By Bruke Lemma, PhD
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.” – George Orwell
In Abiy Ahmed’s Ethiopia, where absurdity has secured a permanent lease, and the Oromuma thugs have made themselves quite comfortable, we find ourselves in a realm where corruption, extreme stupidity, and ignorance flow more abundantly than the local river – especially wherever these thugs set foot.
In this topsy-turvy world, incompetence isn’t merely tolerated; it’s celebrated with a standing ovation and a ticker-tape parade. It’s almost as if the talent for messing things up is a golden ticket to success – well, as long as you’re Abiy Ahmed or one of his adored Oromuma thugs.
In this strange domain, becoming an overnight sensation seems as straightforward as taking a breath and having a few Oromuma connections. Here, an official who bulldozes the meagre homes of thousands upon thousands of poor Ethiopians gleefully proclaims in the national media that they were illegal poor before but now, thanks to his benevolent actions, they’ve upgraded to legally poor, no doubt, earning a resounding applause from none other than Abiy Ahmed and his gang of Oromuma enthusiasts.
And then, we have our dear accidental leader, Abiy Ahmed, who carries out the role of the court jester among a circus of clowns with unparalleled dedication. He’s like a one-man show, ceaselessly mesmerizing us with his erratic and narcissistic theatrics. It’s as if he’s in a fierce competition for a global record in the grand art of buffoonery. Now, this time, the maestro of stuffups and blunders, whose finesse can only be likened to a rubber chicken trying to conduct an orchestra, has unveiled an astonishingly ludicrous plan, beating up even himself!
He’s made the grand decision to embark on an epic quest – to start a war with one of our neighbours, because, you know, why not add more chaos to his repertoire? In his apparently busy schedule, filled with orchestrating the ongoing genocide of the Amhara people, chasing them, killing, and dislocating them mercilessly everywhere, starting first in the Oromia region, and then in the capital, Addis Ababa, and now intensively in the Amhara region itself – all these and other places in the country, and, all at once!
Which was all comprehensively documented and analysed in a recent UN report but conveniently dismissed by him. In the midst of all that – orchestrating all the conflicts that are raging coast to coast in Ethiopia, the genocidal wars that are going on, and having to lie in an attempt to deflect pesky UN reports and world condemnations – he somehow found the time for this latest dramatic endeavour.
It’s almost as if he has a dedicated war-scheduling app to fit in his warmongering between bouts of utter incompetence. It’s a multitasking marvel of malfeasance, a symphony of chaos orchestrated by a hell-sent, devilish conductor of calamity! But wait, this isn’t just any war that Abiy Ahmed is declaring on one of the neighbours; it is a very special war, christened by the man himself as an “existential war,” ranking it right up there with all the other “existential” wars that he’s bungled in the past – we’ll delve into those comedic masterpieces soon.
You see, this war is absolutely indispensable because, as he so eloquently put it, we urgently need a Red Sea port. It’s existential, we cannot live without it! Yes, because nothing says “existential” like planning an invasion to gain a port by force while your nation crumbles around you due to the weight of your supreme incompetence, does it? It’s as if he’s reading a manual on how to run a country into the ground, one war at a time.
Why, you ask, the urgent need for a port now when we’ve managed to survive without it for over three decades? Well, the truth is it’s primarily about finding a new place to commemorate some obscure 16th-century superstitious holiday, Irreechaa, as his second-in-command, Shimeles Abdissa, recently proclaimed.
They might have also needed a new frontier in Oromuma’s all-out expansionist agenda, on top of its ongoing attempt to swallow the lands of other Ethiopian ethnic groups, which is causing conflicts, deaths, and distractions all over the place. It’s almost like they’re collecting all the ingredients for a recipe of epic disaster, and they’re serving it with a hefty side of delusion.
Abiy Ahmed seems so unwaveringly committed to this deluded cause of a Red Sea port for Ethiopia that he’s willing to personally lead the charge, naturally accompanied by his devoted Oromuma thugs. What a splendid spectacle that would make! It’s as if the world has been holding its breath, eagerly awaiting this grand performance.
Of course, he might also expect the Amhara to accompany him – in fact, some say the whole thing was some kind of entrapment to the Amhara, a ‘clever’ design or ploy to stop them from resisting the genocidal war that he is waging against them all over Ethiopia, and at the same time to continue their mass murders through a third party.
Well, the malicious, narcissistic fool is dreaming – but we’ll delve into that in due course.
In any case, as we have said: Ethiopia was surviving for more than three decades without a Red Sea port, and you might wonder, why is Abiy Ahmed raising it now, where was our dear leader during those decades, why didn’t he raise this existential issue then?
