Part I
By supporting the TPLF in the ongoing Ethiopian national resistance war to preserve the independence and territorial integrity of Ethiopia, both TPLF and Washington, and the West by extension, have committed many fatal diplomatic mistakes. These mistakes can be summed up by popular saying in Ethiopia that goes like the following: “When hard pressed, the flour seeks friendship with the wind (that will eventually blow it off the face of the earth!). When stuck in an impasse, some people befriend others in worse situation. The West in general and the US in particular are in serious diplomatic mishap; and to make matters worse, they chose the TPLF as their fellow travelers in their perilous journey to strategic disaster.
Strange bedfellows in trouble
The US administration in Washington is in deep trouble seeking regional allies and chose TPLF as its Trojan Horse in its bid to make a dramatic comeback in the Horn of Africa where it imagines the Chinese dragon lurking to strike. Unfortunately, the TPLF proves an unreliable and long-discredited partner in trouble that brought only global disrespect and hatred to the hawks in the Capitol Hill. In this case, both Washington’s policy of proxy intervention in the Horn and the Trojan Horse are bound together with the same fate: they are going to be swept of the face of this region as the people of the Horn are rising to decide their own fate without outside interference.
In fact, Washington’s love affair with the TPLF started back in 1991 when they used the Trojan Horse to assume their dominant role in the Horn that was taken over by the former Soviet Union in the previous decade. So, the trouble for America started with Herman Cohen and co. who engineered TPLF’s access to the Menelik Palace, trusting its subservient nature and as a tool of their regional dominance and occupation of the political and military vacuum left by the Derg and the Soviets.
Nationalism or ethnic politics for the TPLF was a sugar-coated and poisonous pill. The TPLF has no ideology but demagogy, pretension and lies. In its early days, the TPLF pretended to be an anti-imperialist movement but abandoned even its rhetoric and succumbed to Western and American temptations as soon as it came to power. TPLF is not a patriotic movement. It is an ethnic-based group whose ultimate objective is the domination of a minority group over the majority of the Ethiopian population and the enrichment of a still smaller group of political and military elites at the cost of the Ethiopian people.
To this end, the TPLF was promoting a system of ethnic Apartheid and Mafia-like gang violence to promote and defend its looting spree of the resources of the country. To this end, the TPLF exclusively relied on extensive spying networks, false propaganda and disinformation selected assassination of its opponents.
The TPLF is a petty bourgeois movement led by rapacious urban political elites with imperfect or incomplete education or experience as their ambition infect them with dreams of power and privileges early in their students years. As it became clear later on, these elites used the peasants’ cause to further their own narrow ethnic and petty bourgeois aspirations. As soon as they seized power, they abandoned the peasants call for land and freedom and became themselves the new landlords who used state power and their control over all available land to amass the wealth and power they craved for.
TPLF’s belly politics and deceptive ideology
They cheated the peasants to use them as cannon fodder for the textbook armed rebellion they started in their hometown and spread it to other parts of the country later on as their narrow ethnic orientations became more evident than their class allegiance and divided the entire country into small ethnic fiefdoms governed by their collaborators and other regional elites. The fragmentation and Bantustan-like redivision of Ethiopia along ethnic lines was constitutionally sealed in such a way that it would not be questioned as long as the TPLF was in power.
In case it leaves office, it would use the notorious article 39 to take the road of secession and “independence” as they had been tempted to do in the last three years since they were pushed from power. They desisted from declaring independence simply because they were in bad shape both politically and militarily or because they instinctively understood that doing so would be like crossing the Rubicon.
The TPLF was always averse of being part of the Ethiopian entity unless it enjoys absolute power. It did not even draw a lesson from other countries where secession has not produced the freedom and prosperity once promised by their leaders under neocolonial arrangements. In the modern world, a country is viable depending on its geographic and/or population size and its natural resources.
The architects of TPLF’s rule rarely spoke the truth when they said that “we can make more impact in the world when we speak as 80 million people [rather than 6 million!]”. In other words these kinds of statements were turned by the TPLF as saying that their minority constituency would sit on top of the vast majority of the Ethiopian people indefinitely. Unfortunately for them, history surprised them by showing them that was a crazy idea.
