[By Bereket Kiros and Teum Mezgebo]
What Tigray needs now more than ever is unity, peace, democracy, and development. As the TPLF “Revolutionary Democracy Ideology” has been preached for decades over and over again, the TPLF political system is intolerant of opposing views and its power, but it encourages corruption, nepotism, and unaccountability.
The TPLF leadership should contribute tangible results to the benefit of the people it serves rather than suffocating the nation with fear, repression, human rights violations, and lack of accountability. The TPLF splinter group and their foot soldiers must undergo soul-searching for reform from their rigorous mistakes and work for the benefit of society, not for their wealth. The TPLF cannot lead forever unless the public is behind it. Anger among the old and young generations is boiling, which might soon burst out with no turning point.
Tigray’s survival as a proud nation is at stake now. To avert unforeseen problems, we must identify our enemies and devise a coherent and straightforward strategy to work with an institutionalised democratic system that helps us maintain our unity to realise Tigray’s national interests. Now, we must discuss and agree on urgent issues in a respectful manner around the table to reach a consensus and narrow our differences. If we focus on only Tigray’s security, territorial integrity, and the return of IDPs to their homes safely, Abiy Ahmed will be forced to implement the Pretoria peace agreement. Discussing different issues endlessly will not solve anything, but we are creating opportunities for our enemies to devise new narratives against us. The TPLF must halt the main divisive issue of the power struggle between them, eroding our unity.
For the last three years, many Tegaru in the diaspora and at home have been writing and calling to prioritise the primary and urgent problems to solve, political differences, and power struggles to one side to restore and strengthen unity. Some were predicting the danger we might face today. We are especially indebted to Tegaru, who relentlessly called our attention to Tigray’s threats, though not many of us could hear them.
Despite all the setbacks of internal division, the genocidal regimes of Eritrea and Ethiopia are continuing their conspiracy to exterminate the people of Tigray and erase Tigray from the map. Tigray is fortunate to have TDF defending our people from the genocidaires and remain actively ready on standby to protect our people. We unreservedly thank our TDF for their unwavering service to protect the people of Tigray and support the interim government by rejecting the TPLF power struggle that disturbs the unity of Tigrayans. The interim government is the only legal body in Tigray that has responsibility in implementing the Pretoria peace agreement. The Tigray security forces must support the interim government in enforcing law and order, justice, accountability, and remain committed to implementing the interim government cabinet decisions and directives. Tigray can’t carry on without functioning government.
At this moment in our history, we face several problems and serious challenges to our survival. We must focus our attention on the systematic genocide crafted by Abiy Ahmed and what he is doing in Western Tigray, i.e., arming Gondar Amhara PP to continue occupying and claiming our territories.
Many Tegaru are working hard to restore justice and accountability, hoping to lead to democracy, freedom, and liberty for our people. Tigray is well alive and effective due to the resilience of TDF and its people. Our resolve should never be diluted to restore our historical lands and Tigray’s sovereignty.
Appeasement and peace offerings are not working for Tigray. The Pretoria peace agreement is used as a silent weapon of war by Abiy Ahmed to continue his systematic genocide in prolonging the restoration of constitutional order, removing the Amhara and Eritrean forces from the occupied territories of Tigray. Instead, he is working on the exploitation of gold mining using internationally banned chemicals, making the areas uninhabitable. We are strengthening the genocidaire Abiy Ahmed with our natural resources (gold and other precious minerals) to buy weapons for our destruction, as he is still pursuing the same aggressive tactic to exterminate Tigrayans and fight each other.
We are wasting time on internal politics and divisions propelled by greed within the TPLF leadership; we must stay focused on the immediate threats to our survival. The TPLF leadership tone must be changed to save the lives of people expelled under harsh conditions of the genocidal war to return to their respective areas with complete state sovereign protection. The TPLF leadership’s priority should be saving the people of Tigray before saving themselves and the party, forgetting the TPLF will live if the people of Tigray live.
Henceforth, we need to prioritise the most pressing issues to defend Tigray from hostile forces effectively.
1. We must preserve our unity, which is our strength to protect our identity, heritage, and territorial integrity.
2. We, all Tegaru, must work in unison to defend and struggle for Tigray’s survival and national interest.
3. We must prepare to liberate ourselves first, then liberate others to fulfil our duty with national pride in the interests of the Tigrayan people.
4. We must not tolerate personal interests, corruption, and bad governance, as these hinder progress and harm Tigray’s national interest.
5. We must not dilute transparency and accountability to keep our unity intact, as unity can be eroded if accountability and transparency are not practiced and upheld.
6. We must internalise and acknowledge identifying Tigray’s enemies first and foremost to help us map out our understanding of making friends and avoiding unwanted alliances.
The geopolitics in the Horn of Africa is attracting the formation of hostile alliances involving our enemies, which pose serious threats to our survival. We must look at the geopolitical interests around us and devise strategies to defend ourselves and with whom to make alliances to protect our national interests. Our coherent thoughtfulness and readiness may help us to avoid being outnumbered, outgunned, and outmanoeuvred by the neighbouring genocidal forces as well as hostile external forces.
To overcome such grave problems involving geopolitics in the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, our unity and focus on analysing and putting strategies and measures to the threats that may come from regional geopolitics are paramount that may come to Tigray. Tigray can’t afford to sit back and argue in internal TPLF politics and react when things get out of control and are difficult to handle.
We must learn from November 2020’s inadequate preparedness to defend Tigray with 9000 special forces if the politics in Tigray are now out of unity, which is only focused on the struggle for power between the warring groups within the TPLF. The warring parties’ chaotic and uncompromising political stances are dividing the people. The division can harm Tigray significantly, so we should use “the art of politics,” known as “compromise,” to bring us all together to harmony and normalcy. We need to recognise the greatest threat to the people of Tigray, which is the unfinished genocide waged by the regimes of Abiy Ahmed, Isaias Afewerki, and the Amhara elites.
Therefore, we should remain focused on the genocide threats to our survival, free our territories occupied by Amhara and Eritrean forces, and return IDPs to their homes using the Pretoria peace agreement. We must always be vigilant in assessing our enemies’ thinking and strategies, which can help us adjust our defence readiness to outsmart them.