Editor’s note: Readers unfamiliar with the Horn of Africa may encounter political figures, organizations, and conflicts in this article that are not explained in detail. At its center is an argument about how Abiy Ahmed’s growing concentration of power has been sustained not only by Abiy himself, but by a broader network of Ethiopian and international actors who, for different reasons, have helped legitimize, accommodate, or normalize his rule. The author calls these actors “enabling elites,” and argues that they need not be Abiy loyalists, paid supporters, or ideological allies: their interests can simply converge with his. As the article puts it, “Convergence does not require conspiracy.”

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When I wrote The Messiah and the Crowd, my concern was never simply Abiy Ahmed. I was trying to understand the extraordinary hopes so many Ethiopians invested in one man in 2018. Abiy was presented as democrat, reconciler, modernizer and national healer, sometimes almost as a providential figure.

I found the euphoria difficult to understand. Ethiopia had been through versions of this before. The Derg itself emerged from mass opposition to an old order and became one of Africa’s most brutal dictatorships. Democratic transformation cannot safely depend on the supposed virtue of a single leader.

I was skeptical even before Abiy became prime minister. In an LSE essay published on March 28, 2018, I cautioned against exaggerating the supposed dissent of a figure such as Abiy from the political and security establishment that had produced him. I did not foresee everything that followed, but I did not believe a new personality necessarily meant a new political system.

When Abiy visited Washington that July, I remember the debate over whether Ethiopia needed a transitional government. His answer, in substance, was that Ethiopia did not need one because he would transition it. The crowd applauded, but a democratic transition cannot be a man.

Eight years later, the harder question is what happened after the cheering stopped. What happened when former opposition figures, journalists, academics, diaspora intellectuals, foreign diplomats and mediators discovered that supporting, accommodating or legitimizing the new ruler could serve interests of their own?

By “singing for their supper,” I do not necessarily mean singing for money. Power has many currencies: office, access, recognition, invitations, visibility, professional opportunity, diplomatic relevance and proximity to the ruler. Some may receive nothing tangible at all. They may simply discover that the ruler’s enemies, ambitions or fears overlap with their own. An enabling coalition does not require ideological agreement. It requires convergence.

Shifting standards

Alemayehu G. Mariam offers one of the clearest examples. He became a formidable diaspora critic of Meles Zenawi and the TPLF-led EPRDF after the disputed 2005 election, subjecting the government to relentless scrutiny. Then Abiy arrived, and within months the language changed dramatically.

Alemayehu became chairman of the Ethiopian Diaspora Trust Fund Advisory Council. The position was voluntary, so this is not evidence of financial patronage. But money is not my argument. Recognition, access and incorporation can matter without a paycheck.

The GERD provides a revealing measure of the transformation. Under Meles, Alemayehu called the project a “white elephant”. Under Abiy, that white elephant underwent a remarkable transformation. In April 2018 he was already urging Ethiopians to rally around the new prime minister. By October, the praise had become extraordinary, followed at year’s end by a remarkable thank-you tribute. By September 2025, the GERD itself had become an object of celebration.

Facts change, and honest people change their minds. The dam was eventually completed and generated electricity. But Alemayehu’s transformation extended far beyond reassessing a dam. The man who once subjected the Ethiopian state to relentless suspicion became an energetic defender of the political order that replaced the EPRDF, including around the government’s National Dialogue. An intellectual is entitled to change a political judgment. What is harder to defend is changing the standard by which political power is judged.

Sisay Agena presents another version of the problem. He knew repression personally. He was imprisoned after the disputed 2005 election during the crackdown on journalists and opposition figures documented in the U.S. State Department’s human-rights report. He later became prominent at ESAT, one of the central institutions of diaspora opposition.

After Abiy’s arrival, ESAT’s political orientation changed dramatically, eventually provoking criticism from within the opposition media environment, as Mereja reported in 2020. Sisay did not learn authoritarian repression from books. He experienced it. The principle should therefore be simple: the rights that protect you when you are the target must also protect someone else when the target changes.