Back in 1991, the Washington pundits specializing in Ethiopian and Horn politics were well-informed about the nature and political program of the TPLF thanks to insiders like Herman Cohen and the top experts in the department for African affairs were academics and CIA functionaries like Paul Henze had considerable were calling the shots as to the regime and objectives of the TPLF political elites.
A legacy of betrayal and poverty
The TPLF elites who subsequently ruled Ethiopia with “fire and iron” for 27 years are like the typical post-colonial African elites who did not care about where the money comes from as long as it flows in their secret banks accounts. They have betrayed the very people in whose name they have amassed riches and stashed them in foreign banks while the people wallow in unspeakable poverty. It is with these TPLF elites that Washington is currently striking deals; the first for its return to power and the second for its domination over this part of Africa.
In 2018, the TPLF was caught napping with its pants down as the popular uprisings across the country sounded the death knell of its neo-fascist dictatorship. With the death of their leader who was largely considered the architect the evil politics, of TPLF, the group was in disarray as it was oblivious of the growing popular freedom for democracy and an end to its dictatorship. The top brass of the TPLF were busy wallowing in the illusion that no power on earth would unseat them as they were busy amassing great fortunes for themselves while the people were starving. Their pseudo-economic development was financed with the huge debts they took from left and right in the name of the Ethiopian people and used to line the pockets of the top corrupters in the state bureaucracy and the military industrial complex.
And when the TPLF’s powers and privileges suddenly collapsed, it started to look for a way out of the general crisis that was its own making. TPLF lived in its own illusions. The leaders told themselves that they were the only people capable of ruling the country. They believed they were unbeatable. They told themselves that they were the smartest people around and the most courageous ones. All these illusions proved nonsense as soon as the people said “enough is enough!”. The first existential impulse forced the TPLF leaders to seek shelter in their hometown from where they started their long planned project to destabilize the entire country and engineer a political comeback from there.
The TPLF miscalculated its options by exaggerating its strength and underestimating the popular aspiration for democracy and economic justice. It is wallowing in pipe dreams lie a demented mental case, trying to retake the same unfortunate journey to Addis Ababa it took some 30 years ago now that all its credibility were tested by recent events and proved untenable.
Legacy of greed and deception
Back in 1991, the TPLF was enjoying some popular support as the Derg was ousted and the country faced a possible political chaos. Back then, the Americans might have expected the TPLF to play a stabilizing role under such a volatile circumstance and allowed it to enter Addis Ababa and fill the power vacuum. Yet, the TPLF acted like a hungry hyena that suddenly bumped into the carcasses of a dead donkey. Its greedy instinct was obvious when it decided to take power alone and exclude other opposition parties from sharing from the booty. It was then that the TPLF sawed the seeds of its own ultimate disaster. It manufactured half a dozen of pseudo ethnic parties and formed an alliance with them for the sole purpose of using them as Trojan Horses until the time the real motive behind the EPRDF coalition blew up in the face of its founders.
The TPLF knows that it cannot achieve is dreams of returning to power under present circumstances and it is ready to work under its masters’ plan simply because it has lost a lot from the political reforms of the last three years and wants to compensate its losses by making money from its mercenary operations as a proxy of its Washington’s masters. However, the US is going to damp the TPLF the moment it becomes irrelevant to the execution of its hegemonic aspirations as it has already damped or betrayed so many of its criminal collaborators in so many parts of the world.
The Washington hawks are too naive to suspect TPLF’s real motives behind its campaign of terror in Ethiopia. The TPLF is cheating them by promising them to get rid of a regime that does not serve their hegemonic ambitions. The TPLF is past master in fabricating lies and selling lies. Now that it has lost its dominion over Ethiopia, it is seeking a foothold from which it can launch its reign of lies and reign of terror in order to make as much money as possible and execute its devilish plans both in Ethiopia and the region at large.
The TPLF has become so cruel and so bloodthirsty because it is now acting to avenge its lost power. Even its old foot soldiers have abandoned it. It is now recruiting its mercenaries from the ranks of underage children who were not even born when TPLF elites were wallowing in unimaginable luxury and sleeping on stashes of American dollars in Addis Ababa.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD DECEMBER 9/2021
