The Ethiopian people might have found relief through the next on-coming power of the Derg if it had been a genuine effort to  relieve the Ethiopian people from the misery of poverty and ignorance, but soon  Menghistu Hailemariam's main preoccupation and agenda became to crush the  Eritrean armed struggle for freedom.

Forgotten were the mass starvation,  poverty and ignorance the Ethiopian people had so much sought relief from and  deserved to have gotten it. Instead, in larger amounts and better  qualities of military hardware supply from the super powers, Menghistu  Hailemairam tightened his grip on the Red Sea dream to unleash unimaginable  horror on the peoples of Eritrea and Ethiopia. Young Ethiopian soldiers  went north, unknown territories to them, to secure the Red Sea for the Greater  Ethiopia blessed with magical qualities of freedom and legacy of 3000  years. Mystical and romantic, wishful thinking, a deadly adventure, but  never practical, and never objective. The African strong man, with  the might of powerful army and powerful alternating super power allies,  Menghistu Hailemariam had forgotten that he is indeed human, flesh and bones  with limitations, like all of us. The dream, he had wrongly thought, was  coiled in his willpower alone, and if he terrorized, maimed, killed, tortured  and imprisoned a little harder the Eritrean people would succumb to his wishes,  and the Red Sea would be Ethiopia's after all. The mass starvation of the  Haile Selassie era came back in bigger and uglier proportion, one million people  died in the famine of 1984-85. Still, he pressed on with his obsession, as  if it was some sort of illness that obscured the reality at hand and fed his ego  to march forward. Well, the world was shocked again to discover such  proportion of famine and starvation, obliged to feed the hungry gave all that it  could to the needy. The famine along with the increasingly tightened grip  on the war obsession finally caught-up with Menghistu Hailemariam, alone and  lonely with a horrible chapter of Ethiopian history to his credit, he  abandoned his dream and the Ethiopian people, and fled the country in 1991.

The current regime of Ethiopia, TPLF, rose from  the ranks of the common people of Tgray, supposedly as a better representation  of the oppressed masses, seeking democratic justice and a peaceful  coexistence within Ethiopia and its neighbors. But, the expansionist  dream, the underlying Ethiopian policy of the "no Ethiopia without the Red  Sea" obsession that had destroyed Haile Selassie and Menghistu Hailemariam  became their obsession too. Under the guise of a border dispute, the TPLF  is holding hostage and terrorizing the young nation of Eritrea with a declared  war at a cost of US $1 million per day.The international community's  effort to secure even a cease-fire through its organized bodies, OAU, UN, EU  failed because the underlying objective of the Ethiopian expansionist policy is  not being addressed to the satisfaction of Ethiopia, or to that of justice and  fairness. So, the game of war and expensive war toys goes on at the  expense of the Ethiopian people.

The TPLF whose promises and objectives may have painted itself to be  even better than that of their predecessors has gotten in the worst imaginable  trouble quicker than their predecessors. The mass starvation is nothing  but a window to the unfolding horror the Ethiopian people are subjected to under  the leadership of the TPLF. The HIV epidemic, uncontrollable forest fires,  ethnically divisive policies and the rampant corruption that is eating away at  Ethiopia will eventually bring the downfall of the TPLF too. Like  its predecessors the TPLF could neither secure a misplaced objective and  priority by conducting a war to gain what is not rightfully theirs, an outlet to  the Red Sea or Greater Tgray, nor could they survive to stay in power for long  without paying attention to the plight of the Ethiopian people.

The international community, including Eritrea,  out of a moral obligation, and based on humanitarian response are doing  all they can to insure food is delivered to the starving population of  Ethiopia. To that end, Eritrea has responded favorably to have its Assab  port be used as a corridor for channeling humanitarian aid to Ethiopia, and the  US alone has donated more than half of the requested assistance. It is  ironic and somewhat disturbing to learn that the TPLF is balking at Eritrea and  the international community for the depth of their concern at the drought and  starvation crisis the Ethiopian people are suffering.

Still, expansionism through aggression being the  primary objective of their policy, the TPLF speaks with such arrogance of  undoing Eritrea's aggression. Prime Minster Meles Zenawi announced today  that in the face of such a devastating drought and starvation the war with  Eritrea will go on, hinting at a possible offensive to be launched  anytime. Such bravado and heavy sacrifices at the expense of the Ethiopian  people for a dream that is neither practical nor attainable leads to yet another  road of collapsed power of an impotent government in the lives of the Ethiopian  people. And, yet the TPLF men speak feverishly, about the dream of the Red  Sea and Greater Tgray. So did Haile Selassie and Menghistu Hailemariam  until the last breath of the last minute.