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History Repeating Itself! Ghosts of Fascists Abiy Ahmed & Isaias Afewerki

By Abebe Hailemariam
Tigrai Online Nov. 13, 2020

After the Egyptians were handed down a series of the Mother of all humiliating defeats in the hands of Emperor Yohannes IV’s renowned General, Alula Aba Nega, in what is now called Eritrea, in the 1880s, the British, while on the surface pretending to be on the side of Emperor Yohannes IV, behind the scene though, they, on February 5, 1885, had the Italians move in to Massawa to replace the Egyptians.  This Italian foothold aroused nationalist fervor in what then was called the sickest country of Europe, Italy, and before too long, it moved inland into Sahatit were its troops found themselves encircled by Alula’s forces.  Italy tried to reinforce its forces at Sahatit, but its advancing army was ambushed and virtually wiped out by Alula’s forces at Dogali, making a history first, like no other before where, for the first time, a modern European army was crushed at the hands of Africans!  The history making defeat halted Italy’s imperialist dream, but its foothold on Massawa remained awaiting Alula’s next campaign to drown the Italians into the Red Sea.  But then came the Mahdist invasion.

In 1886, the Mahdist onslaught began and quickly took over Dembea where they torched the Mahbere Selassie monastery and drove all the way to Gondar and ransacked it dry.  As a patriot extraordinaire and a devout Christian, Emperor Yohannes IV, not only because the sovereignty of his country was at stake but also heeding the urgent plea from the people of Gondar and Gojam, mobilized his army and rushed them to crush the Mahdist onslaught.  Both Menelik of Showa and Tekle Haymanot of Gojam were supposed to join the emperor in the campaign but they were no shows, thereby not only double-crossing Emperor Yohannes IV but more importantly, betraying Ethiopia at the hour of its ultimate need!  And as every Ethiopian knows, the Emperor was martyred as he defended his country and people, at the battle of Metema, on March 10, 1889.

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There are those who say that Emperor Yohannes IV was killed not by the Mahdists but Menelik’s assassins but only God knows the honest truth.  What is sure and beyond dispute is though, in addition to Menelik’s betrayal on the “Eritrean” front by serving as an Italian spy against Emperor Yohannes IV, the betrayal by Menelik and Teklehaymanot during the Mahdist invasion along with the Mahdist offesnsive, was what brought about the carving and colonization of what the Italians called “Eritrea,” and what brought the over one hundred yearlong suffering and humiliation of the Ethiopian and their brethren, the “Eritrean” people! The betrayal by Menelik and his Ahdawee backbone not only during the Mahdist and Emperor Yohannes IV’s campaign in “Eritrea but also following the battle of Adwa, was not only the ax which cut the bond of Adolis from Axum permanently but also it was this treason of all time which gave birth not only to the nerve and mastered gases which poisoned dead zillions of our people but also to the wall which continues, to this day, to set us against one another and condemned us to a never ending bloodshed and perpetual obituaries!

As all of us know, the people of Behere Tigray (Tigray-Tigrigni), those who, for the first time in history, just as they once were the builders of one of the four greatest civilizations in the world, destroyed a modern European army and by doing so, had created the opportunity to ensure their country’s independence from the tentacles of Europe, but thanks to the betrayals of Menelik and his Ahdaweeian backbone, our people in Eritrea had to endure the ultimate humiliation in the hands of the Italians for some sixty years!  Similarly, he may have been black but what Menelik did to those under his rule was very much like what the Italians did to our brethren in Eritrea.  This is especially true of what Menelik did to the Tigrayans (including starvation and castrating newly born male babies), the Oromos (erasing the Oromo mindset, butchery, occupation and slavery) and others who were treated even worse.

For Europeans to treat Africans with such horrific disregard and inhumanities was to be expected.  After all, the Europeans did not see Africans as human beings of their equals. The Europeans wanted to dominate and subjugate the Africans so that they could use them as a pair of tools in the service of the white man.  It was all about power, dominance and loot!  But what is inexplicable was why Menelik, a black man, turned out the equals of the European devils against his own people.  Menelik was in fact the African equivalent of the European; he may have been black but he, like the Europeans, believed many ethnic groups within Ethiopia were inferior stocks which he could  reduce into serfdom and slavery so that they could become a pair of tools in the service of the black Ahdawee master breed!  Just think about the prices paid for the latter!  While our “Eritrean” brethren wilted from the grip of the Italian barbarity, Ethiopians not only during Menelik’s time but until about 1974 (European calendar), for a span of a century, had one university, a couple hospitals, very little economic development, malnourished and disease-riddled population, no roads except the ones built by the Italians, and no democratic rights!

