The great journalist Martin Plaut, who keeps himself
strictly within the perimeters of professional ethics, twitted a couple of days
ago: "The next few weeks will show who miscalculated. Difficult for 6% of
the population of Ethiopia to face the Federal army, the Amhara militia, and
the Eritrean military all at the same time. Clearly the Tigrayans have lost
cities. Now we will see if they have lost the war". This is a great incite
based on a full understanding of the timeless ethos of freedom inherent in the
Tigrayan culture. We don't need to wait for weeks to realize that starting the
war was a grave miscalculation. It was based on the wrong perception of the
invincibility of a joint force of Ethiopia, Eritrea, and a hate blinded Amhara
militia misguided by false sense of bravery and mischief of its elite, against
"a poor tiny region which is dependent on Ethiopia for its survival".
Three days were "generously" alloted to start and end the war.
How much time the war takes is not decided by both sides
but only by the side which started the war. There has never been war in history
whoes end is decided by those who started it. Neither Hitler nor Mengistu were
able to end the wars they started. They were able only to start them by
"counting their chicks before they are hatched". As Commander Seye
Abrha once said, "We know war and thus we fear it". Why is war
feared? Because how it ends is not predictable! When crazy megalomaniacs
trigger war on other people, who jealously guard their freedom and the right to
self-determination, they would be pressing a button triggering a chain reaction
that they cannot control. The loss of lives and the destruction of property
emboldens rather than weakens those who defend their freedom. In such war’s
nations rise from the ashes more powerful than before. They are like steel
which acquires its greater strength and resilience from more and more burning.
Vietnam not USA and France decided the end of the wars. Carpet bombing and
agent orange never forced the tiny but gallant Vietnamese to surrender. They
fought in the rice paddies, they fought in the underground tunnels, they fought
in the forests and weakened the "elephants" into collapse. What did the
Vietnamese have in their hands? Little more than AK-47 rifles, but missiles in
their hearts!