Above cartoon is from www.alamy.com
Denton Collins
**Please forward this article and findings on these links for USAID and White House, and request comment . Contact your US House Representative and Senator and share this article — a false pretense for supporting TPLF similar to Iraq’s fake WMD is being peddled while we don’t know “Where are the US taxpayers’ billions stolen from Ethiopia?”
The US Embassy in Addis can be reached at ConsAddis@state.gov OR PASAddis@state.gov The US Mission to the African Union can be reached at usau@state.gov ***
I am old enough to intimately remember Emperor Haile Selassie as the first among world leaders at the side of JFK’s casket in on 25 November 1963. Front. And. Center.
Yesterday, 17 September 2021, will go down in history as the death of this historic relationship dating from 1903. This compelled me to put pen to paper on a foreign policy topic for the first time in years. To my Ethiopian friends, I am with you.
How does one even begin to apologies for the Biden Administration’s humiliating foreign policy record so far? (Within the last 48 hours America has lost historic allies in Ethiopia and France. How poetic that de Gaulle and Haile Selassie are standing side by side above.)
Look at this picture and take a moment for it to sink in. Ethiopians like to say gold in your hand feels like a piece of bronze.
Yesterday, President Biden issued an executive order imposing sanctions on warring parties in Ethiopia — which in reality is targeting the Government of Ethiopia- the most democratically elected in the history of the ancient nation.
It is not the first time that Ethiopia, a nation that has sent diplomatic mission abroad since before the United States existed, has been thrown under the bus by the West. Recall when Ethiopia — one of only a handful of African nations in the League of Nations — was allowed to be overran by the same League that it was member of AND by another League member. Double standards and colonialism have never been part of your vocabulary.
Yesterday’s Executive Order has parallels to the British and French foreign ministers at the time of the League’s decision: Sir Samuel Hoare and Pierre Laval, secretly planned to divide the country and give a piece to Mussolini (Hoare and Laval lost their jobs as a result).
The Administration gave moral equivalence to the Ethiopian version of Blackshirts collectively known as Tigrean Peoples Liberation Front, TPLF, a declared terrorist organization. A collection of dead-end, narrow-minded ethnophob kleptocrats.
The executive order has no doubt emboldened the TPLF and prolonged the war.
Anyone who follows the Horn of Africa politics and human rights issues (and has half a brain) will know the TPLF be as racist and base-ist as the National Party of Apartheid (literally ‘separate development’) South Africa and the Nazi Party of Germany — just a cunning modern equivalent.
Meanwhile…
Surly coincidental, also yesterday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) declared that of the 445 large food aids trucks sent to to Tigray province only 38 have returned. Suppress one news story with another is as old as…Ethiopia. The message from WFP characterized the missing trucks (not one or two, but several hundred in a war zone) as “concerning” — if that’s not the understatement of the century, I don’t know what is.
The Fortnight
On 24 August the American Embassy in Ethiopia tweeted, “USAID rejects any accusation that food assistance is knowingly or willingly given to soldiers,” — the response was met with widespread derision including photos of TPLF fighters with USAID biscuits.
Just six days later, on 1st September, Sean Jones, the USAID mission Director to Ethiopia reversed course after withering criticism(during the same week Americans started the infamous exit from Kabul airport) and admitted the TPLF was indeed attacking and stealing food from aid storage depots.
Resurrecting the TPLF, which appears to be the (misguided) US policy is akin to throwing a lifeline to the Nazi Party after, for argument’s sake, they had retreated to, say Bavaria, at the end of the WWII — as the TPFL had fled to Tigray region during the last three years.
Ethiopia 1935/2020, Poland 1939: Why the Double Standard, Still?
