War in Tigray: Decisive hours, Premier Abiy’s appeal to the tigrayan population

by Guido Talarico

The ultimatum given by the Ethiopian Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Abiy Ahmed, to surrender to the Tigre Liberation Front (TPLF) is about to expire. After this last lapse of time, the Ethiopian army will enter this region on the border with Eritrea, led to rebellion by an elitist minority that does not want to give up the loss of power in the central government that occurred with the nomination of Abiy as Prime Minister.

And this is a central point of the whole affair, which once again has been misrepresented by the international press, still conditioned by the propaganda that the tigrayans have for years bent to their own interests and to the detriment of much more numerous ethnic groups such as the Oromo or Amara or against the Eritreans, their allies and supporters at the time of the war on the Derg, the bloody communist dictatorship led by Menghistu.

Because the truth that Abiy has been repeating for a long time, even with heartfelt appeals to the population, is that the Government of Addis Ababa has nothing against the tigrayan population that it considers an integral and beloved part of Ethiopia, but only has the objective of freeing this region and the country from the blackmail of a reduced and elitist number of tigrayan leaders who, out of pure desire to be able to sacrifice their own people and with it the future of Ethiopia and the whole Horn of Africa to their own personal interests.

Abiy, while knowing that in any case it will be a blitzkrieg, wants to avoid further bloodshed at all costs. A price that in the end only the population and the weaker social classes pay, while instead the tigrayan elite continue to manoeuvre in the shadows spreading false news and using the good relations that, also at international level, they maintain thanks to twenty years of continuous government. A power that, as we were saying, has been interrupted by the rise of Abiy, a young leader brought to power by a population harassed by tigrayan discrimination.

Many parties, also at an international level, including the United Nations, worried about the humanitarian crisis that could result from the continuation of the conflict, are engaged in these last dramatic hours, before the ultimatum expires, in an attempt to make the tigrayan directorate in the regional capital of Macallé surrender, which, once again, seems unfortunately oriented to pursue its own crazy interests even at the cost of sacrificing its own people again.

Abiy continues unceasingly to send messages to the tigrayan population, precisely to avoid useless and further bloodshed, also because the tigrayan defeat, should the surrender not come, is a certain fact, given the forces on the field and considering that the population, for the most part already fleeing towards Sudan, has no desire to face this mad clash.

So the next few hours will be decisive for the tigrayans and for Eritrea, which continues to support with friendship and loyalty the choices of President Abiy, whose rise to power, it is good to remember, has closed a crazy aggression against Eritrea, which lasted twenty years and wanted by the tigrayans, and will also be decisive for Ethiopia and the whole Horn of Africa.

The Ethiopian government speaks of thousands of TPLF soldiers who are surrendering in these hours knowing that the war is not directed against them but against the few people who control the TPLF junta. Sources in Addis Ababa confirm that the spokesman of this junta, who has a wife and children with American citizenship, has asked the American ambassador to have his family evacuated to the United States while declaring that he wants to send the young tigrayans to the massacre against the federal army.  All this while the Ethiopian human rights association denounces the heinous crimes found in the liberated areas against defenceless populations by Tplf squads that are already qualified as war crimes that Debrezion and his comrades will have to answer for.

(Associated Medias) – All rights reserved.