BY JEFF PEARCE
Part Two
I have a few humble suggestions.
What Should Be Done?
The U.S., Britain and EU have been screaming until our ears bleed about “unfettered access” and rescuing folks from famine, for months. What is very interesting is that I have not heard a single word from any Western official about ensuring civilians are safe within territory held by the TPLF. And as we now know, various confirmed and unconfirmed reports are already coming out about their reprisal executions.
It hasn’t seemed to occur to the idiots in Washington and London that there could be innocent people who do not want to live under the depraved rule of a terrorist organization.
Let the motto ring out loud and long, until they hear it in D.C. and get the message: Safe Passage Now.
Tigrayans who want out of the region should get safe passage to federal held territory. Let these people go. Students at Mekelle University, interim administration workers fearing for their lives, everyone who wants out should be allowed to get out — to walk out safely and be given transport to safe locales in the rest of Ethiopia.
A TPLF sympathizer demanded to know from me on Twitter where would six million people go? It is a ridiculous question on its face, because are you already conceding that six million Tigrayans don’t support the TPLF? Then what are we talking for?
And quite frankly, the desperate flee to anywhere they can. Far better that an arrangement is worked out so they can get away from danger to locations in safe Ethiopian territory where their immediate needs can be met. Because do we really want to see Mekelle turn into Mosul?
Conversely, if anyone wants passage into Tigray, they should be granted it at agreed-upon checkpoints, for which both sides are entitled to check arrivals for smuggled arms.
Civilians travelling to Tigray could have a five or ten-day grace period which would allow them to track down and collect relatives and folks who cannot easily travel alone out of the region, such as the disabled and elderly. Let them come, collect their loved ones, and safely leave.
You claim the moral high ground, TPLF? Show us you can do this decent thing for people.
Otherwise, well, my hope is that the Abiy government will block all aid convoys, all shipments until fast-track negotiations are concluded — not with the TPLF, because their word is worthless. No, make the arrangements with the Americans, Brits and Europeans, who will expect their prize Dobermans to honor a deal.
No More Free Lunch
What else? After this, after innocent civilians are granted safe passage and escorted out of the region, no more handouts. It ends here. Like the entitled brat who says he’ll do just fine, moving into his bitchin’ new apartment, you don’t get to come back and have Mom do your laundry. Fend for yourself, TPLF assholes.
And I do mean everything. Go read at night by car headlights. Go bug the Americans to fill in the very large hole in terms of food supplies, now that Ethiopia is no longer footing the bill. Congratulations! You claim you wanted your own independent state, well; you can’t have the one to the south. You get what you paid for with others’ blood.
Governing, as you know, is a lot harder than trying to destroy a government — you guys are experts at that as for actually providing the essentials and basics for a populace? As everyone knows not so much.
A TPLF troll, thinking herself clever, tweeted the other day, “Build a wall between Tigray and Ethiopia.” That was so funny to her. I replied, “Well… You have enough rocks up there. Do please get started.”
Kick Out the Correspondents
I’ve made this argument before in another article, so I won’t rehash my case here, except to make it explicitly clear once again that a free press does not mean only Western correspondents can provide it. They are guests, not citizens, and if they continue to side with their chosen “underdog” to the point of flagrantly lying and manipulating, they shouldn’t be welcome.
It’s never been more urgent that these people have to go. Put them gently and respectfully on a plane and send them home… or if they like, to their new posting, the capital of the self-declared Tigray state where they can get a wonderful dose of the reality they failed to bring to their reportage of the conflict.
For those of who still believe “if it bleeds, it leads,” let’s see how long you last there when your agenda of pushing pain and conflict runs smack into the painted sets and puff smoke of the TPLF, wanting to
claim all is paradise now. Let’s see how your new best buddies react to the critical stories you write on their screw-ups.
I confess I will genuinely get a kick out of watching that. I will put up my feet and enjoy that spectacle immensely.
And at long last, finally… Prevail
Ethiopia is now saddled with a mind-boggling debt created by a terrorist organization and its war. It will need to get out from under that. All the more reason for the Free Lunch to stop now. Instead, it must turn its face towards fresh opportunities and diversifying its economy. Focus on infrastructure. Build more schools, train more professionals. And most importantly, secure new friends.
It’s quite clear that all these machinations to destabilize the country have puppeteers standing in the shadows behind the TPLF. Egypt is hell bent on stopping GERD, and the U.S. seems hell bent on pleasing Egypt, sucking up to a despotic regime even while it condemns what may well be one of Ethiopia’s most fair elections in its history (at least earning a “C” grade from some observers for trying).
As I’ve written before, if the U.S. and EU want to treat an ally like an enemy, it’s time for Ethiopia to get new friends. It’s also time for Ethiopia to reach out and resume its place as a leader of Pan-African interests.
The one thing that has always impressed me is the Ethiopian capacity to forgive. Read Raymond Jonas’s excellent The Battle of Adwa for how Italian prisoners of war were treated after the fighting was over. Consider how Italians were soon treated cordially in the aftermath of the Second World War.
Diaspora friends and contacts within Ethiopia have always said essentially, “We can handle the truth; we just want to know what’s really going on.” For their trouble and compassion, they’ve been rewarded with propaganda, lies, and abuse. They’ve been told on a daily, almost hourly basis that they are the enemy, their history and culture insulted.
Yet they hold their heads high and still care. There are millions of Ethiopians of mixed ancestry who share in Tigray’s heritage, which in the end is and always shall be part of Ethiopia’s heritage. And it is the Ethiopian spirit, the human spirit, to care about those displaced, those who are starving or who are traumatized by war. Which is why it’s so infuriating and contemptible that the Western media continues to portray this conflict as an ethnic one at its root instead of a war waged by a criminal oligarchy/terrorist group that’s using identity politics to harvest hate.
But now that terrorist group has the sweet illusion of power. The problem is that with their incompetence, any Tigrayans living within their ISIS-like domain will still suffer. Their quiet desperation or misery in silence may go on for some time, even years, as a Tigray state will no doubt be propped up with loans from the U.S., the EU and Britain. But eventually the bill will come due, as folks have next to nothing to grow up there, and tourism dollars will only go so far.
The propagandists, in their poverty of imagination, appropriated the hash tag verb of “Prevails” from Ethiopia when a more fitting slogan for their future will be Tigray Subsists.
And yet I know that no Ethiopian really wants that. They stole the term “prevails” because they understood its power — but not its spirit. You will only truly prevail together. I have extreme doubts that the TPLF will settle for its new Kingdom of Stone. It will invent a pretext to go beyond agreed-upon borders and kill again.
But if by some miracle, the U.S. persuades it to finally settle down and get on with governing; Ethiopia can be big enough to let it try its grand experiment.
There may (and likely will) come a time when Tigrayans, finally shaking off these terrorist parasites once and for all, want to return to the Ethiopian family. And it won’t be a question of if or should Ethiopians take them back, they will do it because a piece of the nation’s soul was missing for that interval, and only the coldest of hearts could say they won’t miss it.
And as for Tigrayans, those who at last recognize the true monsters in this drama, they will hopefully call themselves Ethiopians again and see arms stretched out and waiting — with extraordinary patience — to embrace them and welcome them home.
Editor’s Note: The views entertained in this article do not necessarily reflect the stance of The Ethiopian Herald
The Ethiopian Herald July 4/2021
