Ethiopia

A few thoughts. Being a Somali from Ethiopia, I've always had an ambivalent relationship to the Ethiopian state. To be Ethiopian Somali is to inherit a history of blood and struggle, of colonialism and dispossession. To belong to the land but be excluded from the nation.

But the fact is that federalism - even one imperfectly instituted - has offered us something. Recognition as the 3rd largest ethnicity, a nation within a nation. A shift away from centralized governance that (often violently) suppressed difference for a system of ethnic autonomy.

It means something to be able to go to school in one's own language, to be able to fill out a government form in Somali, to see officials who are your own rather than highlanders brought in to govern who call you "shifta" and "shiretam" and treat you as foreign invaders.

We all know the misery and suffering TPLF-dominated rule brought to the Somali region as it undermined its own constitution. But there is a larger issue at the heart of this conflict –– the very idea of Ethiopia and how governance should work. This is what is at stake.