The Spoiled Oligarchs of Tigray

Revolutionaries as Ruling Elites: A Global Pattern

Throughout modern history, revolutionary movements have often betrayed their own ideals once they seized power. The very groups that claimed to fight for liberation, justice, and equality gradually transformed into authoritarian ruling elites, preserving their monopoly on power at the expense of the people. In Cuba, for example, Fidel Castro’s revolution promised justice and national dignity but quickly evolved into a one-party dictatorship where dissent was criminalized and elite families dominated the state. Iraq’s Ba’ath Party, which began as a modernizing, nationalist movement, became a brutal dictatorship under Saddam Hussein, who purged rivals, militarized society, and turned the country into a surveillance state built on paranoia. Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi justified his rule with anti-imperialist and revolutionary slogans but built an erratic regime grounded in personal rule, tribal favoritism, and state control of the economy.

Perhaps the most extreme and chilling transformation occurred in North Korea, where the revolutionary struggle against Japanese occupation led by Kim Il Sung gave way to a hereditary dictatorship characterized by absolute control, propaganda, and the erasure of individual identity. The people were reduced to instruments for the glorification of the leader. In this system, ideology served not as a tool of justice but as a veil for repression and dynastic succession.

Eritrea, under the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ), led by Isaias Afwerki, has tragically followed this North Korean model with astonishing precision. Once a disciplined liberation front, the PFDJ turned Eritrea into a closed, militarized, and cult-like state. There are no elections, no free press, and no civil liberties. Youth are forced into indefinite national service that amounts to modern-day slavery. The country’s institutions revolve around the survival of one man’s rule. Propaganda is fed from childhood, and thought is monitored as tightly as borders. Former comrades in arms are imprisoned or disappeared. Revolutionary ideals have not only been abandoned, but they have also been weaponized to justify oppression.

TPLF: From Vanguard to Power-Hungry Elite

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) emerged in the late 1970s from the mountains of Tigray as a Marxist-Leninist movement dedicated to the liberation of the Tigrayan people and the overthrow of the Derg military dictatorship. It attracted idealists, peasants, and students who believed in self-determination and justice. When the TPLF defeated the Derg in 1991, it became the dominant force within the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). For over two decades, the TPLF shaped Ethiopia’s military, intelligence, and economic policies.

Under the leadership of Meles Zenawi, the TPLF adopted a technocratic, developmental model resembling China’s Communist Party. Centralized control was maintained while pursuing infrastructure development, economic growth, and international engagement. Despite authoritarian tendencies and human rights abuses, the regime-maintained legitimacy through its developmental achievements. Meles was not just a politician; he was a strategist who blended state-building with ideological discipline.

However, after Meles’s death in 2012, the TPLF lost both its intellectual compass and administrative competence. The remaining leadership clung to power while failing to deliver governance, growth, or vision. Corruption festered, factionalism intensified, and the party grew increasingly detached from the public. Delivery mechanisms collapsed while repression remained. TPLF became a hollowed-out power structure, interested only in self-preservation, unable or unwilling to reform. It turned inward, protecting oligarchic privilege while Tigray’s youth faced unemployment, hopelessness, and later, war.

Institutions Turned into Tools of Elite Capture

The TPLF’s long rule saw the creation of institutions that were ostensibly meant to rebuild Tigray and empower its people: EFFORT (the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray), INSA (the intelligence and cybersecurity agency), Defense Engineering, and leadership roles within the Ethiopian National Defense Forces. These institutions became heavily politicized, with appointments based on loyalty to party elites rather than competence or public service. Over time, they became the strongholds of an emerging spoiled oligarchy, a class of ex-fighters, officials, and technocrats who treated Tigray’s public wealth as personal property.

What was once described as a “revolutionary democracy” quickly decayed into a system where economic opportunities, political offices, and even access to state services were determined by allegiance to internal party factions. Corruption became normalized. Revolutionary veterans who had once survived off dry bread and determination now lived in luxury while the people they claimed to represent were mired in economic stagnation and political suffocation.

The Spoiled Oligarchs Turn Against the People

The most alarming development in the decline of the TPLF-led system has been the behavior of its oligarchic fragments, old guard insiders, embittered purged members, idolized generals, business elites, and ambitious newcomers, who now treat the people of Tigray not as a constituency to serve, but as a resource to exploit, manipulate, and discard.

