meadna.com

History Revisited

“Tesfasion Medhanie: a mercenary paid to put the disinformation in Print”.

From the Archives of Adulis Vol. III, No. II, 1986. EPLF Bureau of Foreign Relations.

Eritrea; The Dynamics of a National Question, by Tesfasion Medhanie.

This 300-page paperback by a certain Tesfasion Medhanie is a calumnious compilation of all sorts in innuendos and virulent attacks against the Eritrean revolution, and the EPLF in particular, largely by drawing for its source materials from official publications and statements of the Ethiopian Regime, and Soviet publications. The author makes frequent references to unacknowledged “independent observers” to lend credibility to his prejudiced adversity to the Eritrean Struggle.

The book is a very condensed piece of disinformation-produced to-date by avowed opponent of the Eritrean cause. In his crusade to vilify the EPLF, the author grossly distorts the glaring truth concerning the political orientation, aims, achievements, and international relations of the EPLF, his main target. Most of the factions of the ELF, the TPLF, and all of the democratic opposition movements in Ethiopia are not spared from his slanders too. He castigates all visitors to Eritrea-journalists, humanitarian organizations, and public figures –as agent of imperialism and even operatives of CIA for telling the truth they witnessed through their own eyes. The author has never visited the field himself and is otherwise a stranger to the Eritrean revolution except for a brief flirtation with ELF sometime in 1977 while teaching in the Sudan. Yet he finds the temerity to dismiss all independent accounts of what is taking place in the region as pure fabrication to “discredit the Soviet Union and Socialist Ethiopia”

In his overzealous, almost fanatical, advocacy and defense of Soviet motivations and design in the Horn, the author exhorts us to revise history and reality anew through his distorted prism. For him, since the USSR is on the side of Ethiopia in the conflict raging in the region, all forces that stand on the way must, perforce, be reactionaries; simply tools of imperialism. The job is, hence, to reveal this links, or fabricate them. It is this them that haunts his work from start to finish. However, the sheer volume of lies he has to fabricate to this end renders his task self-defeating, as the book cannot mislead even those remotely acquainted with the realities in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

But, if the litany of factual errors and falsification of events is excessive, the analysis he employs to deny the legitimacy of the Eritrean struggle is more abominable. It is these justifications we will briefly address here.

1. The author subordinates the sovereignty of nations to what he calls “revolutionary interest epitomized by the Soviet Union”. In the Eritrean case, he argues; “the USSR has changed its position based on considerations of the interest of social progress. Its present underlying assumption holds that the union of progressive forces in Eritrea and Ethiopia would be a tremendous victory and a further boost to the anti-imperialist movement, that unity is necessary for the social progress of both peoples along the socialist path”. Again, he repeats, “the Soviet position should be understood in the light of the need to repel the imperialist threat to the Ethiopian revolution”.

Although never put in these crude terms, such pretexts to justify unwarranted Soviet intervention against the Eritrean Struggle have been advanced before. But apart from those who have vested interests in continued colonialism, this ‘theory” has no moral validity. Whether the Ethiopian regime is socialist or pro-imperialist has no bearing whatsoever on the colonial content of the Eritrean cause, although a democratic regime in Ethiopia would have discarded its imperial legacy and granted the Eritrean people their independence. In the old days, colonialism was advocated in the name of “civilization” and “Christianity”. This time, we have new apostles who justify aggression and annexation in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “the interest of revolution”. Without dwelling too much on the subject, the Eritrean people, like all other colonized people, have an absolute right to independence. Their sovereignty cannot be predicated to any other condition, with whatever presumed benefits.

2. Feeling somewhat uneasy with the first argument, another preposterous pretext the author forwards to justify Soviet support to the Ethiopian regime is to deny the legitimacy of the Eritrean cause all-together. Thus, he contends, “…. Given that Eritrea was actually colonized by U.S. imperialism through the instrumentality of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, it ceased to be a special (sic) colony in mid 1977. Therefore, Ethiopia was no longer a satellite or neocolony of the U.S. It terminated its subservient relations with the U.S. it dismantled the U.S. military bases in Eritrea which thus is no longer being used for the protection of imperialism’s spheres of influence and in the strife against socialism and the national liberation movements….

