Dear Professor Alex de Waal,
I am surprised that you consider TPLF 27yr dictators who represented only the 10% of their Tigrayan tribe to be “statesmen and patriots“! The other 90% of Ethiopia’s people consider them brutal dictators, pure and simple. Their Tigrayan cousins in Eritrea simply considered them war criminals. Your views are obviously propaganda intended for the incoming Biden Administration, but any hope that Biden’s Administration will brow-beat Ethiopia’s Government on behalf of the TPLF criminals is wishful thinking (just as Trump discovered when he tried to brow-beat the Ethiopian Government on behalf of Egypt). Just as the USA has Genocide and Slavery in their DNA, Ethiopians have Pride and Independence in their DNA.
Essentially, your TPLF “statesmen” hiding in the caves will be hunted down at all costs by THEIR VICTIMS during the TPLF’s rule – including by the thousands of Eritreans made fatherless by TPLF war-crime (just as the Holocaust survivors hunted down the German Nazis wherever the may be across the world after WW2). I am not denying that we are all one people: my cherished London lover at the time, born in Addis, was an Eritrean (she is now famous and familiar to you); and I was at the same time running a school in London that educated Tigrayan children (utube Mr. Halake School 1).
As for Egypt and Sudan, they wouldn’t dare start a war; for all Egypt’s bravado, they have never won a war inspite of being “Arabs’ biggest army”- which no longer has relevance since the Arabs have made peace with Israel. Both Egypt and Sudan know that they are dealing with Ethiopians and we may just be bloody-minded enough to make the Siemens Mountains source of the Nile develop a thousand tributaries that will re-direct the Nile into Northern Kenya and the Indian Ocean, fertilizing all our dry lands. This will be possible with a little bit of engineering help from our committed Chinese friends.
But we Ethiopians are a reasonable people inspite of the beauty and pride we have in our DNA: so we will make Sudan and Egypt a reasonable offer: 33.4% of the water of the Nile remains in Ethiopia; 33.3% of the water of the Nile is used by Sudan and 33.3% of the water of the Nile continues on to Egypt. What could be fairer than that? Egypt cannot, and should not have the 80% share that it now gets and war or not Ethiopians intend to change that!
You are very educated, Professor Alex de Waal of Oxford and Harvard Universities; and you are well aware of the geo-political calculus, so I need say no more.
Dida Jallow-Halake (biologically Oromo, sociologically Kenyan, educationally Scottish, professionally English, matrimonially Gambian – and patriotically Ethiopian Pan-Africanist!).
Notting Hill, London, England.