One need not deny the sufferings caused in the course of centuries of state-building in pointing out the complexity of Ethiopian history and in recognizing the constructive elements it also harbors. From this perspective, one could, for analytical purposes, briefly identify in Ethiopian history three political trajectories - assimilation, fragmentation, and integration - in order to ferret out from within our own history an understanding of the present and intimations of possible responses for the current crisis.

The assimilation trajectory is incarnated in the effort to create a centralized state. Tewedros (1847-1868) is probably the first emperor who engaged on this path. His campaigns to subjugate all the sources of power, including the Church, eventually led to his downfall. This centralizing thread was picked up by Haile Selassie who successfully stripped the nobility and the regions of their traditional autonomy and brought the whole country under the direct control of the center. The Derg intensified this centralization. The assimilation current has invariably been met by resistance from Ethiopian society. The major revolts in Tigray, Gojam, Bale, and Eritrea and the rise of ethnic liberation fronts took place within the assimilation trajectory.

The fragmentation trajectory could be identified roughly with the period of Imam Ahmed (1527-1543), the Zemene Mesafint (1769-1853), and the current EPRDF regime. At the root of this political trajectory are policies based on partial criteria of political organization, such as kinship, religion, or ethnicity, which highlight differences at the expense of what Ethiopians share. The TPLF's stand captures well this fragmentation current: According to it, "Even though it is undeniable that the oppressed masses of the Amhara nationality itself do not play a major role in the oppression of the Tigrayan masses the two peoples have developed bitter hatred towards each other. They are deeply suspicious of each other" (quoted in John Young, 1997). The fragmentation current emphasizes what divides rather than what unites Ethiopians.

The integration trajectory characterizes the Axumite period (from about 100 BCE to circa 590 AD), the Middle period (from Amde Tseyon to Zara Yakob, 1314-1468), and the periods of Emperor Yohannes IV and Emperor Menelik II. The integration trajectory differs from the assimilation current in that its objective is unity rather than centralization, cultural symbiosis rather than assimilation, recognition of regional autonomy rather than the dictatorship of the center. The integration trajectory has been wrongly lumped with the assimilation current in the ideological hurry to label Ethiopian history as that of "colonialism", hence justifying fragmentation, or as the history of primordial national unity, hence justifying centralization as one could note from the Derg's motto, Ethiopia tikdem. Unlike the assimilation and the fragmentation currents which focus respectively on Ethiopian and ethnic identity, the integration current puts the emphasis on the kind of society Ethiopia is to be. Indeed, when one takes into account the utilitarian articulations, characteristic of the integrative trajectory, of the primacy of the national state with the relative autonomy of regional rulers, one discovers the important roles negotiations and accommodations play in the relations between the center and the regions. The integrative current has features that in some ways tend to reflect the idea that the higher level intervenes only if the lower level is not able to fulfill an important task. Thus, we could discover within our own history, experiences of political practices which carry within themselves hints of the modern ideas of regional autonomy and federalism.

These three political trajectories embedded in Ethiopian history, considered here separately for analytical purposes, are intertwined with each other. Each is gestated in the wombs of the crisis of the regime it replaces. The important point is that the present is not a tabula rasa: it is the locus of the various historical experiences that gave birth to modern Ethiopia and, as such, of the various possible futures that exist in it as potentialities. Enucleating these will enable us to achieve a contextual understanding of the current situation as well as of the possible political trajectories that are open to us. Which of these trajectories is actualized depends on us.

Decades of political struggles involving every sector of society have made it self-evident that Ethiopians reject the assimilation and fragmentation currents and aspire to live in a democratic and prosperous society. Though the integration current offers the best route to fulfill this aspiration, the ethnic fragmentation current has the upper hand at the moment. And those who currently espouse this approach usually refer, and rightly so, to the harms done to them and their ancestors by the historical state-builders of Ethiopia. Our past does harbor many historical wounds insofar as the processes of nation and state-building involved to a great extent the use of force. There is an important kernel of truth in the historicist claim that the way we relate to historical events influences our political consciousness. Were we to keep the historical wounds open permanently, we will be imprisoned in our past; we will be incapacitated from understanding the realities of the present and prevented from coping effectively with our current problems. Were we to forget our historical wounds, we will empty our history of its important formative events and repeat our past mistakes.

The assimilation current keeps historical wounds open, because, given the multi-dimensional and multi-ethnic character of Ethiopian society, assimilation can be pursued only through the mechanisms of centralization and oppression, thus repeating and deepening the historical wounds of the past. The fragmentation current also keeps historical wounds open in that it relives the past as if it were still the present, with the result that the present is soaked in the pains of the past, generating "bitter hatred towards each other", to borrow the language of the TPLF. Keeping historical wounds open is the bread and butter of ethnic politics and the scourge of contemporary African political life. The Cameroonian writer, Célestin Monga, points out that "The resurrection of past injustices that few even remember appears incomprehensible, yet this is exactly what happens in Ethiopia, Chad, Rwanda, Nigeria, and Kenya. The memory of the pain and suffering one social group suffered at the hands of another suddenly comes to the fore and the "victims" discover that their exploitation dates back several decades or more. When this happens, we have in our hands the makings of a lengthy conflict." The fragmentation current makes the sufferings of the past the guide of current politics. It thus diverts the people's energy from the pressing tasks of creating a democratic and developed society to the pursuit of ethnic politics.

