u/Electrical_Study_341

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The page on the contributor from ACLED's website

The two following posts provide context and more trusted means of gathering info:

The U.S, U.K and France all gave one sided statements fully in favor of Abiy while putting all the blame on the TPLF. The neoliberal West were never impartial when it comes to the UAE backed neoliberal government of Ethiopia. It's long past time every Tigrayan realized this and acted accordingly.

Don't treat foreign media as impartial anymore if you have been doing so up until this point. Make sure to compare anything they release with more trustworthy sources like Addis Standard.

Underneath is a list of some of the most obvious signs:

• Pushing for religious division (E.g. Trying to incite hatred, Blaming specific religious demographics, insinuating that some were less affected by others for nefarious reasons, etc.)
• Pushing for division along Awraja (They tried this with multiple angles from claiming some areas aren't actually Tigrayan to singling out and villanizing areas like Adwa, etc.)
• Aligning with the Abiy regime and those under it like Simret/ the TPF as well as claiming that the TPLF and Abiy's regime are equally responsible for the current situation and of equal moral standing
• Claiming the TPLF have been a problem for 50 years so including the entire Second Woyane period as well
• Attacking Tigrayan nationalism and favoring pseudo-ethiopianism as well as making baseless claims in order to assist this
• Denying or undermining the genocide especially the part that Abiy played in order to make him seem like a lesser evil
• Ignoring or undermining the central role that Abiy's played in the failure of Pretoria especially the return of Western Tigray

On brigading specifically, it's probably noticeable to many of you that all of a sudden common Tigrayan talking points are being immediately downvoted while Abiy regime talking points are upvoted and there's a flood of posts and trolls that have been coming and going breaking the rules until they're banned, etc.

Abiy hasn't hidden the fact that he has an online PP disinformation troll army and they're clearly here on Reddit too even if they're mostly on Twitter. Given the rules of this subreddit and their consistent enforcement, many of these are cleared away but now that war has been renewed more of them are active now so please report any comment or post that breaks the rules of this subreddit as well as any suspicious activity so they can be monitored.

After having spoken to family living in Mekelle on different sides of the city, I'm getting mixed reports. One of them said that the TPF were the ones primarily in control while the other said that the ENDF were present in some areas especially the outskirts. There's also a strong atmosphere of fear especially among the youth because they're getting harassed and accused of being members of the TDF, etc.

Time will tell whether this occupation of Mekelle and the rest of the towns and cities they go on to occupy will be as brutal as before but there's a small and hopeful chance they'll avoid this as they seem to be a little more aware that committing atrocities against Tigray's civilians only fuels support for the resistance. However given they were carpet bombing civilians areas and attacking humanitarian trucks right before Tigray responded, they may still be as stupid and genocidal as before.

To keep up to date and for research into the background of these events check the resources on the wiki page on r/Tigray. 

Source for the full video (1)

To supplement this, you can read through the following books as they provide a lot of crucial information when it comes to the oppression that was endured by many under the yolk of the Amhara elites and the Pseudo-Ethiopianists that followed them from the year 1889 to 1991:

Understanding Ethiopia's Tigray War by Martin Plaut and Sarah Vaughan. (Free sample) (The official reviews)

The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat by Ryszard Kapuscinski. (Free Sample) (An excerpt)

Sweeter than honey: Testimonies of Tigrayan women by Jenny Hammond. (A review)

The campaign of Shewa in Tigray by Fisseha Abiye Ezgi. Here's an excerpt (1)

More relevant books and other resources can be found here.

This is an excellent article and there are only three minor issues to keep in mind.

The first is that Axum (the city) is written about as if it was without a doubt the capital at the time while not mentioning that scholars that specialized in Axum, like Stuart Munro Hay, believe that Axum was likely abandoned as the capital by the time of the First Hijrah. The second is that there's a minor bias from the author when it comes to the belief that the King of the time had converted to Islam and the arguments against that but he does however still include those arguments in his article just not in the most neutral way. The third issue is that "Habesha or Al-Habash" is translated as "Ethiopian" in English while the use of that term internally only came much later in the 13th century after the fall of Axum and at an even later date for foreign powers to use that term in reference to both Axum and the two powers that succeeded it.

I recommend that this be read alongside the following two books:

Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity by Stuart Munro Hay. This is arguably the premier book when it comes to the Axum Kingdom.

Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402 by Adam Simmons. This book has an excellent section on the history of how the term Ethiopia was used that crosses over Axumite, Sudanese, Greek, "Ethiopian", etc. history (Free sample).

In spite of the downhill situation back home, it's important that we as a community do our best to keep up hope and importantly look after ourselves for both our own sake and the sake of our people.

I hope that we as a diaspora can overcome the fractures that have risen and do much more to organize effectively throughout this year because our people will definitely need it.

God bless you all.

For more on the role that Eugene Puryear played in the genocide you should read this:

How and Why the US Left Betrayed Tigray: US organizations like PSL and Black Alliance for Peace cannot be trusted to advocate for Palestine’s liberation after they condemned nearly a million Tigrayans to genocide.

The book I'm currently reading which led me to find this article is Nubia, Ethiopia, and the Crusading World, 1095-1402 by Adam Simmons. Here's a sample. It's been excellent so far and once I'm done I'll post a review here.

This is part of his Tigray Funk album, an underrated gem that I recommend everyone listen to especially if you enjoy rap or storytelling through rap. I preferred listening to many of the other songs in the album but I like this one for its lyrics.