The sanctions imposed by the Administration, which elicited on open letter to President Biden from the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Adiy, will, based on history, only strengthen the resolve of Ethiopia to:
a) Crush the TPLF on the battlefield as in Stalingrad
b) Prosecute those captured or turned in as in Nuremburg
c) Hunt those leaders who escape prosecution as in Eichmann in Argentina
Food Aid: The Empirical Evidence on the TPLF Theft
Food Aid: the Foreign Policy Tool that Keeps on Destroying
Food aid is fuel to keep fighting. It is also fungible with cash and arms. Is the United States using food aid in the same way it funded Contras with arms sales to Khomeini’s Iran?
If there is poster child for a failed state, effectively without a government for approximately 30 years, neighboring Somalia would be the most convincing.
What few recognize is that the land of modern-day pirates largely became dismembered and ungovernable due to food aid, or more precisely the use of food aid by the US and the West for short term geo-political interests.
A little known book from 1999, The Road to Hell, written by a recovering aid worker in Somalia chronicles the devastating and extreme effects of ‘poor people in rich countries giving food aid to rich people in poor countries.’
The Road to Hell, should provide a roadmap of how NOT to create the next Somalia. Or Syria, or Libya, or, or.
In early July of this year, the open debate on the Tigray conflict at the UN was spearheaded by the US. At this unprecedented event for Ethiopia — one of the few countries in the world that is was a member of both the League of Nations and the UN — the US Ambassador was unequivocal in advocating for food aid to reach TPLF held region of Tigray.
Who wouldn’t support feeding starving women and children?
USA, Discouraging Democracy?
Let us look back at the events of the summer, for context: In the week before the UN meeting, Ethiopian Federal forces had just completed a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew from Mekele, the capital of Tigray region, undoubtedly under heavy fighting and pressure from troops loyal to the TPLF.
Also coinciding in the week before the UN meeting, Ethiopia had just completed the most free and fair election in its long history so it’s alarming to see that the State Department was “gravely concerned” at this historic achievement in the middle of a pandemic no less.
Note, Obama called Ethiopia a ‘democracy’ at a state visit during TPLF’s rule and who could forget the despicable Susan Rice laughing while endorsing the TPLF Election (imagine if it was Canada, or any European nation, she was commenting on) despite the mass killing of pro-democracy protesters at the time. Rice, a close confidant of the former TPLF dictator, Meles Zenawi, is supposedly calling the US policy shots for Biden on Ethiopia.
I invite Rice to one of the many homes that lost children to TPLF’s live bullets while marching to honor their vote.
An analysis of the wider conflict and US policy is documented well by Nemo Simret in Pay any price, bear any burden, and a related reversal by the New York Times journalist Declan Walsh, A brief experiment with Truth with the “editors of the NY Times are apparently sweeping this reversal under the rug.”
The US has longstanding knowledge of the misuse of food aid, so the missing trucks this week, and looted warehouse should not come as a surprise. The TPLF routinely misdirected aid even when ruling Ethiopia let alone while on the run.
Empirical Findings Reveal Large-Scale, Ethnic Based, Theft of Food Aid
A multi-million dollar food aid distribution research project was conducted in the late 1990’s. The project was led by the Agricultural Economics department at Michigan State University in coordination with the Ethiopian Ministry of Economic Development and Cooperation (MEDAC) and the US Agency for International Aid (USAID) — who funded the project. Below are the findings:
For years, while TPLF were leading Ethiopia, food aid was going to one particular region, Tigray, at approximately 20 times more per person than average of other regions of Ethiopia, and about 7 times more per person than the average of other regions when adjusting for the possible influence of contributory factors, or covariables, using statistical and econometric analyses.
Basically, worse case 20x more, best case 7x more to Tigray region directed by the TPLF.
This little-known study was brought out in technical aid workshops and various proceedings, of course it didn’t make the TPLF led government in Addis Ababa happy. The US funded project to understand where the billions in American taxpayers’ funds were going to was immediately cancelled by the TPLF government and scientists kicked out of the country.
Ultimately the data, based on a survey of 4,166 households, was published in the peer reviewed journal Food Policy, 24 (1999) pg (see above or Table 3, pg. 404 for the theft and regional discrepancies cited).
