It is now a year since TPLF declared all out war on Ethiopia. A year may look like a very short period of time when we hear about other conflict areas which may have been dragging for years. Some conflicts seem never to end, and some people say it is done on purpose because there are those who thrive on these conflicts. The destruction others suffer may bring riches to those engaged in the construction industry those who sell iron rods, cement and other construction materials. Wars it is known present the best opportunity of making lucrative income to producers and distributors of arms and ammunitions both simple as well as well sophisticated and extremely expensive such as the most advanced jets, helicopters, tanks and now UVAs or drones etc. The traditional saying in Ethiopia which says, ‘the death of one is the wedding of another’ describes it eloquently.
‘War traders’ exist because they know they thrive from the explosions and protracting of conflicts. There are those who are called for reconstruction purposes when destructions occur, and hence these industries are anxious to even solicit conflict situations or serve as catalysts. Even so called humanitarian organisations and governments are not always exempt from such suspicion. They have their own interests which may drive them to if not encouraging these deadly and destructive conditions but at least they do not seem to lose sleep if and when some humanitarian crisis unfolds somewhere under their watch.
At times the governments themselves of these conflicting nations do not seem to worry too much about the losses because in some cases they may have their contacts with these organisations and it then boils down to what sort of relations they can entertain with these forces and what sort of advantages they could extract from them. This is of course tragic because if a government tries to trade on the pain of its citizens, it cannot get worse than that. Corruption is a way of life for some governments and we know from our own experience with the TPLF-led government that ruled Ethiopia for three decades! There has been found ample evidence to this effect and given that the hidden agenda of TPLF was to weaken Ethiopia and then reduce it to several even weaker nations and then build up a mighty Tigray on its debris, there is no wonder on what it is now doing!
People die and this does not worry too much these politicians and destruction of infrastructure and houses happens regularly. This as well does not seem to prevent them from sleeping comfortably. They usually trade some promising words for public consumption, but this does not prevent the suffering of citizens from persisting and it go on for ages! We have seen time and again that only when the situation gets so nasty that the fall out is bound to affect their strategic interests and economies and their securities would these major powers begin to take drastic actions to halt certain conflicts. Otherwise with a bit of commitment, most conflicts could be resolved within a certain span of time.
However, what is usually observed is that no one seems too interested in doing this as there are too many vested interests with lots of networks pursued continuously. Many people say war is a lucrative trade for many while it is deadly and tragic for those directly involved in the battles. There have been discovered by some international organisations and human rights activists that even humanitarian aid that is prepared to be handed to these poor victims of war for those who are displaced and in agony become the target of unscrupulous politicians and their allies to plunder the resources and divert them for their personal gain!
Many people are heard expressing regrets that this war in the northern part of Ethiopia is fratricidal and needs to be stopped immediately. They accuse the Ethiopian government of not doing enough to avert it in the first place. They insist it must have anticipated that this condition would materialize and it must have done everything possible so that such a scenario would not materialize. But this seems to be a very simplistic and even naïve conclusion built upon totally erroneous or misplaced premises or inadequate information on the situation. It is said that it takes two for a tango and in conflicts situations it cannot be any truer. There seems to be a deliberate tendency to downgrade certain fundamental facts in the build up to the current conflict in Northern Ethiopia.
People forget that after 27 years of TPLF dictatorship in Ethiopia, citizens had enough of it and wiped away this clique of criminals from the national palace replacing it with a reformist government. The TPLF had been plundering the resources of the country and building up their own empire both at home as well as abroad for ages. It was a relentless and frantic voyage towards misappropriation of all sorts done in a systematic and organized and well planned manner for few individuals and companies carried out at the expense of millions of poor and downtrodden people reduced to total destitution and misery!
It is an ascertained fact that the core TPLF consists of a few individuals networked very closely and tightly with a total monopoly of not only political power but also economic dominance. What should not be downplayed or neglected is that this group has been doing whatever it did in Ethiopia for 27 years assisted and encouraged by several Western nations including the US and the EU without moving a finger when it committed all sorts of heinous violations of fundamental rights of the poor people of Ethiopia as a whole under their watch! They cannot say they did not know about it!
It was well known by many that there were all sorts of violations of human rights against Ethiopians and they were done in plain daylight with the knowledge if not encouragement or facilitation of these governments or organizations that are closely linked or traded with them.
