The National Council of Eritrean Americans (NCEA)
September 13, 2022
Michael Rubin is apparently so blinded by the propaganda, lobbying forces, and other agendas of Special Interest Groups to starkly downplay and overlook the mayhem that the TPLF has and continues to stoke in Ethiopia with its destabilizing ramifications for the large Horn of Africa region. His self-serving and mendacious opinion piece (1945 September 9, 2022) is indeed overtly fallacious and risible.
Let’s get the facts straight: –
• First off, the subversive group that Michael Rubin is advocating for is the culpable party that ignited the war in Ethiopia by launching an unprovoked, massive, and premeditated war on Ethiopia’s Defense Forces on 4 November 2020. No amount of disinformation can change these indelible facts to portray the TPLF as a victim of some concerted and conspiratorial forces.
• The TPLF’s war plans and military offensives of choice included escalation of its hostile agenda against Eritrea. Its war rhetoric throughout the past two years is replete with its dogged pursuit of creating “Greater Tigray” as residual Plan B and that incorporates most of highland and eastern lowlands of Eritrea. In the early days of its first offensive, it also launched more than 100 long range missiles targeting Asmara and other Eritrean cities.
• In Ethiopia, the TPLF further launched two more military offensives including its latest military offensive last month on August 24th. TPLF military offensives have been directed and have wrought immense destruction and suffering in the Afar and Amhara Regions of Ethiopia. These offensives occurred at the time when the Ethiopian Federal Government had declared unilateral and later permanent ceasefires.
The Federal Government of Ethiopia declared a unilateral ceasefire in June of 2021 and a permanent humanitarian truce in March of 2022, primarily to avert looming food-shortage that was affecting Tigray and other Regions of Ethiopia. The TPLF, however, misused the space and opportunity for peace to acquire more weapons, food aid and fuel to launch another reckless offensive that it unleashed last month and that is raging to this day. The TPLF had requisitioned WFP fuel for its war purposes with apparent impunity. As it will be recalled, the TPLF diverted over 1,050 WFP trucks in two months from June until September 2021 for use in its human-wave attacks in eastern and central Ethiopia and as it was boasting at the time it was poised to march all the way to Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. The fact that the TPLF is squarely responsible for the starvation of the people of Tigray, its extensive forced conscription and use of child soldiers in pursuit of its elusive and grandiose dreams of political cum military dominance in Ethiopia and the larger region should have elicited international condemnation, that it didn’t shows the moral bankruptcy of the major powers of the world.
In the event, Michael Rubin’s unconscionable plea to support and arm the “Tigray Defense Forces” is absurd and can serve no other purpose than fueling more conflict and suffering in the Horn of Africa region. The TPLF consists of thugs and mafia-style criminals that have oppressed and abused the people of Tigray for almost 50 years and wreaked havoc in the Horn of Africa for decades.
The focus on Eritrea is a red herring to divert attention from TPLF’s inexcusable culpability. Eritrea has of course every right to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity. The countries of the region have also inalienable rights to formulate appropriate defense architectures to safeguard their collective security and advance regional peace and stability.
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