From Chains to Trenches: Ethiopia’s Cycle of Exploitation

by Yemane Abselom

Modern-day Ethiopia was forged during the age of European colonization. While European powers were busy carving up Africa, an ambitious king from the central highlands of present-day Ethiopia began a campaign of conquest against the southern peoples. This expansion, led by King Menelik II, laid the foundations of modern Ethiopia — not through unity or consent, but through violence, subjugation, and enslavement.

Menelik, often hailed as the “father of modern Ethiopia,” expanded his dominion by forging an alliance with various European powers, from whom he acquired modern weaponry. Armed with these new tools of war, he extended his northern Shoa kingdom southward, forcibly annexing vast regions and creating the borders of modern Ethiopia. But this “unification” came at an immense human cost. Menelik’s army committed atrocities against civilians and combatants alike — mass killings, torture, and enslavement. Those captured were sold or forced into servitude, while those who surrendered peacefully were compelled to hand over gold, ivory, and slaves. Ethiopia’s birth was thus rooted in conquest and internal colonization, a legacy that continues to haunt its social fabric.

The descendants and ancestors of Menelik’s ruling class governed Shoa and later Ethiopia for generations with little compassion for those they once enslaved or dispossessed. One Ethiopian law chillingly declared: “መግደል ኣይፈቀድም ጋላም ቢሆን,” meaning “Killing is prohibited — even if the victim is a Gala[sic].” The term “Gala” is a pejorative term Abyssinians used mainly on the Oromo people of the Horn of Africa, historically, however, it is used to refer to people who had been enslaved and sold. Slavery was legally abolished in Ethiopia only in 1942, after Haile Selassie came back to power in 1942. However, the practice continued in various forms for many years after, and its legacy continues to be felt today. This been the case, Ethiopia’s rulers and intellectuals erased this shameful past from collective memory. They neither acknowledged the injustices nor made amends. The regions inhabited by these formerly enslaved peoples remained impoverished and marginalized. Just a week ago, when Abiy and his ex-EPRDF comrades gathered for yet another ritual of self-blame and “hail the 7th King” ceremony inside the Sof Omer cave, they were lamenting how neglected the Bale region of Oromia has been—apparently unaware that the neglect is their own doing. The regions that felt marginalized and ignored have waged various separation wars for decades. When the Ethiopian state needed soldiers for its endless wars, it was the poor and the historically oppressed who were conscripted, sent to die for a government that had never cared for them.

Following Menelik, successive rulers of Ethiopia plunged the nation into one war after another. The most devastating was the thirty-year war with Eritrea, which began when Ethiopia illegally annexed its northern neighbor. During those decades, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians were sent north — few ever returned. The haunting saying “ሰሜን የሄደ ኣይመለስም” — “He who goes north never returns” — became common wisdom. When the war ended in 1991, the Ethiopian government never informed families about the fate of their loved ones. There were no casualty reports, no graves, no accountability. The government’s cold response was simple: “if they did not return, assume they are dead.”

Yet the cycle of bloodshed continued. In 1998, Ethiopia provoked another conflict by encroaching on Eritrean territory near the village of Badme. Ethiopian troops opened fire killing an Eritrean patrol unit, sparking a full-scale war. This time, Eritrea fought with modern weaponry and organized defenses. The Ethiopian leadership, indifferent to the lives of its own soldiers, ordered wave after wave of young men into fortified Eritrean positions. The resulting carnage shocked journalists and observers who witnessed the endless rows of bodies. Ethiopia’s strategy was to overwhelm Eritrea with sheer numbers — a brutal calculation made possible only by a government that viewed its soldiers as expendable and its poor as disposable landmine sweepers.

In 2020, another devastating war erupted — this time in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. An estimated one million people perished in the conflict. Before the Tigray war had even ended, a new war ignited in the Amhara region, is claiming more innocent lives. Once again, it was the children of the poor, the marginalized, and the forgotten who were forced to fight and die. Today, under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, Ethiopia finds itself entangled in multiple internal wars. Yet, astonishingly, the government continues to threaten another war with Eritrea with little disregard for lives who will die on his illegal expansionist dreams. Abiy behaves as though the supply of expendable lives is infinite — as if the blood of the poor can forever sustain his ambitions. But history has shown that no empire built on the suffering of its own people can endure forever. One day, the Ethiopian people will say enough. They will refuse to serve as cannon fodder for rulers who have never cared for them. And when that day comes, a long-overdue reckoning will finally arrive.