The date the author refers – mid 1977 – was the date when Ethiopia’s strongman, colonel Mengistu eliminated some of his rivals in a palace shoot-out. This date represents a “watershed” for the author, because few months later, the Mengistu regime signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow. It is this treaty that has transformed Ethiopian colonialism of Eritrea. It is difficult to conceive that the author actually believes in what he is advocating if his mental faculty is still in place. A criminal who slaughters an innocent bystander by borrowing a gun from somebody is not absolved of murder if he discards the weapon afterwards. Indeed, whether Ethiopia joins the Warsaw Pact or not, whether it severs its relations with imperialism or not, this cannot sanction its annexation and colonial occupation of Eritrea

In earlier days, the argument often peddled by apologists of Ethiopian colonialism was that a feudal and non-capitalist Ethiopia could not colonize Eritrea, narrowly interpreting colonialism as a European phenomena of the 19th century. As this justification has increasingly proved untenable, we are now witnessing the formulation of other absurd explanations by these elements in their quest to stifle the legitimate rights of a wronged people.

3. Another weapon the author summons to discredit the Eritrean revolution is to accuse the EPLF as an organization propped up by imperialism. The slander is not again entirely new although earlier accusations were indirect insinuations contending that the war in Eritrea “objectively served imperialism” etc. For the author, however, the EPLF is organically linked with imperialism, and this right from its formation. He thus alleges; ‘prior to 1972, it seems that the Issayas group (his derogatory term to the EPLF) has its own connections with Ethiopian authorities and U.S. imperialism inside Eritrea”. This, he claims, was further consolidated in 1976 prompting for the “break between Osman Saleh Sabbe’s Foreign Mission and the EPLF”. In his twisted analysis, he alleges: “…some observer interpret this development in light of the revolution events in Ethiopia and the unfolding tactical changes in US policy in the Horn of Africa. They maintain that the Issayas group had by 1976 secured assistance from the U.S. or its allies who were applying increasing pressure on the new Ethiopian regime. Hence they opine, the group could afford divorce from Osman Sabbe whom it needed only as a source… After 1983, the anti Soviet EPLF established operative relations with U.S. allies in the Middle East, extension of its ties with Washington. It deepened its relations with imperialism and the rightwing Arab states. Now that there was no armed force in Eritrea or Ethiopia with anti-imperialist orientation, it could maintain such relations without fear of being exposed before the Eritrean public. In a sense, the EPLF competed with the TPLF to become NATO’s most favored opposition movement in Ethiopia.

These transparent lies do not need any refutal. What must be addressed why he has to go to such an extent to bend the truth? His underlying motives are to justify Soviet interventions and indeed plead for a more frantic soviet campaign against the EPLF. For a little later, he laments: ‘one cannot conceive of any sound reason why the USSR and progressive states did not make any effort to unmask the publicize in a general way the conspiracy of the EPLF and other “nationalist” Ethiopian movements with imperialism to liquidate the anti-imperialist forces in the Eritrean movement”. In this rapid spokesman of Ethiopian of Ethiopian colonialism, what we have is not only somebody who justifies Soviet intervention against the Eritrean people, but one who asks for more of the same.

Throughout the book, the author’s obsession is to defend the transgressor and penalize the victim. He laments, for instance, “ the on-going war in Eritrea seriously strains the socialist orientation of Ethiopia. It drains resources which would otherwise be utilized to enhance Ethiopia’s socio-economic development”. Hence, if Ethiopia’s military rulers squander the country’s resources to pursue their war of aggression in Eritrea, incurring impoverishment and suffering to the Ethiopian and Eritrean peoples, the blamed should nonetheless rest on the Eritrea people and the EPLF for not succumbing to their onslaught.