Berhanu Nega’s trajectory is even more striking. He was imprisoned after the 2005 election, later sentenced to death in absentia and eventually left an American academic career for armed opposition. Eritrea provided Ginbot 7 sanctuary, and Berhanu traveled internationally using an Eritrean passport alongside his American green card.

Then Abiy arrived. Berhanu abandoned armed struggle, returned home, entered peaceful politics and eventually joined the government. There is nothing inherently objectionable about moving from armed struggle into peaceful politics. It should ordinarily be welcomed. The question is what happens to principles once proximity to power becomes possible.

We no longer have to wonder where Berhanu stands on the Red Sea. On September 5, 2026, he described Ethiopia’s pursuit of “sovereign access to the sea” as an inevitable national imperative tied to the country’s security and long-term survival.

The word sovereign matters. Commercial access is negotiable. Transit arrangements and port leases are negotiable. Sovereignty over another country’s territory is not. There is bitter irony here: Eritrea was sovereign enough to shelter Berhanu when the Ethiopian state wanted him imprisoned or dead, yet now Eritrean sovereignty appears more negotiable. A country’s sovereignty cannot be indispensable when it shelters you and negotiable when you no longer need its shelter.

A more elaborate form of enablement appears in Blen Mamo Diriba’s argument for presidentialism. Its central paradox is remarkable: she recognizes that Abiy has accumulated a concentrated reservoir of political authority, yet that concentration becomes part of the case for allowing him to oversee a constitutional transformation supposedly intended to institutionalize and ultimately distribute power.

The concentration of power thus becomes the justification for entrusting the person who concentrated it with redesigning the institutions meant to restrain it. Constitutionalism normally begins from distrust of rulers. This argument begins from trust in the ruler’s willingness to constitutionalize his own restraint.

And after eight years, what evidence suggests that Ethiopia’s problem is an insufficiently powerful Abiy Ahmed? Popular adulation supplied legitimacy. Medemer supplied ideology. Prosperity Party supplied organization. Elections supplied electoral claims. The National Dialogue supplied the appearance of consultation. Corridor development supplied visible transformation. Now presidentialism offers the possibility of converting personalized authority into constitutional authority.

Nic Cheeseman and I warned in 2021 that Ethiopia’s elections could do more harm than good. I returned to the legitimacy crisis in An Election Without Peace. The problem is not presidentialism in the abstract; democratic presidential systems plainly exist. The danger is constructing one around an already dominant ruler and then using his dominance as the justification for allowing him to design it. The man who became the transition may now become the constitution.

The international circle

The enabling coalition extends beyond Ethiopia. Former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy represents one form of international validation. During the Tigray war, he described Ethiopia as a regional “linchpin” capable of “exporting stability”.

More recently, Nagy has drawn an analogy between Ethiopia’s interests in the Red Sea and the rights of Nile states. But international watercourses and access to the sea are not governed by the same legal regime. The UN Watercourses Convention addresses shared international watercourses, while the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea addresses something different. Crucially, Article 125 of UNCLOS provides for access to and from the sea for landlocked states while preserving the sovereignty of transit states. International law provides a mechanism for access precisely because access and sovereignty are not the same thing.

Academic authority supplies another kind of validation. Ann Fitz-Gerald became a prominent international defender of narratives favorable to Addis Ababa during the Tigray war. A U.S. FARA filing records contact with her concerning a media appearance by the Ethiopian government’s registered foreign agent. That does not establish that she was paid by the government and should not be represented as such. The broader issue is more important: foreign academic authority can give a government’s narrative something it cannot easily manufacture for itself, namely the appearance of independent international confirmation.

Then there are the mediators. Olusegun Obasanjo and Uhuru Kenyatta possess something Abiy cannot award himself: the prestige of supposedly independent African peacemaking. Obasanjo’s neutrality has long been questioned by Tigrayan actors; Chatham House noted the difficulty he faced gaining their confidence amid suspicions of closeness to the federal government. Whatever one thinks of those suspicions, neutrality is not a lifetime credential conferred by the title mediator. It has to be demonstrated continuously.

