BY AREGU BALLEH – The sympathy Biden’s administration is showing towards TPLF is understandable although misguided.
Some of the top officials in the Obama era and in the current administration such as Susan Rice, the former boss of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were personal friends and admirers of the late Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi and his party which ruled the country for 27 years. In those years the US cared little or ignored human right violation and atrocities committed by the regime.
The party which had controlled economic and political apparatus for nearly three decades chose to rebel against the central government once it lost power, and later attacked the national army, thereby triggering a civil war that led to its demise.
Today, TPLF has become defunct as a political party, and whatever remains of it is reduced to a terrorist organization. Apparently, the party’s Obama era allies don’t seem to be ready to let it go. That is why they are trying all they can to help it rise from the ashes by putting pressure on the country’s current leaders.
The sanction Biden’s administration imposed on Ethiopia is the latest attempt to breathe new life into TPLF and make it a political actor again. Any attempt to bring TPLF back to the political arena will, without any doubt, go against the will of the majority of 110 million people who have seen enough of the human right abuse, division, corruption, and atrocities under the TPLF leadership.
The sanctions are also a slap in the face to the Ethiopian diaspora in the US who overwhelmingly voted for the democratic party and helped clinch its narrow win including one in the traditionally republican state of Georgia.