Addis Abeba — This moment demands more than slogans, loyalty tests, or recycled narratives. It calls for sober self-examination among those who shape political thought, institutions, and public discourse--an examination grounded not in abstract theory, but in the lived reality of a people who have paid an extraordinary price.
Tigray is not only at a political crossroads--it is at an existential one. In such moments, how elites think, speak, and act matters as much as armies and diplomacy. The depth of today's disillusionment among Tigray's political class--at home and across the diaspora--reflects how heavy that burden has become. It did not grow from indifference or moral failure but from years of sustained suffering without justice, from promises of peace that have not materialized, and from the widening gap between what our people have endured and what our politics currently seems capable of delivering.
Many of us have reached a point of deep skepticism toward existing leadership, inherited structures, and familiar political language. That skepticism is not only understandable; it reflects the weight of a moment that has tested the limits of endurance and belief. Yet disillusionment, however justified, is not itself a strategy. When it begins to substitute for careful thinking--when exhaustion is mistaken for clarity, or rejection for renewal--it can quietly foreclose options at the very moment when preserving them is itself a political responsibility.
This article is not a defense of any party, leader, or past governance record. It is an attempt to speak honestly, among ourselves, about reform, responsibility, and survival under conditions of profound power asymmetry and to confront the questions we can no longer defer without consequence.
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Tigray's elite disillusionment, why this fracture happened
Elite disillusionment in Tigray did not emerge in a vacuum. It is neither moral failure nor intellectual laziness. It is the predictable outcome of prolonged trauma layered upon political suffocation.
Since the genocidal war against Tigray began in November 2020, the region has endured mass atrocities, systemic sexual violence, starvation as a weapon, occupation of its constitutional territory, and the near-total collapse of economic and political life. What was meant to be an enduring peace--the Cessation of Hostilities Agreement (CoHA), signed in Pretoria in November 2022--has largely become a paused state rather than a fulfilled accord, with core provisions remaining unimplemented and fragile at best.
Core provisions--the withdrawal of non-federal forces, restoration of pre-war constitutional territory, the safe return of internally displaced persons, justice, reconciliation, and rehabilitation--are still unrealized. Meanwhile, Tigray remains subject to economic blockade and institutional exclusion.
Elite disillusionment, the absence of a credible organizing force, and the sense of being trapped in an uncharted and hostile geopolitical moment are not weaknesses of Tigrayans. They are the logical outcomes of unresolved genocidal crime, sustained annihilatory pressure, political fragmentation, static leadership amidst deterioration, and ongoing preparation for renewed coercion. It is within this suffocating environment that elite disillusionment has metastasized.
To engage fractured elites honestly, we must avoid forced consensus, personality politics, and moral absolutism."
Some elites, once vocal advocates for silenced victims, now argue that the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) itself has become the primary threat to Tigray's safety. Others, exhausted and demoralized, frame alignment with federal talking points as pragmatism. Still others - by design rather than despair - align with splintered political and military factions tied to the federal government, calling for dismantlement of TPLF as a condition for peace.
This shift deserves understanding before judgment. It is an elite fracture under pressure, where exhaustion, fear, ambition, and manipulation converge. The question Tigray now faces is not who is to blame, but something far more consequential: How does a people under existential threat preserve political agency, prevent annihilation, and open future options without prematurely committing to paths they cannot yet sustain?
Core principles for engagement without false unity
To engage fractured elites honestly, we must avoid forced consensus, personality politics, and moral absolutism. What is needed instead is a minimal set of shared principles--a political floor below which no Tigrayan actor should fall, regardless of factional affiliation or ideological divergence.
These principles do not ask for loyalty. They ask for restraint, sequencing, and responsibility.
1. Primacy of Collective Survival Over Factional Victory
No political disagreement--past, present, or future--justifies actions that weaken the collective capacity of the Tigrayan people to survive as a political community.
Internal critique is legitimate. Political competition is legitimate. But collective political disarmament under coercion is not. Any action whose foreseeable outcome is the erosion of Tigray's agency in the face of hostile domination violates this principle.
