consolidated by Emperor Haile Selassie, all to create an Oromia Republic, supposedly!

We maybe looking at the splintering of Ethiopia Ex-Yugoslavia style or so they often say these days in a lot of media outlets. Like Somalia of the eighties of the last century, Ethiopia seems to be on the verge of a total collapse with the ethnic groups each taking and managing its own turf.

We read in the media suggestions for a transitional government to ensure the national unity of Ethiopia. While it may look ideal, it is difficult to see how this would work when the component parts were brought together by force in the first place. Many parts will bolt out, as soon as an opportunity presents itself. Already the TPLF and others are forging ways out of the Ethiopian federation or so we hear and read. It is how the current constitution was built – to allow those who want to leave to go their own way.

The reality of Ethiopia appears to be a country about to break up into its component parts. The question to ask oneself is, “Will this go through a violent process or peacefully and through an orderly manner, introducing new countries to the region?”

It will certainly be different from the violence that shook Somalia in the early nineties of the last century. Somalia is the home to a homogenous people through tongue and religion and culture – the same people. Ethiopia is home to different peoples with different languages and cultures that were forced together to live under the same administrations for over a century.

The general assumption that Ethiopia is too big to break up or fail is no longer valid. The Soviet Union was also a big country and, indeed, splintered into its component parts that were forced together by the Czars of long ago. This is one of the perils of the strategic errors which the Ethiopian Administration has committed. We shall address the other looming volcanoes in other articles.