In typical academic fashion, the most salient but politically contentious findings, are buried at the bottom of the paper with the unsurprising statement that regional differences “are due to the factors not measured by this study.” No uproar, not even a whimper, from the US State Department and US Mission in Ethiopia?
That Easy Word: Genocide
The word ‘genocide’ along with buckets of tears effuse from the useful fools’ (essentially brainwashed Tigreans as no one else in the country or diaspora supports the terrorists) social media accounts with hashtags purporting genocide in Tigray – see my remark later in the piece about retribution in Tigray.
If stealing billions from starving people of one ethnicity and giving to another (up to 20 times more) over decades is not genocide, then English needs a new word for ethnic-based death from depravation. A classic case of the perpetrator crying wolf.
Forbes Magazine was not as coy as the academics — an article published many years after the Food Policy publication, Ethiopia’s Cruel Con Game (ironically these stollen funds are now used to buy influence on the same Americans it was stolen from) had this to say:
“Two numbers tell the story in a nutshell: 1) The amount of American financial aid received by Ethiopia’s government since it took power: $30 billion. 2) The amount stolen by Ethiopia’s (TPLF) leaders since it took power: $30 billion.”
This video from 2015 documents some of this theft among other crimes.
America is notorious among G7 countries for being rather skimpy for its own citizens’ food stamps and safety-net policies. Yet it has been providing billions of dollars of food aid for decades. Moreover, when it is stolen, misallocated, and sold — there is deafening silence.
Food Aid in Ethiopia: A Brief History of TPLF Theft, and the New Iran Contra.
Moreover, it stands to reason that this theft and continual Aid is not a bug but rather a feature — a new Iran Contra? You’re a billionaire, and if your house has been burglarized for 30 years, losing billions, when you don’t change your locks, what should one assume?
The Kleptos, Pickpockets, Ill Gotten Gains, the Ethiopian Low-Lives…
ሌባ /Leba/ Amharic for ‘thief’: a person who steals another person’s property, especially by stealth and without using force or violence.
The word ‘leba’ has a particular weight in Ethiopia, so much so that it’s even a term of perverse endearment: Ethiopia is the only country in Africa that does not have iron bars covering windows of gold shops — you get the picture. Armored truck companies have yet to do business there.
Since the TPLF’s effective hold on national power from 1991 to 2018, blatant corruption, often taking the form of ethnic based misallocation of resources (aka lebenet, in adjective form) extended far beyond food aid. Infrastructure and capital projects along with contractors’ lucrative contracts followed a pattern largely indistinguishable from South African Apartheid in its effects.
The TPLF, their supporters, and Tigray to some extent benefited — although the mass of Tigray’s population gained little and millions are still trapped in structural food deficiency requiring annual food handouts — in four ways:
1) Regional bias favoring Tigray with the allocation of the aid and investments.
2) By driving infrastructure policy from the ubiquitous government constructed apartment complexes (dolled out to TPLF supporters) to the suspicion number of football stadiums — which caught the attention of the Economist.
Apart from graft concerns, this had the effect of squeezing out the (more efficient) private sector, job creation, innovation, etc in an already poor country. The ‘developmental state’ policies during the period of TPLF rule ensured that Ethiopia was one of the top countries in the world, if not the top, in terms of percentage of GDP in state hands.
3) First priority for these contracts were awarded to the network of TPLF run front companies under the guise of independent private companies, often associated with the so-called REST (Relief Society of Tigray) and so-called EFFORT (Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray).
4) Developing a system of patronage whereby businesses and individuals connected with the TPLF would benefit resulting in a systematic culture of corruption in an African country largely known for an absence of corruption.
The World Bank own spatial data (blatantly published online, no less, at least it gave Priyanka Kanth and Michael Geiger a chance to show off their spatial analysis skills — save the website to PDF form in case the WB decides to remove the link), show the concentration of road construction in Tigray tell a powerful story.
