Attempt to Use TPLF for Regime Change in Ethiopia Futile, Says Canadian Scholar

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December 24/2021/ENA/  The attempt of Western powers to use the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) for regime change in Ethiopia is futile as the country is strong enough to defeat them, Matthew J.L. Ehret, the Canadian Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow told ENA.

Ethiopian forces have recently pushed back the TPLF who have been committing atrocities in many areas, including Labella and Mai Kadra.

The senior fellow said, “We know that the TPLF group have conducted massive rape and used child soldiers. The atrocities it has committed have also been well documented in Mai Kadra and Lalibella.”

The terrorist TPLF, which rejected the call for withdrawal of its forces from Amhara and Afar regions they invaded after the government’s unilateral ceasefire and the withdrawal of Ethiopian National Defense Force from Tigray for months, was driven away with a humiliating defeat, but said they “retreated to give peace a chance.”

According to Ehret, “the West is spreading propaganda and we have been told that pro-democracy rebels want to get rid of authoritarianism; and so we are expected to believe this. We have been fed all the time and supposed to assume that the rebels are just peace-loving people.”

He further noted that powerful Western forces are using TPLF to bring regime change in Ethiopia, citing as evidences the recent announcement of the much-disorganized group of federalist front announced from the US and the infamous leaked video of Western diplomats “discussing regime change.”

The Western desire to interfere and change the regime in Ethiopia, like what happened in Libya and Syria, is futile because Ethiopia is strong with African and powerful international allies, Ehret underscored.  

“I don’t think the type of circumstances that were in place when Libya was overthrown and when Syria was on fire a few years ago. So, I don’t think those circumstances existed today in Ethiopia’s case. I think Ethiopia is in a much stronger situation, and those countries did before China and Russia presented themselves as players on the stage to say ‘no you are not allowed to do this anymore.”

The scholar stressed the need to use sovereignty and territorial integrity to resist Western interference in internal affairs with like-minded countries and focus on investments.  

“Ethiopia should keep moving ahead with investments into a reconstruction of infrastructures which have been heavily damaged by the fighting in the past year. Schools, hospitals, water, electricity and all of these things should be focused on; and I think focus on national banking, the emission of state credit for big projects which are anti-inflationary are all very important and scarce. Some very evil powerful people in the West do not want these ideas to become contagious.”

Organizations, including human rights agencies, under Western powers control are dishonest when it comes to their affiliates and adversaries, and are largely instruments of liberal imperialism, the Canadian scholar stressed.

“I do not have very positive feelings for Western control of human rights organizations which have shown time and again to be agencies to justify regime change overall…There is not a lot of honesty I see coming out of any of these organizations. These are largely instruments of liberal imperialism.”  

Therefore, Ehret suggested that Ethiopia strengthen its partnership mainly with China for mutually beneficial and very important economic ties and security, especially on major development projects.

Ethiopian News Agency
2023