BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The tiger will not change its spots as the TPLF will not change its lies. True to its nature, the TPLF is infamous for using all the dirty ploys from the devil’s “Book of Satanic Tricks” to realize its evil intents. Right after its, recent defeat, the TPLF collected hundreds of its dead soldiers decimated while fleeing the battles, carried them in trucks and buried them in Tigray. Then it tried to lure Ethiopian federal and allied forces to go deep into its territory in order to accuse them of killing its fighters who were decimated during their misadventures in Amhara and Afar regions.
The corporate media in America and Europe that were waiting to break the fake news of “genocide in Tigray” could not do their job simply because the Ethiopian side knew about the ploy and stopped at the borders between Tigray, Afar and Amhara.
This proved a failed attempt to mislead the international community by spreading fake information and trying to take some oxygen into its near-death condition in order to achieve a kind of military self-resuscitation. TPLF is a like a dying person who is gasping for breath like a drowning man, catching at a straw to survive and find a second life. It is now shelling Afar towns along Tigray’s border in order to create the impression that it is still alive and kicking, and in the worst case scenario, draw the Afar people into the war.
This is a failed tactic but TPLF never says it has failed. The TPLF is seriously incapacitated but not completely destroyed. The answer to its false bravado and bragging should be to hammer it from the air in order to further paralyze its ability to carry out cross border shelling with heavy weapons and displace people from their villages and towns.
Under duress, the TPLF may change deceptive tactics. It can call for cease fire without stopping to kill innocent people. It may call for dialogue without being ready to talk or in order to buy time until it is ready for another round of genocide. It can smile at the TV cameras while deep down it is nursing grudges and dreaming about the day of vengeance. According to many accounts of insiders of the group, the TPLF is like a devil that can smile to you during the day and returns by bight to haunt you and claim your blood.
In the last fifty years, the world has changed beyond recognition. Ethiopian politics and society have change beyond recognition. Technology and human thinking have evolved beyond recognition. Yet, the TPLF is still standing where it was the day it was born fifty years ago. TPLF’s thinking proved as old as the group itself whose military tactics have frozen at the stage of WWI’s trench warfare. That was why they spent months digging 6 km-long defensive trenches at the strategic Gansha junction that was blown into smithereens within hours of fighting, thanks to modern technology.
It is possible to liquidate terrorist groups like the TPLF with overwhelming military power. Notwithstanding the fact that a guerrilla style formation can hardly be contained with conventional methods. Even small terrorist groups are likely to survive in hostile environment because of their mobility and flexibility and territorial advantage. There are certain precedents to showcase such a strategy.
In Sri Lanka The Tamil Tigers were defeated and liquidated in Sri Lanka through scorched earth tactics of the army that reduced the movement to ashes in matters of weeks or months. In Chechnya, the Russian army launched two military offensives against the Islamist terrorists who wanted to create an independent republic. It has taken a lot of effort to fight the terrorists but at last they were defeated and Chechnya remained part of the Russian federation. In both the Tamil and Chechen cases, law enforcement was backed by overwhelming firepower and sustained attacked against the cities and areas the terrorists used as hideouts causing immense human and material losses.
However, the principles, strategies and objectives of the military operations against Tamil and Chechen separatists by the Sri Lankan and Russian governments respectively may not work in Ethiopia. Politically, both the Chechen and Tamil terrorists were fighting for secession or independence. In Ethiopia, the whole operation is about law enforcement to bring the criminals before a tribunal. TPLF may be secretly considering the option of independence but it knows this will be realized only on the graves of all Ethiopians.
Separatism as an option is an unrealizable dream because of geopolitical, economic and territorial considerations. Most of all, the people of Tigray who have always been in the first defense lines of colonial intrusions and foreign aggression in the past will not allow the TPLF to separate them from the rest of Ethiopia by hook or by crook. Ethiopia without Tigray or Tigray without Ethiopia would be nonentities. The rest of the Ethiopian people will never allow an inch of present Ethiopian boundaries to be altered by any means, legal or illegal.
However since the survival of TPLF has repeatedly proved to be anathema to the historic aspirations of the Ethiopian people, the group has to be incapacitated or eliminated by any means necessary. As we said above, pursuing the TPLF to its final hideout may be a dangerous gamble. Yet the Ethiopian federal forces and all its regional allies have the military capacity to paralyze and stop the TPLF’s military adventures as they have now proved it. However, a pause in the operations may be used by the TPLF to rearm, train and launch new offensives. We are witnessing a resurgence of the group even at this stage as it is not completely ousted from the regions it had invaded and is even shelling border areas along Afar for now.