The book is replete with other provocative falsifications of facts and numerous apologies for the Dergue’s crimes in Eritrea. For him, the Dergue’s regime has been seeking peace while the EPLF’s peace calls a re “spurious” aimed at “averting offensives”. He quotes the Ethiopian foreign minister as saying in June 1987, ‘we want to solve the problem peacefully. We do not believe that the military solution will bring the permanent solution to the problem”. The author tell us that “ this was an accurate statement of the PMAC’s intent”, conveniently forgetting that only a month earlier, the regime had resolved to carry-out, with full force, “the military and only solution to the Eritrean problem” in a 12 seminar it orchestrated in Addis Ababa.

But this spineless apologist of Ethiopian colonialism does not know limits to his defense of aggression. He justifies the Dergue’s refusal to agree to a temporary cease-fire to facilitate the distribution of famine relief. First questioning the sincerity of the EPLF’s “dubious proposal” that was ‘forwarded to put the PMAC on the spot”. But he finds Mengistu’s response in which he says “we will never negotiate with terrorists” as plausible. His reasoning; “…It appears the Ethiopian government would not have accepted the cease-fire even if the offer of the EPLF and TPLF were genuine. The government was concerned that agreement to a cease-fire would be tantamount to giving the EPLF and TPLF a status qualitatively higher than that associated with “bandits” or ‘mercenaries” or “terrorists”

In short, the book is a deliberate work of disinformation full of a litany of lies and fabrications. The author portrays a non-existent reality and recklessly plays with the cause of a people and their immense suffering. He accused every and all observers-not to mention those in the forefront of the struggle who are shedding their precious blood to assert the dignity of the people –as paid agents. The liberty he takes to slander the integrity of so many perhaps betrays one truth: that he is a mercenary paid to put the disinformation in Print.





