AHOY! JEFFREY FELTMAN: REMEMBER THE TALIBAN! REMEMBER THE TPLF!
Negotiating with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) is negotiating for unconditional surrender and restoration of the TPLF to power. Period!
“T” is for terrorism.
“T” is for the Taliban.
“T” is for the TPLF, Tigray People’s Liberation Front!
This week Terrorism triumphed in Afghanistan spectacularly, dazzlingly, breathtakingly.
Mustachioed Taliban fighters toting AK-47 sat in President Ashraf Ghani’s office basking in the glory of victory.
Meanwhile, at the Kabul (Karzai) Airport, throngs of panicked Afghans were clinging to a giant U.S. Air Force C-17A cargo jet. The gruesome sight of three individuals dropping from the jet shall remain an indelible stain on the history of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Today, Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman is in Addis Ababa to arm-twist the Ethiopian Government to negotiate with the TPLF.
Yes, indeed!
Feltman is on a mission to tell the Ethiopian Government to make a deal with the TPLF or else!
Negotiating with the TPLF is negotiating with Devil.
For the TPLF, anyone who negotiates with them is weak, scared and bereft of self-confidence. The only way the TPLF negotiates is by killing, jailing and torturing.
For over a decade, I have studied the negotiating strategies and tactics of the TPLF and its Faustian deals.
On August 16, 2010, I wrote a commentary entitled, “Ethiopia: Beware of Those Bearing Olive Branches!” I discussed the zero-sum negotiation games of the TPLF. In such negotiations, the TPLF wins everything and those who negotiate with them lose every time.
Everyone who has “negotiated” with TPLF leaders knows they are guided by two principles:
1) “You are gonna do it my way, or you’re gonna hit the highway!
2) “What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is negotiable.
On August 16, 2021, eleven years to the day, I am writing about Feltman’s mission to force the Ethiopian Government get the TPLF to the negotiating table.
On July 2, 2017, I wrote a commentary entitled, “The Zero-Sum Negotiation Games of the T-TPLF in Ethiopia.” and showed how the TPLF had perfected the zero-sum game in Ethiopia since 1991.
On November 10, 2020, I wrote a commentary entitled, “A Simple Question to All Who Seek To Exert Pressure on Ethiopia: D0 YOU NEGOTIATE WITH TERRORISTS?”
On November 16, 2020, I wrote a commentary entitled, “Negotiating With the TPLF is Negotiating With the Devil: I Told You So in 2017!” How can anyone negotiate with a group that bombarded a federal military installation without provocation and killed so many soldiers? How can anyone negotiate with a group that is massacring innocents and pillaging the countryside at this very moment?
For years, the TPLF has been threatening war and secession.
But the TPLF’s position has always been clear: If they cannot rule Ethiopia with an iron fist, then Ethiopia will go to hell in a handbasket.
I have addressed the TPLF’s war-drumming and -mongering in my February 4, 2018 commentary thoroughly.
The bottom line is that if the TPLF cannot return to power by force of arms, it will try to return to power at the negotiating table.
All the Ethiopian Government has to do is sign on the dotted line, get on its knees, bow down its head and announce, “Here come the TPLF. Make way for the mighty, mighty TPLF.”
That will not happen even if hell freezes over and the TPLF devils go ice-skating.
The TPLF wants to repeat in 2021 its negotiated seizure of power in 1991
In 1991, the TPLF used “negotiations” in London to swiftly install itself in power.
What a “negotiation that was!
The TPLF hoodwinked Herman Cohen, then Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, at the negotiating table into announcing “the rebel leadership has assured us that they plan for a broadly based provisional government leading to a democratic constitution for Ethiopia.”
That plan proved to be an apartheid state totally dominated by the TPLF.
For decades, every time the TPLF found its rear end in the ringer and boxed in, it cries out, “We are ready to negotiate! We are ready to talk!”
For the TPLF, negotiations, discussions, elections, etc. are all games.
Deadly games.
Zero-sum games.
A brief history of TPLF games of negotiation
In 1984-85, when Tigray was undergoing severe famine, TPLF set up a scam organization called “Relief Society of Tigray” (REST) and negotiated with international NGOs for food distribution. TPLF leaders diverted $95 million of that aid for weapons purchases and other activities unrelated to famine relief.