2. Distinction Between Reform and Dismantlement
To criticize leadership failures and demand accountability is a political necessity, not a betrayal. But it should also be clear that there is no moral or political equivalence between such critique and the legitimization of externally imposed political erasure. Reform seeks to correct, renew, and strengthen collective agency; dismantlement, under coercion, does the exact opposite--it dissolves agency and transfers it outward.
In a context where Tigray remains militarily encroached upon, economically strangled, and institutionally excluded, calls to dismantle its remaining political and security structures do not constitute reform. They endorse a power vacuum that others are eager to fill. Distinguishing between reform and dismantlement is therefore not an exercise in loyalty to any organization but a basic requirement of political responsibility in an asymmetrical and hostile environment. Under conditions of occupation and coercion, dismantlement is not reform; it is capitulation by proxy.
3. Non-Collaboration With Structures of Collective Punishment
No Tigrayan political actor should legitimize, echo, or operationalize narratives, legal maneuvers, or security frameworks that deny genocidal crimes, normalize occupation, justify economic strangulation, or criminalize Tigrayan political existence. Alignment with such structures, however framed as pragmatism or peace, constitutes political collaboration, not dissent.
4. Political Pluralism Must Be Built, Not Imposed
A plural political future for Tigray is essential. But pluralism cannot be manufactured by dismantling existing structures--even when they are weak or anachronistic. New structures and movements must emerge organically, not through external coercive engineering. Pluralism without agency is managed fragmentation.
5. Suspend the Illusion of Normal Politics
Participation in federal processes under occupation, displacement, starvation, economic blockade, and political exclusion confers legitimacy to a system dismantling Tigray.
Representation without rights is symbolic surrender, not inclusion. And strategically, it weakens--not strengthens--Tigray's future claims.
6. Genocide Recognition and Accountability are Non-Negotiable
Justice is not a bargaining chip. Any political project that downplays atrocities, reframes genocide as mere "war excesses," relativizes, or postpones accountability indefinitely is fundamentally incompatible with safety and dignity.
7. Autonomy of Tigrayan Political Decision-Making
Tigrayan political choices must be made by Tigrayans, accountable to Tigrayan society. Decisions made under coercion or inducement, however eloquently justified, lack legitimacy.
8. Elite Responsibility in Times of Power Asymmetry
Elites possess disproportionate power, access, influence, and safety; such asymmetries strip elite discourse of any claim to neutrality, especially in times of profound power imbalance.
Disillusionment may explain much of our present moment, but it cannot excuse what follows from it."
For this very reason, elites carry a duty of consequence-awareness, often referred to in ethical literature as "noblesse oblige" (nobility obliges) or an "aristocratic sense of responsibility" to society. Because their words and actions have wide-ranging, long-term implications, they are morally obliged to prioritize ethical, evidence-based discourse and decision-making over simplistic solutions to complex matters and to avoid narratives that weaken the bargaining power of the vulnerable.
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9. Deferred Resolution of Internal Power Struggles
In times of existential threat, it is morally responsible for elites to set aside internal power struggles. This is not submission but a principled commitment to safeguarding the collective future. Prioritizing unity and preservation in moments like this stands as a solemn ethical duty. This is not amnesty. It is the moral imperative of strategic sequencing.
Call to accountability
Disillusionment may explain much of our present moment, but it cannot excuse what follows from it. The questions raised here do not demand agreement, loyalty, or silence; they demand responsibility: to think beyond personal exhaustion, beyond factional grievance, and beyond the comfort of easy conclusions.
If this piece succeeds at all, it will be by unsettling easy answers and reopening difficult conversations among those of us whose words and choices still matter. History rarely judges political classes by the purity of their intentions or the sharpness of their critiques, but by whether they preserved or forfeited collective capacity at decisive moments.
The future of Tigray will be shaped, in no small part, by whether those with voice, access, and influence choose to narrow our collective horizon--or to safeguard it and remain accountable to the people whose survival has already been asked to bear far too much. Some choices do not end arguments--they end options. AS
Editor's Note: The author of this opinion piece, who wishes to remain anonymous, is a physician by profession and is not affiliated with any political party.
