Mereja.Forum

[Zmeselo]

TIGRAY — What’s Behind Ethiopia’s Latest Accusations over Eritrea?

According to Major Gen. Yohannes Wolde Giorgis (John Medid), the rift between Abiy Ahmed and the TPLF began soon after the Pretoria Agreement, when the TPLF rejected Abiy’s proposal to jointly crush the Amhara Fano resistance.

They also turned down his request to target Eritrean forces, forces that just saved his regime from being overthrown.

In response, Abiy quietly withdrew his troops from the Ethio-Eritrean border under cover of night, hoping to trigger a fight between the TPLF and Eritrean forces over who controls the vacated military positions.

But the plan failed as both sides saw it coming and refused to take the bait.

Now, two years later, a grassroots peace and reconciliation initiative known as Ximdo, driven by the people of Tigray and Eritrea, has taken hold.

As a result, Eritrean forces have withdrawn from previously federal-held areas and returned to their side of the border. Border areas are opening up, and communities on both sides started to reconnect and working toward reconciliation.

But this quiet people-to-people reconciliation isn’t what the Abiy regime wants to see happening.

As Tigrayans and Eritreans move toward peace, Abiy’s government is once again appealing to the international community, this time not with accusations against TPLF but against Eritrea of provoking conflict and violating Ethiopian sovereignty.

In Abiy Ahmed’s twisted mind, war is sold as peace, and conflict is disguised as development.

Ethiopia is salivating for a war with Eritrea.

Eritrea has been working tirelessly to bring a rapprochement between the two countries, including using its resources to stabilize and save Ethiopia from disintegration and civil war in 2022.

Eritrea is currently ensuring that peace prevails by removing every obstacle to peace. Building consensus with neighboring populations to avoid war is not warmongering or subverting Ethiopia’s sovereignty but ensuring a peaceful future for both nations.

One of Eritrea's principles remains ‘we do not want what is not ours and we will not give what is ours’. Eritrea remains within its internationally recognized borders and no amount of Ethiopian threatening or arming dissidents for regime change ambitions will change that.

Ethiopian leaders are looking for a way out to cover their failure in managing Ethiopia. Eritrea will not take the blame for successive Ethiopian leadership’s failure to bring the country to sustained prosperity and development. Ethiopia’s relationship with its neighbors is at its worst ever as Ethiopia is still threatening to annex their ports to establish its naval base. At the top of the list is Eritrea and its Assab port.

Eritrean history shows that Eritreans will do everything necessary to ensure peace but will not allow any Ethiopian adventurism & expansionism into Eritrean territories.

A war adventure that Ethiopia is seeking may result in the disintegration of failed Ethiopia that is holding with a string of dream or a civil war that is will be devastating.

[Abdisa]

For generations, Ethiopian rulers have waged wars trying to escape from self-made internal turmoil, but it all ended up with depleting our human and material resources, thus making us a client state of powerful nations. The Pretoria agreement was dead on arrival because it was drafted by foreign powers that wanted to keep Ethiopians in shackles of debt, civil wars and backwardness.