The federal forces should not relax their vigilance even for a minute. As we said above, when the TPLF is silent it does not mean that it is sleeping. On the contrary, it must be planning its next genocide. The federal forces should selectively use air power against selected targets in order to neutralize the top command, degrade and destroy its training and deployment capabilities by destroying its command and communication centers. In the past, the TPLF used the time of general elections to push its forces into Amhara and Afar. The Ethiopian leadership is now busy launching the national dialogue and the TPLF may use this time to produce some sort of surprise. This is no time for celebration.
The objectives of the Ethiopian forces remain the same. namely ending TPLF’s rule in the entire country, bringing the criminals to justice and rebuilding destroyed infrastructure and ensuring peace and stability and reconstruction in the war-devastated areas. Systematic air strikes against selected soft targets and the top leadership of the neo-fascist group may be an option while at the same time separating innocent civilians from the group while at the same time minimizing collateral damages should be seriously considered. Ethiopian air power will certainly make a difference as it has already done during the previous operations.
In order to silence the international chorus of false accusers, Ethiopia should effectively use its air power to incapacitate, paralyze, destroy and finish off the neo-fascist terrorist group’s command and control infrastructure and its architects of evil. There should be no respite in these air operations and the TPLF should not be given time to regroup and launch ground attacks as it did before. Unpredictable and relentless air strikes are likely to disorient, frustrate and commit tactical mistakes.
Training and logistic facilities, as well as military and symbolic installations should be the main targets of air operations while collateral damages should be brought to a minimum as the TPLF may use the civilian population as human shield or as hostages to protect its evil deeds. The remnants of TPLF’s ground forces should not be allowed to move out of their regional boundaries in order to engage in ground operations and a state of temporary siege should be imposed in areas bordering the bases and hideouts of the neo-fascist forces.
Ground forces should stop and consolidate or reinforce themselves at strategic points along the Tigray border in order to prevent the TPLF from leaving its hideouts to indulge in its usual hit and ran operations or skirmishes deep into surrounding Amhara and Afar territories as it had done in the past. Ethiopian forces will certainly adopt their tactics to the requirements of a very fluid and unpredictable situation. For instance, it may It try to turn current events in Sudan to turn them into its tactical advantage to get a life line.
The Washington hawks and their Western allies would not stop accusing Ethiopia of “genocide” or “human rights abuses” whether or not Ethiopian forces will pursue the TPLF deep in its hideouts. During the Chechen and Tamil operations in Russian and Sri Lanka respectively, international groups were also clamoring against the operations to destroy the terrorists. Had the Russians or Sri Lankan government forces stopped their operations at that time on the urgings of the so-called human rights groups, the two terrorist movements could have established separate, weak but troublesome artificial “countries” that could be easily turned into Western protectorates. Ethiopia is not Russia or Sri Lanka although the TPLF is akin to the Tamil and Chechen terrorists.
Ethiopia should never allow so-called human rights groups or Western powers to determine the direction or outcome of the present law-enforcement operations. The people of Ethiopia alone have their destinies in their hands and decide what to do next to get themselves rid of the TPLF cancer that has metastasized and threatens to kill Ethiopia’s body politic. The Ethiopian government has made the right moves by not going deep into Tigray in hot pursuit of the TPLF gangs and hordes. It has also rightly rejected the fake peace call and cease fire brandished by the Washington hawks, the TPLF puppets and the corporate media.
In fact, the good TPLF is a dead TPLF that would leave the scene without further ado so that the people of Tigray decide about their future within a strong, democratic and constitutional order. True to their nature, the TPLF neo-fascists are never consistent in their claims. When their egos are inflated, they threaten to declare Tigray’s “independence”, and when the going gets tough, they claim they are part of the Ethiopian entity. They are now badly beaten and tittering on the brink; so it is natural for them to call for a ceasefire or talks which in fact amounts to saying, “please give us time to regroup, rearm and launch new acts of genocides!”.
For the Western powers and the US, TPLF’s present defeat should give them time and reason to rethink their strategic priorities, including whether to reject the TPLF as a spent force no more useful to carry out their plans or whether to switch sides and try rapprochement with Ethiopia.
There is no ethics in American and Western diplomacy and opportunistic pragmatism is the rule rather than the exception. They will keep on looking for new allies and friends in the Horn of Africa until they attain their strategic objective of putting the entire region under their neocolonial tutelage.
The TPLF has deceived the international community more than once. It should not be allowed to deceive it anymore. The international media that is not attached to the Washington hawks and the TPLF neo-fascists should be invited to see and document what they have seen so that the international community would know the truth and understand Ethiopia’s genuine cause and right to defend itself when threats to its existence are being implemented by the TPLF with the silent collaboration of the US and its Western allies.
It is now time for Washington to call a spade a spade and deny the group any opportunity to exercise it deceptive claims. It is rather time for truth to get the upper hand over all previous international media clamors that proved not only hollow but were also exposed after its humiliating defeat in the battlefield.
The Ethiopian Herald January 8/202