Uhuru is more complicated. Senior TPLF figures initially regarded him as a more neutral figure, and his inclusion helped balance concerns surrounding Obasanjo. That makes the prestige he brings to more recent political processes especially consequential. A government-organized dialogue does not become genuinely national simply because a respected former African president stands on its stage. Prestige itself can become political capital.

Western governments continue reinforcing the same structure. On August 26, the European Union, its member-state missions, Canada, Norway and Britain welcomed Obasanjo’s renewed consultations and reaffirmed support for the AU-led process. Supporting African mediation is not the problem. Support without sufficient scrutiny of what the mediation has become is the problem.

Pretoria stopped a catastrophic war, and that achievement should never be minimized. But stopping a war and building peace are different things. Ground fighting and drone strikes have returned to Tigray. The question is no longer merely how to prevent a hypothetical future war. It is whether Obasanjo, Uhuru, the AU, Washington and Europe are using their influence to restrain the man with the drones.

If diplomatic energy is instead concentrated on separating Tigray from Eritrea, weakening Tsimdo or pressing Abiy’s adversaries to accommodate him while federal military pressure continues, mediation becomes asymmetrical. Abiy gets drones while his adversaries get lectures about restraint. Western governments may believe continued diplomatic engagement restrains Abiy, while a personalist ruler may read the same behavior as evidence that escalation carries few international costs. What is intended as restraint can become permission.

Those who said no

Counterexamples matter because they remove the defense of inevitability. Milkessa Midega Gemechu held senior positions in Oromia before breaking with the government and eventually going into exile. His later criticism of Abiy’s political trajectory was explored in Foreign Policy.

Taye Dendea served as State Minister of Peace before publicly criticizing Abiy and the government’s handling of negotiations with the Oromo Liberation Army. He was dismissed and arrested the following day. The government subsequently brought serious criminal allegations against him, which should not simply be ignored. Neither should the chronology.

Gedu Andargachew rose higher still, serving as Amhara regional president, foreign minister and national security adviser before breaking with Abiy and going into exile. Berhanu traveled from armed opposition into Abiy’s government; Taye traveled from government into prison; Milkessa and Gedu traveled from the establishment into exile. Their different trajectories establish the point: the test is not whether someone believed in Abiy in 2018. The test is what that person did when the evidence changed.

There is an international counterexample as well. U.S. Chargé d’Affaires Christine Meyer in Asmara recently emphasized Eritrea’s independence and respect for its sovereignty and agreed borders. That is what respectful diplomacy looks like. One can condemn repression in Eritrea without treating Eritrean sovereignty as negotiable. Eritrea is not Isaias Afwerki, and Eritrean sovereignty belongs to Eritrea.

Tsimdo and the useful critic

As I argued in Former Enemies, a Common Adversary and Tsimdo and the Changing Politics of the Horn, the convergence among actors who were recently enemies should not be romanticized into a natural alliance. Their histories, interests and ultimate objectives remain different. Tsimdo is better understood as a symptom: Tsimdo did not create Ethiopia’s crisis. Ethiopia’s crisis created Tsimdo.

This is where Jawar Mohammed becomes interesting. Jawar has long struck me as one of Ethiopia’s most mercurial and slippery political characters, not because political flexibility is inherently objectionable but because his career demonstrates an extraordinary capacity for repositioning: activist, nationalist mobilizer, opposition politician, political prisoner, conciliator and critic. Political agility can be a strength. It also means his interventions deserve scrutiny.

His characterization of Ethiopia and Eritrea as a “complicated divorce” feeds the broader language of an “unfinished divorce.” At precisely the moment when Tigrayan and Fano actors are finding grounds for tactical cooperation despite their bitter recent history, Eritrea is one of the issues most capable of reopening their divisions.

One does not have to be an Abiy loyalist to perform political work useful to Abiy. I am not alleging coordination, because none is necessary for the argument. Convergence does not require conspiracy. A person can oppose Abiy and still advance an argument that fractures opposition to him. The most effective wedge issue usually does not need to be invented; it is an old wound waiting for someone to touch it.

