African American photojournalist Jemal Countess reveals TPLF rebels had previously looted all medicine & health equipments from Amhara region and sent them to Tigray; after he visited every area between Mersa and Kombolcha city. The journo, who works for Getty Images, said “all looted medicines and equipment was shipped to Tigray” in every town along the over 100 kilometers of A2 corridor in northern Ethiopia. His damning first-hand accounts are striking as top TPLF leaders like Dr Tedros Adhanom and notorious Western TPLF surrogates including Martin Plaut, Kjetil Tronvol and Alex Dewal claimed Tigray had no medicine and aid for nearly a year.
Current WHO director Dr. Tedros Adhanom was the executive leader of the US-backed TPLF junta for decades as the group was accused of some of the most gruesome atrocities in the African continent. According to Ethiopian officials, and several non-Ethiopian UN whistleblowers & UN insiders, Dr Tedros currently manages the diplomatic, media and foreign relations of the TPLF rebels since they triggered an insurrection in November 2020. One of his first diplomatic assignments was to put blame only on one side, and portray his TPLF warlords & the Tigrayan insurrectionists as victims in the eyes of Western media & diplomatic community.
The famous African-American journalist Mr. Countess however reported that the Tigrayan rebels had also robbed some medical facilities and food in Afar region as well as from several major warehouses of food stockpile previously utilized by local & international aid organizations. Most of the looted material was transported to Tigray by TPLF using stolen UN aid trucks that previously delivered aid to Tigray at the middle of 2021. WFP spokeswomen Gemma Snowdon was the first western official to acknowledge hundreds of UN trucks were lost in Tigray as the TPLF repurposed the trucks to transport tens of thousands of fighters south into Amhara, and then transport medicine & aid north out of the Amhara region.
On top of the massive medicine & aid stockpiles stolen by TPLF, and the slow but reoccurring aid deliveries by land thru the Afar corridor; Tigray was reportedly receiving massive medicine supplies from another third route: the air bridge of aid shipments by EU & UN agencies flying directly from Addis Ababa to Mekelle.
Last week, famous Tigrayan journalist Hermela Aregawi asked where did all this medical and aid supplies to Tigray disappear and blamed the TPLF elites for the suffering of non-combatant Tigrayans. Other critics said most of the medicine & food aid has been diverted to feed and treat TPLF fighters, who at some point in 2021 reportedly numbered over 750,000 soldiers. The logistics, food and material needs to sustain such a massive fighting force and prolong the war have been the priority of the TPLF elite; particularly the Tigrayan supremacist faction who believe the war must ultimately cross into Eritrea borders to implement their historic “Greater Tigray” manifesto.
As the insurrection began, Reuters reported the TPLF had around 250,000 trained militia and Tigrayan soldiers, the largest force in the whole country. That number nearly quadrupled as the war continued and after TPLF chairman Debretsion Gebremichael called for “people’s war, including children” to participate in the insurrection.
Caught in the middle of this TPLF insurrection and their Amhara & Afar victims have been the nearly a million malnourished innocent Tigrayans who have been aid-dependent for decades. As TPLF elites like Dr Tedros and their supporters dominated Ethiopia for a quarter of century (securing prominent jobs abroad and building multibillion dollar companies like EFFORT at home), around a million innocent and poor Tigrayans relied on food aid to survive every day. Analysts say Dr. Tedros and other TPLF leaders are now expected to use these innocent Tigrayans as a hostage and for political leverage.
Jemal Countess in northern Ethiopia
The African-American photojournalist Jemal Countess was one of the first Western journalists to document the first major atrocity of the war on civilians, when TPLF fighters massacred over a thousand Welkait Amharas in 2020 at the town of Maikadra.
He later provided firsthand evidence that some of the Tigrayan killers escaped Ethiopia and fled to Sudan as refugees. CNN’s Nima Elgibar, in coordination with TPLF’s advocacy media group TMH, later quoted these TPLF fighters-turned-refugees who portrayed themselves as victims and started the now controversial narrative of “Tigray Genocide” in Western media. After the Ethiopian government declared ceasefire in 2021, the TPLF continued the war and Countess remained on the ground reporting on the mass displacement of millions of Amhara and Afar civilians.
