Who do you turn to when the world's leading human rights watchdog's @hrw leader, director- Kenneth Roth- is leading misinformation campaigns based on fakenews accounts of other media outlets with bias? Eritreans & Ethiopians, have to be aware of this deadly destabilization agenda.
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The World Peace Foundation (est.1910) is an operating foundation affiliated with The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Its executive director is Alex de Waal.
And, who'se Alex de Waal (Alex de-vil)? He is someone, who was madly in love with Legesse chenawi.
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Professor Alex De Waal (Image source: Addis Fortune)
FEATURED
Alex De Waal’s disinformation against Ethiopia is disgraceful
Posted by Editor1@EA
Tsigereda Meleskachew (BA, MPH)
https://eastafricanist.com/2020/11/25/a ... sgraceful/
TPLF’s attack against ENDF’s Northern Command, which overwhelming majority of Ethiopians considered an act of betrayal, has attracted the interest of the global community. As such, it is not surprising that the conflict in North Ethiopia’s Tigray region has already been a leading story across many international media outlets.
One thing that is also apparent to see is that some experts of the region’s politics, former and current correspondents from the Horn of Africa, scholars and even graduate students studying the region are busy to exploit the unfortunate conflict in Ethiopia as an opportunity to promote their expertise.
Sadly, considerable number of individuals acting as experts of the region in general and Ethiopia in particular have also been embarrassingly biased and openly contributing to the disinformation campaign led by the TPLF.
Professor Alex De Waal, a respected researcher from Tufts University, is one of such individuals who chose to spread false narratives as he bids to save the face of his friends in the TPLF. The problem is not that Alex De Waal has friends amongst TPLF leaders. In fact, anyone who is in pursuit of knowledge or a journalist in search of good reporting could even sit with terrorists.
The problem is when the rebels mold the researcher to become their advocate and lobbyist; and when they transform the journalist as the agent of their disinformation campaign.
Sadly, Professor Alex De Waal has now joined TPLF’s disinformation against the federal government. But why is that? How is it possible that an intellectual of De Waal’s level, elected to side with a rebel that just massacred well over 600 ethnic Amhara Ethiopians?
The answer is not that complicated.
Alex De Waal admires former Ethiopian dictator, Meles Zenawi, who also led TPLF for almost the entirety of his adult life until his death in 2012.
For example, just look at a paragraph from a lengthy article the professor published with African Affairs in 2013: https://academic.oup.com/afraf/article/ ... /148/10408
As Meles crossed the border back into Ethiopia, I met him for the first time, and we began the first of our seminars on political economy. As dusk fell, still recuperating in his pyjamas, Comrade Meles climbed aboard a creaky Soviet Zil truck, captured from the Ethiopian army. All travel was at night, to avoid the MiGs, and we bumped our way along rocky tracks, first through the forested lowlands, camping out during daylight hours under trees next to a dry riverbed. Such was the itinerant life of the TPLF leadership. The next night our truck rumbled up a road cut through the mountainside by the guerrillas, with hairpins so tight that our truck had to make three-point turns. We spent the next day in caves at the TPLF’s temporary headquarters in a mountain called Dejena, and the next nightfall I watched as an apparently uninhabited hillside gave forth a battalion of men, a dozen trucks and a tank, all of them completely obscured by camouflage until that moment. The TPLF had turned concealment into science.
Such an intimate friendship and adventure with a rebel leader turned a tyrant until his death has indeed made Alex De Waal a devout of Zenawi and a life long supporter of TPLF, the most corrupt and cruel organization that Zenawi left behind to ruin Ethiopia.
Alex De Waal’s recent commentary
In a short piece for BBC https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-54932333 on Nov. 15, Alex De Waal states that
and that the situation,Ethiopia is spiraling out of control…
And continues with baseless accusations against the current Ethiopian Prime Minister, which is a very sharp contrast to the love and affection De Waal showed to Meles Zenawi.is threatening to rip the country apart.
Moreover, with regards to the conflict’s onset and who takes responsibility, the professor states that,
Sadly for De Waal, TPLF has admitted starting the conflict after waging,until there is an independent investigation, the rival stories remain allegations.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/11/ ... ing-regionthunderous, sudden, and preemptive attacks
against the ENDF.
But who cares, right? Alex De Waal continued with his disinformation campaign designed to help TPLF.
The question is how is he helping?
TPLF has been spreading lies after lies regarding the involvement of the UAE drones and of course Eritrean soldiers, to aid ENDF’s operation against TPLF rebels.
So who returns mere 3 days, after his published opinion piece on BBC? Yes, Alex De Waal. In a piece written for Africa Arguments, the professor claims,
Ten years ago the then-Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Meles Zenawi told me, “my nightmare is that we should have an Egyptian agenda financed by Gulf money.” He didn’t foresee state-of-the-art military technology as part of that nightmare.
By claiming that he already had the above conversation with Meles, he acts as though he regrets that Meles did not know that this (gulf military aid to Ethiopia?) was coming. This is quite the low road, for Alex De Waal. He then argues that the drones are indeed coming from UAE’s base in Assab, Eritrea.
Not only that. The professor somehow mixes up this current situation in North Ethiopia, with that of President Trump’s recent inane comment about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.
This is just Alex De Waal’s disinformation and faulty analysis, at its best. What is amusing is that, the expert later states,
Let me reiterate: I am not assigning culpability or direct involvement to either of these countries.