The language of an “unfinished divorce” is objectionable for another reason. There was nothing romantic about Eritrea’s separation from Ethiopia. Anyone tempted to treat Eritrean sovereignty as an unfinished negotiation should understand what Eritreans paid for self-determination. Ruth Iyob’s The Eritrean Struggle for Independence, Dan Connell’s Against All Odds, David Pool’s From Guerrillas to Government and Okbazghi Yohannes’s Eritrea: A Pawn in World Politics document different dimensions of a thirty-year struggle and its enormous human cost.

What appears from a conference room as a question of ports and geopolitics was lived by Eritreans as war, bereavement, displacement, deprivation and generational sacrifice. That struggle culminated in the internationally observed 1993 referendum and Eritrea’s admission to the United Nations. The divorce is finished. Shared languages, cultures and families across the border should encourage reconciliation and trade, but they cannot manufacture residual Ethiopian sovereignty. If shared culture makes Eritrean independence an unfinished divorce, Africa is a continent of unfinished divorces.

While the elites sing

This is where the consequences of all this become impossible to separate from the arguments used to legitimize it. Tigray, barely recovering from a catastrophic war, has again experienced ground combat and drone attacks. Amhara remains engulfed in conflict. Oromia remains deeply unstable. Recent reports from Wollega describe another cycle of killings, displacement and the burning of civilian property and religious sites amid competing allegations involving regional forces, irregular formations and their opponents.

And yet the intellectual prescription remains greater concentration of authority. What evidence from the past eight years suggests that Ethiopia suffers from too little Abiy Ahmed?

Nor is the destabilization confined within Ethiopia. Eritrea faces increasingly explicit Ethiopian claims concerning the Red Sea. Berhanu’s language is especially revealing because “sovereign access” converts a solvable economic question into an existential national claim. Ethiopia can negotiate access, transit and commerce. What it cannot legitimately do is convert population size or economic need into territorial entitlement.

History itself shows that Eritrean sovereignty is not an obstacle to Ethiopian access. After independence, Ethiopia continued using Assab extensively and Massawa as well under extraordinarily favorable arrangements. Ethiopian transit goods were exempted from Eritrean taxes and customs duties, although Ethiopia still paid for port and shipping services. In other words, Ethiopia enjoyed access while Eritrean sovereignty remained fully intact.

The real prerequisite was trust. Ethiopia does not have to own Assab to use Assab, but durable access requires Eritrea to believe that commercial access will remain commercial access. A government cannot describe landlocked geography as an existential injustice, invoke population size, revive historical grievances and normalize demands for “sovereign access,” then expect Eritreans to negotiate as though none of this has consequences. From the Eritrean side, the obvious fear becomes: access today, sovereignty tomorrow?

This has consequences inside Eritrea as well. For decades, Eritrean youth have lived under persistent insecurity and militarization. Young people who should have been studying, building businesses, developing professions and participating in meaningful national development have instead lived in a country organized around permanent security concerns.

None of this excuses Isaias Afwerki’s government. Indefinite national service, political imprisonment, the absence of democratic institutions and the denial of fundamental freedoms remain the responsibility of the Eritrean regime. Security cannot become a permanent excuse for dictatorship. But neither is the underlying insecurity imaginary.

Every renewed suggestion that Eritrean territory remains an unfinished Ethiopian question strengthens the security argument inside Eritrea. It makes it easier for an authoritarian government to argue that demobilization is dangerous and political opening must wait. The Eritrean government is responsible for exploiting that argument, but Ethiopian politicians who continually replenish the insecurity cannot pretend they have nothing to do with the environment in which it operates.

This is one of the tragedies of Abiy’s Red Sea campaign. It does not weaken authoritarianism in Eritrea; it can strengthen the conditions under which authoritarianism reproduces itself. Eritrean young people deserve freedom from their own dictatorship and security from their neighbor. They should never be forced to choose between the two.

A peaceful relationship could instead allow Ethiopian commerce to flow through Assab and Massawa while Eritrea benefits from trade, transport, logistics and employment. Sovereignty and access can coexist because they have coexisted before. The missing ingredient today is not sovereignty. It is trust.