Well, he was indeed hard at work during these three decades, but not for the betterment of Ethiopia – he was diligently labouring on behalf of those with a burning desire to annihilate it. It’s a peculiar twist of fate that he now seems hell-bent on destroying it himself, but we’ll save the details on that one for later. It’s almost like a tragicomedy, with Abiy Ahmed starring as the lead clown, and all the Oromuma thugs hanging on his coattails.
Our cherished court jester, Abiy Ahmed, was a devoted student of his esteemed forerunners, the truly malicious TPLF – a group whose brilliance could make the universe’s most ignorant entities appear as geniuses. These TPLF masters were impressively adept in an array of misdeeds, and their expertise in sheer pigheadedness was unparalleled. They were so stubborn that even pigs might have found their unwavering determination rather impressive. It’s a wonder they didn’t make it to the intergalactic hall of fame for sheer folly.
Interestingly, at the height of their powers, the mere suggestion of Ethiopia’s needing a port was met with scorn and an assortment of even more creative forms of mockery courtesy of the TPLF. But here’s the delightful part – they have now undergone an apparent epiphany and wholeheartedly support Ethiopia’s need for a port, and thus, the quest for a port, and eagerly endorsing Abiy Ahmed’s absurd war capers, in addition to supporting him overall, including in his conflict in the Amhara region, becoming his most ardent cheerleaders.
They were previously accusing Abiy Ahmed of genocide in their own region, and now they overtly and covertly support the very man in his genocidal war in the Amhara region. It’s truly a marvel of political flip-flopping that could rival even the most masterful gymnastics routine, to say nothing of the maliciousness. Nonetheless, their port-centric exploits are but a minuscule glimpse into their repertoire of capriciousness.
TPLF’s flip-flopping on the port matter and the like are mere trivialities when we compare them with their magnum opus: initiating a war so profoundly bereft of reason that it defies every shred of logic. It was a spectacle driven by sheer idiocy, an unmitigated disaster that caused the death of over a million young individuals, a significant number of them underage, leaving also additional countless lives in ruins.
The war ruined the Amhara region, causing extensive death and distractions, and it also plunged TPLF’s own Tigray region into an unfathomable abyss of chaos. The aftermath of this most senseless war was nothing short of monumental, dragging the Tigray region back in time by several decades and ushering in an era of severe poverty, hunger, destitution, and a plethora of other calamities. Recovering from such a catastrophic event would be next to impossible, not for decades, anyway, even in the best of circumstances.
Well, these were the esteemed mentors of Abiy Ahmed, and after he cast them aside like worn-out shoes, they promptly became the primary subjects of his fear and trepidation. He feared they might stage a comeback and topple him, just as he had toppled them. His fear was warranted, considering their narcissistic rage and inconsolability at the loss of their extreme privilege and the license to steal and act with impunity.
However, instead of concentrating on Abiy Ahmed, these geniuses decided to redirect their misplaced focus toward the Amharas, against whom they claimed to have old scores to settle, although they had been hammering them for three decades while they were in power – what more they wanted to do to them, only the gods know. They also endeavoured to wage a war against Abiy Ahmed simultaneously, in an attempt to regain power and rekindle their past glory. Unsurprisingly, they managed to mess up both tasks spectacularly, an outcome that even a five-year-old could have foreseen with ease.
Here is where we find ourselves now: the TPLF destroyed the Amhara region, and Abiy Ahmed obliterated the TPLF region. Now, the TPLF is attempting to forge an alliance with Abiy Ahmed, itching to launch an assault on the Amharas, and perhaps annex some territories from the Amhara region, this time with the help of Abiy Ahmed, who is already in the Amhara region and carrying out genocidal war and wreaking havoc there.
The TPLF harboured grand ambitions for a long time, involving the massive misappropriation of resources from Ethiopia, sabotaging it in myriad ways, and driving it into the ground. Simultaneously, they aimed to build a republic of Tigray and then depart. However, these ambitions now lie in the dustbin, following the loss of a million of their youth and the almost complete destruction of their region.
They are now completely defeated and have a much smaller new plan, in line with their very humble circumstances. However, given TPLF’s mentality, this new plan is very likely to be as mindless as their previous one, ensuring that the region remains stuck in endless misery and destitution for a very, very long time to come.
What could be more senseless than going to the Amhara region, destroying it for no reason at all, only to have their own region completely destroyed by Abiy Ahmed? Now, they are aligning themselves with the very same man who destroyed their region, revelling in his success and proudly boasting about having turned their region into a barren wasteland, as desolate as the tiny speck of land he hails from, Beshasha.
In any case, this alignment with Abiy Ahmed is primarily for them to go back to the Amhara region once more and destroy what is left of it, with the hope of reclaiming territories that were never theirs to begin with. They seek to do this with the support of Abiy Ahmed, who is already there, the two of them ganging up now on the Amharas.