Think about the wars too.  The people who fought to liberate themselves from the Italians in Eritrea, the people who died fighting to get rid of the Ahdawee monster which, like the Italians, sucked them dry and the people who died fighting the black Mussolini -Isayas Afewerki!  Similarly, think about the Ethiopian people who perished under the suffocating tyranny of Menelik, Haile Selassie, and the Derg!  Think not only of those who died in wars of liberation or uprisings but those who perished from the corrupt, incompetent and inhumane policies like the cycles man-made famines and the lives lost, courtesy of these brainless thugs whose life mission had been living a life so sleaze, so dishonorable, depraved, profane and amoral as it has been so sinful!  So, much so that even though, these thugs preached as leaders of the country which had never been colonized, they had very little to show for that time of independence but shame and just about last place amongst the African countries!

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The Ethiopian and our Eritrean brethren had hoped, through that years of unparalleled sacrifices by the Tigrayan and Eritrean people along with their Oromo people and many others, the Ahdaweeian acute and chronic national disease, had been eradicated.  With the new Constitution reflecting the dreams and aspiration of the peoples of the nations and nationalities of Ethiopia, ushered following the ascent the TPLF/EPRDF, the Ethiopian people had hoped the  Ahdaweeian tyranny had ended.  To be sure for some twenty-seven years or until the passing of the late PM Meles, in TPLF/EPRDF’s Ethiopia, there was a tremendous positive change across just about everything in the country.  For the first time in some over one hundred years, the Ethiopian people were no longer in the belly of that Ahdawee beast! But since the passing of PM Meles, the Ahdawee monster awoke from its hibernation and by the time Abiye Ahmed made it to the national ticket, back was Menelik, just as was the case between Menelik and the Italians, Isayas and the Arabs had bankrolled the Ahdawee stooge Abiye to the Menelik palace!  And so, we are back at the square one where we have the ghost of Menelik at the helm of power in Ethiopia, and the ghost of Baratieri and Benito Mussolini at the helm of power in Eritrea!  And just like it was a hundred years ago, we have the most degenerate people at the helm of power, and as it was then, now the people find themselves in the receiving end of homegrown style of Europe’s worst inhumanity devouring our people!

In his short tenure of less than three years, the Ex- Prime Minster of Ethiopia, Abiye Ahmed, has incurred so much damage to Ethiopia and its people that he may have won the honor as being, in terms of horror, terror and treason, the one without equal in the history of Ethiopia!  In less than three years, he has propelled Ethiopia down from a strong, confident and one with a bright future country into one fertile for every seed of curse in the devil’s bible!  From its economic stride, globally praised and respected, its contribution to world peace equally valued and appreciated, to its role as a trusted guardian and advocate of Africa’s vital interests at the global stage, until the passing of the late PM Meles Zenawi, Ethiopia had in fact shined not only as an “economic tiger,” but also as a country of ideas not only for its own economic development but also for the African continent!  But then came coconut head “King” King Kong, born ill-equipped for anything worthwhile but a life of crime ranging from betraying his country by serving as a spy for his country’s enemies, selling his country’s domestic and international interests, inciting inter-ethnic and religious violence, imprisonment of political opponents, to innumerable out right murders which to this day remain without the due course of law! But that has not been the worse.

As previously documented, since the ascent of the Ex-PM Abiye Ahmed to state power, the plight of Tigrayans had gone from bad to an existential predicament.  Ethnic-cleansing, extrajudicial killings, state sponsored media campaign to incite ethnic cleansing, road closings to blockade not only to prevent enter-state commerce but to use food as weapon, imprisonment without due process of law, discrimination in employment, hijacking of public goods, and harassment of Tegaru at airports and elsewhere outside Tigray, has become not only exceptions but state policies!  Moreover, at a time when a global pandemic and locust invasion of biblical magnitude, he not only denied delivery of masks to Tigrayan students, and blocked and grounded trucks carrying essential goods including medicinal products and agricultural implements but also blocked delivery of drones donated by Tigrayans in the Diaspora, to fight the natural disaster.  Excluded Tigray from receiving air support in the fight against the locust at a time when that the Ex-PM had launched locust mitigation operations in States or Kilils which border or adjacent to the State of Tigray!  He has too not only denied shipment of food from global humanitarian organizations destined for people surviving on safety net rations but also blocked free excess to Tigray by journalists, scientists, investors and tourists have been blocked from going to Tigray too.  At this very hour, Tigrayans are being rounded up from elsewhere in Ethiopia and confined to a concentration camps in Jijiga and elsewhere in prisons.  And there is more and no doubt no smaller than what took place during Menelik, colonial Italy, Haile Selassie and Menguistu combined but worst!