The fact that no one at the World Bank or the State Department has objected tells an an even more powerful story of the low opinion the Bretton Woods institutions have about Africa (imagine if Biden’s home state of Delaware received 5x, 10x, 20x, 50x more infrastructure spending than the remaining 49 states).
Interesting, just to the south, Amhara region had almost no growth in roads (there were no inherent previous disparities in non-Tigray parts of Ethiopia that would justify such an unbalanced investment).
I’ve seen similar maps from South Africa in the 1980’s: Townships and bantustan areas vs where whites live.
TPLF rebel movement late 1970s to 1991
At the time of the MEDAC/MSU/USAID food aid findings, the TPLF were not new to diversion and commercializing food aid. Indeed, that is how the rebel group financed their movement that ousted the government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991 (a dictator, no doubt, but one who suppressed all equally regardless of ethno-linguistic background).
Campaigns such as ‘Live Aid’ and ‘We Are the World’ were primarily used to fund the TPLF according to the BBC:
“Two former members of the TPLF, Aregawi Berhe and Gebremedhin Araya, said the group had relied on the aid money to fund its campaign against the then ruling military junta. Berhe, a former TPLF commander, told (journalist) Martin Plaut that in 1985, only 5% of the $100m raised by charities ended up with the victims of the famine.” The BBC stood by this report in 2010 as published in The Guardian.
During this period in the 1980’s the TPLF survived by exaggerating the population under threat of famine, through the sale of food aid, and other techniques involving their diaspora Tigrigna speaking community in Sudan — from where arms were smuggled through — and “with the use of Relief Society of Tigray (REST)…it enabled it to use food as a weapon of rewarding supporters and penalizing those who refused to cooperate,” writes Paulos Milkias. Essentially what it is doing now.
TPLF led Government 1991–2018
It will be helpful to understand the current crisis by looking at how the rebel group conducted itself after coming to power as an unelected ‘transitional government.’ Without a national debate, much less a referendum, in 1994 it re-drew the country’s regions creating satellite-parties, inserting the suicidal Article 39 clause (un-debated or legally ratified) in the constitution that permits regions to separate. Again, the parallels with Apartheid South Africa are unavoidable.
Hatred as a Strategy
It’s interesting how many detested the Trump administration while tolerating the TPLF. The TPLF, reveled in highlighting past wars and conflict (the act of presentism to highlight grievances) while preaching equality and ethnic group rights.
Imagine Angela Merkel speaking on a near daily basis, for 27 years, about the wars between pre-Bismark German fiefdoms, teaching it in schools, abolishing German as a national language and essentially making division the platform of the Christian Democrats. It’s a miracle that Ethiopia still exists, but a generation has grown up brainwashed which will take time to undo.
Of course the true aim of the TPLF wasn’t some sort of reconciliation from old conflicts. It was a cruel and self-serving strategy to burn down the house and cause disharmony among the 80+ ethno-linguistic groups. A classic divide and conquer strategy with jealousy and a conspicuous inferiority complex at its heart.
Some of the poorest parts of Ethiopia are in the so-called Amhara region (the polar opposite of what the TPLF did for Tigray, by amassing wealth in a few short decades) contradicting their mantra of Amhara hegemony and expropriation of wealth at the expense of other groups.
This duplicity no doubt facilitated TPLF’s hold on power for almost 30 years — extending from its small base of support — Tigrayans comprise less than 10% of the population — and facilitated the misappropriation of foreign aid and resources for the Party’s elite and supporters.
These ethnic based regions, or ‘homelands’ as they were called in Apartheid South Africa, were not appreciably different in form and structure from South African bantustans or homelands. Ethiopia, an ancient ethno-linguistically connected country from centuries of political integration as well as integration through trade, marriage (the current Prime Minister is from two ethno-linguist groups), war, and religious pilgrimages— was now a collection ethnic ‘homelands’ being taught different languages in elementary school.
