Ethiopia is ripe for ‘Philadelphia moment’ to secure lasting peace

Ethiopia is at war with itself. The year-old civil war has spawned one of contemporary Africa’s worst human rights and humanitarian crises. 

Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali has lost his shine. When he rose to power in April 2018, he was beloved by Ethiopians and the world. He was likened to Che Guevara or Thomas Sankara – and his pictures and posters adorn the walls and streets everywhere.

But did the Norwegian Nobel Committee mistakenly reward a military pact against a common enemy (Tigray) for a peace deal and awarded Abiy the 2019 Nobel Prize for making peace with Eritrea? 

From the word go, Abiy drifted from the idea of regional solidarity based on the pristine ideal of pan-Africanism to new alliances narrowly based on centrist ideologies and Cushitic consciousness. He joined the Horn of Africa Cooperation, a tripartite alliance with Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki and Somalia’s Mohamed Farmaajo, which weakened the existing architecture of peacebuilding in the region weaved around IGAD and the African Union. 

Abiy’s went for a military solution to Ethiopia’s crisis of state formation. Unwittingly, he plunged his country into its second and most brutal civil war – after the one fought between the communist military junta and Ethio-Eritrean anti-government rebels (September 1974 to June 1991). This saw a tragic reversal of Abiy’s fortunes and a crimson stain on Ethiopia’s fourth premier.

Pressure is mounting for a return to dialogue. Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta called on rival Ethiopian factions to cease hostilities and embark on dialogue. For the first time, the United Nations Security Council also called for a negotiated “lasting ceasefire”. Washington suspended Ethiopia from the African Growth and Opportunity Act, effectively ending its duty-free access to the US market.

Facebook deleted Abiy’s post that urged citizens to rise up and “bury” the rival Tigray forces. For now, a peaceful solution to the conflict is off the table. Abiy and his rivals are hellbent on securing a battleground win to establish a victor’s order. 

Hidden costs of power-sharing

As the adage goes, every cloud has a silver lining. The advance of anti-government forces towards Arat Kilo, the seat of the government in Addis Ababa, is ushering in Ethiopia’s ‘Philadelphia moment’– an all-inclusive convention to hammer a new social contract and durable peace.

The war has deep ideological foundations. It pits the ‘centrists’, who are determined to dismantle ethnic federalism and centralise power in Addis Ababa against ‘federalists’ clamouring for the rights and autonomy of more than 80 ethnic groups.

Those searching for a solution to Ethiopia’s ongoing war must cast their nets far beyond the usual run-of-the-mill power-sharing agreements beloved of Africa’s western partners, foreign experts and NGO-led forays into peacebuilding. 

Ethiopia neither wants victor’s order nor a ‘ceasefire’ based on elite power-sharing. Western political engagement in Africa in the 1990s, inspired by the South Africa model of transition from apartheid to democracy, canonised power-sharing as the one-shoe-fit-all pathway out of civil wars.

Nearly two decades ago, experts warned against the “hidden costs of power-sharing”. In their influential article, Denis M. Tull and Andreas Mehler (African Affairs, 2005) argue that power-sharing between warring parties in Africa has tended to “reproduce insurgent violence”. Far from Immanuel Kant’s “perpetual peace”, offering a share of state power to rebels has created incentives for politically ambitious leaders to wage insurgency warfare, thus sustaining a cycle of insurgent violence.

History shows the West’s preferred instrument is not worth investing in as a cure for conflict in Africa’s ethnically divided societies. Violence after Kenya’s expensive double-elections in 2017 and South Sudan’s “peace agreements” , now in their nth phase of reincarnation, revealed that power-sharing has not secured sustainable peace. The power-sharing model is as absurd as encaging two warring male lions and expecting them to come out alive, peaceful and ready to hunt together! 

New citizens of a new state

After two calamitous civil wars, Ethiopia is now ripe for a ‘Philadelphia moment’, the type that dismantles the old order and creates new citizens of a new state. Beyond power-sharing, America’s Constitutional Convention that took place in Philadelphia in 1787 and birthed modern world’s oldest democracy and most powerful nation on planet earth, carries profound lessons for Ethiopia. 

The Philadelphia convention sought to restore, revise or fix the old regime and create a new government and a new order. It resulted in the Constitution of the United States, a new social contract and a new rights-bearing citizenry.

Propelling America’s ‘Philadelphia Moment’ were its liberal foundations and Anglo-Saxon tradition. The convention adopted a complex system of ‘three-governments-in-one’, the liberal trinity of legislative, executive and judicial branches checking each other’s power overlaid with three vertical layers of a federal government. 

Ethiopia must hew its post-war constitution and forge a new social contract from its triple heritage of African traditions, Orthodox (and increasingly Western evangelical) Christianity and Islam. It should dismantle the political relics of the ‘ancient regime’ based on the “mythical Solomonic state” and the militarism of its challengers – rival monarchists, communist crusaders and insurgents.

It should build on a common focus, overarching goals and shared values, beliefs and principles that unite its 80-plus ethnic groups as the fulcrum of inclusive governance in a new Ethiopia.

Owing to its mixed ideological past (monarchy, communism, insurgency and militarism), a sustainable tainable social contract for Ethiopia must inevitably be a fine blend of Western liberal heritage of equal and rights-bearing citizens and the meritocracy of non-Western grassroots democracies (‘democratic centralism’), which tap into the veins of local or community consensus as the basis of policy and action.

A caretaker government of eminent professionals, not a power-sharing mongrel of rebels and elements of besieged government, should oversee Ethiopia’s Constitutional Convention and the search for lasting peace. 

Professor Peter Kagwanja is former Government Adviser and Chief Executive, Africa Policy Institute. This article draws from the author’s remarks during a round table on ‘Securing Solidarity and Unity of Purpose for Regional Stability’, Trademark Hôtel, Village Market, Nairobi, on November 5, 2021.