The TPLF Elite Vs. Meles Zenawi: Is there a Distinction?

Just like a
lot of diaspora Ethiopians who follow their country’s situation closely, I am a
regular visitor to the Ethiomedia website. But
lately, I noticed something in the website that caught my attention. On top of
the Ethiomedia website, there used to be a banner
(sign) which says: ‘TPLF cannot be reformed; like apartheid, it should be dismantled’.
For some reason, I do not see that banner any more on the web site. I do not
want to speculate. I hope the owners of the website will tell us about the
reason behind putting the banner in the first place and why they decided to
take it out afterwards. But Given what we know about TPLF in the last 20 years
and before, the expression, in my opinion was a very appropriate one and should
not have been taken out. It is a gross simplification to attribute Ethiopia’s
complex problem to a single organization, group or individual. But if there is
any one entity that is singularly responsible for the country’s dire condition
today, it is TPLF.

Here is
the question I want to explore briefly: 
who is using who between Meles and TPLF elite?
Is Meles manipulating the TPLF leadership or could it
be, somewhat unconsciously and mysteriously, the other way round?

 Professor Messay is
on point when he says that Meles is a creation of
TPLF as much as TPLF is a creation of Meles. Despite
the obvious fact that Meles and TPLF are one and the
same, there is a tendency to see Meles in isolation
from the secretive and poisonously ethnocentric organization that made possible
everything Meles has been able to ‘accomplish’.  In their article entitled 37 years of TPLF and the footprints of
Meles, Tesfaye Atsbeha and Kahsay Berhe wrote that “…Meles has absolute power, because the
members of the TPLF were and are – as many Ethiopians – vulnerable to tyranny”.
I completely agree. I
feel ashamed as an Ethiopian that despite the sacrifice of countless Ethiopians
in the last 50 or 60 years to bring justice and democracy in that country, we
have anything but democracy in Ethiopia today. In fact, the vicious enigma that
we are in as a society from one dictatorship to another says more about us than
the dictators that have ruled us.

But it is not enough to talk about
just dictatorship in Ethiopia today. It is my understanding that when our
previous dictators or autocrats (Mengistu or Haile
Selassie) kill, arrest and terrorize their own people, for the most part, they
acted as individuals who care about their powers, not as groups, certainly not
as ethnic groups. At least not officially. This fact
may not seem a big deal on the substance, but has a tremendous symbolic
significance for a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nation like Ethiopia. The Meles dictatorship on the other hand, is very different.
The Meles regime is no less brutal in terrorizing the
people, eliminating its opponents and abusing human rights. But it does that as
a political group organized based on ethnicity. TPLF not only identifies itself
as an ethnic group professing to fight for the right of a particular segment of
the society, but it divides the whole country along ethnic lines. For 20 years
now, the TPLF policy has been basically to tell people that their suffering
(oppression) is primarily because of who they are as an ethnic group, a message
that implies (if not explicitly, in many cases) an oppressor that is also a
group, be it ethnic, national or linguistic. For 20 years now, the Meles regime has instituted a political system in which
ethnicity is the officially favored form of political organization while
multi-ethnic political groupings have been demonized.

When Mengistu
was overthrown, he left behind a country in which people are scared to stand up
for their rights because they have been traumatized by the political violence
they have experienced. I am not sure if we can say the same for TPLF. The
departure of Meles/TPLF seems to have a more
unpredictable and scary consequences. This is because in addition to being the
worst abuser of human rights, the regime deliberately
chose to base its existence on destroying the very essence of our togetherness,
the fabric that holds the society together. In other words, while Mengistu’s regime curtailed rule of law and democracy in
the country, the TPLF rule threatened the very survival of the country
itself.        

Because
of this dangerous nature of the current dictatorship in Ethiopia that emanates
from the regime’s claim of its collective basis, I am skeptical of arguments that
single out Meles as a plausible explanation of what
is going on in our country today. The two Meles
–centered explanations, which I termed as ‘Meles
-as-Eritrean-Mercenary’   and ‘Meles– as- a- son- of –a- traitor’, despite their apparent
difference, have one essential element in common : they in effect serve to
unwittingly obscure the fundamental problem in Ethiopia, which is TPLF.

First, let us
consider the ‘Meles -as-an -Eritrean-Mercenary’
reasoning. The proponents of this position, the most prominent of which is Abraha Belay, the editor of Ethiomedia.com website, argue
that Meles’ connection (not TPLF’s) to Shabia (Eritrea) is at the root of the problem, and that it
is impossible to solve Ethiopia’s problems until we realize it. The problem
with this position is that the Eritrean issue has been used not just by Meles  Zenawi, but
by the entire TPLF core over the years; and that like many Ethiopians, I
believe that Shabia and TPLF are two sides of the
same coin as far as what they have in store for Ethiopia. No Ethiopian needs to
be told that it is the entire TPLF elite, not just Meles, that allowed the
separation of Eritrea, which rendered Ethiopia a land locked nation overnight.
It is also the TPLF leadership in general that looked the other way when shabia and its agents looted Ethiopia like a house
abandoned by its owners. In short, TPLF in general, not just Meles that was in bed with Esayas
until the two went to war towards the closing years of the 1990s.

