Mesfin Arega
July 03, 2021
For all intents and purposes, Meles Zenawi was the Hitler of TPLF (Tigray People Liberation Front) whereas the 1976 TPLF manifesto was the mein kampf of Meles Zenawi, his lebensraum being the huge, fertile lands in the Amhara provinces of Gonder and Wello. Meles Zenawi’s shutzstaffel (SS) was the notorious federal police known as Agazi. All of these are clearly evident by the measures Meles Zenawi started to take immediately after he usurped power in 1991.
He effectively doubled the size of what used to be called Tigray Province by annexing a huge, fertile land from Gonder Province (known as Wokait), and another huge, fertile land from Wello Province (known as Raya), and renamed these annexed lands “Western Tigray” and “Southern Tigray”.
He assembled ultra-tribalists from TPLF and OLF to craft an anti-Amhara “constitution” without Amhara participation, even though Amharas are by far the largest majority in Ethiopia. (That Oromos are the majority in Ethiopia is a pure lie fabricated by Oromo tribalists and their Tigre advocates, and propagated by their anti-Amhara western sympathizers.)
His Bantustan constitution divides Ethiopia into language-based ethnic regions (called Kilils) which solely belong to one and only one ethnicity of the Kilil. For example, the “Tigray Kilil” belongs entirely to Tigrayans, even though (thanks to annexation of Amhara lands) millions of Amharas live in the Kilil. Likewise, the “Oromia Kilil” (which also annexed a huge, fertile land called Dera from the Amhara province of Shewa) belongs only to Oromos, even though Amharas are by far the largest majority in virtually all big cities and towns of the Kilil (such as Debre Zeit, Nazret, Assela, Shashemene, and Zeway). Worst of all is the “Benshangul-Gumuz Kilil” which was formed by renaming one-half of the Amhara province of Gojam, and then constitutionally labelling Gojam Amharas “settlers” in their own ancestral land.
He started to implement the 1976 TPLF manifesto word by word immediately after he assumed power in 1991. According to this fascistic manifesto, “Amharas are the mortal enemy of Tigrayans” responsible for most (if not all) Tigrayan problems, and, therefore, Tigrayans should make them as irrelevant as possible by weakening them as much as possible, preferably by a sort of “final solution”. From 1991 till its downfall in 2018, TPLF has been actively engaged in a well-documented three decades of systematic and brutal ethnic cleansing (including rape and forced sterilization) of Amhara. There are no better proofs for the scope and severity of Amhara’s persecution under TPLF than Wolkait and Raya, which were ethnically cleansed to settle TPLF fighters so much so that (even after TPLF is removed from power) Tigrayan tribalists continue to claim them as “Western Tigray” and “Southern Tigray”, basing their claim on TPLF engineered demography.
His own government openly admitted that it could not account for the loss of 2.5 million Amharas in its 2007 census. Since TPLF is well known for unashamedly over-reporting or under-reporting data as its sees fit, the actual loss in Amhara population is believed to be double the admitted loss (about five million) which more than the entire population of Tigray proper. However, even the admitted loss of 2.5 million Amharas would make the genocide of Amhara by TPLF the worst genocide the world has ever seen, next only to the holocaust, definitely much worse than the Rwandan genocide. No wonder why the TPLF flag is as painful to Amharas as the swastika is to Jews.
He knows Amhara history well enough to realize that TPLF cannot put them down indefinitely, no matter how much support it gets from the west. Therefore, he insisted on including an article (called article 39) which would make it very easy for TPLF to establish a separate country (“the Republic of Greater Tigray”) when the time comes it can no longer dominate Ethiopia. If the present conflict in Tigray started when TPLF attacked the Northern Command (I cannot be sure of this because neither TPLF nor Abiy Ahmed are trust worthy), then TPLF would do so, only if it was about to declare Tigray Republic unilaterally based on Article 39 and, in case Abiy Ahmed does not obey the Article, saw the need to degrade Ethiopia’s potential military response significantly.
The silent genocide of millions of Amharas by TPLF over a period of nearly three decades (1991 – 2018) was possible only because it had overt and covert support of western governments. In particular, the US and UK poured billions after billions into TPLF’s bottomless coffers in the name of “development assistance”, most of which was laundered back to the US and UK (and part of this laundered money is now used to wage relentless propaganda campaign against Amhara and “Amhara Ethiopia”). While Meles Zenawi was silently cleansing Amharas from the annexed Amhara lands, President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair were hailing him as the prime exponent of “Africa’s new generation of leaders” the west can “do business” with. When Mele’s Zenawi’s notorious Agazi (the equivalent of Hitler’s SS) openly murdered more than two hundred Addis Ababa protestors (mostly Amharas) following the highly disputed May 2005 election, the US State department blamed the massacre on “lumpen” protestors and, thanking Meles Zenawi for quickly putting the protest under control, funneled additional millions for “additional training” of Mele’s Zenawi’s SS.
The west did its best to prolong Meles Zenawi’s reign for as much as possible so that it can continue to “do business” with him for as long as possible. However, nature took its course, Meles died of natural cause in 2012, ruled Ethiopia from his grave for six more years (2012 – 2018) in the name of Mr. Hilemariam Desalegn, and then TPLF was pushed off the seat of power in Arat Kilo (Addis Ababa), thanks to Amharas’ continual opposition and occasional revolt against degradation, marginalization, and persecution by TPLF. The west has now revived TPLF from its deathbed so that it can restart “doing business” with its new leaders. The first major business is to finish the unfinished business of cleansing Amharas from annexed lands by ensuring that “effective control of western Tigray is returned to the Transitional Government of Tigray (translation: TPLF) ” (Press Statement, Anthony J. Blinken, May 15, 2021)
Mesfin Arega