Abiy Ahmed’s Administration Continued Overt and Covert Support and Systematic Sanctioning of the Genocide of the Amhara People

Bruke Lemma, Ph.D.

“Genocide is the most potent of all crimes against humanity because it is an effort to systematically wipe out a people and a culture as well as individual lives.” Jerry Costello

The extremely brutal and sickeningly inhuman mass slaughtering of mothers with their newly born and as yet unborn babies, children as young as few months to few years old, the elderly and the infirm, the youth and others that are being reported by various media outlets – are, unfortunately, just the latest instalments in the decade’s old campaigns of violence, terror and genocide that have been, and continue to be, perpetuated against the Amhara people. It has been reported now that hundreds, possibly, even thousands, of Amharas have been slaughtered in these latest reported incidents in the Oromia region.

Initially, the campaigns of violence, terror and genocide against the Amhara people were introduced, systematised and directed by the TPLF – which it did when it was in power for almost three decades, building on a process that began before it gained power. After the group was suddenly toppled about four years ago, the genocidal campaigns on the Amhara people were eagerly taken over by Abiy Ahmed’s new administration – who then greatly amplified, spread widely and intensified them – among other things, turning the Oromia region into an extremely busy slaughter house for the Amhara people.

Here, before proceeding further, it might be best to clarify the rationale/s that this author – and others elsewhere might have – used for assigning blames and responsibilities for the genocide of the Amhara people – that has been going on for decades but have been much more intense in the last four years – as well as for any other action/s and inaction/s that are producing the current unruly and extremely chaotic situations almost everywhere in the country. Obviously, the TPLF who radically weaponised ethnic identities, elevating and normalising identity politics and grounding almost everything in the country, including the design of the various regions, along with their constitutions, as well as the Ethiopian Constitution itself on these identities – must be primarily blamed for the genocide of the Amhara people and for other related difficulties that continue to trouble the country and its people.

However, it has been more than four years now since the TPLF lost power and Abiy Ahmed – who was put forward by the Oromo People’s Democratic organisation (OPDO) and elected to be the country’s Prime Minster and the Chairman of the EPRDF with the very crucial support of the Amhara Democratic Party (ADP) – took over the leadership of the country. Therefore, it was entirely the responsibility of Abiy Ahmed’s administration as well as that of his party, the Prosperity Party (PP), a rechristened EPRDF – to ensure the safety and security of the Ethiopian people. However, Abiy Ahmed’s administration and the Prosperity Party – have both failed miserably in living up to their responsibilities.

What is more, we have now extensive evidence clearly demonstrating that Abiy Ahmed and Shimeles Abdisa – the president of the Oromia Region – are both very much responsible for the continued Amhara genocide that has been and continues to take place in the Oromia region and elsewhere in the country for the last four years. Still, in any reasonable apportioning of contributions to those responsible including Abiy Ahmed, Shimeles Abdisa and the other contemptable ethnocrats, hatemongers and opportunists and thugs of various levels of notorieties – by far the largest share of these responsibilities for what has been going on in the country clearly must go to the country’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed.

As such, among other things, power has been progressively concentrated in the Prime Minister’s hands in the last four years. It has now gotten to the stage that others are mainly there to do Abiy Ahmed bidding and to simply obey whatever command he decides to give them – with expectation of nothing other than the jump and how high varieties of responses. Of course, that is not to say that these others do not share the Prime Minister’s primitive ethnocentric worldview, vindictiveness, hatefulness, narrow-mindedness as well as the host of other stupidities that helped to set off and to intensify the ongoing Amhara genocide in the Oromia region and the other troubles that have been popping up all over the country in the last four years – they all do; that is what ties them together.

So, the most significant change in the country has been from almost three decades of power that was concentrated in the hands of a very asinine psychopathic group, the TPLF – to power almost singularly concentrated in the hands of a single even more asinine psychopathic individual, Abiy Ahmed. Still, beyond the obvious, there might be some subtle differences between these two otherwise psychopathic entities, at least, in theory – that would make one of them slightly more preferable than the other.