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For the past week or so, the crimes against humanity so orchestrated and planned against the people of Tigray is underway.  Tigray is not only being bombarded from the ground and air by the twin evils that are Abiye and Isayas but also with the entire Ahdawee hard and soft power not only within Ethiopia proper but in the Diaspora too!  For the past week or so, Abiye Ahmed had gone on public television and declared war on the people of Tigray.  He has told the Tigrayan people, including those who live in cities and towns, that he was going to bomb them with fighter jets.  This, he has said at a time when he had also ordered the Ethiopian army to invade the state of Tigray.  In his own words, and through his Chief of Staff General Berhanu Jula and Air Force commander, General Yilma Merdasa and many Ahdaweeian Oromo personalities, have told the world that many towns, including Sheraro, Shire and even Axum in Tigray have been taken over by their forces!  This they have done while at the same time coordinating with a foreign army (Isaias Afewerki’s army) to wage war not only against their own people (both Tigrayan and Oromo peoples) but also endangering not only the lives of the people of Tigray but also the UNESCO world heritages which dot just about every plain, mountain, hill and cliff, some estimate it be about three hundred strong, in the state of Tigray!  

It is to be recalled too, that in the Ethio-Eritrea war of May, 1998 to June 2000, Isaias Afewerki not only ignited a war between the two brethren that are the Ethiopians and Eritreans but also committed crimes against humanity by incinerating school children at the Ayder school in the heart of the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle (see inset).  He dropped bombs in the city of Adigrat and totally destroying the town of Zal Ambesa, a civilian occupied and devoid of any military installations!  But it did not start with the incineration of the children of Ayder!  Isayas in fact had Tigrayan blood (his kin blood) in his hands just about since his ascent to the leadership of the Shaibia. Just to high light a few, there was that blockade of food stuff in the 1980s, was willing to settle for autonomy and leave Tegaru high and dry (remember the Carter mediation?), fire-bombed Tegaru in Asmara as they were marching to celebrate Lekatit 11, asphyxiated Tegaru in shipping containers and confined Tegaru to concentration camps during the Ethio-Eritrea war, and during the post Meles Era, not only financed terror groups to kill Tegaru and to destroy not just the TPLF but to obliterate Tigrai!  Until about the ascent of Abiye Ahmed, Isayas and his Arab handlers as well his Ahdaweeian new lovers, these ghosts of Menelik, Baratieri and Mussolini were confined to the leash of the TPLF, and not only Tigrayan security but more importantly, Ethiopia’s sovereignty, reputation, and national and international interests were secured.  Not anymore!

In the past two to three years, we have seen Ethiopia’s peace, constitution, sovereignty, economic and just about every critical metric that makes an independent country a sovereign, compromised!  The GERD had been sold to Ethiopia’s historical enemies, and Ethiopia has become the playground of Isayas and by extension his Arab handlers!  Not only interethnic, religious, and political violence has surged and reached peak high, state sponsored violence has skyrocketed, and the economy has collapsed but the country is at the brink of disintegration!  And yet, instead of doing the right thing and follow the right path, both the new reincarnates of Menelik, Baratieri and Mussolini, have joined hands not only to fragment Ethiopia and Eritrea further, just like it was the case throughout the last one hundred years, but also to erase those very people who have been, time and again, the bulwark against enemies both foreign and domestic- the Tigrayan people!  Abiye Ahmed, Isayas Afewerki and the entire Ahdawee hard and soft power the world over, have their war of holocaust against the Tigrayan people underway!  What is so sad is that history has repeated itself!  But with a new twist.  What is new and sad is that we Abiye Ahmed, supposedly and Oromo backed by Ahdaweeian Oromo Generals joining hands with Menelik’s progenies and the disciple of Baratieri and Benito Mussolini that is Isayas Afewerki!  But make no mistake about it, as they have done since time immemorial, the people of Tigray will pay a heavy price but as a people of good and honor born to be free, they will, like it has been the case throughout their long and proud history, prevailed over those disciples and merchants of evil!  No question about that!!!!

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