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100,000 people sacrificed to prove TPLF’s “Ethiopianness” Shortly before the signing of the ceasefire agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Ethiopian Ambassador to the USA, Mr. Berhane Gebre-Christors flew to Huston, Texas to address a meeting of the Tigrean community there about TPLF military tactics and their “successes” in the war with Eritrea. The Ambassador is a Tigrean and a veteran ideologue of the Tigrean People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that has been ruling Ethiopia since 1991. The meeting was carefully organized and not many dissenting voices were heard. Remarkable about the meeting were the Ambassador’s boisterous reflection of the TPLF’s “success in crushing Shabia” and his irrational narration of his party’s explanation of the attributes of the “invincibility” of its army. The talk was replete with a constant theme of self-adulation reminiscent of the Mengistu Haile-Mariam era. The ambassador described the horrific war as one that was so clean that only few lives of Ethiopian soldiers were lost. It requires courage and a deep sense of responsibility for leaders to acknowledge lives lost in a war from their side, but courage and responsibility have always been lacking in the TPLF camp. This should come as no surprise to those who have been following the activities of this organization since its formation in the early 1970s. Its record reveals that the organization was created from, and nurtured by, death and destruction and as a result killing people and destroying property have become engrained in the collective psyche of its leaders. Many scholars and “experts” have long speculated that the drive to this war was the worsening internal politics of Ethiopia at the time when the border skirmish between Eritrea and the TPLF government started. It was a time when the TPLF was confronted with a mix of potentially threatening forces from disenchanted ethnic groups who resent the authoritarian rule under a minority government and an extremist right wing group bent on reversing Eritrea’s independence. The TPLF leaders had to look for a soft external scapegoat and garner some support internally by proving their “Ethiopianess” which had always been in question. It turned out that the proof required sending tens of thousands of actual and potential dissenting voices for a brief encounter with Eritrean landmines from the front and TPLF guns from the back. The proof demanded the sacrifice of over 100,000 lives, and these lives belonged to the dissenting Oromos and other ethnic groups in southern Ethiopia. How else can any rational mind explain the carnage that was inflicted upon our people for a minor border conflict that could have been settled by international arbitration and saved the lives of tens of thousands of people? The current peace deal could have been advanced two years ago without the loss of life. But the TPLF had another mission. It had to prove its “Ethiopianess” by “teaching Eritrea a lesson”, no matter how many lives may be lost in the process, and gain support from those who could not come to terms with Eritrea’s separation from Ethiopia. The TPLF has indeed achieved some success in this regard but how long will it last? Will the TPLF promise to the extreme right wing be kept? Can it be kept? A glance at TPLF’s history suggests that Meles Zenawi’s new friends would soon be disappointed because the TPLF is notorious for breaking promises. Meanwhile, as the TPLF cadres go around preaching their successes and as the families of those 100,000 lives slaughtered in the war mourn, famine, AIDS and abject poverty are taking their toll on the peoples of Ethiopia. But because most of the victims are not from the privileged Tigrean ethnic group, the TPLF leaders need not bother about it. Now that they have proven their “Ethiopianness,” they may continue celebrating their brilliant success. But how long will the party last? Nous verrons.
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