Addis’ Tigray policies echo the mistakes that drove Eritrea away.
Karl Marx famously observed that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Ethiopia is now living the second half of that maxim. The three-decade war that ended with Eritrea’s independence was the tragedy.
What is unfolding in Tigray—a region that remains legally part of Ethiopia yet is politically marginalized, economically isolated, cut off from much of its own territory, and excluded from “The National Dialogue” meant to shape the country’s future—is the farce.
But unlike tragedy, farce is not inevitable. It emerges when leaders refuse to learn from the past.
The Ethiopian National Dialogue Commission (ENDC) was established in late 2021, at the height of the Tigray war, with the stated aim of helping bridge Ethiopia’s deepest political divides, including the conflict between the federal government and Tigray. Nearly five years and two mandate extensions later—first to February 2025 and then to October 2026—it remains incomplete. Commissioners have acknowledged before parliament that dialogue has yet to take place in 94 woredas in Tigray. Independent researchers have reached a broader conclusion: The process suffers from weak legitimacy, limited inclusion, and flawed design. Most strikingly, Ethiopia’s principal armed and political actors—the Oromo Liberation Army, Amhara Fano, and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF)—remain outside it.
This is more than a procedural flaw. A national dialogue cannot claim legitimacy when those shaping the country’s conflicts are absent from the table. The TPLF itself has dismissed participation as a low priority, reflecting how little confidence Tigray’s dominant political force has in a process it had little role in shaping.
The same pattern extends beyond the dialogue. Tigray was once again excluded from Ethiopia’s 2026 general election, leaving the region without representation in the federal vote for a second consecutive electoral cycle. The result is extraordinary: Tigray has no meaningful role in The National Dialogue, no participation in the national election, and no representation in either chamber of parliament.
This recalls the final years of the Ethio-Eritrean federation. In the 1950s, Emperor Haile Selassie’s government did not negotiate the federation’s future with the full spectrum of Eritrean political opinion. Instead, it relied on the compliant Unionist Party, marginalized nationalist voices, and used its influence over the Eritrean Assembly to ratify a decision already made in Addis Ababa.
The federation was dissolved through the appearance of consultation rather than genuine consent. Today’s national dialogue risks becoming a similar exercise: a process presented as inclusive while one of Ethiopia’s most consequential regions remains outside the room.
The comparison should give Ethiopian policymakers pause. Eritrea’s separation was not the product of an irreconcilable desire for independence from the outset. It followed years in which political participation steadily narrowed until meaningful federalism became impossible. When dialogue becomes a monologue, those excluded inevitably begin looking elsewhere for answers.
Tigray’s exclusion extends well beyond The National Dialogue. In February, Ethiopia’s House of Federation removed five constituencies—Humera and Adi Remets in western Tigray, Tselemti in the northwest, and Korem Ofla and Raya Alamata in the south—from Tigrayan regional administration ahead of the 2026 elections. While federal polls were ordered to proceed in these areas, regional council elections were postponed indefinitely until competing territorial claims are resolved. Every major Tigrayan party, from federalists to outright independence advocates, condemned the decision as unconstitutional.
The dispute is about far more than electoral administration. More than three years after the Pretoria Agreement called for the withdrawal of foreign and non-federal forces, large parts of western and northern Tigray remain under the control of Amhara regional forces and Eritrean troops. Estimates vary. The UK Home Office has suggested the occupied territory amounts to roughly one-fifth of Tigray, while Tigrayan political actors place the figure closer to one-third. Whatever the precise number, the underlying reality is not in dispute: Significant parts of the region remain outside the authority of the Tigray Interim Administration.
Rights organizations and displaced residents have documented killings, sexual violence, arbitrary detention, forced displacement, and the settlement of new populations in areas emptied by war. Under such conditions, any future referendum on disputed territories would struggle to command legitimacy. Critics argue that a vote held before displaced communities can safely return would merely formalize demographic and military realities created through conflict rather than reflect the freely expressed will of residents.
The parallels with Eritrea are difficult to ignore. Addis Ababa did not defeat Eritrean nationalism through political persuasion. It weakened Eritrea’s autonomy, dismantled its institutions, imposed Amharic over Tigrinya and Arabic, and increasingly relied on coercion instead of consent. Radicalization followed; it did not precede these policies.
A similar logic now appears in Tigray. While few officials would openly state it, the practical message is hard to miss: Territory matters more than the people who inhabit it. The prolonged occupation of contested areas, the displacement of Tigrayan communities, and the region’s political exclusion together create the impression that Tigray’s land is negotiable, but Tigrayans themselves are indispensable to Ethiopia’s political future. Whether intended or not, that is precisely the perception that strengthens separatist narratives.
Perhaps the greatest casualty of this trajectory is not the separatist movement but the federalist center. For much of the past three decades, the dominant current in Tigrayan politics sought to reform Ethiopia rather than leave it. The TPLF itself long argued that multinational federalism offered the best framework for holding the country together. That conviction is now steadily eroding.
Salsay Weyane Tigray (SaWeT) illustrates the shift. Before the 2020–2022 war, the party advocated a loose federal arrangement within Ethiopia. After the conflict—which SaWeT, along with several other Tigrayan parties and scholars, has described as genocidal—it concluded that federalism could no longer guarantee Tigray’s security. Independence replaced autonomy as its central objective.
That transformation is no longer confined to rhetoric. In April 2026, SaWeT and the Tigray Independence Party (TIP) signed a memorandum of understanding to build a unified pro-independence front, arguing that Tigray’s fragmented political landscape demanded a coordinated strategy.