The danger extends westward as well. Sudan is already being consumed by one of the world’s worst wars. A February Reuters investigation reported a camp in Ethiopia’s Benishangul-Gumuz region training thousands of fighters for Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces, drawing on satellite imagery, security documents and multiple sources. Reuters reported alleged UAE financing and logistical support; Ethiopia and the RSF did not comment, while the UAE denied involvement in the hostilities.

The qualifications matter. Allegations should not become established facts merely because they fit our expectations. But the evidence is serious enough to raise a larger question about Ethiopia’s role in the regionalization of Sudan’s war. A government struggling with armed resistance and political fragmentation inside its own territory is simultaneously projecting ambition toward Eritrea and becoming entangled in Sudan. A country cannot indefinitely compensate for internal disintegration through external ambition.

This is precisely when enabling elites become most useful. They do not need to agree with one another, share an ideology or even regard themselves as supporters of Abiy. Some supply nationalist justification, others constitutional theory, media legitimacy, academic validation, mediation or diplomatic normality. Their motives diverge, but their usefulness can converge.

The international community’s deepest mistake may no longer be that it believes in Abiy. Many foreign officials probably do not. The deeper problem may be that they remain more frightened of Ethiopia without him than of what Ethiopia is becoming under him. Every crisis therefore produces another reason to preserve the indispensable man: another dialogue, another mediation, another appeal for restraint, another constitutional experiment, another explanation for why the latest escalation should not fundamentally alter the international relationship.

At what point does supporting Ethiopian stability become preserving the man destabilizing Ethiopia? Former presidents, diplomats, academics and Ethiopian intellectuals cannot plausibly claim ignorance of what another regional war could mean. They watched Tigray’s devastation. They can see Sudan burning. They know the history between Ethiopia and Eritrea. One would hope they would use whatever influence they possess to restrain a ruler increasingly consumed by his own historical importance. Instead, too many find ways to make his ambitions respectable and his excesses explainable.

That is how a dangerous ruler becomes normalized. He does not need everyone to love him. He needs enough influential people to find reasons to excuse, reinterpret or facilitate each new escalation.

Foreign actors carry a particular responsibility because they are unlikely to experience the consequences themselves. Their children will probably not be conscripted. They will not shelter from the drones, become the Eritrean families preparing for another war or join the Sudanese families already fleeing one. Whatever the currency, foreign actors should not profit professionally, politically or intellectually from the blood of Eritreans, Ethiopians or Sudanese.

Eritreans have already paid far too much for their sovereignty. Ethiopians have paid far too much for the ambitions of successive rulers. Sudanese are paying an unimaginable price for a war sustained in part by outside interests. If another regional war comes, those who spent the preceding years giving territorial ambition, concentrated power and military escalation a respectable vocabulary cannot claim complete innocence simply because they never carried a gun. Responsibility begins before the first shot is fired.

This does not diminish Abiy’s responsibility. It explains how personal responsibility becomes durable political power. A Messiah without believers is merely a man with an extravagant conception of himself. Political danger begins when intellectuals, politicians, institutions and foreign governments discover reasons of their own to sustain the mythology. They need not share those reasons, like one another or even like the Messiah. Sometimes it is enough to keep his adversaries divided, his ambitions respectable and his excesses explainable.

The Messiah did not create all these interests. He learned how to assemble them, exploit their contradictions and survive through their divisions. The Messiah and the Crowd asked why so many people invested extraordinary hopes in Abiy Ahmed. It never meant everyone; some of us were skeptical from the beginning. Eight years later, the harder question concerns those who should have known better: those who kept adjusting their standards as the evidence accumulated, those who found a place at the table, and those whose independent agendas now perform political work useful to the system even when they do not belong to it.

Meanwhile, Ethiopia fractures, Tigray is again under attack, Eritrea is again forced to think about its territorial security, and Sudan’s catastrophic war draws in more outside actors. The contradiction is becoming impossible to hide: the crowd helped create the Messiah, the enabling elites helped sustain him, and while the elites sing, the people pay.

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