The most important of these is that in the case of a single all powerful psychopathic leader, those around him will compete against each other to tell him whatever he wants to hear most in order to gain his favours – regardless of the possible effects of these things that they pass on to him. In contrast, in psychopathic groups, where members might be relatively free to speak their minds, the group might be able to avoid disastrous, extreme or otherwise damaging actions and to become generally more moderate overtime and to pursue moderate objectives as a result of having access to realistic feedbacks.

However, these things do not apply to both the TPLF and to Abiy Ahmed – and to those around him – for a number of reasons. As such, first of all, other than some pretentious, greedy and naked opportunists and glorified halfwits and such, there might not be anyone with any genuine or appreciable intelligence at all belonging to the TPLF group and/or who would freely choose to be around Abiy Ahmed. In that, among other things, the TPLF’s initiation and continuation of an extremely disastrous civil war – with the most ridiculous of ridiculous objectives – shows that there is no one with any discernible intelligence belonging to the TPLF group, at least, not anyone among its top leaders. Of course, these idiocies along with its extreme cruelties and heartlessness and so forth – have always been there with the group.

Indeed, the only thing that the TPLF ever good at was using a brute force to get its way – it never had and/or used any great intelligence, only brawns! Here, it is interesting that there is this common misperception in regard to psychopaths and/or psychopathic groups which is that they are extremely clever or some such – which is a complete nonsense. As such, except for their complete lack of conscience and the total absence of empathy for others in them, there isn’t a great deal that is special about psychopaths in regard to their intelligence. In particular, their individual IQs are well within the same spread as that of the general populations’ – i.e., some have above average intelligence, others have below average intelligence, while still others might have moderate to very low and so on intelligence.

In any case, after listening to some of Abiy Ahmed’s speeches, including some of the easily verifiable lies, fabrications, distortions and more that the Prime Minster is fond of telling to his audiences, one is struck by how very, very low this highly psychopathic man’s intelligence actually is – a combination that makes him extremely, extremely dangerous to everyone around him and to others on whom he has significant power, influence and control. It is very frightening and unsettling that someone with the temperament, general dispositions and intelligence as Abiy Ahmed was able to acquire such an unlimited power on millions of people that he is now exercising without any checks and balances at all.

Moreover, as the Prime Minister collects around him, exclusively, the most ignorant sycophants, and demented ethnonationalists, aggressive hatemongers, hooligans, greedy opportunists and other thugs – there is no chance at all that these bands of wretched characters are likely to have any moderating effect on him in any way at all. Still, he is highly unlikely to listen to them or to anyone else even if they were able to offer positive feedbacks and advices and so on anyway – as such, he is now bursting with arrogance, a feeling of being untouchable and a strong sense of security and more.

All these are rather ominous signs that he might have been emboldened now to engineer and unleash an even worse bloodbath than that the country has ever experienced before in its history including what it is experiencing now in the current genocide of the Amhara people going on in the Oromia region – anytime. In general, it would be highly delusional for anyone to believe that Abiy Ahmed would change and become a better leader – because that is very much unlikely. Therefore, the only solution is replacing Abiy Ahmed by a more competent leader, even if that won’t be easy. However, the struggle towards that end must start now.

In any case, the current genocide of the Amhara people in the Oromia region was directly and indirectly supported, encouraged and systematically sanctioned by Abiy Ahmed and Shimeles Abdisa – much in the same way that Abiy Ahmed facilitated and systematically sanctioned TPLF’s genocide of the Amhara people when the group invaded and devastated the Amhara region. Indeed, while they might be prepared to fight each other to death in order to steal power from each other, however, there is very little or no difference at all between the TPLF and Abiy Ahmed, among other things, in their utter gutlessness and tremendous fear of the Amhara people – and in their need to use cowardly pre-emptive assaults and attacks against them. And that is the prism through which we must view the genocides of the Amhara people that has been going on throughout the country – not only in the Oromia region.