Just as America’s last president, Trump, found that it is much easier to build support using divisiveness than by unity, the TPLF attempted to brainwash a much less educated populace than the American one, and to much success. Normally, leaders without perverse agendas build countries with cohesion, not actively attempt to destroy them, to the extent of writing it into the constitution (is there an antonym for nation building?).
The entire social fabric was upended over the 27 years of TPLF rule. The country’s regions were re-drawn on ethnic lines (suspiciously close to the same borders Italy used during the war and occupation from 1936 to 1941). All of this, from a group without any mandate or legitimacy — a rag tag group of largely uneducated rebel fighter.
If you happen to be born outside of your ‘homeland’ — as many were for several generations — prospects for employment, personal security and wellbeing were greatly diminished and tens of thousands have lost their lives in all the regions including Afar, Amhara, Bene Shangul, Oromia, Somalia and Tigray — by pitting neighbor upon neighbor.
Since regions were now encouraged to teach in a local language, freedom of movement for employment and other reasons were curtailed. Unqualified stooges with connections to local government officials were running whole government agencies and departments, and of course driving fancy cars. It was good for the both TPLF and the regional or bantustan leaders. Again, a classic co-option model of pre-Mandela South Africa.
As Meles Zenawi, Susan Rice’s confidant, famously stated on television, “it’s not your qualifications that matter, we will hire a donkey if they they are aligned with our politics.”
Ethiopia was largely corruption free relative to the rest of Africa, but that began to change with the TPLF and still persists today. Were it any other country, Ethiopia would have turned into a banana republic. Post TPLF it is on the edge and it will take another generation or two to recover.
2018 — Present
The misrule led to a mass uprising in 2018 that saw TPLF leaders retreat to the Tigray region. Much diminished, the TPLF used the looted funds to sow discord among ethnicities.
Just today, my Ethiopian friends reached out when they knew I was writing this. They informed me about an 87 page leaked TPLF strategy document on how to destabilize Ethiopia by pitting Oromos against Amharas, among other strategies such as social media manipulation with the end goal to seek independence (if they won’t rule Ethiopia they are intent on burning it down). Apparently was it was broadcast on the ESAT network today -if someone can insert English subtitles and send it to me I would appreciate it.
Kill Your Brother (in the Night, if You Must)
The proximate cause leading to the current conflict is when in November 2020 the TPLF attacked the national army based in Tigray protecting northern Ethiopia (in the middle of the night) killing hundreds. Essentially a bloodier Ethiopian equivalent to the Confederate attack on Fort Sumpter (the 1861 battle that began the American Civil War).
Imagine if a group of American insurrectionists killed US troops, in their sleep, at Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia or Fort Bragg, California— then they went on to attack several more states killing and starving thousands more. The American public would demand that the terrorists be crushed like cockroaches, not negotiate a settlement with them.
Weeks before the attack, the TPLF leadership proceeded with a rogue regional election despite being pleaded by elders to follow the rest of the country and postpone the vote to responsibly mitigate COVID-19 risks.
Over the last 10 months since the outbreak of fighting between TPLF and the Ethiopian National Defense force, the TPLF has been using lobby groups including SGR LLC and Von Batten-Montague-York to influence US policy.
If there is no law that prohibits a terrorist organization from lobbying members of Congress, there should be.
Moving Forward: Restitution and Justice
Ethiopia has already killed some of the TPLF leadership in battle who have resisted arrest and imprisoned those captured. Meanwhile, Ethiopia and all peace loving countries should cooperate with Interpol and other financial crimes agencies around the world to recover the funds stollen by the TPLF on moral grounds as well as to reduce the arms being used by the TPLF in the current war.
An audit of those funds used by the TPLF to purchase influence is in order to break the scheme of using looted funds, largely from the US, to secure even more aid and foreign policy concessions from America. Often the funds are kept in the name of the officials’ children.
