☆ Increasingly, Abiy’s vitriol toward the TPLF appears to be a projection or his own mindset, and not rooted in reality.
☆ Abby treats anyone who does not agree completely with him as an enemy. Here, he repeats the experience of Erdogan, Turkey’s president.
☆ Rather than engage professionally, the Abby regime prefers to rely on trolls. Such tactics always backfire.
☆ That Abiy appears to have blessed a foreign invasion of Ethiopia is treasonous on its face.
☆ Abby embraces the attitude, l’état, c’est moi, but he is wrong. Ethiopia is a great nation. It is not a single man. Abby’s campaign in Tigray has been a disaster. It should mark the end of Abby’s rule, but that does not mean an end to Ethiopia – unless Ethiopians continue to follow Abiy on his suicide mission.
It has now been almost three years since the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Abiy Ahmed as the recipient of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” Abiy received international plaudits. CNN called him a “modern day African leader.” Other African leaders congratulatedhim on twitter.
Terrence Lyons, a professor of conflict resolution at the Carter School, praised other aspects of Ethiopia’s tremendous progress under Abiy. He released political prisoners and opened political space. “Political prisoners were released, the repressive civil society law scrapped, and independent media rebounded. Exiled movements that had been labeled as terrorists – such as Ginbot 7, the Oromo Liberation Front, and the Ogaden National Liberation Front – agreed to end their armed struggles and returned to Ethiopia and registered as political parties,” Lyons explained. He continued to report that Abiy had strengthened civil society and laid the groundwork for a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to explore the abuses of previous regimes. As important, Ethiopia began to meet its economic potential as an African giant.
From Promise to Pariah
Today, that promise is gone. The Nobel Committee may not be able to revoke its prize, but it chastised Abiy in a way that exceeded admonishments of other recipients whose commitmentto peace eventually waned.
Abiy and his partisans believe such criticism is unfair. He and his supporters grow frustrated that the international community largely discounts their narrative surrounding the start of the Tigray War and its conduct. Too often, this frustration manifests itself in either personal attacks or conspiracy theories, both of which exacerbate Abiy’s relationship with the broader international community. It may be satisfying to blame others, but it is immature. If Abiy wants to know how he lost the world, he need only consider his own actions.
Alas, he is unwilling to do this. Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to sit in on a conversation with an Ethiopian Cabinet-level official and ask him what lessons the Abiy government had learned from the past two years of civil war. After all, there are two major parties to the conflict, and to suggest the fault rests solely with Abiy’s enemies is not realistic. Even if Abiy believes truth is fully on his side, responsible political and military leadership should constantly assess and adjust tactics. Abiy’s does not, for the simple reason they do not acknowledge mistakes.
This could suggest many dynamics, none of which is good for Ethiopia. First, Abiy may truly be unable to recognize the error of his ways. He may have a messiah complex and believe that he can do no wrong. Second, Abiy may so terrorize those around him that they either self-censor or fear contradicting their boss. In a sense, this was the dynamic at play when Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman allegedly ordered the murder of Washington Post columnist and Muslim Brotherhood activist Jamal Khashoggi. That many long-time visitors to Ethiopia report public fear approaching what Ethiopia experienced under the Derg should raise alarms.
Volume over Substance
Also contributing to the collapse of Abiy’s reputation has been the Ethiopian government’s over-the-top response to criticism and its ineffective diplomacy. Too often, Abiy and his regime substitute volume for substantive engagement. The Ethiopian Embassy in Washington, D.C. is a non-entity. Its diplomats are less active than those of countries a fraction of Ethiopia’s size.
Rather than engage professionally, the Abiy regime prefers to rely on trolls. Such tactics always backfire. They did not work for Somalia’s Mohamed Farmajo or Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Rather, online polemics became self-defeating as the leaders themselves began to confuse paid and imaginary courtiers with legitimate opinions. Trolls seldom change the opinion of policymakers for the simple reason that the latter do not spend their time online, let alone on a platform prone to manipulation and dominated by anonymous persons.
For the Ethiopian government to use trolls to punish opinions it dislikes also backfires because it antagonizes rather than changes minds. If Abiy’s government believed in the justice of its cause, it should be able to use facts to cajole and convince rather than simply lob insults. Perhaps Abiy believed he could use trolls to attack diplomats, foreign analysts, and academics, and then conduct business as usual through official channels. This fools no one. When government-paid trolls throw fireballs, it reflects on all serving Ethiopian diplomats and ministers. It disqualifies them in the court of normal relations.