Arbitrary arrests and detentions, executions based on identity in certain localities and continuous provocations or incitement of conflicts among various communities were the order of the day. There were opposition parties who exposed these misdeeds of the TPLF government and yet none of these so called international human rights organisations or reputed western governments ever moved to take decisive steps to halt them. We never heard of impositions of sanctions that we now hear consistently to support the exploits of TPLF and strengthen its position against the legitimately elected Ethiopian federal government. Ethiopians now ask: Where were all these bodies when the suffering of Ethiopians took place for year?!
Today we hear and see every day that there seems to be a consistent campaign against the Ethiopian government in open support of TPLF which has been declared ‘terrorist’ by the Ethiopian parliament and whose deeds have confirmed that there is no other way of defining them. This cannot be hidden from those who seem to support TPLF and yet they continue to try and undermine Ethiopia and its government siding with the TPLF. What is really shameful is the kind of condemnation they make of what the Ethiopian government does when it is forced to defend itself while they make no mention of all the atrocities this terrorist group has been committing, not only during its almost three decade rule, but also now that it has retreated to the north with all the armaments and ammunition of the federal government!
It is as if TPLF is allowed to commit all sorts of heinous crimes against innocent rural people caught in the fighting and showing their muscles against these folks and no one western country seems to worry about it. Nor do their major media outlets mention or report on them while they try to continuously condemn by reporting of atrocities committed by the Ethiopian government against TPLF!
These media outlets have continued with their smear campaign basing their reports on the partisan analysis of all the lobbyists paid by TPLF and its allies in the western nations and even the main media outlets of the West seem to benefit from a certain remuneration unusually siding with the enemies of Ethiopia and giving one sided coverage and analysis of stories that come fabricated by TPLF and their agents.
The history of TPLF is well known for its inventions of victories that never occurred and losses that are never admitted besides glorifying invented stories. They have paid authors to write books that try to glorify their battles during their guerrilla war days. Fortunately today we know that almost all of them were invented narratives, fiction so that the people believe that they have done miracles to defeat the military government of the Derg. We have always known that most of the assertions narrated by these people were invented and paid even for the writers and Ethiopians know who facilitated their advent to power and who worked hard to put down the ‘communist Derg’. There seems to build up another round of this story but the Abiy government seems to have learned the lesson well and that is why there is strict control of what is being introduced to the country with the pretext of humanitarian aid and the like. Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it!
The propaganda campaign is also equally dangerous because the western media and the governments behind them are very powerful. But Ethiopians now cannot be fooled again as it happened to the former military government that was deposed more by the facilitation of certain enemies of Ethiopia rather than the glorious fighting exploits of the TPLF forces.
That story cannot be repeated today because we are now in more advanced days and there are technological gadgets that reveal how much intrigue there is on the part of international bodies and agents and how organized and masked these forces are when they side with the terrorists TPLF who have never done even the basic responsibilities of a government to their own people let alone to the entire Ethiopian people. Turning a blind eye to what has been going on as a whole and not putting things in context can only tell us that there are the vested interests of some countries in terms of their strategic overview of the situation and Ethiopians seem to be the sacrificial lamb! Some people have compared this current situation of Ethiopia in the international arena as the one that took place in the nineteen twenties when Ethiopia was assaulted by the Fascist regime of Italy and when it appealed to the intervention of the League of Nations, the precursor of the current UN we all know how history unfolded. It is sad that such comparisons are now conjectured because we would have thought that humanity has improved as human rights of all peoples both strong and weak are now more recognized and protected than a hundred years ago! Ethiopia as one of the founding members of the UN cannot hide its disappointment with the UN Organisation for the kind of position it has adopted in the current fight in northern Ethiopia as reactions. The UN risks its reputation for how it has reacted in this conflict! So do countries of the EU and the US who seem to have preferred to turn a blind eye on all sorts of heinous acts the TPLF terrorists are carrying out and try to force the Ethiopian government to sit down with them and negotiate! How can an elected government sit down to negotiate with a band of criminals engaged in openly trying to destroy it?! Before the war was provoked by TPLF there all sorts of repeated calls for a negotiated settlement of whatever political differences there could be between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government, but TPLF has always rejected it declaring that it would use force and impose its rule over Ethiopia and probably thanks to some promises of aid or some undisclosed strategy TPLF was confident that it would defeat not only the Ethiopian Defense Forces but also any other side that would try to help it! It might be a matter of time to discover exactly the full truth on this strategy and who exactly did play a role in the TPLF assaults against Ethiopia!
BY FITSUM GETACHEW
The Ethiopian Herald 28 October 2021