The first group consists of the TPLF old guards, those who have remained in leadership since the movement’s inception. These individuals internalized the belief that their revolutionary sacrifice justifies a permanent hold onto power. They have normalized entitlement, clinging to the old institutional shell of the party even after its moral and functional collapse. For them, Tigray exists to legitimize their continued dominance.

The second group includes those purged from the TPLF over the years, figures who were once central to the project but were cast out during factional purges or internal rivalries. Although many of them suffered real injustices at the hands of the leadership, their reaction has often been driven by bitterness and vendetta, not vision. Obsessed with settling scores, they have aligned themselves with Tigray’s enemies, including genocidal forces, hoping to destroy the old guard and inherit the remains.

The third group is composed of military elites, both within and outside the current TPLF orbit. Once revered as heroes of the armed struggle, many of these figures came to see the people of Tigray as expendable assets in their pursuit of strategic dominance. Some waged reckless campaigns during the recent war, calculating loss of life as a necessary cost for reputational preservation. Others, pushed aside by newer military figures, now lurk on the margins, hoping for a return to relevance through disruption.

The fourth group includes the economic oligarchs, men like Beyene Mikru and Teklewoyni Asefa, who oversaw economic institutions that were supposed to lift Tigray from poverty but instead served as platforms for cronyism and consolidation of wealth. Instead of investing in inclusive growth, they maintained monopolies, suppressed independent enterprise, and rewarded loyalty over merit. The economic foundations of Tigray were manipulated to serve their private networks.

The fifth and perhaps most dangerous group are the aspirants to oligarchy, the hopefuls. These are opportunistic political leaders, business elites, media activists, professionals, and scholars who came of age after the revolution. Some emerged through nationalist parties or civic movements and paid real sacrifices, but many among their leadership have shown themselves driven not by transformative vision, but by a deep aspiration to replace the old guard, not change the system. Their obsession with positioning, with visibility, and with capturing the “anti-TPLF” narrative has often blinded them to the real interests of the people. This has been tragically clear in how some of them have aligned themselves with Ethiopia’s genociders, disregarding the destruction, displacement, and trauma inflicted on Tigray in the pursuit of personal or political gain. For them, Tigray is useful only when it helps build their personal brand.

Within this fifth group also dwell the nostalgic feudals, descendants of once-powerful families or self-appointed cultural custodians who still dream of a return to the old days. They see themselves as born rulers and view the Tigrayan farmer or worker not as a citizen with rights, but as a subject to be ruled. For them, the modern republic is an obstacle, and democracy is chaos. Their language is clothed in heritage and tradition, but their core desire is control. Like the worst of the old nobility, they are willing to sacrifice generations of progress to reassert their imagined entitlement.

The Futility of Reforming from Within

For a long time, I tried, like many others, to work with members of the Tigrayan elite, hoping to forge a new path forward. The idea was simple: bring together those who still believed in justice, accountability, and democratic rule, regardless of background or history. But the results have been deeply disappointing. Over and over again, initiatives that began with the intention of building new, people-centered coalitions were hijacked or paralyzed by individuals driven not by vision but by personal ambition, vendetta, and factional politics.

The hard truth is that the majority of the Tigrayan elite either belong to one of the five categories of spoiled oligarchs or aspire to join them. Even outside the formal institutions of power, in the realm of so-called opposition politics and civil society, these dynamics persist. Most political entities that present themselves as alternatives are in fact dominated by disgruntled oligarchs who were purged from or excluded by the ruling class. Their anger toward the old guard is intense, but their core political instincts are disturbingly similar. They want power, not transformation. They want revenge, not reform. They do not seek to build new systems; they simply want to inherit the old ones.

