Thread by @althecat

This article appears to be a poor translation from another language, possibly Amharic, and concerns EU and other efforts seeking to have the terrorist designations lifted from TPLF and OLA / Shene.

There are no EU Terror designations on either.

en.euro-journal.press/2022/02/12/new…

I have deleted this earlier tweet now as it is causing confusion.

Though I do think the effort by the EU and AU Envoys, probably supported by the UN and US is counterproductive at this time.

The pressure from international actors, Govts and NGOs like the @CrisisGroup on the GoE to remove these terrorist delegations had been on for a long time.

And underlying the calls is a subtext that the designations are illegitimate and/or harmful to the peace making efforts.

But to my knowledge none of these International Actors have yet formally acknowledged what these two organisations are doing, and the absence of such calls is - to my mind- at least equally harmful to the peace making process.

Whilst there are some minority interests and actors inside Ethiopia who do not consider them terrorist organizations. Their conduct in the war in Amhara, their alliance with each other, and in the case of the OLA their ongoing attacks on civilians in Amhara looks like terrorism.

The failure by international actors to appreciate this, and to call the attacks in Amhara and Afar what they are - deliberate ongoing acts of terror by secessionist movements make this worse.

The people and Govt. of Ethiopia are being gaslighted on this.

The harm this causes is huge, it causes distrust between groups within the country and distrust of the Govt.

WRT The national dialogue a very large majority of Ethiopians appears to be resolutely opposed to Govt. negotiations with the groups unless they lay down their arms.

And till now neither the TPLF nor the OLA has done so, nor shown any sign of abandoning their ongoing cowardly terrorist attacks on civilians in Amhara and Afar.

There are nearly daily reports of OLA attacks in Amhara especially in West Wellaga, and have been for months/years.

As for the TPLF in December they received international praise for their withdrawal and announcements of an end to their fighting, but the proceeded immediately to continue their attacks on Amhara and Afar.

Two months after launching an offensive against Ab’ala a border town between Afar and Tigray in mid December, TPLF’s offensive against pastoralist self-defence militias (Afar has no army) has now expanded significantly and 300k Afar people are now displaced.

This conflict has been barely reported on in the Media and UN, EU and US spokespeople appear to be equally unable to mention it, though they must be aware of it as it is the reason that humanitarian aid cannot be delivered to Tigray.

On December 28th, also after their withdrawal, TPLF also launched an offensive in the West of Tigray near the border of the disputed territory on Welkaite. For several weeks they once again attacked North Gondar on the Adi Arkay road and in surrounding areas but were repulsed.

This 2nd TOLF offensive - which one presumes Western intelligence must have also been aware of - was even more invisible than the attacks in Afar, which are at least subject to lots of Twitter reporting.

Ethiopians are aware this, also of the looting, destruction, massacres and systemic mass rape in Amhara undertaken by the TPLF, as these things are reported inside Ethiopia.

Hence the widespread opposition to removal of terror designations and direct negotiations.

Earlier at the height of Ethiopian-IC tensions, during Jeffrey Feltman’s 2nd or third round of peace-brokering efforts the U.S. Envoy was sent back from Ethiopia and told that he had “wrong facts” and told not to return until he had “correct facts”.

Things have improved since then, notably following the publication of this seminal article by @afitz3105 and @BronwynBruton in @foreignpolicy. foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/28/eth…

But Western diplomatic peace efforts are likely to fail unless they acknowledge the truth about TPLF.

Specifically the truth about their - i.e. Western diplomatic - enabling of the TPLF facilitated by an ongoing failure to acknowledge the truth about the origin of the war, and the horrific crimes committed in the period since the unilateral ceasefire at the end of June 2021.

The Govt. Of Ethiopia appears to have been worn down to a considerable extent by all of this.

If a group is gaslighted for long enough this will happen. But in the absence of a truth based reset to this horror story, I can’t see peace and reconciliation efforts working well.

Meanwhile the TPLF continue to push the West aggressively whenever there is even a minor effort to disclose the truth, or a positive word directed at the GoE, even if the word is 🔥 bathed in gaslight as recent remarks from @WFP’s Mark Dunford and UN DSG @AminaJMohammed were.

The South African “Truth and Reconciliation” process is the best model that Africa and the World has for the National Dialogue process that Ethiopia is now embarking on. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_and…

And the first word in the name of that commission is in my opinion the most important one.

You can have no effective peace and reconciliation dialogue, without Truth.

In the case of Ethiopia that truth remains disputed and continued widespread Western acceptance of false narratives will remain a major obstacle to peace and reconciliation efforts in Ethiopia until these core ideas are at least reviewed/reconsidered/discussed.

This is difficult for IC actors because they were cleverly deceived by the TPLF, and are rightly concerned about the implications which might arise if they look closely at their engagements with the TPLF at the outset of this war on Nov. 2020.

But absent their doing so, a gaslit national dialogue, involving a party that has gone all in on its big lies - about the origin of the war and its victimhood - cannot possibly succeed.

I.E. Peace and reconciliation are very hard to achieve absent truth.

And this is why I think talk of removing a terrorist designation from the TPLF is premature, and calls from IC mediators for this course of action are Ill-advised.

/ends

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