Western Diplomats’ Selfie With A TPLF Terrorist Leader Was A Soft Power Flop

It’s now impossible for those two figures to ever make even a semi-credible pretense of caring about human rights after showing that a sincere commitment to this concept isn’t as important as their governments’ strategic interests in the TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror on Ethiopia that they’ve been waging for almost the past two years.

The American and European Special Envoys to the Horn of Africa recently traveled to the Tigray Region’s capital of Mekelle while visiting Ethiopia, during which time they took selfies with TPLF terrorist leader Debretsion Gebremichael after meeting with him for talks. They seemingly thought that this would be a soft power coup that’ll show their Western constituents that they “stand with Tigray” in its separatist-terrorist campaign against the federal government, but all that it did was expose them as hypocrites when it comes to their human rights rhetoric.

Gebremichael’s fighters are responsible for slaughtering thousands of innocent Ethiopian civilians throughout the course of their nearly two-year-long Western-backed TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror that’s been waged since November 2020 as punishment for their civilization-state’s principled neutrality in the New Cold War. Furthermore, the TPLF also holds Tigrayans as de facto hostages in an attempt to receive more foreign arms under the cover of UN aid shipments. The group’s refusal to unilaterally disarm and demobilize is the reason why the conflict hasn’t yet ended.

The Western envoys’ enthusiastic endorsement of Gebremichael might have played well among their intended audience but it was a soft power flop when it came to the rest of the world and especially Ethiopians. Their civilization’s human rights hypocrisy was on full display and it became clear that their governments supported the TPLF all along despite previously claiming to have supposedly been “neutral” towards the conflict. If those envoys were bonafide humanitarians like they presented themselves as, then they’d have never met with Gebremichael, let alone taken selfies with him.

Foreign meddling in Ethiopia’s internal affairs isn’t new, but the latest manifestation thereof has been extremely deadly for its people since it began in earnest in November 2020 as was earlier explained. By letting those envoys visit Mekelle to meet with one of the TPLF’s terrorist leaders, the federal government cleverly gave them the narrative rope to hang themselves and destroy their governments’ reputations once and for all. Ethiopians now know without an inkling of doubt where the US and the EU stand when it comes to their civilization-state’s existential anti-terrorist struggle.

Observers across the Global South can also now arrive at the same conclusion after seeing how happy Western envoys are to meet with separatist-terrorist leaders, not that any of this was unexpected for the overwhelmingly vast majority of them. Nevertheless, that selfie will go down in infamy as undeniable proof that Western diplomats literally take joy in meeting with war criminals, who they shockingly treat as celebrities. No amount of positive engagement on social media from their targeted Western audience can compensate for the self-inflicted damage they just did to their own states.

This speaks to just how short-sighted the strategic intentions behind their trip to Tigray was. Those envoys thought they’d score some political points at home through their selfie that they hoped would be virally shared across their countries’ Mainstream Media (MSM) in order to remind everyone that their governments “stand with Tigray”. While that outcome did indeed occur, another much more impactful one also happened, namely that they exposed their governments’ double-faced policy since there’s no legal or moral equivalence between the Ethiopian government and TPLF terrorist leaders.

Western diplomats’ ignorance of how their infamous selfie would be interpreted by Ethiopians and other people across the Global South also shows that this civilization truly doesn’t understand non-Western ones. Rather, they arrogantly project their own people’s mindsets onto others, falsely expecting everyone else to react the same way as they would. This observation further reinforces the point that Western diplomats operate based on a self-assumed sense of so-called “exceptionalism” that’s counterproductive to their side’s soft power cause.

The final words to be said about this scandalous incident is that it truly never should have happened. Western envoys should have known better than to so enthusiastically embrace a foreign terrorist leader whose government has accused him and his group of war crimes. It’s now impossible for those two figures to ever make even a semi-credible pretense of caring about human rights after showing that a sincere commitment to this concept isn’t as important as their governments’ strategic interests in the TPLF-driven Hybrid War of Terror on Ethiopia that they’ve been waging for almost the past two years.