The integration current differs from the other two in that it embraces both remembrance and "forgetfulness". Its successful implantation requires however that we recognize, as a philosopher puts it, that "There is a degree of sleeplessness, of rumination, of the historical sense which is harmful and ultimately fatal to the living thing, whether this living thing be a man or a people or a culture…the past has to be forgotten if it is not to become the gravedigger of the present….". In other words, if we let the pains of the past overwhelm our lives, we paralyze our creative powers and become the "gravedigger(s) of the present". "Forgetfulness" has an indispensable role in tackling our current crisis insofar as the energy spent on ruminating on the past will be freed to engage the problems of the present. However, one should not misunderstand what is meant by "forgetfulness." The term is not used in the sense of erasing or denying past sufferings, but rather, speaking analogically, in the sense of doing the "work of mourning". To avoid a misunderstanding of what I mean, I will use instead the word "detachment".

First, all our historical wounds must be exposed. In the words of a critique of totalitarianism, only "recovering, retaining, and reweaving what was forgotten, suppressed, and distorted …into a full and complete narrative of the present…can bring us to closure [and] to reconciliation…." However, in recovering the events of the past, one must make a distinction between the "being" of past events and their "meaning". The "being" of wars contains the pain, traumas, and all the raw emotions that accompany violent acts. But the meanings of such events cannot be historically comprehended if what an ethicist calls "painism" becomes the grid for interpreting them, because, then, the history of state-building in Ethiopia will be reduced to violence and ethnic trauma, and past events will be perceived through the distorting lenses of hatred, anger and the desire for revenge. In such a framework, Ethiopian history is depicted as an inhospitable enemy territory, and one is thus seized by the compulsion to reject it in toto and one is deprived consequently of the detachment and perspective essential for grasping the constructive dimensions of our history. As a result, the present will be sacrificed for fighting the battles of the past instead of being mobilized to build a better society for the now and the future.

The point could be illustrated by using the analogy of mourning. The "work of mourning" is successful only when the mourner eventually frees himself or herself from the emotions felt at the moment of death of a beloved person. Only with this successful "work of mourning" could the person be free from the raw emotional burdens occasioned by death and redirect his or her energy towards the tasks of the present and the future. This does not mean erasing from memory the death of the beloved, but rather to remember the life-history of the deceased with detachment. Similarly, detachment from historical wounds does not mean erasing them from our collective memory. Rather, it signifies freeing ourselves from the pain of these historical wounds such that the events are now understood and remembered without the systematic distortions caused by the raw emotion that inevitably accompanied them at the moment of their occurrence. Such a detachment allows the past to be appropriated as an enlightening inheritance rather than to be lived as a traumatic and haunting experience; it opens a space for a shared future.

It is instructive to consider "The Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act No. 34" adopted in South Africa in 1995. This is the Act that created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The main function of the Commission is to bring out into the open the truth about the tortures and killings of the Apartheid regime so as to enable South Africans to complete successfully the "work of mourning" and to free themselves from the catastrophic consequences of painism that would have poisoned the present and the future. This was deemed necessary in order to prevent ethnic fragmentation, hatred and revenge from derailing the task of building a democratic and united South Africa. In the words of the Act, the Commission fulfills "a need for understanding but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimization." Though no comparison is possible between the inhuman crimes of Apartheid and the sufferings our historical state-builders inflicted on us, a crucial lesson could be drawn about how we Ethiopians need to relate ourselves to our wounds of history. Without detachment from the pains of the past, we will not have the understanding, the unity, and the will necessary to tackle the colossal socio-economic problems we now confront; and the current crisis will deepen and expand to a point of no solution.

Interpreting the past through "painism" makes it appear as if the present discontent results from our incapacity to change the past. But this cannot be. It is not the past but actually existing famine, AIDS, malaria, illiteracy, absolute poverty, and oppression that confront us today. The reason for the current discontent has to be then the realization that the present conditions are profoundly inimical for creating the just political order we all yearn for. Espousing painism as a grid for interpreting our past will make us life prisoners of our historical wounds and condemn us to ethnic politics and conflicts. Democracy and development are incompatible with painism.

Our history indeed shows that we have the capacity to heal our historical wounds. If one considers the complex processes that made the whole country hospitable to all such that it is difficult to find a region of Ethiopia where Oromos, Amharas, Tigres, Gurages and others have not settled and prospered peacefully, and, in addition, if one considers the great capacities for collective action manifested in the victories of Gundet, Gura, Adwa against foreign invaders and in the multi-ethnic resistance to the Fascist invasion, one has to conclude that we Ethiopians have the capacity to transcend our troubled past. But we have to have the opportunity to do so. And this opportunity cannot exist if we do not successfully mourn the tragic events of our history and allow the historical wounds to heal. Healing historical wounds, like the TPLF's decision to keep them open, is a political choice. A critical re-appropriation of the positive legacies embedded in the integrative current could provide a fertile ground for the rise of an autochthonous democratic federalism that could heal our historical wounds and avoid the violent conflicts and dislocations that characterize the fragmentation and assimilation currents of our history.