What was heard in Addis Ababa today?

Feta Daily News update on August 18, 2023. What was heard in Addis Ababa today? Before the rise of Fascism and Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World in the 1930s, a pioneer of European colonialism by the name of Roman Prochazka, Austrian, wrote a provocative book under the title Abyssinia: the powder barrel. 

In this pro-colonial book that justified the civilizing mission of Italian aggression against ancient and independent Ethiopia, Prochazka offered the misleading and harmful narrative that Abyssinians (he meant Amhara) are fiercely independent, patriotic, anti-Western and a significant competitor to European colonialism in Africa. 

He argued that Amhara expanded Ethiopia’s territorial space by subjugating other ethnic groups.  He deemed it right that European colonialists had a moral responsibility to free oppressed nationalities. These external powers continue to take sides in support of national liberation fronts, especially the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) which use the narrative Prochazka offered as a template. 

Today, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, and other countries take advantage of Ethiopia’s ethnic polarization. Among other things, they supply military hardware including drones to the Abiy Ahmed regime. The regime in turn uses these drones to kill innocent Amhara civilians, including infants, pregnant women, and elders throughout the Amhara region.