and his dream to be King, nay Emperor. He told everybody on his selection as caretaker prime minster in April 2018 that his mother had prophesied, he would be king, and that day had come to pass. The different nations and nationalities of Ethiopia had already rid themselves of the oppressive rule of kings and dictators and quickly realised that their federal arrangement was in danger. That was why there has been and still is so much resistance by the different nationalities. Abiy Ahmed has replaced their leaders by his own yes men (yes, they were all men) who have replaced the ones that were elected by the local people according to the Federal Constitution.

There has been much inter-communal violence and killings and murders, including of high government officials whose outright assassinations were never investigated properly.

What is more, Abiy Ahmed put eight of the nine regions under military command to try and quell the widespread unrest . A Nobel Peace Prize winner putting his people under military command, and the world still did not ask questions about the incongruity of it all .

There was only one place, Tigrai, where Abiy Ahmed could not impose his will. Tigrai had proven an obstacle to his dream to promote himself from King to Emperor of Ethiopia and reimpose a unitary system of government that was discarded by the peoples of Ethiopia in 1991. He was not able to have his way. All his attempts failed, including trying to force the TPLF to join his newly formed Prosperity party in November 2019 on dismantling the EPRDF coalition. He needed more time to plan, and plot.

2. The Second enemy of Tigrai and the TPLF was President Isayas Afewerki

What is more, Isayas Afewerki is totally against the federal system in Ethiopia. In this sense, and in his loathing of the TPLF, Isayas Afewerki’s vengeful desires and those of Abiy Ahmed’s are in perfect synchrony.

The third party to this alliance is the Amhara Prosperity party which is home to the extremist Amhara nationalists.

(The competition between the Tigreans and the Amhara elites we are witnessing has its roots in the 19 ^th century when there was competition among the various warlords for the Ethiopian crown, but particularly between the future Yohanes IV, a Tigrean, and the future Menelik II from Showa (an Amhara. This is rather reminiscent of the War of the Roses in England in the 15 ^th Century between The House of Lancaster and The House of York. You only see this competition in England now on the stage, in William Shakespeare’s plays for people’s amusement. Unfortunately, in Ethiopia, some people’s mentality is still back in the feudal era, even if they are fighting one another with AK-47s, tanks and warplanes instead of spears or bows and arrows)

Abiy Ahmed declared war on Tigrai on the night of 4 November 2020. He told the world on 28 November 2020 that the war was over with his army entering Mekelle although we have not seen any captured “fugitives” which he had told the world was the aim of the war. If the war is indeed over as he claims, why can’t he restore the internet and telephone services to Tigrai so that families both inside Ethiopia and outside can find out how their loved ones are? The reason is simple: Abiy Ahmed does not want the world to see the systematic devastation his army, with Isayas Afewerki’s army and the militias of the extreme Amhara nationalists, have caused in Tigrai: homes, hotels, factories, plantations, farmers’ fields, university equipment, and so on, have been ransacked and destroyed. The aim of the war, which had been in planning for at least three years, is to destroy Tigrai and take it back to the stone age. That this is indeed the real purpose can easily be judged by what has happened so far. It was not to catch “fugitives”.

The people of Tigrai had been through this fire before in the Derg era (1974-1991) and came out triumphant. There is, and will be, great hardship and suffering in the present struggle as well. But the people of Tigrai are confident that they will bounce back and rebuild their communities and destroyed infrastructure with the help and good will of the international community. The Tigreans should be held in high esteem for their principled position in defending the federal constitution and trying to stop an incipient dictatorship (like that in Eritrea) before it takes root.

The Tigreans have not broken any laws, invaded anybody, or tried to cede from Ethiopia, so they do not deserve to be attacked by the full force of these three entities. The bullies have already thrown at them most of what they had: the full force of the Ethiopian army and air force, most of Eritrea’s army divisions and air force and the militia of the extreme Amhara nationalists gathered under the Amhara Prosperity party. That is besides drones ‘borrowed’ from the UAE base at Assab, Eritrea. But these forces still haven not managed to defeat and subdue the people of Tigrai, just 6% of the 110 million population of Ethiopia. Tigray has resisted all these forces.

What can these fanatical enemies do next? That will be Abiy Ahmed, Isayas Afewerki and the extreme Amhara nationalists’ dilemma. According to some Tigrean leaders appearing in the Tigrinya and Amharic media, the Tigrean defence forces have apparently been following defensive tactics thus far. They say the war has only just begun and the offensive is yet to come. Their opponents have already committed most of their forces in a kind of blitzkrieg, and apparently have been largely decimated by the Tigrean defence forces and militia. That is why these enemies had to rely on bombings with artillery and warplanes. This blunt technic of war has resulted in many IDPs (internally displaced people) besides the refugees who have managed to trek to Sudan, that is if the Ethiopian army has not blocked their escape routes.

From the size, scale and nature of the war on Tigrai, it should now be abundantly clear to the international community that the aim was not really to apprehend a few “fugitives” belonging to the TPLF but a co-ordinated attack by three different forces to try to wipe Tigrai and Tigreans from the face of the earth.

This can be attested by the fact that it is not just Tigreans within in Tigrai that have and are suffering. There are mass arrests of Tigreans in other parts of Ethiopia too. They have been dismissed from their jobs and robbed of their money and property merely for being Tigreans. One of the most stupid examples is the dismissal of the much-praised chief executive of Ethiopian Airlines, under whose stewardship the airlines has become one of the few successful and profitable airlines in the world in the last 10-15 years.

There are many sad stories like this. The extreme Amhara nationalists have even tried to besmirch the name of Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ¹ , the current Director of the World Health Organisation, to have him removed from such a prominent international post. Once again, he happens to be a Tigrean Ethiopian.