By all measures of sensible judgement, war is ugly, destructive, and dehumanizing. Apart from a few exception of countries who relish the display of violence, there are no nations that celebrate war these days. Ethiopia is one of the few exceptions. Yes, it is a matter of historical record that Ethiopians, timidly following deceptive dictators, are incurable war-mongers. Particularly when it comes to Eritrea, Ethiopians are not responsive to peace. They resent, envy, and loath Eritreans. Furthermore their preoccupation with war making is so deep-seated that they have injured their country to perpetual poverty, famine, pestilence, disease, malnutrition, and premature death. Why? Grandiose self-delusion and bitter hatred have combined to make Ethiopia irrational and self-destructive.
Hatred of Eritreans by Ethiopians is well known to Eritreans. The brutalities of Menelik and Yohannis were such that they could have been expected only from a mind-set of sub-human dimensions. In recent decades, that mind set of Ethiopian inhumanity manifested itself when Haile Selassie said: "We Ethiopians are not interested in Eritreans as a people; we are interested in Eritrea as a territory." The tradition of utter hatred was repeated when Prince Asrate Kassa, as Haile Selassie's representative in Eritrea, declared: "to kill and de-populate the fish, you have to drain and de-habitat their waters." In order to implement Ethiopia's sadistic lust for the blood of innocent Eritreans, Asrate Kassa behaved as a mad dog dripping around its deadly fangs with the blood of innocent school children. Of course the hate-induced madness continued when the Derg's death squads, mostly Tigray cadres and functionaries, conducted wholesale murder and massacre of innocent Eritreans. The Ethiopian madness continued until the glorious day of Eritrean liberation in 1991.Now with the province of Tigray possessing all economic, political, and military power of all of Ethiopia, we are witnessing a relapses of the incurable Ethiopian madness.
It is difficult to understand why the Ethiopians are solidly behind the Tigrayans in trying to subjugate Eritreans. Every thing about Eritreans in Ethiopian history is noble, courageous, self-less, patriotic, and of extreme dedication. As we witness the Ethiopian spirit today, it is not one that works for peace and reconciliation, but one of hatred and rush to war.
The Tigrayans, who came to power on account of Eritrea's quest for peace between the two countries, are continuing Ethiopian brutalities against innocent and peace-loving Eritreans. They are seeking excuses to pursue war to reach a level of brutality where no other Ethiopian killer had gone before. The new battle cry is an echo to that of Haile Selassie, and the Derg brutal years. It is a war to "break Eritrea's spinal cord" and make it a quadriplegic state.
Why such a hatred? Could it be that we should have known better than to expect peace with the Ethiopians? Should we now conclude that no amount of Eritrean generosity, forgiveness, understanding, and tolerance can heal Ethiopian hatefulness? I think it is time that Eritreans know that it is unthinkable for the greater segment of the Ethiopian population to accept Eritreans as a people short of subjugating and erasing Eritrean identity and Eritrean pride. The Tigrayan regime has understood the value of that hatred. It is now capitalizing on that curse to chase its dream of Greater Tigray. As Eritrea continued to present an obstacle to Tigray's unwarranted exploitation of Ethiopian capacity to hate and Ethiopia's own vulnerability for disintegration, there are a several factors that must be understood in order to confront the Tigrayan challenge.
Responsible Eritrea As an Obstacle:
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Tigrayans sought endorsement from the Eritreans for the idea of a separate and independent Tigray state. When the Eritreans refused to endorse their idea, the Tigrayans were offended. Meles and his gangs bristled with anger at Eritrean rejection. "Who are the Eritreans, after all, to tell us whether we should claim independence or not", they fumed. Realizing their powerlessness then to struggle for Tigray's independence, they decided to put their plan aside and signed on to the Eritrean plan of overthrowing the brutal Derg. They were reward for cooperating with Eritrea in overthrowing the brutal Derg. They marched to Addis in victory accompanied and protected by Eritrean tanks and fighters. The TPLF accepted Eritrean conditions and reassured Eritreans and the world that they would not alter Ethiopian legitimate territorial features by advocating separatist Tigrayan agenda. Eritrea on its part went a step further by diligently seeking peace and understanding, forgetting the past and anticipating a future of development and prosperity in the two countries and in the Horn. Eritrean markets and Eritrean ports were thrown wide open for Ethiopian investment and unconditional use.