This is sad. He already said it, but then comes and claims he did not. Just laughable.
Lastly, Alex De Waal somehow states the exact words of what Mr. Getachew Reda, TPLF’s spokesperson just said two days ago in Amharic.
De Waal echoes Reda’s words as,
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was perhaps a little naïve, to say the least, in embracing Pres. Isaias as his security policy mentor.
Is this a coincidence? I doubt it is. But this is yet another example of a western scholar’s bias, that aims against a sovereign country of Ethiopia’s size and influence.
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Opinion
The role of foreign analysts on conflict and disinformation in Ethiopia
Eliass Kidanu
https://addiszeybe.com/featured/opinion ... n-ethiopia
December 25, 2020
Ethiopia's polarized political atmosphere has been very difficult for analysts, especially so for foreign analysts mainly because they can not or at least could not keep up with the fast changing political developments in Ethiopia which comes with one breaking news after the other. This coupled with the language barrier as Amharic is the working language, only few of those developments will make it to the English news for the foreign analysts to find out in time and make analysis.
Therefore, they are easily misinformed knowingly or unknowingly, either because of the already polarized political conditions in the country or their communication and allegiance to only a particular political entity of a certain political thought. As a result they lack the knowledge of the opinion of the general public and the reality on the ground to make informed analysis.
I can mention the case of Kjetil Tronvoll, the Director of Oslo Analytica, as well as Professor and Research Director of Peace and Conflict studies at Bjorknes University College who is recently making headlines for his disinformation campaigns against Ethiopia. I have been recently following his tweets and the biased analysis he gives on different occasions.
After I have read his rebuttal in response to his critics, I decided to write and point out few of his biases by drawing evidence from the recent interview he gave to
a Twitter page, under the title of "Kjetil Tronvoll on simmering political tensions and civil war in Ethiopia"in pursuit of development,
The propaganda claims he seems to have bought from TPLF and its surrogates are many. Firstly, he said Abiy’s administration with his medemer/synergy philosophy resembles that of authoritarian and suppressive Derg regime or Imperial reign and that TPLF is the champion of multinational federation. This is a laughable accusation of TPLF propaganda against the administration of Abiy. The country is being led by Prosperity party (PP) that believes in a multinational federation. There is no sign of backtracking from the part of PP with regard to its political program.
Therefore this is just one of the many baseless smear campaigns being propagated by TPLF and its surrogates to delegitimize the Prime minister and in doing so to create havoc in the country. The idea of forming the PP party had been discussed for a long time in the EPRDF party. The main idea of forming it emanates from the belief and necessity of forging a strong unified country while at the same time respecting the right of self determination of regional administrations. The very good showcase here is the creation of the 10th new regional administration of Sidama regional government under PP.
In fact the reality is the opposite of what TPLF is propagating. TPLF used the pseudo-multinational federation it created as a tool to establish one of the most dictatorial and suppressive regimes composed of its minority ethnic party that dominated the politics, economy and military life of the country. TPLF may have started it but it did not create a real multi-ethnic federation, it never had the will to create one. The people of Ethiopia were made to live under the tyranny of this repressive region for almost three decades. It's system created ethnic based competition for political power and economic dominance in the country of over 90 ethnic groups. Therefore the people of Ethiopia abhorred it because this was an ideology imposed on them at a gunpoint in the first place. It is wrong to deny the fact that it had managed to pick up some support along the way in its three decades of reign but no one has chosen it, especially at the beginning.
The second most outrageous disinformation campaign of Kjetil and of course TPLF, is the claim that the national defense force bombed Tekeze dam in Tigray. Despite the government's denial that this is false allegations, TPLF and "academic researchers" the likes of Kjetil Tronvoll and some media outlets were spreading this fake news to use it to draw international attention.
It has been reported widely that only the electric transmission lines of the dam have been intentionally interrupted by TPLF soon after the armed conflict started. Since then the electric transmission lines have been reconnected and are now operational but it's worth noting that it has never been bombed.
Thirdly, the mystery of the death of Engineer Simegnew, who was in charge of The Grand Ethiopian renaissance dam project, is still unknown. But in the interview Kjetil tried to insinuate that he was killed by the "new power holders'' referring to the Abiy's administration which makes this another one of his fabrications.
Finally the war strategy advice he tried to give to TPLF around the time of the start of the armed conflict spoke volume to his bias. He tweeted
And another of his completely false tweets says Djibouti forcefully repatriated a deserted Ethiopian general to Ethiopia in breach of their asylum rights.It is essential for Tigrai to secure supply routes, communications, and access to the sea. If the armed conflict drags out. This will hence define their war strategy, if a conflict escalation is not mitigated.
I do not think any independent researcher should be involved in a spread of lies and propaganda of such volume. There could be instances where Ethiopia can make use of foreign experts and analysts if their intention is to help bridge the divide and conflict instead of fueling it. My kind advice to kjetil is to widen his knowledge of Ethiopia and go beyond his circle to understand Ethiopia better and give constructive analysis that is expected of him.
Eliass kidanu kassaye studied Foreign Languages and literature(English, B.A. degree) in Addis Ababa university. He taught English language in Gibson Youth Academy for two years. And now lives in Finland, helsinki. He is Studying his masters in Changing Education.
trying to understand if I touched a nerve or you just being an asxhole...