Perhaps one of the reasons for Abiy’s slash-and-burn diplomatic strategy is a mindset that exaggerates Ethiopia’s importance to non-Ethiopians. At its core, Abiy treats anyone who does not agree completely with him as an enemy. Here, he repeats the experience of Erdogan, Turkey’s president. The West once saw Erdogan as a moderate and a bridge-builder. But years of dismissing even mild criticism as evidence of affiliation with terrorist groups backfired. Rather than being silenced, Abiy’s critics, diplomats, and even his earlier cheerleaders began to question his grip on reality. He antagonized so many figures at home and abroad that today he can rely only on his own family.
It is also incorrect to adopt the “with us or against us” mindset for domestic politics. When Abiy supporters suggest criticism of his conduct of the Tigray war means affinity for the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), he appears paranoid if not a loon. That his supporters suggest criticism of Abiy and partiality toward the Tigryans is racist does Abiy no favors. It makes as much sense as suggesting that support for Ukraine over Russia is motivated by anti-white sentiment.
Confusing Propaganda with Reality
Abiy may be frustrated that the world in general and Washington, in particular, do not share his conclusions about the TPLF as a terrorist group. Arguments that the TPLF is to Addis Ababa what al Qaeda is to Washington are ridiculous. The TPLF was the dominant party in Ethiopia’s governing coalition from 1991 to 2018. While Abiy is correct that the TPLF committed human rights abuses during its rule – one in which he participated both as director-general of the Information Network Security Agency and later as a minister – simply reclassifying political rivals as a terrorist group and then growing angry when the international community does not follow suit is self-defeating. Even if the TPLF was a terror group, there is no justification for the collective punishment and mass starvation that Abiy has directed. Increasingly, Abiy’s vitriol toward the TPLF appears to be a projection or his own mindset, and not rooted in reality.
Abiy’s arguments fail to resonate in other ways. His supporters say the TPLF fired the first shots on Nov. 3, 2020, when Tigrayan forces attacked the Northern Command headquarters. But the speed and scale of the Ethiopian reaction suggest prior planning on Abiy’s part. This in turn leads foreign analysts to interpret Tigrayan action as pre-emption rather than aggression.
Allies also matter. To make peace with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki is one thing; to collaborate actively with him is another. That Abiy appears to have blessed a foreign invasion of Ethiopia is treasonous on its face. Abiy’s alliance with former Somalian President Mohamed Farmajo, a man who collaborated with Al-Shabaab and sought to extend his own term illegally, is almost as stigmatizing. Friends matter. Simply put, Abiy’s hatred led him to the disqualifying embrace of rogues. He may blame the outside world, but he took that journey of his own accord.
The Problem is Abiy, not Ethiopia
Abiy embraces the attitude, l’état, c’est moi, but he is wrong. Ethiopia is a great nation. It is not a single man. Abiy’s campaign in Tigray has been a disaster. It should mark the end of Abiy’s rule, but that does not mean an end to Ethiopia – unless Ethiopians continue to follow Abiy on his suicide mission. Here, an Iraq analogy is useful. In the 1980s, Saddam Hussein slaughtered the Iraqi Kurds in the Anfal genocide. Rather than divorce Iraq completely, Iraqi Kurds still mark Iraqi Army Day each year on Jan. 6. To date, they realize Saddam was the problem, but see the Iraqi Army as an institution to respect.
A year ago, Abiy might have used external diplomacy to shield himself from accountability for his own actions. Today it is too late. He has condemned himself and Ethiopia to pariah status, and has become an impediment to both peace and to Ethiopia’s efforts to secure an influence commensurate with its size, history, and economic potential.
Abiy may persevere as Robert Mugabe did, but Ethiopia will pay the price, just as Zimbabwe did. The simple reality is the United States, European Union, and many African countries no longer see Abiy as redeemable. For peace and prosperity in Ethiopia, the only course of action is Abiy’s exit. If, when, and how that happens will be a question for Ethiopians only. The lone certainty is that Abiy’s legacy will be shaped less by his Nobel Prize and more by the revelations of a future Truth and Reconciliation Committee.
