BY SOLOMON DIBABA
Ensuring the rule of law in Tigray region is indeed a complex process but I think the major part of unseating TPLF from its ivory tower is completed and done in the fastest manner comparable only to the US campaign in Iraq. TPLF has now become irrelevant because it can no more claim to be a liberation front for its own members let alone the peoples of Tigray.
The peoples of Tigray had suffered for more than 40 years from the highest level of deception and political rhetoric they were fed for all these years. They suffered from the famine of 1974 and 1984 and TPLF multiplied their misery by isolating the peoples in the region from adequately receiving relief supplies. Now this has stopped for good and the breeze of freedom is already blowing in the region. Rehabilitation and development have touched the ground.
The uniqueness of the campaign to enforce the rule of law in Tigray emanates from three features of the campaign. First, despite western media claims that Ethiopia has plunged itself into a prolonged civil war, it took the army and Special Forces of Amhara only three weeks to swart a regional army which was preparing for war for more than two years.
Contrary to the expectations of the international community and a consortium of fake news fabricators, the offensive was carefully targeted with no civilian casualties. Notwithstanding the barbaric actions of TPLF in Mai Kadra, Humera and destruction on hard earned public infrastructural facilities, the army conducted the mop up campaign with minimum loss of life contrary to the reportage by international media companies reporting from afar and from Ethiopia.
The rehabilitation program that is underway in Tigray will hopefully be conducted in the shortest possible time. I am thinking of 5 interconnected track of activities which would include fast-tracked delivery of relief supplies which has already began, rehabilitating the infrastructural facilities like telephone lines and networks, electric power supply, restarting WASH facilities, roads and airports savagely destroyed by fleeing TPLF so called Special Forces.
Rehabilitation will also involve starting functional services of government structures at all levels. The establishment of the Provisional Cabinet will pave the way for smooth running of all sectors of public services including financial, health, education and interregional and local transport services.
Tigray is an important international tourist destination but TPLF deliberately destroyed Axum Airport to incapacitate the tourism sector in the country thus leaving thousands of youth in the region from benefiting from the sector.
The damage inflicted on the social psychology and morale of the peoples of Tigray by TPLF’s dictatorship needs a specific treatment by way of building their confidence on the government and their age old unity with the rest of the peoples of Tigray. TPLF never paid respect to family life but was only interested to ensure its oligarchic hegemony at the cost of the blood and flesh of the youth in Tigray. Mental and emotional rehabilitation is particularly need for the youth. The provisional regional government will hopefully come up with its own strategy and plan to put things on track.
Given the objective reality in the region and its proximity with several neighboring countries, setting up a strong security and public safety apparatus is another top urgent task that requires the attention of both the federal and regional provisional government. Contrabands in firearms, medicaments and electronic devices severely affect the safety and security of citizens in the region.
The longstanding development programs that should have been accomplished in Tigray was purposefully hijacked by TPLF’s idiosyncratic day dreams of claiming to be a de-facto state, a dream tantamount to a pie in the sky. TPLF conducted a theatrical sham election wasting state fund allotted to it and getting prepared to wage war on Ethiopia.
Long overdue development programs and deliberately neglected annual development projects need to take off from where they have stopped. This will indeed take time.
On the other hand, instead of basing their understanding and analysis on false information from TPLF sponsored social media, the international community of nations should support Ethiopia’s efforts to ensure peaceful development in the country and in Tigray Regional State in particular. The international media outlets should source their information not from TPLF fugitives on the run but from government and other CSO sources on the ground.
Although TPLF is already out of the politics in Ethiopia, the vestiges of its slanderous lies and bragging is still going on in the social media creating a phantasy of starting outdated guerrilla warfare to come back to power again. The point is, this is not 1975 and it would be difficult to rewind unidirectional time in favor of TPLF. Gone are the days of chivalry.
The Ethiopian Herald January 22/2021