There was also a very similar dynamic at play in Ethiopia’s repeated, embarrassing and disconcerting loss fighting a conventional war against a psychopathic rebel group, collections of asinine group narcissists – losing to them not once, but two or three times! As such, these repeated losses and the consequent destructions of various parts of the country by the TPLF and the sufferings of so many including Tigray Ethiopians – are all products of the country’s dreadful leadership. Specifically, these losses were due to the Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed, a man with very dark triad personality, who was trying to achieve conflicting outcomes rather than a straightforward victory against the TPLF – a group that started the war by slaughtering those who were there to protect the region in their sleeps and more.

In that, Abiy Ahmed wanted to ensure the survival of the TPLF, in order to use them to unsettle and continually harass the Amhara people – and thus, to stop them from ever daring to demand democratic governance, respect for their human rights, and rule of law and the like. Therefore, in these wars, there were only very limited attempts and calculated forays designed to cause measured and non-fatal damages to the TPLF – damages that will stop the group from being a threat to Abiy Ahmed’s grip on power without diminishing its ability to be a real concern and an ongoing threat to the Amhara people.

These things were also compounded by the fact that Abiy Ahmed was also doing everything in his power to sabotage the Amhara forces behind the scene – and doing so at each and every step of the way. As such, through these efforts, the Prime Minister was able to seriously undermine the Amhara forces and to ensure that they were defeated in advance – in every war that has been waged against the TPLF so far. His continued activities now also show that the Prime Minister is very busy continuing to engineer a defeat in advance to the Amhara forces in any and all future war/s – that are certain to be waged against the TPLF, a group that continues to exist predominantly thanks to Abiy Ahmed!

Specifically, the TPLF recently declared that it has completed preparations to invade the Amhara region once more – and, lo and behold, the Ethiopian government promptly began conducting ‘law and order’ operations in the Amhara region with the aim of disarming the Amhara forces, among other things. So far in this ongoing ‘law and order’ operation, there has been mass arrests of thousands of the Amhara youth, extrajudicial killings and kidnapping and enforced disappearances targeting Amhara intellectuals, media personalities and leaders of the Amhara forces, especially, the Amhara Fanos.

Thus, Abiy Ahmed’s administration has been very busy terrorising the Amhara people by launching a massive operation into a lawful region and portraying the people there as the criminals and so on – that they most definitely are not. At the same time, however, the extremely lawless, and the very violent Oromia region, infested with criminal forces such as the OLF and others who operate openly, even setting up training camps and so on – was completely left to the very criminals to run as they saw fit. In fact, there are multiple evidences now demonstrating that the regional administration and the federal government have been directly and indirectly supporting and working with these criminal groups.

As such, in addition to the numerous mass brutal killings, rapes and pillaging and property destructions and so forth, the OLF has also robbed twenty-one or so Commercial Bank Branches in the Oromia region; and, advanced weapons and equipment that are bought for use of the national defence force regularly finds their way into the group’s hands. Despite all that and more, however, there was never any ‘law and order’ operation in the Oromia region targeting the group and/or any attempt to disarm it – with anywhere comparable scale as the current ‘law and order’ operation in the Amhara region. Thus, while leaving actual criminals almost untouched, they have been terrorising the Amhara people using a bogus ‘law and order’ operation – with the aim of disarming the Amhara forces – with no actual evidence of criminalities and while the region is facing a renewed threat of invasion by the TPLF.

In any case, there have been numerous verifiable reports of the Amhara residents being forced to give up their weapons immediately before the invasion of their areas by the OLF group in the Oromia region. Moreover, a number of times and in a number of localities, the national defense forces that were stationed around some of these areas occupied by the Amhara farmers and villagers were ordered to leave suddenly and inexplicably – the OLF then invades these areas following their steps and commits mass brutal killings, property destructions and more.

In addition, Amhara farmers and villagers were also called by regional authorities a number of times and in a number of localities for meetings and whereby the OLF suddenly descends in these meeting and starts slaughtering the farmers and villagers – with all that and more, much more, it is highly reasonable, then, to assert that Abiy Ahmed, the Oromia region president, Shimeles Abdias, and the OLF have all been working together to perpetuate the genocide of the Amhara people. In any case, it is essential now for there to be an independent investigation of these things and for all the criminals and perpetrators to be brought to justice and to be held accountable.

The author can be reached at: lemma.bruke@hotmail.com