May of 2000 was an eventful and paradoxical month-the period when the Ethio-Eritrean conflict reached both its climax and lowest point. It was a month that saw the realization of the objectives of the Ethiopian government and the deflation of the Eritrean national ego. It was the month of regeneration of national pride and celebration for Ethiopians all over the world. But there is one great exception, to the celebrating Ethiopians, which lives on in the memories and consciences of other Ethiopians: our people's displacement and herding to concentration camps on EPLF's charges that they possessed Ethiopian genetic make up.

It was also the month in which the Ethiopian leadership was seen in a new limelight by international and national observers. Unfortunately, the EPRDF, which is the ruling party of Ethiopia and the gallant men and women of the Ethiopian Defense Forces are not going to get their due respect and credit for their accomplishments from the cynical anti-EPRDF and the vocal know-it-all political extremists. This will bring the turbulent reality of Ethiopian politics again crashing down on Ethiopians in Diaspora in its midst.

The anti-EPRDF forces reasoned that if the EPRDF were allowed to exploit their victory over Eritrea to dig deep political roots, the opposition's shaky foundation would crack beyond any repairs. The opposition's first strategy therefore is better determined to discredit and defame the head of the EPRDF and the Ethiopian government, Prime Minister Meles, at any cost. No matter what he did, Meles must not be allowed to gain any credit for his leadership during the conflict with Eritrea. Psychologically, the extremists must attack, attack, and then attack him again. But there are risks in the perpetual attack-it becomes increasingly extreme, shrill, and finally, boring. Second, the old rallying issue of the question of Eritrean independence has to assume a new facelift and rally around the question of Assab. Besides the appeal of Assab to most Ethiopians as a natural outlet to the sea, once the war started they became ensnared in its logic. If it was logic, it was that of the alcoholic: one more piece of land couldn't hurt, given all the Eritrean lands have gone down under the Ethiopian defense forces already.

All this is preparatory to an appraisal of the true worth of Dagmawi's recent commentary titled *Renewal ofthe EPLF-TPLF: What Prosepects?* (July 15,2000). Since the inner life of Dagmawi is not our concern here, biographical facts can be kept to the minimum. Dagmawi made a name for himself as a pioneer in his web site management with competence, but his convictions of political impartiality were not sharpened by his symbolic position among cyberspace audiences.

One can only guess when Dagmawi's view began to change. Perhaps during the proposal of *Technical Arrangement* in Algiers, for it was then that he believed in accepting the arrangements for securing the national interest of Ethiopia, divergent from and irreconcilable with the ones that had been proposed by most Ethiopians. However that may be, one suspects that he mainly propelled himself into a change of opinion as the outcome of the Ethio-Eritrean conflict was emerging in favor of Ethiopia. He never ceased to believe that *The TPLF and EPLF are natural allies.* Having arrived at this clumsy departure or destination point, he never looked back until he reached the conclusion that *No matter what happens, the TPLF will always be closer to the Tigrean-dominating EPLF than to any Ethiopian opposition party. Similarly, the EPLF will always be closer to the TPLF than to the Eritrean opposition.*

Was the alliance of TPLF and EPLF in the past by itself a sufficient cause for Dagmawi's sweeping and shallow conclusion? Even if it was a factor in its own right, one of those political ideas floating in historical space which some extremists love to toy with before the Ethio-Eritrean conflict, even if it could be proved that its influence was as pervasive as Dagmawi suggests, it still would not by itself be a sufficient cause for alarming the Ethiopian people, not to mention angering the people of Tigray. There are many factors, which would have to be included in any overarching framework of explanation, which are barely touched by Dagmawi before his insignificant conclusions.

All this was quite soothing and flattering, to the political extremists who would like to see the demise of TPLF from Ethiopian politics, and did much to compensate for one's inability to read the history of TPLF from serious researchers, such as professor John Young. Professor Young explains the *marriage of necessity* between EPLF and TPLF as follows: *By defining its relationship with the EPLF as tactical, the TPLF was making it clear that the only thing it had in common with the Eritrean movement was a shared commitment to overthrowing the Derg. The movements thus did not have similar positions on political or ideological concerns, and this cast the long-term viability of their alliance in doubt (emphasis mine).

Moreover, by claiming that their relationship was only tactical, the TPLF called into question the legitimacy of the EPLF's relationship with the Eritrean masses. That is, if the EPLF's relationship with the Eritrean masses was not 'democratic' as the TPLF understood the term, it had the right to enter into tactical alliances with other movements, even if those movements opposed the EPLF.* (Peasant revolution in Ethiopia, Cambridge University press, 1997. Page 156)

When some of the extremists' old bulwarks are proved to be untenable by new masses of facts concerning either *Tigrean nationalism* or the future formation of an independent Tigray, they retreated to new standing ground of speculative hypothesis and ingenious conjecture. This made a well-calculated appeal to the average reader who is little interested to be told that TPLF was not and will not be standing for national interest of Ethiopia.

The other points of Dagmawi's commentary seem to rest on equally flimsy hypothetical assumptions. The charge that Meles was overtly loyal to the Eritrean interest rather than to the Ethiopian interest flies in the face of the facts. Such kind of nail-biting analysis is an insult to all Ethiopians, even worst to the people of Tigray (as Meles is their representative) whose pillars of pride and patriotism revolve around the history of Ethiopia as a whole.

Clearly then Dagmawi adopted the extreme position of certain political elements who push ideas to their logical limits. But my grave reservation concerning Dagmawi's hypothesis are twofold. First, I am deeply suspicious of any ethnic-causal explanations of events as no doubt he is, but I think that he here places far too much of the burden of explanation on the overloaded shoulders of TPLF and *Tigrean nationalism.* His concept of *Tigrean nationalism* itself needs explanation, and that explanation must be political, social, and institutional as well as intellectual.

Furthermore, the spread of *Tigrean nationalism* as opposed to *Ethiopian* and *Eritrean* among the Tigrean people and the consequences of it hypothesized by Dagmawi (the future alliance of Eritreans and Ethiopian of Tigrean origin) have still to be proved. Otherwise, his use of the word *Tigrean nationalism* had an ethnic charge of the ethnic brigade ring to it and I think his analysis is an insignificant heresy of partisan wishful thinking.