What makes this dynamic even more dangerous is that these opposition oligarchs often act as gatekeepers in the spaces that were meant to enable genuine discourse and change. Any discussion about democracy, institutional reform, or people-centered governance is quickly shut down or derailed. Instead, they aggressively push a single agenda: anti-TPLF slogans. While criticism of the TPLF is often legitimate, reducing the political struggle of Tigray to mere opposition to one party serves only the interests of those trying to replace it. It does not serve the people. These individuals hate the idea of democracy, true democracy, even more than the TPLF old guard. Their fear of open, participatory, accountable politics is palpable. Any space they enter, be it a media platform, political movement, or civic group, is often transformed into a narrow anti-TPLF echo chamber, incapable of generating real solutions or mobilizing the broader population for change.

The result is stagnation. Civic initiatives die in infancy. Political projects fracture before they mature. Public trust erodes further. Those who try to introduce fresh ideas or speak the language of reform are sidelined, ridiculed, or silenced. Even initiatives aimed at unity and national healing are dragged into the same shallow discourse, where the goal is not to elevate the people of Tigray, but to score points in the elite’s power struggle.

This environment has made it increasingly difficult for real change-seekers to operate. We are fragmented and often exhausted, worn down not just by the burden of war and displacement, but by the suffocating political culture that chokes every attempt at renewal. Many give up. Others are co-opted. The few who persist are treated with suspicion by all sides. And so, the cycle continues: the spoiled oligarchs continue to dominate the conversation, not through vision or legitimacy, but through sheer obstruction and control.

Unless we are willing to recognize and reject this pattern, we will continue to see new names and faces recycling the same failure. Tigray deserves more than recycled slogans and recycled tyrants.

Breaking the Cycle

Tigray stands at a dangerous and defining crossroads. While external threats have shaken its foundations, the deeper crisis lies within: a decaying political culture ruled by spoiled oligarchs who have hijacked the legacy of a people’s struggle and transformed it into a machinery of power, exclusion, and betrayal. These oligarchs, whether still in power or circling the gates in the hopes of replacing those in power, have built a self-sustaining system of manipulation, factionalism, and fear. They have corrupted institutions, buried hope, and normalized the idea that the people of Tigray are disposable in the pursuit of power.

This toxic cycle will not break by itself. It will not be broken by waiting for the old guard to change, or by gambling on one faction over another. Nor will it be broken by those who merely rebrand themselves while playing the same old political games. The future of Tigray demands more than new slogans or reshuffled leadership, it demands a complete rupture with the political class that has consistently failed its people. This means that those who genuinely care about justice, democracy, and the dignity of Tigray must make a decisive break. They must stop orbiting around spoiled oligarchs, hoping for inclusion or compromise. They must stop seeking permission from those who have lost all moral authority to lead. They must stop investing time and energy trying to reform a structure designed to resist change.

True change will only come from those bold enough to build something independent, free from the old power networks, grounded in democratic values, and oriented toward collective liberation. That requires courage. It requires those of us who still believe in justice to organize, to act, and to speak out, not with bitterness, but with clarity and purpose. It requires us to stop being discouraged by fragmentation and start forging unity through shared principle, not shared grievance.

Time and again, efforts to build democratic alternatives have been derailed, diluted, or destroyed by the very oligarchic instincts we sought to overcome. The majority of the elite are either entrenched within the oligarchic structure or aspire to join it. Even many of the so-called opposition forces or nationalist movements are dominated by individuals driven more by hatred for the TPLF than by a vision for Tigray. They wear the language of reform, but their objective is often to inherit the same power they once denounced. The institutions and platforms we hoped would catalyze change became, in practice, battlegrounds for displaced elites seeking reentry.

It is painfully clear that we cannot wait for the elite to fix itself. They will not. They are too invested in the system that sustains them. Instead, those of us who still believe in building a Tigray based on justice, popular sovereignty, and democratic accountability must take bold steps forward. We must organize outside the reach of the oligarchy. We must gather with humility and resolve, not to mimic the structures we oppose, but to replace them with something better, something grounded in service, sacrifice, and truth. It is time to build a movement that is not obsessed with personalities, not tethered to old loyalties, and not defined by vendetta. It is time to build a new political home for the people of Tigray, one that puts them at the center, not at the margins.

The spoiled oligarchs have ruled long enough both from power and on the opposition side. They have had their chance, and they have failed. They do not own Tigray. The people do. And the people deserve better. A new beginning is possible, but only if we are willing to leave the broken past behind and walk together toward a different future.