💭 Residents in the Northern Ethiopian city of Adi Daero, in Tigray scream in agony while searching for their families in the ash and trying to rescue people trapped under a rubble. A mother is heard shouting loudly “my son, my son, I lost him…”
Yesterday, ‘unEthiopian’ fascist Oromo regime’s and Eritrean air forces bombarded many towns in Tigray including Shire, Adi Daero and Mekelle.
This barbaric act was carried out yesterday, 27 September 2022 – on the very day Christians celebrated the annual Christian festival of the Meskel (which means “CROSS” in Ethiopic), marking the finding of the “True Cross” on which Jesus Christ was crucified. The festival is one of the major religious celebrations of the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia.
👹 Evil Jihadist Abiy Ahmed Ali Blessed A Foreign Invasion of Ethiopia is Treasonous on its Face
It’s tragic that the ‘PEACE PACT’ – actually a WAR PACT — that earned evil Galla-Oromo Abiy Ahmed Ali the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize allowed him to borrow Eritrean soldiers, U the Eritrean army UAE + Turkey + Iran drones, to conduct this genocidal war against Christian Tigray, Ethiopia„
👹 Kosovo 2.0 in the making. This is the evil did of Ahmed’s PP Oromos, Isaias’s EPLF, Debre Tsions’ TPLF and Amhara PP/ Fano.
💭 This satellite image shows the mobilization of military forces in the town of Shiraro
Satellite images show the mobilisation this month of military forces in towns on either side of Ethiopia’s northern border with Eritrea, a private U.S. company said on Wednesday.
Reuters could not independently verify the contents of the images showing reported military activity in the aftermath of the breakdown on Aug. 24 of a five-month ceasefire in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
Tigray forces have battled Ethiopia’s federal army and its allies, including Eritrean troops and fighters from neighbouring Ethiopian regions, over the course of a nearly two-year war.
Images collected on Sept. 26 show military forces, vehicles and artillery positions in the town of Shiraro, near Tigray’s northern border with Eritrea, according to Maxar Technologies Inc, which collects and publishes satellite imagery of the region.
The images from Eritrea were taken on Sept. 19 and show the deployment of heavy weaponry in the town of Serha, near the Tigray border, Maxar said.
Most communications to Tigray have been down for more than a year.
Tigray forces said on Sept. 13 that Eritrean troops, fighting alongside Ethiopian soldiers, had at one point taken control of Shiraro since fighting had resumed but suggested they had since been beaten back.
They have also accused Eritrea of shelling Tigrayan towns from its territory in recent weeks.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean authorities have not responded to requests for comment about the recent fighting.
Eritrean troops supported the Ethiopean military in earlier phases of the war. The Eritrean government has not confirmed its participation in fighting since the ceasefire broke down, but said earlier this month that some reservists had been called up for military service.
Ethiopian government spokesperson Legesse Tulu, military spokesperson Colonel Getnet Adane and the prime minister’s spokesperson Billene Seyoum did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the images on Wednesday.
Eritrean Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel and Getachew Reda, a spokesperson for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), the party that leads Tigray’s regional government, also did not immediately comment.
☆ Today and tomorrow Ethiopian Christians celebrate ‘Meskel’. Today’s Meskel celebration includes the burning of a large bonfire, or Demera. Iranians protest in front of their London embassy Iranian & Ethiopian embassies are neighbors. Wow!
☆ President of the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia, Sahle Work Zewde was in London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
This lady is one of the most cruel beings Ethiopa ever has seen. In the past four years, under her presidentship, over a million innocent Ethiopian Christians have been massacred, the whole region of Tigray besieged and starved, over 200.000 women and girls even monks were brutally raped. And this by the evil Oromo regime of Abiy Ahmed Ali she works for. Yet this lady has never spoken about this sad and serious matter. No condolences, no remorse, no regrets, no in fact this callous ‘woman’ made a mockery of her fellow girls and women by continuing to work for the criminal regime. We in Ethiopia are surprised that she was allowed to travel to Britain – then she and her genocider boss Abiy Ahmed Ali must face either the International Court of Justice, or after death they will have to face the divine court of justice over the genocide of Northern Ethiopian Christians.
💭 A “Feminist” Government: And It’s Repulsive Rape Cover-ups.
