While at Addis Ababa University the young Siye participated in student moment and later drop out to join TPLF in the mid 1970s. After joining TPLF as a rebel fighter he rose to the high rank of the party and become a commander of the TPLF force in a short time. His prominence in the TPLF has led the Derg authorities to take revenge against his family. Among others, his older brother was taken out from Atse Yohannes high school in Mekelle, where he was a physics teacher, and shot dead in front of his students.
After the defeat of the Derg and the end of Ethiopian Civil War in 1991, Siye served as the Ethiopian Minister of Defense. In his capacity as Minister of Defense and Legislator he negotiated with all other armed rebel groups to their cessation of armed struggle and joining of the Transitional Government. Besides restructuring the Ministry of Defense into a nimble and effective institution and laying the foundations for a new national defense force, Seeye oversaw the implementation of a DDR program affecting over half a million ex-servicemen and ex-combatants. He also had a key role during the 1998-2000 Ethio-Eritrean War both in reversing the Aggression of the other side and in the design of the conditions for the deployment UN Peace Keeping Forces.
Siye was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray from its founding in 1995 until 2000. He had also played significant role in the introduction of the economic rehabilitation and restructuring policies following the end of the war in the early nineties. As part of the restructuring process he served as board chairman of both Ethiopian Airlines and Ethiopian Telecommunications and led their establishment as autonomous corporate entities. He also was involved in the running of a big Endowment Fund which was involved in diverse development activities.
Controversy and Imprisonment
Siye was arrested on July 2002, accused by the Federal Ethics and Anticorruption Commission of abuse of office by aiding his associates to unfairly obtain bank loans and buying state properties. He was afterwards charged with two specific acts: that he had pressured the state-owned Commercial Bank of Ethiopia to provide loans to his brother, Mihretab Abraha; and that he helped Mihretab obtain a 19% discount for 15 trucks he purchased from AMCE, a truck-assembly plant in which the Ethiopian government owned a 30% stake. In a hearing, the Federal judge, Birtukan Mideksa, set Siye free for lack of evidence, however he was subsequently arrested by the government the moment he left the building and imprisoned for six years. On 11 June 2007, the Federal Supreme Court of Ethiopia dismissed the charge that he had pressured the bank to give his brother loans, while convicting him on the charge that he helped his brother Mihretab get discounts on seven of the 15 trucks. At the same session, Mihretab was sentenced to five years imprisonment and a 1,000 Birr fine, along with a number of their friends and relatives who heard their sentences at the same time. However, because most of them had been imprisoned they were released.
After Imprisonment
In July of 2008, Siye became a founding member of the Forum for Democratic Dialogue, a new coalition of opposition parties and activists. Since then he, along with ex-President Negasso Gidada, another former member of the EPRDF, have announced that they have joined the Unity for Democracy and Justice Party, a coalition of which the FDD is a member. However in late 2010 Unity for Democracy and Justice Party was dissolved due to government pressure and imprisonment of top officials of the party. From 2011 to 2012, Siye Abraha was a fellow in the Mason Program at Harvard Kennedy School. He graduated in mid 2012 and joined United Nations Development Programme.
