The attack on the Ethiopian Federal Forces of the Northern Command by the TPLF cabal has drawn a multitude of actors from the vast array of the so called “international community”. To be sure, this international community is as diverse as the human race itself-with all kinds of interests, concerns, persuasions and expectations. This community, thus, comes in multiple forms and shapes that could be laconically categorized-without scholastic distinctions-as the good, the bad, the ugly-and the gullible. Exhibiting a complex ecology of this vast community in such simplistic dichotomy may be imprecise, but it helps to provide some glimpse into the relationship between this community and Ethiopia.
The Good
The international community has played an important role in financially, materially and logistically supporting the Ethiopian people and its governments. A lion’s share of the government budget of Ethiopia has been financed by this community through different mechanisms-including direct budget support, soft loans and other arrangements.
At a humanitarian level, the massive support Ethiopia had received at the time of the devastating famine and drought in the 1980s is a reminder of the good intentions of this wing of the international community. The majority of this community was driven by a genuine interest to foster human decency, advance humanitarian values and fight abject poverty around the world. Ethiopia has been welcoming and working closely with this wing of the international community for years.
The Bad
The other wing of the community at the extreme end of the good is driven by sheer greed, self-interest, arrogance and hegemony. This wing is dominated by a number of powerful and not-so-powerful governments, political entities, multinational corporations and institutions which employ a variety of subversive acts-including sheer brutality, conspiracy, white lies and misinformation, to serve that interest under the guise of international cooperation and international partnership.
Ethiopia has witnessed as many such entities as there are in its long and proud history. The scandalous rejection of her protection at the United Nations when it was savagely attacked and then invaded by Italian Fascists in the early twentieth century is one poignant reminder.
The Ugly
While both the good and the bad wings are often obvious to discern, this category of the international community is sneaky and devious and known to employ a medley of acts under the guise of whatever is international. One such group widely accused of undermining the Ethiopian interest has been some of the major international media.
The Media
The media plays a key and critical role in informing and shaping the views of the international community-well, humanity as a whole. The Ethiopian conflict has shown the ugly face of some of the leading international media in their unbalanced and biased reporting. The media houses have shown massive partisanship including violating the basic journalistic decency. In a number of cases, viewers have been bombarded with recycled news, watered down facts patched with screaming headlines favorable to the TPLF cabal.
It should be noted that paid TPLF operatives and its shenanigans-under the guise of journalists and analysts-unabashedly misrepresented facts, lied incessantly, and even went as far as hinting to the cabal some disastrous actions as alternative measures. For instance, these partisan journalists and analysts largely opted to ignore the massacres perpetrated by the marauding and fleeing forces of the TPLF cabal. To add insult to the injury, they presented those very perpetrators as victims to be rescued by agitating the international community.
To this day, many of the international media are yet to clearly call out the party which started the conflict-and triggered the war. And yet, while the cabal surreptitiously and systematically misinformed the international community and falsely accused the Federal Forces of the Northern Command as starting the war, one of their high-ranking officials, openly admitted at a televised interview that TPLF started the pre-emptive “thunderous” attack likening it to a history of Israeli forces. Most of the media houses continue to deliberately ignore this critical fact and portray the government as equally culpable, if not more.
Humanitarian and Human Right Organizations
TPLF has a long-and dark-history of playing humanitarian organizations as narrated and written by a number of its own former members. A report by BBC over a decade ago that uncovered misuse of aid money and provisions by the TPLF cabal is a case in point.
The history of some of the human rights organizations, such as Amnesty International, is not unembellished one. In one of its reports on the situation in Ethiopia some six months ago, the organization produced such a sloppy report, that it had to withdraw part of it and promised an internal investigation (at least so it said). But, in the recent conflict, most Ethiopians and the government watched with yet another surprise as the organization hesitated to call the TPLF perpetrators of the My-Kadra massacre which the UN has recognized and ruled further investigation.