Whatever the short-term geopolitical interests of the West vis-à-vis Egypt or the Horn of Africa is, it is essential to understand that insufficiently monitored food aid is essentially cash or weaponry. In the wrong hands it can, and has broken nations while rewarding those who control and manipulate it.
No one should die from hunger, anywhere. If the West is genuine about feeding Ethiopians in need, and in particular Tigray region, the first step is to acknowledge TPLF’s history of misallocating and monetizing food aid — actually take their own word for it when they say only 5% of aid reached the hungry in the 1980s and look at the data collected by USAID and others showing gross misallocation based on ethnicity and region.
It’s not far fetched that Tigray could turn into another Somalia and become a safe haven for terror groups like Al Shabab next door in Somalia — such groups are already expanding in the Sahel.
A region with few resources — led by the TPLF — a designated terrorist by both the US and Ethiopia— with a proclivity for fomenting conflict, stealing aid and suppressing dissent cannot be allowed to exist.
If the US and the West are truly interested in reducing malnutrition, at a minimum, the US should rescind call for sanctions and call for the TPLF to disarm and the leadership to turn themselves in.
In a fair world the US would offer assistance, just as we had to Europe in WWII, to eliminate the terrorists (only once when Hitler attacked Europe, Ethiopians fought side by side with British and other Allied troops to expunge the Italians). Barring that, Ethiopia, is in its right, duty to be precise, to eliminate the any threat within or outside its borders and to enlist the assistance from any country near or far.
Anything that does not need to be explained, shouldn’t be, but this is the extent of the double standard Ethiopia and Africa faces, again, where the obvious has to be spelled out.
An offer of bounty for information leading to the capture or death of senior TPLF leadership will reduce the suffering and cost on all sides.
Food Aid Recommendations
In terms of food aid, the following should be implemented immediately:
1) Require all 407 unaccounted trucks in Tigray returned or accounted for before more aid is sent (and add GPS tracking devises that cannot be removed). They are likely transporting troops and used in the war if not returned.
2) All aid deliveries by land or air must be inspected to avoid arms smuggling.
3) Develop controls for transparency in selecting local distribution vendors and collateral held in case trucks are not returned.
4) Require that a statistical sample of households’ claims be audited by independent third parties to verify the number of family members claimed matches food requests.
5) Inter and extra regional analysis of food distribution to assess the potential for misallocating based on political, ethnic and other affiliations.
6) Seal the boarder with Sudan with troops and coordinated satellite monitoring.
7) Establish whistle-blower protocols and rewards for food aid handlers.
Furthermore, there is no precedence to deter future perpetuators of similar crimes as the TPLF have committed. Let us keep the Abiy Adminstration future leaders of Ethiopia honest.
The hunt for stollen funds must begin immediately, and any collected funds should offset food aid commitments by the West and be returned to Ethiopia. Start with the bank accounts of the children of senior TPLF members.
TPLF Party members, and other satellite party members, and their families (including the current WHO General Director Tedros Adhanom, a TPLF politburo member and former foreign minster who BTW is standing for re-election at WHO this year — in what alternate reality does this fellow even become a janitor at the World Health Organization? His case has been referred to the International Criminal Court) that live outside of Ethiopia often do so beyond the means afforded them by their salary. Such an investigation should begin with asset declarations and supporting documentation.
TPLF ‘Leadership’ and the End
It difficult to believe that the current leadership of the TPLF is best the region of Tigray can do- a collection of leba. In addition to theft, their moral depravity has been called been exposed on numerous occasions. For example, the Tigray regional president, Debretsion Gebremichael “John,” was known to engage in international sex tourism worldwide which, aside from the lewdness would not have been possible on his civil servant salary. These are basic standards to expect from political leaders regardless of nationality or country. According to the report, “John” has a…
“history of employing prostitutes, escorts and call girls in many cities including Cairo, Yaounde (Cameroon), Bangkok, Hiroshima, Tokyo, Geneva, Seoul, Busan (S. Korea), Mumbai (India), Dubai, Hong Kong and Las Vegas in search of whorehouses.”