In 2018, Ethiopia appointed it’s first & Africa’s only serving female head of state. It also got the first female Supreme Court president. A female politician was now a chairperson of National Election Board. It even created a brand new ministry, named it Ministry of Peace & handed the leadership over to a woman. Out of 20 cabinet members, 10 of them were women. A notably male dominated post, the Defense Ministry, was also to be lead by a woman for the first time.
Ethiopians rejoiced, the rest of the world applauded and media covered this change with flying compliments. Representation mattered. This was seen as something that can level the gender field. Having a 50% women led cabinet was impressive by any standard since the global average for female government ministers is 18.3 percent . More than a dozen countries have no women cabinet members at all.
President Sahle-Work Zewde said in her first parliamentarian address vowed to be a voice for women — famouslytelling MPs that if they thought she was talking too much about women, that she had only just begun.Not only was this move symbolic, many believed it would open the door for gender parity. Who wouldn’t want that?
Mrs. Ashenafi, the Supreme Court President, was the founder and executive director of the Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association. A woman in a high court could do wonders. So this too was welcomed as a much needed step to move Ethiopian women’s agenda forward.
About two years into this gender reform, the country found itself in a political turmoil. The Prime Minister, a 44 year old Nobel Peace Prize recipient who was behind these gender reforms, announced a start of what would be a deadly conflict. This was followed by a complete black out of an entire state, Tigray, where this armed conflict was happening. The state housed over 6 million people. Women, children, elderly were trapped in a a highly secretive war operation. It is a well known fact that women pay dearly during armed conflicts especially a conflict of this kind were absolutely no media was allowed in.
Pressure was mounting on the The Prime Minister to ease up the black out. As the state opened up ever so slightly, horrific stories of war crimes started surfacing. Rape being on the top of the list.
The stories were gruesome to say the list. The Prime Minister defended his “operation” that happened in total darkness. “No women & children” he said “were harmed during this operation”. The families of the people of the state that were attacked begged to differ.
Most accounts detailed rape cases of Ethiopian woman by Ethiopian & a foreign army.Ethiopian Soldiers expressed their concern to Reuters. A soldier who refused to be identified said women were being raped, after the city fell to federal forces. The Prime Minister had allied with the neighboring country to defeat his political rivals. In doing so, he seemed to have no say in controlling the erratic behavior of the soldiers.
On an audio account, a witness told a reporter how “At the beginning of the war, soldiers would have their way with any women they wanted but after they were told to be careful of AIDS, they started raping little girls whom they believed to be safe from this disease”.
Desperate for answers, concerned citizens turned to the gender reformed government & its women “Leaders”. Surely they are here to speak for their sisters, mothers and children. They said so. The world thought so.
Days, weeks, and months passed. The ladies in high places chose the the age old technic of avoiding responsibilities related to rape & women grievance — Silence. There was no direct or indirect addressing of such horrific victims account. There was no urging of an immediate investigation into the matter. There was no expression of absolute outrage. There was no message to families of alleged victims to stay calm or that they are with them.
The last time the Press secretary mentioned rape was back in 2018 – right after she was appointed. The post was of a generic lip-service type she had come to be known for.
Four months into this war, The President decided to travel to the war torn region. Part of her photo-op visit was to include a stop at a hospital were rape victims were also being treated. At the entrance, the President was politely asked by doctors and other stuff members to not go in with military men who accompanied her. The victims were traumatized & the sight of men in uniforms was additional trauma. The president took a personal offense to being morally lectured. So she refused. She demanded that the military men be allowed in with her. The hospital stuff reported that on catching sight of the soldiers, the victims began screaming, crying and shaking with fear. The president had to remove herself from the spot immediately since no amount of comforting or assurance could calm the victims down. She left — leaving the victims a little worse than she found them.
Her office then released statements & pictures. Showing her interacting attentively & kindly with locals. This would surely get her boss the good PR he very much needed. Still no mention of rape allegations. Continued silence. The president warned at the beginning of her term that she will exhaust the men by speaking up for women issues. Two years into her seat & tested with real life challenge, the world could see she has no intention of delivering on that promise.
It has become obvious now that the ladies in position of influence and power in Ethiopia have chosen to politicize the suffering of women. They too have decided to utilize the same weapon of covering up rape allegations just like men in history had. If you don’t talk about it, it has not happened. Some of their supporters believe them. Many more others are left wondering if this gender reform was genuine or if it was implemented merely to strengthen the power of the men behind this reform.
