Leadership Failure, Historical Amnesia, and the Roots of Tigray’s Crisis

In the aftermath of the Tigray Genocide, many Tigrayans experienced a painful political awakening. The scale of destruction, the loss of life, and the deliberate dismantling of society forced people to confront long-avoided truths about power, domination, and the nature of the Ethiopian state. Yet today, that awakening is fading. Frustration with the failures of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) leadership has pushed many Tigrayans into disillusionment, political confusion, and in some cases, denial of deeper historical realities.

There is no question that the current TPLF leadership has failed profoundly. It has proven weak, often cruel to its own people, and incapable of providing moral or strategic leadership at the most critical moment in Tigray’s history. This failure deserves condemnation, and leadership change is not only justified but necessary. However, focusing exclusively on the shortcomings of the TPLF risks obscuring a far more fundamental issue: the structural subjugation of the Tigray nation within the Ethiopian state.

From Power to Peripheralization

Prior to its complete submission to Shewan domination, Tigray was widely recognized as the wealthiest and most powerful dominion of the Habesha world. European travelers, missionaries, and diplomats consistently described Tigray as politically organized, economically productive, and militarily formidable. It was the heart of Abyssinian civilization, not its margin.

This historical reality changed dramatically after the fall of Emperor Yohannes IV and the rise of Menelik II of Shewa. The formation of the modern Ethiopian state was not a neutral process of unification but one of conquest, centralization, and extraction. Power shifted decisively southward, and Tigray was transformed from a center of authority into a peripheral region subjected to political neglect and economic exploitation.

What had once been the strongest kingdom in the region was gradually reduced to a land synonymous with famine. This transformation was not accidental, nor can it be explained solely by environmental factors or local mismanagement. It was the outcome of a political economy designed to serve the interests of a centralized empire centered in Shewa.

Famine as a Political Instrument

Tigray’s repeated famines are often portrayed as natural disasters or local failures. In reality, they are deeply political events. While local leadership errors have sometimes exacerbated crises, the primary cause lies in the region’s relationship with the Shewa centered Ethiopian state and the way resources, power, and development have been systematically structured against it.

After the death of Yohannes IV in 1889, Menelik II launched a deliberate and punitive campaign to break Tigray as a center of political and military power. Contemporary accounts and later historical analyses describe a scorched-earth strategy aimed not merely at defeating armed resistance but at permanently crippling Tigrayan society. Menelik’s forces systematically destroyed agricultural cultivation systems, burning fields, dismantling terraces, and disrupting irrigation, while confiscating or slaughtering farmers’ oxen, the indispensable backbone of highland agriculture. In some areas, oxen were reportedly consumed by occupying troops, ensuring that even survivors could not resume farming. The campaign also involved mass violence against civilians, including the purposeful mutilation of male populations as a method of terror and deterrence, extending even to young boys, signaling an intent to extinguish future resistance. These actions collectively collapsed food production and social reproduction, precipitating what many historians regard as the worst famine in Habesha history, a catastrophe rooted not in natural failure but in calculated political destruction designed to subordinate Tigray to the emerging Shewa imperial order.

During the reign of Emperor Haile Selassie, famine ravaged Tigray and Wollo, killing hundreds of thousands. The imperial government not only failed to respond adequately but actively concealed the disaster from the world to protect its image. During the Derg period, tens of thousands of Tigrayans died again from famine and war, as the military regime used starvation as a weapon against rebellious regions.

Most recently, during the genocidal war on Tigray, most of Tigrrayan cities and towns were deliberately destroyed, livelihoods were dismantled, and nearly a million lives perished through violence, starvation, and preventable disease. In none of these historical moments except may be the most recent one was the TPLF the original cause. In many cases, it did not exist at all.

What unites these tragedies across imperial, military, and federal regimes is the role of the Ethiopian state itself. Whether by deliberate policy, criminal neglect, or denial, successive governments either caused famine conditions or refused to acknowledge and address them. This pattern is too consistent to dismiss as coincidence.

Misplaced Blame and Political Confusion

Today, some Tigrayans, exhausted by suffering and betrayed by local leadership, are turning away from the systemic and structural Problems Tigray faces in Ethiopia as the cause of the repeated famines. Anger at the TPLF is understandable but allowing that anger to erase historical facts is dangerous. The failure of one organization does not negate a century of systemic oppression.

Denying the role of the Ethiopian state in Tigray’s repeated destruction requires a form of political amnesia. It means ignoring documented history, lived experience, and the continuity of policies that have reduced a once-prosperous society to chronic vulnerability. Such denial is not strength or pragmatism; it is the psychological outcome of prolonged domination, where victims internalize the narratives of their oppressors.

The Path Forward

Tigray’s future cannot be built on illusions. Leadership change is essential, but it must be accompanied by a clear understanding of the structural forces that have shaped Tigray’s suffering. Without confronting the nature of the Ethiopian state and Tigray’s place within it, any new leadership will inherit the same constraints and reproduce the same tragedies.

The lesson of history is stark: Tigray’s repeated famines, mass deaths, and underdevelopment are not accidents. They are the predictable outcomes of subjugation. Until this reality is faced honestly, frustration will continue to be misdirected, awakenings will fade, and the cycle of catastrophe will repeat.