Jeff Pearce
Let’s start with first principles. As it happens, there’s a clip going around on X of Israeli model and confirmed featherbrain Sarai Givati telling someone it’s okay to murder Palestinian kids: “…This child, if we don’t act, will grow up to be a terrorist.”
Those who know their history were quick to point out this is exactly the rationale that Heinrich Himmler used in a couple of speeches, even in phrasing that is creepily similar: “For I did not consider myself justified in exterminating the men—in other words, killing them or having them killed—and then allowing their children to grow up to wreak vengeance on our children and grandchildren.”
Why am I talking about Palestine and Israel and Nazis in a column about Fano? Let’s say it has to do with first principles.
Okay, so let’s agree that right up there on the list of first principles is not murdering children. Reasonable, yes? A corollary of that is not using kids as cannon fodder. Or using people as human shields. Or denying families food and aid unless they hand over one of their kids to be cannon fodder.
All of these things the Tigray People’s Liberation Front did. There are witnesses. There’s proof—lots of it. Unless you are very late to this party, you know all this, and if you don’t, you can read about it in my book, The Hyena War or check out this article by Professor Ann Fitz-Gerald.
I have lost track of how many incidents of ethnic cleansing the Oromo Liberation Army has committed. Before the TPLF war. During it. After it.
Fano is—was—always supposed to be different. Yes, it was a guerrilla militia army designed to protect Amhara, but not only Amhara. It had ideals. It believed in the dream of an Ethiopia at its best. Many, myself included, publicly supported Fano because it put its muscle where its mouth is. When it captured federal soldiers, it treated them well, winning many of these scared, hungry young men over, convincing them to desert their units and join the struggle against the Mad King.
But today, the so-called Amhara Fano National Movement has decided to take things in a disastrously wrong direction. An alliance with the two biggest butchers in recent Ethiopian history.
It was announced in a painfully amateurish video by the AFNM’s chairman Zemene Kassie. Now I have bashed multiple diaspora groups for not having a clue about how to do PR, but I’m telling you, Ugh, I can only slap my forehead over Zemene making the most of this auspicious moment by sporting an Adidas baseball cap and reading off a page as he’s flanked by office plants. Does no one know how to do this stuff? Good. Gawd.
But hopelessly awful presentation aside, the real question for these guys is: what the hell are you doing?!!!
This must be a bad joke. A tasteless one. A horrific one. This coalition—which even has a name that smacks of desperation, the Ethiopian Popular Forces Alliance for Survival—claims that “as popular forces concerned with the survival of the peoples of Ethiopia, we have been entrusted with the historic responsibility of overthrowing this regime, safeguarding the survival of all nations, nationalities, and peoples, and opening a new chapter.”
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Maybe like me, you’d like to know who entrusted them.
I would like to know what their top officers will say if they ever meet the survivors of the TPLF’s Mai Kadra Massacre.
I very much want to know what possible consolation they can offer the woman who lost her husband, the people attacked and nearly murdered by Samri, the friends and family of those buried in that mass grave I visited with other reporters. I would be veryinterested to see that moment when they tell the residents in person, “Oh, yeah, we’re working with the group that killed your family members.”
Then there’s the OLA. How long is the virtual river of blood that it created? How many Tears of Wollegahave fallen?
Please explain how this is a “popular force” that’s “concerned with the survival of the peoples of Ethiopia.”
I am sure there will be a velvety, pithy, purring explanation that no, no, no, you silly white man, you don’t understand what’s happening at all! This isn’t the same TPLF! This isn’t the same OLA! After in fighting and factional discord, there are new players or reformed players or players who have come to Jesus and seen the light. These are different organizations, and they’re worthy of being sensible, responsible collaborators in the noble fight.
Sure. Pull the other one. They’re all better now. They’re different. Uh-huh. And Alternative für Deutschland in Germany isn’t a bunch of Nazis.
See, that’s the lesson from hanging around with Nazis. Don’t hang around with Nazis. And if you hang around with people who still have the old Nazis’ branding, you don’t lift them up and reform them, they pull you down.
Plus, if you would never have considered an alliance with their type in 2022 or even 2024, why in hell would you compromise decency and ethics and get into bed with them now?
And what does that say about you that you claim you need them now?
I think it suggests a big honking billboard that reads: WE CAN’T WIN. WE’LL TRY ANYTHING.
Well, then, if you’re willing to do that, what other principles are you ready to break?
First principles? Will Fano units shove skinny kids ahead of their soldiers to take the first shots? Will Fano units extort food from families? If they do, they’re not really Fano anymore. Are they?
The release heralding this coalition is making the rounds, some celebrating it, and at least one person I know and respect deeply has given their endorsement, arguing in so many words that whatever Fano wants to try, it’s a “means to an end.” Support whatever side Fano is on.
Sorry, no. Hell, no. This corrupt, vile coalition, this nightmare wrapped in stale injera, is so terribly wrong and can only lead to more anguish, more heartbreak. Because if you abandon your humanity and first principles then all that will change at Arat Kilo will be the name tags.
Yes, I’ve heard the chatter and rumors, the logic of the armchair generals. “Hey, TPLF still has the heavy weaponry so if we can get our hands on that…” Or the supposedly more devious logic of “Use the bastards. Use ‘em. Let them take the hits, and then dump their asses…”
Who’s kidding who here? You think the tanks will be loaned out like library books? You think the Junta can’t anticipate that one of its partners may screw them over? Bur worse, the rationale behind these lines of thinking is vicious and cynical. Just as this coalition is ultimately a cruel display of cynicism. We can’t win, so we’ll try anything.
And does no one who made this devil’s bargain have any recollection that this is exactly the kind of thing that bought Ethiopia close to thirty years of misery in 1991? The Derg? Mengistu? Any bells ringing?
Right. This time it’ll be different. Angels will weep with joy, there’ll be monsoon season in Afar, and Donald Trump will read a copy of Long Walk to Freedom in public.
First principles. Always.
Fano’s first allegiance should be to the Ethiopian people.
And it’s an appalling breach of faith with the people to tell them that their past suffering—all the massacres, all the empty days and nights spent in IDP camps, all the bones dug up from mass graves—all of this doesn’t matter because look, kids, we have the numbers to win now! They should forget?
Only they can’t. And they are bound to wonder if the butchers of Mai Kadra will be among those who will be piled into the vehicles during the victory procession in Addis, raising their rifles high, grinning and shouting in triumph. What disgusting amnesty has been promised for these monsters?
Do you have any clue how much filth you’ve sullied the name of Fano with in this shameless pursuit of power? Because that’s all it is once you’ve abandoned your ideals: a pursuit of power.
You’re telling Ethiopians that to stop Abiy and his relentless ethnic cleansing you’ll work with those who have committed ethnic cleansing, and oh, by the way, you guys have to all forget about their ethnic cleansing.
Let’s hope this coalition isn’t real. Or if it is real, that it’s short-lived. Otherwise, Ethiopians must make the tragic walk to another funeral—this time for an ideal.
