BY MENGESHA AMARE
One can confidently speak that Ethiopia was not ruled by its sons or daughters prioritizing its national interest or citizen’s wellbeing as the unthinkable made possible in a given motherland, ranging from taking bribes for public service to showcasing planes and ships for sale.
The economic sabotages, political conspiracies and schemes to get citizens rivalry one another have been made deliberately deep-rooted to pave the way for a hidden mission: dismantling Ethiopia at the end of the day. All these evil deeds had pushed the people of Ethiopia to point their fingers towards the then administration and organize themselves to wholeheartedly get it vanished for good.
Being incapable of resisting the widespread protest staged by the two Ethiopia’s biggest ethnic groups: Oromo and Amhara, along with other sisters and brothers of course, the Tigray People Liberation Front (TPLF) was purely toppled down.
Indeed, all Ethiopians protested against TPLF’s 27 years at the helm of administration. Misfortune for it began when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in April 2018 following the activities done bedecked with the new reform in all aspects. As of that time on sources of corruption, maladministration and anti-Ethiopia movements have got dried. However, terrorist TPLF all the time desires to make all the mishaps unceasing.
To this effect, it severely and inhumanly attacked the Northern Command base in Tigray. Thinking that attacking the Northern Command has effectively helped create a military vacuum and make Ethiopia without a federal force—the terrorist TPLF orchestrated a plot and slaughtered generals at night.
Reorganizing itself coupled with the unwavering support of the general public and that of a range of security forces, the national army told perpetrators in the lanugage they can understand and controlled the center of terrorist TPLF, Tigray sate capital Mekele within fifteen days, and stayed there for over seven months helping the interim administration well organize.
It is a well comprehended fact that northern Ethiopia has been wracked by violence since November, when Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into Tigray to topple the TPLF, then the region’s ruling party. Its leaders retreated to Tigray from where the group fired the first shots in the current conflict in early November 2020 by launching an assault on a federal military base with the support of loyalists in the army, including commanders and soldiers, who then defected to its ranks.
Not only was a huge stockpile of weapons seized, but high-ranking officers and soldiers who resisted were killed or captured in their thousands.
Cognizant of the fact that farmers have to till lands to produce crops and others segments of the society adjust situations accordingly, the federal government declared unilateral ceasefire and left the capital. However the peace-loathing element started a new war in Afar and Amhara sates and stayed at various places for almost half a year fighting four to five months.
Having been confined to Tigray, the conflict has then recently spread to two neighboring regions, Afar and Amhara, with heavy weapons fire killing an untold number of civilians and displacing hundreds of thousands more. A number of people are being displaced from their homes, including children and elderly people. “Such an inhumane and a dreadful act has forced and motivated citizens peculiarly the youth to go and participate in the battle fields. I myself have been committed to sacrifice as there is no death severe than this,” said Mohammed Kedir told AFP after completing a 20-day training course to join the Amhara security forces.
Not willing to draw important lessons from all its mistakes, the Tigray people Liberation Front (TPLF) has continued severe atrocities and get women, children and other innocent civilians in Afar sate highly suffered from a range of and untold evil acts.
Though the group has suffered great losses, it has extensively continued attacking the Afar people whom they have been regarded as foes in addition to the Amhara nationals. This irresponsible and full of cruelty act targets at departing the Tigray people from its neighboring Afar and Amhara people forever.
Besides, they committed widespread atrocities against civilians including raping, killing and burning crops, Tigrayans from all sections of society are told to join the TPLF to fuel the fight targeting at dismantling Ethiopia.
Hundreds of thousands of troops have surrendered being starved and getting desperate about the war as it has no purpose at all. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission reported a week before that it was deploying a new mission to investigate reports of attacks on civilians in Amhara, including a recent shelling incident that killed five members of the same family.
No matter how immense and full of severe hostility the deeds of the TPLF would be, the terrorist group has been confidently overcome and burnt with the fire itself ignited over the months since it has triggered the war invading the Afar and Amhara states. In so doing, the Afar militia has been working in close collaboration with the national defense forces and other security forces.
This writer approached Mohammed Ali Muhib, who was born in Afar but lives in Addis Ababa to seek a piece of information about the resumption of TPLF attack in Afar state. He said terrorist group doesn’t have any purpose surpassing the dire need of satisfying power monger spirit.
As to Mohammed, at the time when the government is keen to make fertile ground for peace, the terrorist group entirely rejected the offer and commenced attack in Afar. For instance, the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is now providing food to people “impacted by conflict” in Amhara and Afar.
He said, “Here the international community has to well understand that terrorist TPLF is not working for peace instead its lung breaths when a conflict is triggered, people are skirmished raising trivial tribal and religious issues. Having been devoid of all this cruelty and diabolic spirit, the group has always fond of creating havoc anytime anywhere it prefers and where loopholes are witnessed. The good thing is refraining oneself from drawing important lessons from mistakes would potentially lead them to death’s door. The same is true for terrorist TPLF”
As to Mohammed, the reinvasion has clearly portrayed that the group has never had any care about the people of Tigray let alone those of the neighboring states: Afar and Amhara. If terrorist TPLF had been in a state of sympathetic gesture and wholeheartedly thought about the people of the state, it wouldn’t have been indulged itself in such a degraded and inhuman act upon fellow citizens.
Mohammed said, “Undoubtedly, the group had known that it is absolutely impossible to regain power as it has been severely loathed by all citizens of the country unless it had planned to weaken the country in terms of economy, social, political spheres. True, it had advanced into Afar and Amhara regions in early July and vowed to march onto the capital, after rejecting a ceasefire made by the government. In both areas, they have been accused of committing massacres and other war crimes as well as destroying a number of national wealth.”
The government started fighting after TPLF forces attacked a federal army base in Tigray, killed soldiers, slaughtered influential army commanders assuming that the boulevard towards seizing power would be in a rosy trek. Interestingly, their ill-intended mission has been made an illusion.
The group last week launched an unprovoked assault in the neighboring Afar region, and the Afar region said the latest sign in a flare-up of the conflict in the area.
Ahmed Kaloyta, a spokesman for the Afar region, said that tens of thousands of people had been displaced within three days in the Afar region and TPLF forces are committing atrocities as they did before.
Obviously, the atrocities the terrorist leftovers have been perpetrating are unmentionable. For instance, after seizing the farming village in northern Ethiopia, the rebels roamed the streets searching for young, able-bodied men who had fought alongside government forces. Any young-man was a suspect. So were men with marks on their shoulders left by rifle straps, even though it is common for farmers in Ethiopia’s Amhara region, militia fighters or not to carry Kalashnikovs. They want to suppress and rule the people as they did for close to three decades. Their deed, fundamentally targets at demoralizing ethnic Afar and Amhara as well as weakening them economically thereby making fertile ground for their journey to dismantle the country, Mohammed stated.
Mohammed said, “We have known the inside out of each other especially, who live in border areas of Afar and Tigray. As the group has been giving the people of Tigray hard time, parents have told their children saying, ‘Instead of dying at home, go and fight.’ From all circumstances rife after the war, one can simply deduce that the war has been between the people of Tigray and the terrorist’s combatants, not just a war between the TPLF and the national army.”
Thus all the severe atrocities of TPLF have to be condemned by the international community as Ethiopia’s truth for which it has yelled for a year plus is well exhibited and many have understood all the facts.
The February 9/2022
