Thread by @althecat

It is the only legitimate entity.

Even if the constitution were relevant to the discussion in some manner wrt to a right for Tigrayan people to secede by referendum, by mounting an on going 10 month (and arguably a 3 year dirty war) the TPLF forfeited all their rights.

https://twitter.com/cohenonafrica/status/1426228660332290051

Nonetheless everyone of good faith wishes Jeffrey Feltman luck in securing peace.

Jeffrey Feltman will fail if he continues to seek a negotiated settlement based on the constitution. Any Washington observers who think otherwise are completely delusional.

This war is at the threshold of resuming in full, catastrophically, and Washington is willfully blind.

A sharp change in US policy might be able to delay the conflict long enough to enable Feltman to mediate in some way, but it would need to be public and unequivocal.

And then a negotiated peaceful settlement involving excile of TPLF leadership could at least be discussed.

One means to achieve this might be for the US to threaten to provide security assistance to Ethiopia to capture TPLF leadership and send them to trial, unless they agree to an immediate ceasefire without pre-conditions.

But if Feltman is expected to work the miracle of magically erasing 27 years of US support for TPLF’s crimes with bluster and threats, then Washington is clearly both not paying attention and completely clueless.

It seems plausible today’s French cancellation of military assistance to Ethiopia was also a @StateDept African Bureau daft idea. And now it’s just another broken arrow in Feltman’s mission quiver.

US crack-handed diplomacy has led to a place where most Ethiopians now consider the US as just another arm of the TPLF.

The country is mobilizing for what many consider to be a re-run of the battle of Ad-wa. An existential threat to its existence.

I have just come out of a six hour VOA journalist hosted @twitterspaces forum with a group of 1000 odd divided polarized Ethiopians, some on the Tigray side, some on the GOE side, many in the US diaspora.

The level of pain, fear, trauma and anger on both sides is colossal. Both groups have been on the frontlines of a TPLF engineered information war about the real war in Tigray which has now resulted in over 2 million IDPs.

These people represent two populations. On one side a Tigrayan diaspora twitter community, 5.2 million Tigrayans.

On the other side a mix of diaspora and Ethiopians and Eritreans representing all of Ethiopia 115 million people, who want 1. Peace & 2. To be rid of the TPLF.

A speaker at the close summed up the mood after 100s of speakers on both sides had had their say.

“Continued denial of each other’s pain is what got us here.” - @eyerueth.

There is no threat of Genocide in Ethiopia beyond that created by TPLF.

There is no war in Ethiopia between ethnicities, Tigrayans are Ethiopians, and like all of the peoples of Ethiopia the victims of the TPLF.

The TPLF is the radioactive by product of the US War on Terror. A safe but brutal and ruthless pair of hands who kept the Horn of Africa out of the hands of terror and shipping lanes open.

The TPLF is now completely redundant in this role. Their unwillingness to accept their fall from power, at the hands of a popular youth lead peaceful revolution, the Qeroo, has resulted in a dirty war since a June 2018.

THREADFIX.....

https://twitter.com/althecat/status/1426385537531891712?s=20