When the US UN Ambassador publicly asked for Ethiopia to return satellite dishes to Tigray at the open Security Council this summer— if indeed these were taken, they were conceivably removed so the terrorist enemy does not use them for communications to launch more attacks — perhaps she can also politely ask the TPLF to return the billions of US taxpayer dollars looted.
Today Ethiopia is in full scale civil war with the TPLF on the OFFENSIVE and committing mass atrocities in the Afar (the main one being in Galikomo) and Amhara (now primary in Wello and previously a massacre of over 1,000 mostly Amhara in Mai Kadra) regions while playing victim.
History will record who the social media provocateurs and the biased, or lazy/intellectually uncurious journalists, who perpetuated the war with unsubstantiated narratives.
False narratives are a propaganda tool that can change history. Here are a vivid example and best practice article from Jeff Pearce: Ethiopia: Lies, Damn Lies, Axum and The West and Ethiopia: Let’s Start Fixing Western News Coverage
In Germany, while the Nazi party had mass appeal — with their bass-ist, lowest common denominator propaganda appeal of hate and religious ethnophobia — not all Germans were spineless. It’s time for those who seek peace and justice to stand up.
The vast majority of Ethiopians and Africans rightly detest the TPLF and it’s policies (when was the last time Ethiopians and Eritreans agreed on anything?). Protesters in the millions in the streets of Addis Ababa three years ago is testament to that. As more Western journalist and general public gain knowledge, the tide will continue to turn (an Ethiopian proverb says it’s easy to lie about a foreign land).
“You can fool all the people part of the time, or you can fool some people all the time, but you cannot fool all people all the time.”
The US and Europe will not go far just like in Afghanistan (the list of unconquered countries in world is less than 10 and both Afghanistan and Ethiopia are on that list). I predict Biden will soon lose his job like Hoare and Laval did. Historically, anyone who’s touched the forehead of Ethiopia has come to regret it.
To the clueless, and perhaps well-meaning Western journalist: Your unknown biases and double-standard are glaring. Educate yourself. Resist the urge to be spood-fed information, double check sources and resist all advertising, lobbyist or TPLF surrogate driven stories.
Biden, Rice, journalists, ask yourself, would you be happy living and raising your children in a country run by the TPLF?
It’s time for Ethiopians, especially Tigreans, to stand up and face the truth. Refuse to be a useful tool whether online, or on the battlefield.
An Appeal
Where are the honest, religious, and peace-loving daughters and sons of Tigray? The TPLF plunged you into war and the world is waiting for you to speak up.
The TPLF perpetuated decades of injustice to which Tigreans may have been subject to retribution — that’s unfortunately human nature and to think otherwise is the height of naïveté. It’s time to move forward, heal, and choose leadership that’s fit to lead. You know where TPLF are. Turn them in and choose light over darkness.
P.S. If someone can send me an Amharic translations of this article, I would be most appreciative. We all need to continue to get the truth out. No Nazism, no Apartheid in Ethiopia. End the TPLF reign of terror in Ethiopia, end aid as a weapon, and work long term to remove the TPLF brainwashing of three decades!
My thoughts are the tip of the iceberg. I hope my words will give license for others to speak up. There are countless stories of hiring and firing discrimination based on ethnicity — at government offices, police, army, Ethiopian Airlines, private offices. Human rights abuses in on farms, with the police and kebeles, at jails, and in all matters of civic live under TPLF.
Please speak up and drown out the voices of the opportunists, the money launderers, the fake news, the ethnophobic, and the hired goons (Nima Elbagir of CNN primary source of information are the TPLF and paid lobbyists mentioned above- which she recently had a public conversations with on tweeter. This too, like the missing trucks, is ‘concerning’).
Source: https://medium.com/