In 2000, the TPLF negotiated to settle the dispute over Badme in a “final and binding” international arbitration. When Badme was awarded to Eritrea, the TPLF reneged and demanded further negotiations.
In 2006, TPLF leader Zenawi negotiated in “a handshake” with US General John Abizaid to wipe out Al Shabab in Somalia. That handshake led to billions of dollars in U.S. military and other aid to Ethiopia. What is less known is the fact that Zenawi had also negotiated with Al Shabab to continue minimal military presence so that Zenawi could use them as a boogeyman to milk the U.S. aid cash cow.
In 2008, in “elections for regional parliaments”, the TPLF won 1,903 of 1,904 seats. The TPLF won by 99.9 percent.
In May 2010, the TPLF “won” all the seats in “parliament” by 99.6 percent.
In May 2015, the TPLF “won” 100 percent of the seats in “parliament”.
Such total and complete zero-sum electoral “victory” occurred in a country where there are 79 registered opposition political parties.
In August 2007, the late TPLF leader Meles Zenawi “pardoned” 38 opposition political leaders to “give impetus to political negotiations in Ethiopia after more than two years’ crisis and stalemate.”
In October 2007, “in spite of continuing negotiations between the government and the opposition, the political environment continued to deteriorate.”
In the 2007 “negotiations”, the TPLF had a double zero-sum game “win”. It validated the 38 railroaded opposition leaders were actually criminals because they accepted a “pardon”, and 2) forced them publicly to “admit” crimes they never committed to receive a pardon.
In 2009, the T-TPLF engaged in “negotiations” for the release of political prisoners, only after the political prisoners “had signed a paper admitting they tried to overthrow the government in an ‘unconstitutional’ manner.” Double zero-sum game win for the TPLF again.
In 2009, Zenawi led the African climate change negotiators to the U.N. Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen and delivered a zero-sum ultimatum: Fork over $40 billion or we will “delegitimize you!”, Zenawi blustered. They ignored him.
In 2010, the TPLF negotiated for the release of Birtukan Midekssa, the first female Ethiopian political party leader and current head of the Ethiopian Elections Commission, after she “apologized for denying being granted a pardon in 2007” and “imploring the prime minister to grant her a second pardon for her to be able to see her aging mother and child.”
In 2010, the TPLF engaged donors in “negotiations” to allow them to send election observers and called their election report “useless trash that deserves to be thrown in the garbage”.
In 2013, TPLF head honcho and current leader of the attack on the Northern Command Debretsion Gebremichael said, “Ethnic federalism is equality. TPLF supremacy is nothing but a conspiracy. To say Tigreans are supreme (everywhere), that is not the reality. That is a zero. Zero.”
True. It is a zero.
It’s all a zero-sum game for the TPLF played in an apartheid state.
In 2016, after the Addis Ababa Masterplan faced popular opposition, the TPLF said they wanted to negotiate the plan.
In 2016, when the first state of emergency failed to control the popular uprising, the TPLF again said they want to negotiate.
In October 2016, the TPLF showed their entire negotiating strategy when they massacred 800 plus people celebrating the Irrecha Festival in the town of Bishoftu, some 45 miles southeast of the capital Addis Ababa.
In 2017, when the second state of emergency failed to control the popular uprising, the TPLF pleaded they want to negotiate. Too late.
Whenever the TPLF talked about negotiations, it also always tightened its political grip and continued its massacres, mass arrests, mass detentions and mass torture of innocent citizens.
HANDS OFF ETHIOPIA, JEFFREY FELTMAN!
I have a simple message for Jeffrey Feltman and his bosses.
STOP MEDDLING IN ETHIOPIA’S INTERNAL AFFAIRS!
Ethiopian solutions for Ethiopia’s problems.
African solutions for Africa’s problems
The United States Government will never negotiate with terrorists and sacrifice its Constitution, compromise its armed forces and the peace and security of its citizens.
Neither will the Ethiopian Government!
NO NEGOTIATION, NO DEAL WITH THE TPLF TERRORISTS!