These actions don’t make sense, but they do for the TPLF, as they have always been mindless. Well, the Amharas are well-organized and prepared this time, and they are likely to give as much as they get, making it a potentially complete misadventure for the TPLF, as it continues to be for Abiy Ahmed. But we shall see.
Returning to the question of a Red Sea port and the invasive ambitions toward a neighbour, as we were discussing earlier, for the past three decades, while Abiy Ahmed was diligently serving his TPLF masters, these masters of his weren’t losing any sleep over getting a port outlet for Ethiopia. Instead, their focus was on a different endeavour – destroying Ethiopia from within, much like a parasite does to its host. It is well-known that Abiy Ahmed and his Oromuma thugs inherited their deep-seated animosity toward Ethiopia from the TPLF. Thus, Abiy Ahmed harbors ill will for the very nation he now leads.
Well, much like the TPLF, his preoccupation hasn’t been with finding a port for the country but with undermining and weakening Ethiopia from within, with the able assistance of the Oromuma thugs, who are as supremely ignorant as the TPLF thugs that preceded them. So, why this sudden obsession with ports? Why, oh why, didn’t this brilliant strategist think to bring up the port matter earlier? Could it be that he was too engrossed in the pursuit of new and exciting methods to commit genocide against the Amhara people, forever seeking fresh ways to satiate his insatiable appetite for destruction?
Speaking of the Amharas, they are the true target audience of Abiy Ahmed’s latest theatrical performance, the ones he’s desperately trying to dupe. As we’ve firmly established, he couldn’t care less about Ethiopia or whether it ever had a port. Moreover, he lacks an army that’s remotely competent for any conflict, a fact that’s widely known.
His reckless actions have driven Ethiopia to the brink of bankruptcy, making the war he’s trying to sell nothing but a pipe dream. In the Amhara region, the national army that he turned into a private force and unleashed on the people there is facing a resounding defeat, and the defeated forces are resorting to heinous crimes against humanity by ruthlessly targeting civilians, drawing worldwide condemnation.
The Amhara people are garnering support from nations across the globe, including Ethiopians in the diaspora, who are standing with them in their fight against Abiy Ahmed’s genocidal regime. In a recent major report, the UN warned about the ongoing genocide targeting the Amhara people, not only in the Amhara region but also occurring in the Oromo region, which Abiy Ahmed, as usual, denies.
That is no surprise, however, coming from a pathologically lying, psychopathic man, but the world no longer places any value in his words. He refuses to grant direct access to the UN investigators, and then he claims the report isn’t accurate because the authors didn’t have direct access to the situation on the ground – a classic catch-22. Despite those and other shenanigans, he is now feeling the heat, especially as the Fanos are thrashing his army, which the country he bankrupted ill afford to support for much longer, among other things.
In the face of these challenges, Abiy Ahmed is desperate to change the conversation and stall the momentum of the Amhara people’s fight against his regime, specifically, the progresses that their Fano’s are making in every front, while at the same time attempting to blunt global, including the UN, condemnations of his army’s and his regime’s continued genocidal war on the Amhara people in the Amhara region and elsewhere in Ethiopia. Therefore, he and his mindless Oromuma thugs have been searching for a scheme to deceive Ethiopians and the world at large, and they have now come up with the urgent need of a Red Sea port.
Still, you might wonder why this particular scheme? Abiy Ahmed is well aware that the Amharas are a people renowned for their unwavering dedication to the nation of Ethiopia. His deluded calculation is that by dangling the prospect of Ethiopia’s interests in front of them, the Amharas would inexplicably abandon their righteous struggle and follow him.
However, to categorize such a farfetched scheme as merely “stupid’ would be overly generous. What relevance does a Red Sea port have for the Amharas, who are being treated as second or third-class citizens in their own country by Abiy Ahmed and his Oromuma thugs? They often find themselves arbitrarily denied entry to the capital city, even though many of them reside there. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of their homes in the capital city have been callously demolished, leaving entire families with young children, some with newborn babies, completely exposed to the elements, with nowhere to go, and no one coming to their aid.
Tens of thousands of their sons and daughters from the capital, Addis Ababa, are also systematically rounded up and sent to concentration camps, where they continue to be subjected to hunger and exposed to diseases like cholera, typhoid, dysentery, and more. Given all that and more, the question of a Red Sea port, whatever its merit or lack thereof, is totally inconsequential and utterly insignificant for the Amhara people. Abiy Ahmed and his Oromuma thugs would be extremely delusional to think otherwise.