	History Revisited “Tesfasion Medhanie: a mercenary paid to put the disinformation in Print”. From the Archives of Adulis Vol. III, No. II, 1986. EPLF Bureau of Foreign Relations. Eritrea; The Dynamics of a National Question, by Tesfasion Medhanie. This 300-page paperback by a certain Tesfasion Medhanie is a calumnious compilation of all sorts in innuendos and virulent attacks against the Eritrean revolution, and the EPLF in particular, largely by drawing for its source materials from official publications and statements of the Ethiopian Regime, and Soviet publications. The author makes frequent references to unacknowledged “independent observers” to lend credibility to his prejudiced adversity to the Eritrean Struggle. The book is a very condensed piece of disinformation-produced to-date by avowed opponent of the Eritrean cause. In his crusade to vilify the EPLF, the author grossly distorts the glaring truth concerning the political orientation, aims, achievements, and international relations of the EPLF, his main target. Most of the factions of the ELF, the TPLF, and all of the democratic opposition movements in Ethiopia are not spared from his slanders too. He castigates all visitors to Eritrea-journalists, humanitarian organizations, and public figures –as agent of imperialism and even operatives of CIA for telling the truth they witnessed through their own eyes. The author has never visited the field himself and is otherwise a stranger to the Eritrean revolution except for a brief flirtation with ELF sometime in 1977 while teaching in the Sudan. Yet he finds the temerity to dismiss all independent accounts of what is taking place in the region as pure fabrication to “discredit the Soviet Union and Socialist Ethiopia” In his overzealous, almost fanatical, advocacy and defense of Soviet motivations and design in the Horn, the author exhorts us to revise history and reality anew through his distorted prism. For him, since the USSR is on the side of Ethiopia in the conflict raging in the region, all forces that stand on the way must, perforce, be reactionaries; simply tools of imperialism. The job is, hence, to reveal this links, or fabricate them. It is this them that haunts his work from start to finish. However, the sheer volume of lies he has to fabricate to this end renders his task self-defeating, as the book cannot mislead even those remotely acquainted with the realities in Eritrea and Ethiopia. But, if the litany of factual errors and falsification of events is excessive, the analysis he employs to deny the legitimacy of the Eritrean struggle is more abominable. It is these justifications we will briefly address here. 1. The author subordinates the sovereignty of nations to what he calls “revolutionary interest epitomized by the Soviet Union”. In the Eritrean case, he argues; “the USSR has changed its position based on considerations of the interest of social progress. Its present underlying assumption holds that the union of progressive forces in Eritrea and Ethiopia would be a tremendous victory and a further boost to the anti-imperialist movement, that unity is necessary for the social progress of both peoples along the socialist path”. Again, he repeats, “the Soviet position should be understood in the light of the need to repel the imperialist threat to the Ethiopian revolution”. Although never put in these crude terms, such pretexts to justify unwarranted Soviet intervention against the Eritrean Struggle have been advanced before. But apart from those who have vested interests in continued colonialism, this ‘theory” has no moral validity. Whether the Ethiopian regime is socialist or pro-imperialist has no bearing whatsoever on the colonial content of the Eritrean cause, although a democratic regime in Ethiopia would have discarded its imperial legacy and granted the Eritrean people their independence. In the old days, colonialism was advocated in the name of “civilization” and “Christianity”. This time, we have new apostles who justify aggression and annexation in the name of “anti-imperialism” and “the interest of revolution”. Without dwelling too much on the subject, the Eritrean people, like all other colonized people, have an absolute right to independence. Their sovereignty cannot be predicated to any other condition, with whatever presumed benefits. 2. Feeling somewhat uneasy with the first argument, another preposterous pretext the author forwards to justify Soviet support to the Ethiopian regime is to deny the legitimacy of the Eritrean cause all-together. Thus, he contends, “…. Given that Eritrea was actually colonized by U.S. imperialism through the instrumentality of Haile Selassie’s Ethiopia, it ceased to be a special (sic) colony in mid 1977. Therefore, Ethiopia was no longer a satellite or neocolony of the U.S. It terminated its subservient relations with the U.S. it dismantled the U.S. military bases in Eritrea which thus is no longer being used for the protection of imperialism’s spheres of influence and in the strife against socialism and the national liberation movements…. The date the author refers – mid 1977 – was the date when Ethiopia’s strongman, colonel Mengistu eliminated some of his rivals in a palace shoot-out. This date represents a “watershed” for the author, because few months later, the Mengistu regime signed a Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with Moscow. It is this treaty that has transformed Ethiopian colonialism of Eritrea. It is difficult to conceive that the author actually believes in what he is advocating if his mental faculty is still in place. A criminal who slaughters an innocent bystander by borrowing a gun from somebody is not absolved of murder if he discards the weapon afterwards. Indeed, whether Ethiopia joins the Warsaw Pact or not, whether it severs its relations with imperialism or not, this cannot sanction its annexation and colonial occupation of Eritrea In earlier days, the argument often peddled by apologists of Ethiopian colonialism was that a feudal and non-capitalist Ethiopia could not colonize Eritrea, narrowly interpreting colonialism as a European phenomena of the 19th century. As this justification has increasingly proved untenable, we are now witnessing the formulation of other absurd explanations by these elements in their quest to stifle the legitimate rights of a wronged people. 