It is
one thing to think that Meles is a Mercenary for the
regime in Eritrea. It is completely a different matter to argue that this is
the key to solving the problem in Ethiopia. 
Meles may be an Eritrean mercenary, as some so
passionately seems to believe. We do not really know for sure if that is true,
and I doubt if we ever will. In any case, however, it is less significant
whether or not we really find out if Meles is a
mercenary.  What matters is what we have
known all along: that Meles always uses the Eritrean
card whenever it suits what he cares most about, which is staying in power. It
hardly makes any difference if Meles
is using the Eritrean card because he is paid for it, which is what a mercenary
actually means, or it is his mere tactic to stay in power.

Similarly,
I find the ‘Meles– as- a- son- of –a- traitor’
explanation less convincing. I know a lot of prominent Ethiopian scholars,
including Professor Messay Kebede,
for whom I have enormous respect, believe that Meles’
destruction of the Ethiopian nation is primarily motivated by the repressed
aversion he had for the country growing up, resulting from his family
background. That may be true, and I suspect it is, although it is hard to prove
what is in one’s sub-conscious mind. But the problem I have is that I simply do
not think that Meles’ scorn for Ethiopia is any more
significant than most of his compatriots’ in the TPLF circle of influentials.  In
other words, when it comes to the TPLF leadership, the contempt for anything
Ethiopian is more institutional than individual, whether the hatred is
conscious or unconscious, superficial or deep-rooted, a matter of belief or a
mere strategy to stay in power. One thing is clear, though. More than anybody
else inside TPLF, Meles Zenawi
seems to be the most successful in his skills to manipulate the hate-Ethiopia
crew (of which TPLF core is itself a part) to his own advantage.

But the
success of Meles is not because the people around him
and his party (TPLF) are less evil. Nor is it because Meles’ anti-Ethiopian sentiment is more personal or
stronger. Rather, it is due to the fact that whatever bad attributes we
think Meles has, the TPLF core has it in its worst
forms. Thanks to time, we have witnessed that TPLF’s crimes are not limited to
killing and torturing of other Ethiopians. A couple of months ago,
Ethiomedia.com reported on a series of high-profile murders committed inside
TPLF.  Many of us have long been
convinced that the killing of such TPLF giants as Kinfe
G/Medhin, Haylom Araya and
many others could not just be ‘accidents’, as Meles
and other TPLF elites would like us to believe. The Ethiomedia
report underscores this point by exposing the details of the plans as to how
most of the high profile murders have taken place inside TPLF by its own
leaders. But again when I read the report, it gives me the impression that Ethiomedia is trying to portray those murders as the work
of Meles Zenawi alone. The
truth, however, is that though Meles is
obviously  behind it, such coordinated
acts could have only been accomplished with a full knowledge and participation
of the wider TPLF elite not just in the act itself, but in the cover up of the
crimes.

This is
why most TPLF officials seem to be in peace with such monstrous acts of killing
their own friends, for many of them either knew about, or directly took part in
them. If this is not a testimony to the evil and criminal mindset that prevails
inside TPLF at the higher level in general, and not just a unique feature of Meles, I do not know what is. To be honest, even people
like Seye Abraha, who were
expelled from TPLF have not been forthcoming in criticizing TPLF in any
fundamental way not only for the dangerous direction in which it is taking the
country, but also the decadent and criminal behavior governing the group.

The
point I am trying to make is that the Meles-centered
explanation, to the exclusion of the TPLF structure as a whole, besides being
inadequate in terms of explaining the issue, is misleading, as it diverts the
focus away from the real issue which is the TPLF. Not that Meles
is insignificant, as he is officially the most powerful person in the party as
well as in the country, but he is nothing when taken out of the context in
which TPLF operates. Except as an academic and psychological analysis, singling
out Meles renders the whole effort operationally
meaningless. It unnecessarily mystifies the issue by portraying Meles as having some kind of hidden and covert agenda that
can only be deciphered by some people with special access or capacity. I am not
saying Meles does not have agenda. I am saying his
agenda is not mysterious, not any more at least: it is controlling state power
and undermining Ethiopia and Ethiopians.

The
question: is the TPLF elite’s agenda any different? Are the TPLF giants really
scared of Meles? Is fear of Meles
the reason why they continue to do what they do? Or do they believe in what
they are doing?  I will reflect on these
and other similar questions on my next article but I sincerely ask the people
who were former members of TPLF to deliberate more on the matter. As former
colleagues, people like Aregawi Berhe,
Seye Abraha, Gedey Zeratsion and the likes
are in the best position to inform us about not just what their former
colleagues think, but what is in their heart, how they feel. It may be a good
idea for us Ethiopians to be honest to one another and try to save our country
when we still can.