In addition to these horrors, the Amhara people continue to endure relentless attacks from Abiy Ahmed’s forces in their own regions, where mass murders unarmed civilians are carried out daily by drone strikes, heavy weaponry, and more. Furthermore, their region’s infrastructure is systematically reduced to rubble, resembling the devastation that Abiy Ahmed previously wrought upon the Tigray region, reducing the Amhara region to a state akin to Beshasha as well.
Despite all of this and more, Abiy Ahmed inexplicably believes that the Amhara will overlook their unimaginable and widespread suffering, suddenly shifting their focus to his port nonsense and forsaking their righteous struggle. This level of ignorance is almost inconceivable, an astonishing display of sheer idiocy that defies reason and common sense.
He is bound to be disappointed because no one is falling for his deceitful tactics, least of all the Amharas who have suffered and continue to suffer so much at this madman’s hand. They are intelligent enough to recognize that it means little to nothing whether or not a country where their full citizenship rights are not recognized and respected has secure port access or not.
The priority for the Amhara people, just like any other Ethiopians, is to get their basic rights respected and to be led by the people they elect, to have competent and corruption-free administration, among other things. These concerns come before any consideration of a port or anything else. Thus, they see through the hollow ploy orchestrated by an accidental and imbecilic leader who possesses no semblance of intelligence.
In reality, Ethiopia neither desperately nor urgently requires a port, and it certainly doesn’t need to go to war with any nation to obtain one. The talk of exchanging this for that and so on is also even more farfetched than going to war to get a port, and for so many reasons. Specifically, who would want an incompetent, seriously compromised madman and his band of mindless ethno-extremist thugs negotiating anything important for their country?
The best thing that Abiy Ahmed could do for the country is to leave urgently, which is what Ethiopia urgently needs. With the removal of the narcissistic sociopathic leader of the country, Abiy Ahmed, future leaders will have the opportunity to establish positive relationships with neighbouring countries, enabling mutually beneficial solutions that satisfy all parties involved.
Accordingly, the priority right now is ousting Abiy Ahmed, who embodies nothing but sheer stupidity and has been driving the country into the ditch for five years now. Once he is gone, Ethiopian people could collectively focus on finding intelligent ways to move forward. This includes not only the question of a secure port but also addressing a host of critical issues for the nation: alleviating extreme poverty, providing employment opportunities for the youth, fostering real development for all citizens, and much more. We cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by the absurd schemes of a puerile man-child.
In the meantime, our primary focus should be on the continued suffering of the Amhara people, who are enduring the genocidal war that is being waged on them by Abiy Ahmed and his army. This war affects not only those who are living in the Amhara region but also the Amharas living in other parts of the country, especially in the Oromia region. We all need to provide unwavering support for the ongoing struggle of the Amhara people. This is a supreme duty for all Ethiopians, wherever they may be, utilizing all the resources and efforts we can muster.
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https://twitter.com/i/status/1713917546435318211
“Still, you might wonder why this particular scheme? ”
A plausible scheme was presented above.
Alternatively, if we follow the thread of Zemedkun B’s latest Tigrayan guests (Mereja TV) who allege that the Abiy-Isayas-Debretsion troika is operating in collusion, Abiy may be talking about the Red Sea to help-out Issayas. That is, Eritrean society is becoming fragmented due to a strong opposition to Isayas’ dictatorial rule. Abiy may be doing Isayas a favor by helping him galvanize Eritreans against a perceived threat.
Alemu,
Well, it is interesting but you might have heard, Hanlon’s Razor, “Never Attribute to Malice That Which Is Adequately Explained by Stupidity,” have you?
While it is definitely true, Abiy-Isayas-Debretsion troika are malicious lots, they are all very stupid, of course, depending how you define these things, there is also the obvious factor that all of them are malignant narcissists and worse.
All that aside, how do you think Abiy is helping Isayas by humiliating him publicly, making threats, though implied, while whether he has the wherewithal for carrying out the implied threat or not is highly questionable, the short answer is he doesn’t.
Anyway, it is highly unlikely that what you saying is true, the most likely reason or reasons are:
(1) Abiy Ahmed’s need to change the conversation from his continued defeat in the Amhara region,
(2) To change the focus from his war crimes and crimes against humanity that he is committing in the Amhara region,
(3) To change the focus from the extreme economic pain, set to get even worse, that everyone in Ethiopia is experiencing and rightfully blaming him for it.
The above are more likely reasons for Red Sea port fiasco but he is groping in the darkness, the darkness he has created, there is nothing that would save him now!
However, it would take a little bit longer for him to truly realize these things.
Meanwhile, it is possible that someone might see it fit to drop one of the payloads of the cursed drones on his psychopathic head, and to do so, sometime very soon, doing everyone a great service!