Arena Tigray presents an equally revealing case. Often portrayed outside the region as a moderate unionist alternative to the TPLF, its recent positions tell a more complicated story. Arena belongs to the KidanTegaru coalition alongside the openly pro-independence TIP and Baytona. It has rejected The National Dialogue as unconstitutional and insists that any credible political process must begin with the withdrawal of Eritrean and Amhara forces and include all major armed and political actors, including the TPLF, the Oromo Liberation Army, and Fano.
Even more striking, Arena later denied reports that it intended to participate in the Commission’s dialogue process at all. If Tigray’s oldest surviving opposition party sees little value in the initiative, it becomes increasingly difficult to identify a politically credible federalist constituency willing to defend it.
This leaves Tigray Democratic Solidarity (Simret), founded by former interim president Getachew Reda, as the principal federalist alternative. Simret presents itself as a liberal, reformist party committed to Ethiopia’s federal system. Yet its prospects are constrained by its founder’s simultaneous role as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s adviser on East African affairs. Whatever the party’s intentions, some Tigrayans view it less as an independent political movement than as a project closely aligned with Addis Ababa. That perception makes it difficult for Simret to inherit the legitimacy being lost by the TPLF; it risks appearing to be a federalist alternative created from above rather than one that has earned support from below.
Here, too, history offers an uncomfortable warning. Unionism in Eritrea did not collapse because federalism lost the argument. It collapsed because the state steadily deprived independent federalists of the political space needed to make their case. When the center refuses to let the middle hold, only the poles are left standing.
The erosion of Tigray’s place within Ethiopia is not confined to politics. It is also visible in the treatment of its cultural identity.
In August 2025, security forces abruptly cancelled Ashenda celebrations across Addis Ababa, including events in the Bole district, dispersing young women who had spent weeks preparing traditional dress, songs, and dances. No official explanation was offered.
Ashenda is neither a political rally nor a separatist symbol. Celebrated primarily in Tigray and parts of Amhara, it marks the end of the Filseta fast and is rooted in religious and cultural tradition. Yet its cancellation conveyed a different message: that public expressions of Tigrayan identity had become matters of security rather than culture.
In isolation, the incident might have been dismissed as overreach by local authorities. In the wider context of Tigray’s political exclusion, however, it reinforces a broader perception that Tigrayan identity itself has become suspect. Symbols matter. They signal who belongs, whose traditions are welcomed, and whose are tolerated only in private.
History offers another parallel. Before Eritrea’s armed struggle became inevitable, the imperial government sought not only to centralize political authority but also to reshape cultural life, marginalizing local languages and institutions in favor of a unitary national identity. Such policies did not strengthen unity; they deepened alienation.
The greatest irony is that the architects of Ethiopia’s current approach appear to be recreating the very conditions they now condemn.
During the Tigray war, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed publicly thanked Eritrea for what he described as its decisive assistance to Ethiopia’s armed forces. That campaign later became synonymous with some of the war’s worst atrocities, including massacres acknowledged by Ethiopia itself and attributed to Eritrean troops.
The alliance did not survive the war. Relations between Addis Ababa and Asmara have since deteriorated sharply. Abiy now accuses Eritrea of mass killings in Tigray, of working with hardline elements of the TPLF to destabilize Ethiopia, and has revived demands for sovereign access to the Red Sea, describing it as a matter of national survival. He has also questioned the legitimacy of Eritrea’s 1993 independence referendum, while Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has accused Eritrea and TPLF hardliners of preparing jointly for another conflict.
The reversal is remarkable. A government that once celebrated Eritrea as a wartime ally now portrays it as Ethiopia’s principal external threat. Yet at the same time, it is pursuing in Tigray many of the same policies that pushed Eritrea toward independence: political exclusion, territorial coercion, military occupation, and the shrinking of cultural space.
This suggests that Ethiopia has drawn the wrong lesson from Eritrea’s secession. Rather than asking why unionism ultimately failed, successive governments have focused on preventing the outcome while repeating many of the policies that produced it.
None of this makes Tigray’s eventual independence inevitable. Political futures are shaped by choices, not historical laws. But the dynamics at work are familiar.
Federalism weakens when those who advocate it lose the ability to participate in national politics with dignity and credibility. Separatism gains strength when the state narrows political space while regional and international actors appear more willing than the center to offer recognition, security, or a hearing.
Viewed together, the evidence points in a consistent direction: the exclusion of the TPLF from formal politics, the absence of Tigray from national elections and dialogue, the continued occupation of disputed territories, the marginalization of Tigrayan cultural expression, and the steady erosion of the federalist middle ground. None of these developments, in isolation, determines Ethiopia’s future. Together, however, they create conditions in which the argument for remaining within the federation becomes progressively harder to sustain.
Those already committed to either Ethiopian unity or Tigrayan independence are unlikely to be persuaded by this analysis. The more important audience is Ethiopia’s political center: Those who still believe the federation can survive if its institutions are made genuinely inclusive.
They should confront a simple question.
If this is not the path that ended with Eritrea’s departure, what, exactly, is different this time?
Until Addis Ababa can answer that question with more than delayed negotiations, military control, and administrative exclusion, it risks replaying a history it insists will not repeat itself.
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While this commentary contains the author’s opinions, Ethiopia Insight will correct factual errors.
Main photo: Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during an interview with Oromia Broadcasting Network, 8 August 2026. Source: Ethiopian Press Agency.
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