3. Another weapon the author summons to discredit the Eritrean revolution is to accuse the EPLF as an organization propped up by imperialism. The slander is not again entirely new although earlier accusations were indirect insinuations contending that the war in Eritrea “objectively served imperialism” etc. For the author, however, the EPLF is organically linked with imperialism, and this right from its formation. He thus alleges; ‘prior to 1972, it seems that the Issayas group (his derogatory term to the EPLF) has its own connections with Ethiopian authorities and U.S. imperialism inside Eritrea”. This, he claims, was further consolidated in 1976 prompting for the “break between Osman Saleh Sabbe’s Foreign Mission and the EPLF”. In his twisted analysis, he alleges: “…some observer interpret this development in light of the revolution events in Ethiopia and the unfolding tactical changes in US policy in the Horn of Africa. They maintain that the Issayas group had by 1976 secured assistance from the U.S. or its allies who were applying increasing pressure on the new Ethiopian regime. Hence they opine, the group could afford divorce from Osman Sabbe whom it needed only as a source… After 1983, the anti Soviet EPLF established operative relations with U.S. allies in the Middle East, extension of its ties with Washington. It deepened its relations with imperialism and the rightwing Arab states. Now that there was no armed force in Eritrea or Ethiopia with anti-imperialist orientation, it could maintain such relations without fear of being exposed before the Eritrean public. In a sense, the EPLF competed with the TPLF to become NATO’s most favored opposition movement in Ethiopia. These transparent lies do not need any refutal. What must be addressed why he has to go to such an extent to bend the truth? His underlying motives are to justify Soviet interventions and indeed plead for a more frantic soviet campaign against the EPLF. For a little later, he laments: ‘one cannot conceive of any sound reason why the USSR and progressive states did not make any effort to unmask the publicize in a general way the conspiracy of the EPLF and other “nationalist” Ethiopian movements with imperialism to liquidate the anti-imperialist forces in the Eritrean movement”. In this rapid spokesman of Ethiopian of Ethiopian colonialism, what we have is not only somebody who justifies Soviet intervention against the Eritrean people, but one who asks for more of the same. Throughout the book, the author’s obsession is to defend the transgressor and penalize the victim. He laments, for instance, “ the on-going war in Eritrea seriously strains the socialist orientation of Ethiopia. It drains resources which would otherwise be utilized to enhance Ethiopia’s socio-economic development”. Hence, if Ethiopia’s military rulers squander the country’s resources to pursue their war of aggression in Eritrea, incurring impoverishment and suffering to the Ethiopian and Eritrean peoples, the blamed should nonetheless rest on the Eritrea people and the EPLF for not succumbing to their onslaught. The book is replete with other provocative falsifications of facts and numerous apologies for the Dergue’s crimes in Eritrea. For him, the Dergue’s regime has been seeking peace while the EPLF’s peace calls a re “spurious” aimed at “averting offensives”. He quotes the Ethiopian foreign minister as saying in June 1987, ‘we want to solve the problem peacefully. We do not believe that the military solution will bring the permanent solution to the problem”. The author tell us that “ this was an accurate statement of the PMAC’s intent”, conveniently forgetting that only a month earlier, the regime had resolved to carry-out, with full force, “the military and only solution to the Eritrean problem” in a 12 seminar it orchestrated in Addis Ababa. But this spineless apologist of Ethiopian colonialism does not know limits to his defense of aggression. He justifies the Dergue’s refusal to agree to a temporary cease-fire to facilitate the distribution of famine relief. First questioning the sincerity of the EPLF’s “dubious proposal” that was ‘forwarded to put the PMAC on the spot”. But he finds Mengistu’s response in which he says “we will never negotiate with terrorists” as plausible. His reasoning; “…It appears the Ethiopian government would not have accepted the cease-fire even if the offer of the EPLF and TPLF were genuine. The government was concerned that agreement to a cease-fire would be tantamount to giving the EPLF and TPLF a status qualitatively higher than that associated with “bandits” or ‘mercenaries” or “terrorists” In short, the book is a deliberate work of disinformation full of a litany of lies and fabrications. The author portrays a non-existent reality and recklessly plays with the cause of a people and their immense suffering. He accused every and all observers-not to mention those in the forefront of the struggle who are shedding their precious blood to assert the dignity of the people –as paid agents. The liberty he takes to slander the integrity of so many perhaps betrays one truth: that he is a mercenary paid to put the disinformation in Print.