ABSTRACT
The racialized/ethnicized Habasha (Amhara-Tigray) state in the Ethiopian Empire has created a political roadblock for the development of democracy despite the fact that the empire has frequently confronted social ruptures, upheavals, wars, and revolutions. The Amharas and Tigrayans are connected and at the same time separate ethnonational groups; they have similar cultures and a religion known as Orthodox Christianity. They have also related languages, which use the same alphabet, but their languages, Amharigna and Tigranya, are different. The Tigrayan ruling elites have been a junior partner in the Ethiopian state until 1991, when their liberation front known as the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front with its subsidiary organizations conquered Ethiopian state power and developed a different strategy of maintaining colonial domination, authoritarianism, violence, and racism. The ruling elites of the two groups have been fierce competitors in dominating and controlling the Ethiopian state, and they have claimed Semitic heritage as their ideology to justify their dominant position in the political economy of the Ethiopian Empire. The successive regimes of former Abyssinia and present Ethiopia have been authoritarian to Habashas and terrorist to non-Habashas.
