By Voice of Justice

The Slow Surrender of Tigray

The strength of Tigray was once the unity of its people standing together to defend their rights and dignity. History, political science, and lived experience all confirm one truth: no people are defeated solely by external force; they fall when internal legitimacy, unity, and trust collapse. That is the stage we are dangerously approaching.

Following the genocidal war, the enemy no longer needs mass killings or total blockades to weaken us. Instead, they have shifted to attritional domination a slow process of exhaustion through fragmentation, economic suffocation, propaganda, demographic manipulation, and loss of hope. Starvation, displacement, youth migration, and insecurity continue, while the illusion of “stability” masks a deeper decay.

Leadership Science: Why Authority Is Fading

Effective leadership during existential crisis rests on three pillars:
1. Legitimacy earned through accountability and moral authority
2. Presence visible, honest, continuous engagement
3. Protection – safeguarding people, dignity, and resources

Tigray’s leadership is failing on all three.

Max Weber, the foundational sociologist of authority and leadership, emphasized that political authority relies on legitimacy, not just coercion or tradition. In Economy and Society (Weber, 1922/1978), he argued that leaders lose power when they rely on past achievements or symbolic authority rather than ongoing consent and performance. Leadership that depends on history rather than action becomes hollow and eventually irrelevant.

Citation: Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1922)

Gene Sharp, in his seminal work on power and nonviolent action, explains that all political power ultimately relies on the consent of the governed (Sharp, 1973/2012). Governments, regimes, and leadership structures cannot maintain authority solely through coercion; when legitimacy is withdrawn through withdrawal of cooperation, passive resistance, or social fragmentation power collapses rapidly, often faster than the external force can act. Sharp’s framework is particularly relevant to Tigray: waiting for mercy or external intervention will not preserve authority; only decisive action that restores legitimacy and unity will.

Citation: Sharp, G. (2012). The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3rd ed.). Boston: Porter Sargent. (Original work published 1973)

Daily Erosion of Support After Pretoria

Since the Pretoria Agreement, the daily abandonment of the party and the erosion of public support for TPLF have accelerated. What once represented strength and unity is now weakening day by day.

This is not caused by propaganda alone it is the result of inaction, silence, and strategic paralysis during a continuing crisis. Leadership during peace is easy; leadership during collapse requires bold, painful, and decisive choices. Instead, we are witnessing hesitation disguised as patience.

Political science is clear:

When leadership delays decisive action in crisis, the public interprets it as surrender.

Waiting for forgiveness, cooperation, or goodwill from a government that:
• Conducted genocidal war
• Maintained blockade and starvation
• Allowed mass displacement and demographic change

is not diplomacy it is ill-advised surrender.

No serious leadership waits for mercy from an adversary while its people starve. History offers no successful example of liberation achieved through appeals to conscience alone, especially when conscience has already failed.
Drought, Starvation, and the Abandonment of the Displaced

The current drought and starvation among internally displaced people (IDPs) exposes the depth of leadership failure.

Families displaced for more than five years remain trapped in shelters and camps. During President Tadesse Worede’s visit, their plea was direct and simple:

“Let us return to our homes and our land.”

This is not a humanitarian request it is a political verdict.
A leadership that cannot return its people home has already lost moral authority. Leadership science is explicit: prolonged displacement without a return pathway signals state failure.
Fragmentation as a Weapon

Instead of unity, we now face:
• Political and military drift
• Regionalism replacing collective purpose
• Corruption spreading unchecked
• Public trust collapsing

History is unambiguous:
• Yugoslavia disintegrated once elite unity collapsed.
• Palestinian leadership divisions weakened national leverage.
• Amhara region today shows how internal fragmentation benefits the central state while civilians suffer.

Political scientists call this elite fragmentation under pressure a condition that almost always accelerates defeat. Sharp reinforces this: fragmented consent among the governed accelerates the collapse of authority, even in the absence of open conflict.

The EPRDF Lesson: Division and Collapse

The fall of EPRDF was not sudden, nor purely external. It was preceded by deep internal division between political leadership and military-security elites, as well as fractures within the ruling coalition itself.

Key patterns included:
• Political leaders losing credibility with the public
• Security and military leaders prioritizing control over legitimacy
• Internal mistrust replacing coordination
• Reactive rather than strategic decision-making

EPRDF did not fall because it lacked weapons it fell because its leadership fractured internally while society withdrew cooperation. A divided leadership cannot survive a divided society.

Additionally, EPRDF’s failure shows that violence and coercion alone cannot maintain legitimacy. Gene Sharp’s theory of power demonstrates that governments rule only as long as people cooperate voluntarily or under fear. Once fear fails and elites are divided, collapse accelerates.

Corruption, Resources, and Silent Extraction

The continued extraction of Tigray’s gold while drought and starvation persist reflects the resource curse where wealth sustains elites while society collapses.

As seen in:
• Congo
• Sudan
• Venezuela

Resources enrich elites but destroy trust. Tigray is at risk of following the same path.

Diaspora Disarray: A Squandered Asset

Successful diasporas are:
• Organized
• Disciplined in messaging
• Strategically aligned

The Armenian, Jewish, and South African diasporas succeeded because unity overrode ego.

The Tigrayan diaspora today mirrors the Amhara diaspora, Syrian opposition diaspora fragmented, personalized, and internally consumed reducing its effectiveness at the very moment unity is most needed.

Invisible Leadership and the Collapse of Trust

Leadership psychology is unequivocal: silence during crisis is interpreted as abandonment.

When IDPs plead publicly to return home after five years and leadership offers no roadmap, legitimacy collapses.

There is no blank check for loyalty. Support is conditional, renewable, and rooted in performance and protection.

Endless Statements Are Not Leadership

What the people demand is not:
• Weekly calls
• Announcements of Pretoria violations
• Appeals to international sympathy

What the people demand is:
• Clear strategy
• Right alliances
• Defined path forward
• Protection and return of civilians

Announcing violations without consequences is documentation of failure, not leadership.

The Illusion of International Rescue

What kind of leadership waits for action from an international community that abandoned Tigray for five years while genocide, blockade, and starvation continued?

Leadership science is blunt:

External actors respond to power, unity, and strategy not suffering alone.

Waiting for international intervention without leverage is denial, not realism.

Warnings from History

History punishes leaders who confuse control with legitimacy:
• Gaddafi
• Venezuela’s ruling elite and President Maduro
• EPRDF’s divided leadership

All believed power could outlast trust. All were proven wrong.

Final Warning

Leadership science, history, and the voices of the displaced converge on one conclusion:

Power that hesitates in crisis loses both allies and legitimacy.

Every day of elite division deepens fragmentation.
Every season of displacement accelerates decay.
Every ignored plea widens the gap between leadership and people.

The demand of the people is clear:
• Choose the right path
• Choose the right alliances
• Act with clarity and courage

Otherwise, this leadership will not be remembered as cautious but as the one that mistook delay for wisdom and surrender for strategy.

I hope they listen before history closes the window.

References (APA)
• Sharp, G. (2012). The Politics of Nonviolent Action (3rd ed.). Boston: Porter Sargent. (Original work published 1973)
• Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society: An outline of interpretive sociology (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1922)