In the last three difficult years, millions of Ethiopian citizens have been internally and externally displaced-and yet this sect of the international community has been eerily silent. As a matter of interest, this was the time when the TPLF declared Tigray as the only peaceful region in the country, though mounting evidence has been implicating it in most of the conflicts and atrocities. To put things in perspective, this current conflict has displaced about 40,000 Ethiopians in the Sudan-many of whom Tigrean militia and special forces suspected of committing the My-Kadra massacre. While one displaced Ethiopian is one too many, the noise for 40,000 in contrast to the millions is simply telling the ugly nature and modus operandi of this wing of the international community.
Recently, the Ethiopian government was accused of backtracking on its commitment to unfettered access to the humanitarian mission in the affected regions in Tigray. Though the government has categorically denied it, one wonders if it should be blamed at all given the treachery, partisanship, misinformation, and arm-twisting orchestrated by the operatives and sycophants of the cabal and more so the heavy burden of the TPLF history with aid and humanitarian mission in the past.
It is remarkable that some of the so called human rights organizations have been known to turn a blind eye as TPLF massacred and brutalized its citizens-in the past and currently. These very organizations suddenly turned into advocates of human rights and saviors of the nation when they are actually operating covertly to throw a life line to the atrocious cabal.
The Enablers and the Shenanigans
The hired guns and the shenanigans of the TPLF cabal have been out in full force in what appears to be a very coordinated public relations siege. Unencumbered by ethics and integrity, they manipulated major media outlets and social media platforms beatifying the TPLF and demonizing the federal government. They first pontificated elevating the TPLF as a formidable force with unmatched strength and time-tested resolve in the country and beyond. When that notion of invincibility crashed as the TPLF forces were thunderously trashed in a rather humiliating defeat, they quickly shifted the narrative to human suffering and displacement, pressuring the international community for a negotiation to save the losing cabal from annihilation.
So much for the invincibility of the TPLF and its loser enablers and shenanigans. The TPLF, which bragged about its 17 years struggle-and shining victory for the last 27 years of its rule rather incessantly and arrogantly-lost the war in a crashing defeat in as many days with its leaders now running for their lives in ravines, caves and mountains.
It is important to mention the retraction and apologies of some of the major international media, such as the BBC, which have been misused by some of the cabal’s enablers and shenanigans. In its relentless pursuit of the Prime Minister as a culprit describing him a “Nobel Peace Prize Winner who Sent his troops to Battle” the BBC and others attempted to trash his well-deserved trophy and presented it an obscene dissonance.
Two weeks after the TPLF cabal attacked the Northern Command and admitted starting the war, the International Crisis Group, which describes itself and its analysts as not taking sides, is still disregarding the fact when it wrote on 22 November 2020, more than two weeks after the attack: “On 4 November, Africa’s second most populous country plunged into a serious conflict between federal troops and security forces from the Tigray region, one of Ethiopia’s ten states.” So much for “not taking sides” and the non-partisanship empty sermon.
The Gullible
The TPLF cabal reckons that the international community in general is gullible and prone to easy manipulation. It has been known to pay handsomely to muzzle critical voices and alternative views as one of its sustained strategy to achieve that. The relentless effort and massive resources it deployed to kick off the popular news media, ESAT, off the air is one case in point.
The public relations machinery of the cabal has been mostly effective-in keeping it in power as well as sustaining it through the short-lived war. What is remarkable however is how it managed to take even the most enlightened members of the global community-academics and researchers-for a ride as recently discovered in the signatures petitioned by the cabal and its sympathizers. In the list, one would quickly notice many who could have known better than signing a document with an ulterior motif of sustaining a cabal which has continued to massacre and commit genocide as the recent My-Kadra case vividly exhibited.
In Conclusion
At the end, it is the classic story of the infamous Humpty Dumpty who hoisted himself on the wall and met its fate-agonizingly.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.
RIP Humpty Dumpty. RIP TPLF. Long live the international community in the service of human dignity, human development, and global justice.

The Queen of Sheba can be reached at QueenOfSheba2020@outlook.com