Editor’s note

This is a running chronicle, not a finished history. Each dated dispatch below was written to stand alone: a reader who opens at any single article should not need to read what came before. Read in sequence, they trace the arc of a single political experiment — Abiy Ahmed’s premiership — from the day of his appointment to the present.

The voice is consistent: empirical, structured, allergic to euphemism. Where actors are named, they are named. Where casualty ranges differ, the range is given. Where the government has used a euphemism — “law enforcement operation,” “anti-peace elements,” “Western interference” — the phrase is quoted, not adopted. The same evidentiary standard is applied to every actor on the page: federal government, Tigray People’s Liberation Front, Eritrean Defence Forces, Amhara regional forces, Fano, Oromo Liberation Army, and the international institutions that funded or looked away from the consequences.

New dispatches are added monthly.