Amidst such horrifying moment, they all found time to stay connected on social media discussing everything but the war and war crimes. The Supreme Court President posted a glossy picture of herself with other women “leaders” of the country in the President’s office. She said she was so proud. Proud of the recognition the president had secured from Forbes as the only African woman to be listed “The World’s Most Powerful Women 2020” were the likes of
Vice President Kamala Harris, Stacey Abrams, Sheikh Hasina Wajed & Rania Nashar were featured. The picture was clean. The office was modern. The ladies were smiling. On the pictures they share and topics they chose to discuss — Their male colleagues don’t need to be nudged, everything is under control & all is well in the land of the feminists.
Jihad vs The World’s ancient Christians of Armenia & Ethiopia
💭 Historical adversary of Armenia & Ethiopia; Turkey – which is waging a NATO green-lighted Drone Jihad everywhere – is unleashing again war crimes and genocide against the two most ancient Christian nations of the world: Armenia and Ethiopia.
👹 Muslims Take Christian Woman, Saw Her Legs Off, Cut Her Fingers Off, Put Her Severed Finger Into Her Mouth, And Strip Her Naked. One Muslim Man Says: “Look At The Bitch… She Became A Rock.’
On Friday, the Armenian Ministry of Defence confirmed that the woman in question was killed during the clashes on 13–14 September along the Armenia-Azerbaijan border.
The footage, ostensibly filmed by a Muslim Azerbaijani soldier, shows a number of bodies of Armenian soldiers, including two women.
One of the women has been stripped naked with text written across her breasts and stomach. A stone has been placed in her eye socket and a severed finger in her mouth.
The man filming the scene comments in Azerbaijani: ‘look at the bitch, there are two women. She became a rock.’
The Chief of the General Staff of the Armenian Armed Forces spoke about the footage during a visit by foreign diplomats to the resort town of Jermuk in the southern Vayots Dzor Province on Friday. The town was subject to Azerbaijani shelling, with Azerbaijani troops taking control of positions near the town during the fighting.
‘They committed atrocities in our combat positions against our service members, including women service members’, Edward Asryan told the diplomats. ‘I can’t find words to describe how they dismembered a female soldier, cut off her legs, and fingers, stripped her naked, this is the ultimate level of cruelty’, he added, promising to show the video to them.
😠😠😠 😢😢😢
💭 Historical adversary of Armenia & Ethiopia; Turkey – which is waging a NATO green-lighted Drone Jihad everywhere – is unleashing again war crimes and genocide against the two most ancient Christian nations of the world: Armenia and Ethiopia.
👹 This appalling attack shows once again the depths of cruelty and barbarism to which Muslim societies will sink.
Since 2018 We in Ethiopia saw this sort of cruelty and barbarism on such a massive scale when Turkey-Azeirbaijan allied soldiers of the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia begun their Jihad against Christians of the Tigray region of Northern Ethiopia.
The Tigrayan people of Northern Ethiopia are still facing an even greater threat. Turkish and Arab agent evil Abiy Ahmed Ali has rallied his supporters around a campaign of blatant ethnic hostility. They portray the Tigrayans as a “cancer,” “weeds,” “daylight hyenas” and “rats.” On several occasions, many of Ahmed’s Oromo soldiers were videotaped saying that they should be destroyed with the “utmost cruelty.” Even Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister and EU envoy attested: „Ethiopian leadership vowed to ‘wipe out’ the Tigrayans for 100 years, this looks for us like ethnic cleansing.”
500 years ago the Ottoman Turks, together with the Somalis and Oromos of Africa massacred more than three million African Christians of Ethiopia. 300 years later, the Turks slaughtered as many as 1.5 million Armenians in the #ArmenianGenocide. Today, the Turks massacred Armenians in Azeirbajan, they even travelled accross Africa to work together with their natural allies — Somalis and Oromos– and are again bombing and starving to death millions of ancient African Christians of Ethiopia in the # TigrayGenocide.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on September 23, 2022
💭 Ethiopia’s government has rejected a report by U.N. investigators who accused the government of ongoing crimes against humanity in Tigray, starvation, rape and sexual violence and extrajudicial killings. For more insight, VOA’s Esther Githui-Ewart spoke to journalist Zecharias Zelalem.
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