BY MENGISTEAB TESHOME
Who could guess that someone in his right mind would betray his/her country and carnage horrendously comrades; who spent both good and bad times together?
No one had expected the T-TPLF group to commit such a treasonous act against the country; and attack members of the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) Northern Command based in Mekelle barbarically.
What was happened on the evening of November 3, 2020 against the Ethiopian National Defense Forces stationed in Tigray State for more than two decades in service and protection of the people of Tigray was that.
By considering members of the ENDF as a foreign army rather than national forces who had been serving the people of Tigray with absolute solidarity alongside safeguarding the sovereignty of the country, the rebel group massacred them heartlessly.
The unprincipled, disgracing acts of the terrorist group have saddened, angered and broken the hearts of fellow citizens. And Ethiopians never forget the cold-hearted crimes perpetrated against the army; and they memorize it as one of the black marks that has happened in the history of Ethiopia and Ethiopians.
Today, Ethiopians are observing the 2nd Anniversary of the Day with a special tribute and greater sadness; but renewing their commitment to stand by the side of the army, who are sacrificing their lives to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the country and to sustain peace and security across the country.
In connection with the 2nd Anniversary of the Day, The Ethiopian Herald had a short stay with Ephrem Madebo, one of the top executive officials of the former ‘Patriotic Ginbot 7 Party’ to have his insight on this same topic.
Enjoy reading!
Please tell us your feelings regarding to the unexpected immoral acts of the TPLF group against members of the ENDF on November 3, 2020?
In its long history, Ethiopia has gone through number of gloomy times and lamentable moments where we suffered as a society from external aggressions, our own actions, and inactions. The war of aggression of the 18th and 19th centuries, the five years of Italian occupation, the February 1937 massacre, the 1974 Black Saturday massacre of 60 high-ranking, military and civilian officials, and the infamous red terror of the 1970s are some of the darkest moments that we still remember as a society. The night of November 3, 2020, the night our own home-grown terrorists attacked the Northern Command is yet another National Day of somberness and humiliation. The events of this day are the most damaging and generationally the most consequential because these times the low jab and the backstabbing came from our own brothers and from a place known as the cradle of Ethiopian civilization.
How should the attack of T-TPLF against ENDF be remembered?
I strongly believe that November 3 is a day we, Ethiopians, should commemorate and honor our fallen heroes of the Northern Command with deep sincerity. There should not be Ethiopian that should ever stop thinking and talking about that uneventful November night, a night the Northern Command was attacked and its members brutally slaughtered by the rulers of the very regime.
What is the lesson as a nation we should learn from this betrayal?
The night of November 3, 2020, and the traumatic events of the three years before it, is a clear indication that Ethiopia needs a moment of national reconciliation and a series of institutional reforms to continue as a nation. Ethiopia is a nation with a long history but a very short institutional memory where the grave mistakes of preceding regimes are repeated and at times exacerbated by successive regimes. The last fifty years history of Ethiopia is dominated by elite-centered ideological struggle where elites of all sorts promised a democratic political order, but all failed miserably, pushing the nation to the current unsettling condition. The current political actors of Ethiopia (Government, political parties, regional elites, etc.) have a lot to learn, not only from the political mistakes of the past; but from their own too.
If history is a lesson at all, we, Ethiopians, should learn from our own history that when we defeated the better-equipped and qualitatively advanced European army at the Battle of Adwa, our foremost strength was our unity. The political systems we tried to build in the last fifty years (Socialism and Ethnic oriented Revolutionary Democracy) have destroyed the social fabrics that glued us together creating political, ideological, and most importantly ethnic divisions in a society where unity was its symbol of survival.
The feud of regional forces, ethnic clashes, the civil war, and the complete lack of national consensus literally on everything in the last three years have challenged the nation’s hopes and outlooks, tested its resilience, and utterly endangered its very existence.
The sharp political divide between the political elites and the lack of national unity has exposed our nation to western aggressors and nearby historical enemies. As a result, Ethiopia, a nation that once was the symbol of black resistance against colonialism and neocolonialism, is now suffering from the existential threat of its own making.
How should the nation and citizens respond and ensure lasting peace and security of the nation?
Today, as we face an existential threat from inside and outside enemies, our collective resolve and our unity are the only weapons we have to defeat our enemies and ensure our survival as a sovereign nation. Like any other nation, we do have domestic ideological and political differences, but Ethiopians living at home and abroad must acknowledge that this is the time we put aside domestic political differences and stand together with our government and be integral parts of the nation-building process.
In many countries around the globe, political actors across the political spectrum work closely together and sometimes even forge a national unity government at times of severe national crisis. Unfortunately, working together, settling political differences through dialogue, and cooperating during national crisis has never been and still is not the culture of the Ethiopian political elite.
After the 2021 election, the government of PM Abiy Ahmed made a call to opposition parties to work together. This unique call, a call that downed a new era in our nation’s political history, was applauded by optimists and condemned by perennial naysayers. Today, almost two years after the historical call, the parties that answered the call are blamed as traitors by naive political pundits and extremist ethnic nationalists. But, there’s no doubt and it’s very much noticeable that the good side of cooperation and working together during the crisis with opposition parties has paid off, and PM Abiy’s bold initiation has given our nation a good lesson that the only way out of a national crisis is national unity.
The history of modern Ethiopia is a history of struggle against imperialism, colonialism, and neo-colonialism, a glorious and victorious history that shaped the name Ethiopia itself. Through the years, Ethiopia has been the beacon of freedom for colonial Africa and hope for racially segregated people elsewhere around the world. Today, the respect we had as a nation has tarnished and our place in the world as the symbol of the black struggle against neocolonialism has been eroded. As a result, today for the first time in our history, we, Ethiopians are divided in the face of enormous and unprecedented foreign pressure and interference in our internal affairs.
All political actors of Ethiopia including the government, and the Ethiopian people at large should learn from the political mistakes of the past 30 years, especially the mistakes we made as a nation before and after the attack on Northern Command. Our failure to make preparations knowing the behavior of TPLF on one hand and our failure to consider other options other than war have contributed to a huge loss of life and the destruction of national resources.
Today at exactly this instant, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces are battling the forces of evil in every corner of the country and are sacrificing their lives so that the rest of us work and live in a stable and peaceful environment. The everyday sacrifices paid for us are not just digits that we take for granted; and most importantly, dying for one’s country is not a natural debt imposed on our defense forces; it is a debt that we all must pay. Therefore, we must support our defense forces and the forces lined up alongside them with all our knowledge, energy, and resources. Standing with our defense forces is ensuring the survival of our country.
What piece of advice you want to add to our readers?
In the last four years, the Ethiopian government has done an astounding job in rebuilding a merit-based professional army, an effort that every single Ethiopian must applaud and be part of the process. Nations are nothing but generationally imagined myths. Millions have died for this imagined myth called ‘Ethiopia’ to make sure that this myth passes on to generations. Some died and are still dying against this myth, and some die and as we speak are dying for it. What to die for is another question. What do you die for? My choice is always to die for the survival of Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian Herald November 3/2022
