In the heels of WFP's tour of the drought and famine stricken region of the Horn of Africa followed by its carefully and deliberately worded official assessment that said, "It is not famine, but they require urgent help", the UN have lend the TPLF leaders its helping hand at manipulating the suffering of the Ethiopian people to serve their war mongering agenda. The officially credible report that followed the tour by WFP's Ms. Bertini made sure that plenty of aid was to come to Ethiopia, but then it declared it as "not famine yet" so as to leave room for choices - TPLF's choices that reeks of political manipulation. Predictably, the TPLF went for the political kill, an attempt to keep Eritrea strangled and deprived, by ridiculing the use of the Assab port. As though it was a hypnotized audience, the international community gave in to quelling the anger and distrust the TPLF leaders display towards Eritrea by pouring much money and effort on the logistics of upgrading the capacity of the two small ports of Djibouti and Berbera. With the TPLF's ground rules set, the focus turned on how to quickly amass food and money to fill Ethiopia's aid basket. Last week the US gave additional $5.7 million, the European Union as well as Canada and NGO's around the world are shuffling to gather and deliver the necessary food aid to drought and famine stricken people of Ethiopia. In the meantime, having accomplished of assembling the humanitarian hearts into responding in the manners they planned, the TPLF leaders boasted to the world that it is no problem going to war on an empty tummy. In fact, what the TPLF have told the world is, "war is our priority, feeding our people is your humanitarian obligation and duty!"

With such under handed manipulation of hunger and starvation by the TPLF to serve its own purposes, and the international community, whose reason and logic is overwhelmed by guilt and political correctness into giving aid to Ethiopia, the stage is set for what will unfold as tragic consequence in the Horn of Africa. In step with the devil, subsidizing TPLF's war of aggression on empty stomach that promises to deliver chaos and devastation to the region, the international community has become a partner in destruction by the TPLF. It is one thing to be a beggar nation, down on your luck due to natural circumstances, quite different to have the world feed your starving people while your resources to the tune of one million US dollars a day is spent on a senseless war with a phantom "aggressor" Eritrea. The TPLF chose war not peace; and the TPLF chose to spend its meager resources on expensive war planes not on food for its starving people. The TPLF chose the international community to feed its starving people while it conducts a war of aggression in Somalia, Kenya and Eritrea.

The shocker comes not from the madness of the TPLF who by now have held not only Eritrea, the world as well, in contempt and a hostage to their ill willpower, but the nations of the world, and specially the USA as the leading contributor of aid to Ethiopia and a major player in the peace process of the 23 month old border conflict, to have become a willing victim to TPLF's political manipulation. To be in step with the devil by subsidizing the hidden agenda of the TPLF's war aggression on an empty stomach is indeed a crime against humanity, a crime against the very victims the help is intended to reach. Indeed, the Horn of Africa, and specially in Ethiopia drought and famine have taken their toll. The world is obliged, based on humanitarian grounds, to open its heart and pockets to help those who need to survive the crisis. But, the power of logic and reason should not be lost to the international community, world bodies, and the US whose first-hand knowledge of the unfolding of the Ethio-Eritrean border crisis, to know that the people of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa need peace the most. Giving aid packages to a government like the TPLF who does not care enough for its people to make them a priority in their time of crisis; a leadership who has run wild in its schemes for war and distraction; a government who feeds its own youth to the machinery of human carnage needs to be sanctioned not given aid packages. It needs to be removed from power not supported to inflict further pain and agony upon its citizens. To give aid to the TPLF in the name of the starving population of Ethiopia while failing to address the real issues behind the causes and effects of the problem is nothing more than putting a band aid on the givers guilt conscience

The Ethiopian people have spoken, through the bone and skin only dying children; the anguish filled parents who lost everything and are now losing their children to death by starvation; through the dying sick due to lack of medical attention; through its imprisoned journalists and citizens; through its youth killed on the streets marching for freedom, and the weary and unemployed poverty stricken citizens of Ethiopia, indeed, cry for help. They are a testament to the failure of the TPLF as a leader and a government, and their plight speaks of the agony they endure under such a destructive leadership. To keep filling the TPLF's begging hands with aid packages is to prolong the Ethiopian peoples' suffering - to keep in step with the devil by subsidizing the ethnically divisive, war mongering aggression of the TPLF that boasts to conduct a war on an empty stomach.