Thread by @althecat

The TPLF also returned to one of its favourite pastimes, fomenting ethnic unrest and procuring massacres. All over Ethiopia. And this was the cause of most of the security unrest which prevented elections being held in many parts of Ethiopia in June.

There’s much more but let’s now jump forward to the attack on Northern Command.

Two reliable sources inform me that this is what happened:

On November 3rd the TPLF stole a plane full of cash, hosted a dinner of ENDF commanders and then in the middle of the night commenced the slaughter of 6000 ENDF service people in six locations.

And they didn’t kill them honorably they killed them in their beds, humiliated them, crushed the@ with bulldozers and cut their heads off. This was the first TPLF atrocity of the Tigray War. Many more have followed. I

And the thing about all this is in relation to the U.S. peace mission is that they must have known about all of this. It was not released by the Govt. at the time - as I understand it - to enable families to be informed and bodies to be recovered.

But @AbiyAhmedAli did address the nation earlier this year providing a version of this story, that is less obscene.

Since then though, obscenity has been piled on obscenity by the TPLF in the open light of day In Welkaite, Amhara and Afar. Most recently during a period of first a unilateral ceasefire and later the solemn Olympics Truce.

Throughout this period the USA resuming its mantle as policeman of the planet has been scolding and sanctioning Ethiopia whilst whitewashing their former ally the TPLF.

This is the most Kafkaesque international relation story I have ever covered. The USA is protecting an organisation which looks like it belongs to Stalin or Kim Jong-un. Just watch that latest @stephensarkur interview with @reda_getachew and see for yourselves.

And it is doing so at the expense of its longest and most reliable ally in Africa.

And nobody I have spoken to in Washington, Addis, the UK and Europe, has a clue as to why this is happening.

Echoing Washington one NGO analyst told me that maybe the GoE’s unilateral ceasefire of 28 June hadn’t been publicly supported by Ethiopia’s allies because it wasn’t “sincere” enough.

One even wonders if the block may actually be all about the sexual violence, specifically the squeamishness of political level diplomats about the impact of the their running against the now dominant media narrative demonizing Ethiopia.

Which is odd as the TPLF is legendary for its use of sexual violence and Tigray region has a well documented record of very high levels of sexual violence in peacetime.

Whatever the reason is the salient point now is that Ethiopia doesn’t care. It’s war is with the TPLF. It intends to remove them and is about to do so regardless of what the US thinks.

That war is against the TPLF, not the Tigray people.

But it is a dangerous adversary one which has a history of using soldiers as mine clearers and more recently child soldiers as human shields.

It strikes me that while the responsibility to protect does not provide legal grounds for intervention, it does obligate UN nations to do everything reasonably within their diplomatic capacity to prevent this war.

And in preventing this war, even now at the last minute, the US might also stand a chance of not losing it be of its oldest and most reliable allies.