For a short while, peace prevailed between Eritrea and Ethiopia, but very soon the Tigray minority regime started resurrecting its Greater Tigray dream. This would involve an initial phase of expropriating lands from the provinces of Wolo and Begemdir. Eventually the scheme would go on to unite Tigray with Eritrea by overthrowing the obstacle - the current Eritrean institutions - and installing a puppet regime that would work to cooperate in finalizing the Greater Tigray project. Tigrayans from the days of Emperor Yohannis to the current group in Addis consider the extent of their realm as reaching as far as the edge of the Sudanese town of Fashoda, edging up north near the Sudanese towns of Fazughili, and Sinar and reaching north to include the Sudanese port of Sawakin. Reading between the lines in their various manifestos, and documents, the dream of uniting these lands with Northern Ethiopia with Mekelle as the seat of power is still alive. Independent Eritrea with vigor and self-assurance proved a formidable obstacle. Thus they triggered a chain reaction of hostilities culminating in Badime.
The Tigrayans are now cynically manipulating Ethiopians to remove Eritrea as an obstacle to Tigray's predominance and independent self-actualization. Ethiopia's human and material resources are being used to mobilize for the destruction of Eritrea. The ill-thought diplomatic goodwill from such countries as the United States, and the West's ambivalence to African pains of senseless wars are the catalysts that are activating the fires of Ethiopia's senseless war.
The New Coffee Capitalists-TPLF Coalition:
Rejected by the Eritreans in their expansionist dreams, the Tigrayans resorted to devising other means to expand Tigray at the expense of Eritrea, Ethiopia, and perhaps even at the expense of Sudan in the next decade. They are taking advantage of the means of production common in peasant societies as Ethiopia. Today in Ethiopia there is a new capitalist class which the Tigrayans have been cultivating and exploiting to obscene and banal means for war. This is the EPRDF-Coffee Coalition.
The southern hinterlands are the backbone of Ethiopian military budget. Agricultural producers from the south, particularly Coffee producers, are flourishing as new capitalist class favored by the Tigraya regime. Prominent EPRDF members from the South are Ethiopia's new rich, rewarded in handsome returns as conduits between decentralized coffee production and monopolistic agro-military complex. TPLF's hegemonic grip on Ethiopia's military missions has given them access to capital input as long as they continue to increase production for the military budget. These new capitalists, shortsighted as any other peasant capitalist, see the Tigray regime as benefitting their economic interests and, as long as that arrangement continues, they do not care to question the Tigrayans. Some Oromos are quietly expressing alarm and resentment about Tigray's military hegemony, war objectives, field tactics, command structures, and battle formation, particularly after the onslaught in Badime, the Denakil plains, and Tserona. Some EPRDF members from the Oromo regions have even been isolated, harassed, and sidelined from consultations for expressing vigorous opposition to Tigray's dirty deeds. By and large, however, the coffe-coalition within and outside EPRDF, nurtured and protected by the Tigrayan military gangs, is dictating the South's economic and military predicaments. Such is the infiltration into the Oromo cohesion and unity by the TPLF-EPRDF Coffee-Coalition that the few courageous Oromo fighters who are attempting to liberate the Oromo peoples are isolated and harassed in Ethiopia, Somalia, and Kenya. Their only hope for survival and eventual liberation from the TPLF grip rests with the determination of their compatriots in the West to fight "against all odds". Still, even then, they could only sustain less than a vigorous struggle against the Coffee-Coalition nurtured by the Tigrayans and tolerated by the Southern of wing of the EPRDF.