Blame and Deny: The Ethiopian Political Class’s Obsession with Eritrea

By Mewael Aron

Whenever Ethiopia enters a period of national crisis, its political class instinctively reaches for a familiar scapegoat: Eritrea. In moments of crisis, blaming Eritrea becomes not just a reflex but a ritual, an emotional release for a political elite unable to confront its own failures. This fixation is so deeply embedded in Ethiopia’s political psyche that Eritrea must always occupy a loathsome central role in Ethiopia’s self-justifying narratives.

Ethiopia’s economic difficulties? Blamed on Eritrea’s “denial” of a sea outlet. Political unrest and insurgencies? Attributed to “Eritrean support for opposition groups.” This scapegoating tradition is less about evidence and more about identity, a nostalgic attempt to preserve a sense of Ethiopian exceptionalism amid disintegration. In truth, it reveals how Ethiopia’s leadership remains captive to its own illusions, unable to face an existential reality that no longer conforms to imperial fantasies of unity and dominance.

Ethiopia in Crisis

Today, Ethiopia teeters on the edge of collapse. Civil wars, insurgencies, and ethnic fragmentation have eroded what was once hailed as pan-Ethiopian nationalism. The economy, strained by inflation, debt, and conflict, burdens ordinary citizens. The federal government’s authority is increasingly confined to the capital, while vast regions drift into de facto autonomy or outright rebellion.

In such moments, rather than self-reflection, Ethiopia’s political class reaches backward—to outdated myths and convenient villains. The latest manifestation of this pattern is a growing chorus among Ethiopian elites who now question the very legitimacy of Eritrea’s independence. Their claim: that Eritrea’s 1993 referendum was constitutionally flawed because Ethiopia’s transitional government lacked electoral legitimacy to approve it. On the surface, this argument sounds sophisticated; in reality, it is ahistorical, self-contradictory, and devoid of integrity.

Historical Amnesia as Political Tradition

The attempt to sever Eritrea’s referendum from the long historical chain of oppression and resistance that preceded it is an act of willful amnesia. Eritrea’s independence was not born of Ethiopian benevolence or constitutional procedure; it was the culmination of a 30-year armed struggle for self-determination, rooted in international law and human dignity.

Despite Eritrea`s right to self-determination was recognized by international laws, including by the UN and OAU charters, the federal arrangement of 1952 suppressed its people`s voices. Numerous historical records, including a 1950 report from the American Consulate in Addis Ababa, indicate that approximately 75 per cent of Eritreans favored independence over federation with Ethiopia. Yet Cold War geopolitics and imperial manipulation silenced that will. The United Nations, under pressure from Washington and London, imposed a federation between Eritrea and Emperor Haile Selassie’s monarchy, a forced union that ignored the principle of self-determination enshrined in the UN Charter itself.

The moral bankruptcy of that decision was captured in the infamous words of U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in 1952:

“From the point of view of justice, the opinion of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interest of the United States in the Red Sea basin and consideration of security and world peace make it necessary that the country [Eritrea] be linked with our ally Ethiopia.”

Thus, Eritrea was sacrificed on the altar of Western strategic convenience. Ethiopia’s leaders became the beneficiaries of an injustice that would haunt the region for half a century. To this day, Ethiopia’s political class has yet to acknowledge this original sin. Its obsession with Eritrea is therefore not rational policy, it is a projection of guilt, denial, and nostalgia for a vanished imperial order.

The Fallacy of Constitutional Legitimacy

The claim that Eritrea’s independence was invalid because Ethiopia’s transitional government was unelected collapses under even minimal scrutiny. If the lack of electoral legitimacy invalidates that act, then by extension, nearly every major decision in Ethiopian history, from the 1952 federation to the imperial annexation of Eritrea in 1962, would also be null and void.

Ethiopia has never enjoyed a consistent tradition of democratic legitimacy. No Ethiopian government, from Menelik II to Haile Selassie, from the Derg to the EPRDF, ever came to power through free and fair elections. To invoke “constitutional legitimacy” retroactively, therefore, is not just hypocrisy; it is historical theater.

The 1952 federal arrangement that bound Eritrea to Ethiopia was not approved by any elected government. It was orchestrated through imperial pressure and foreign complicity. If that system had been subject to genuine democratic consent, the bloodshed that followed might have been averted. Eritrea’s 30-year struggle was, in effect, the delayed decolonization that history had denied.

Democracy as Mirage

The notion that Ethiopia has ever been a democratic state is a myth perpetuated by its political class to sanitize authoritarian continuity. The Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), which came to power in 1991, rebranded empire as federation. In practice, it replaced class-based oppression with ethnic-based governance, institutionalizing division while preaching unity.

Elections under the EPRDF and its successor, the Prosperity Party, have been largely ceremonial. The promise of federal democracy has instead yielded a fragile state fractured along ethnic lines, where the center governs by coercion rather than consensus. In such a context, it is ironic to claim that Eritrea’s independence lacked democratic foundation, when Ethiopia itself has never experienced one.

Eritrea’s Independence: Reckoning, Not Appeal

Eritrea’s 1993 referendum was neither an appeal for Ethiopia’s recognition nor a plea for sympathy. It was the formal conclusion of a hard-won right, achieved through sacrifice, endurance, and unwavering conviction. It was a statement to the world that justice delayed would no longer be denied.

For Eritreans, independence was both a triumph and a requiem, a commemoration of 30 years of war, displacement, and devastation, and a moral rebuke to global powers that had once bartered Eritrea’s fate. From the 75 percent support for independence in 1950, Eritrean resolve rose to an almost unanimous 99.8 percent in 1993, a democratic clarity that no Ethiopian election has ever approached.

The referendum’s overwhelming mandate forced the world to confront its own contradictions: the same international system that had once silenced Eritrea was now compelled to recognize it. In that moment, Eritrea’s self-determination became not only a national victory but a moral correction in the ledger of decolonization.

Conclusion: Ethiopia’s Pathology of Denial

Ethiopia’s recurring fixation on Eritrea is not merely political—it is psychological. It reveals a nation struggling to process loss, empire, and identity. Instead of confronting its internal contradictions: economic dependency, ethnic fragmentation, democratic deficit, it externalizes blame. Eritrea becomes the mirror in which Ethiopia refuses to see itself.

But history cannot be rewritten through denial, nor can sovereignty be revoked through nostalgia. The reality Ethiopia must face is not Eritrea’s independence, it is its own unfulfilled promise of modern statehood. Unless Ethiopia’s political class confronts this truth, it will continue to confuse its neighbors for its demons and its failures for their conspiracies.

In the end, Eritrea’s independence is not Ethiopia’s wound; it is Ethiopia’s mirror.