War, it seems, brings the worst in some, and the best in others. The past year and a half in the Ethiopian-Eritrean conflict is no exception. The treatment of Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean heritage in Ethiopia demonstrates that in the midst of TPLF induced banality of common place evil, there has been enough goodwill exhibited by ordinary Ethiopians to restore ones faith in human beings.

For sheer meanness, nothing compares to the manner TPLF cadres have conducted their harassment of Eritreans. The ordinariness of official meanness in TPLF controlled Ethiopia is breathtaking. The unrelenting pursuit of acts of malice against civilian Eritreans defies rational explanation. It's hard to fathom that human beings can harbor such bottomless malice. What consuming hatred drives them to act with such wanton cruelty is a mystery. We know what they have done, but we are hard pressed to know why. The source of their malice is so inexplicable that we are left to ponder a meanness that has no name, and no pedigree.

From TPLF's book of horrors we can cite several examples that attest to their sadism, their smug satisfaction in seeing others suffer. TPLF cadres force-marched people through the scorching heat of the Bure gateway, knowing full well some may not make it. They fired over the head of people whom they forced to walk several kilometers to the other side, hoping to draw fire from the Eritrean side so that they may be hit by "friendly" fire. They snatched people from their hospital bed only to squeeze them into an overcrowded bus to join other deportees on their way to Eritrea. Indeed their pathological urge to harm defenseless civilians is well documented.

If TPLF's meanness is without a name, it's not without a purpose. The driving force seems to be the desire to humiliate and to punish, and in the mean time, to profit. Properties and businesses of uprooted Eritreans and Ethiopians of Eritrean origin have been taken over by TPLF cadres and business affiliates. Over 15,000 have been denied any means of earning a livelihood. Yet they have been prevented from going to Eritrea. They could, however, for the right amount of bribe, to a TPLF official, be issued a passport and an exit visa to any country other than Eritrea. A lot of government officials are profiting from the TPLF inspired misfortunes of Eritreans.

If war has brought the worst in TPLF cadres, it also has brought many Schindlers--people of goodwill- into the picture. There have been countless instances where neighbors prevented TPLF cadres from taking their neighbors, Eritreans, to the police station, on their route to deportation. Neighbors are harboring Sawa experienced children of their friends. In some cases they are raising the children of Eritrean parents who have been deported. They are supporting friends who lost their jobs. Trusted friends have been acting as collectors of rent, and then transmitting the money to their Eritrean friends, wherever they may be. These Schindlers are coming through at tremendous risk to themselves and their families. These are Ethiopians, mostly Amharas and Oromos, but even some Tigrayans who feel disgusted and ashamed by TPLF's ruinous ethnic obsession.

TPLF's meanness is a sickness of the heart. The ill-gotten wealth it has been accumulating at the expense of Eritreans it has been deporting at will cannot last. The wealth so accumulated will be ephemeral. The disquieting factor, however, is whether TPLF's drive to enrich itself illegally is creating a permanent wedge between Eritreans and Ethiopians. Let us hope not. Never should Eritrea do to Ethiopians in Eritrea what the TPLF has done to Eritreans in Ethiopia. Meanness to unarmed civilians may have no name in TPLF's Ethiopia, but it should never, never have a place in Eritrea.