Comforting The Masses With Baseless Propaganda

Two days after the widespread publication of the defection of general Kemal Gelch to Eritrea, many internet sites have been fed with a propaganda claiming the death and capture of dozens of ONLF fighters and high ranking officials. As if the timing of this report of ONLF casualties was not suspect enough, there is little evidence provided of when and where the fighting took place. The report strategically portrays Eritrea as the culprit who is training and arming those who oppose the dictatorial regime in Addis Ababa. This is a classic example of a dictatorial regime wanting to blame all that ills itself to an outsider in order to sway public opinion and deflect attention away from the mass defections of both soldiers and high-ranking Ethiopian generals. In the baseless piece purported as news from the ‘frontlines’, the confessions of non-existent ONLF captives are trumped up as the all-conclusive evidence. This reporting is nothing more than a haphazard attempt to flood news and Blogging sites with baseless information of the casualties of a battle that took place only in the hallucinating minds of the autocracy in Addis Ababa.One does not need to be conversant with Ethiopia and Ogaden to figure out that the piece purported as news is a baseless propaganda. In Ethiopia, security is a federal matter yet it is strange that the federal ministry of misinformation is not leading this propaganda effort. In Ogaden, a place that is a war zone, only the military speaks about any matter supreme of which is security and operations against ONLF. In such a system why is the so-called Deputy Head of Security and Justice Coordination Bureau in the Somali regional State speaking as the authority in this matter? This just shows that the regime in Addis Ababa calculated the best way to drown out the talk of the defection of General Kemal Gelch to Eritrea and the major military losses it incurred in Ogaden against ONLF is to flood the information superhighway known as the World Wide Web with baseless propaganda. The ferocity of efforts dispensed in spreading this propaganda shows the impact that the mass defections of both soldiers and high-ranking officials to Eritrea have had on the psyche of the Ethiopian military and the head of the regime in Addis Ababa. It appears the regime is resigned to its faith of losing more soldiers through mass defections hence the need to comfort the masses with this baseless propaganda for the time being.
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Ogaden Online Editorial