Meles of Ethiopia emboldened by the fall of Mubarake and Gadafi who he considers as main backers of Eritrean regime, is "planing" to "surgically attack" Eritrea to cause a regime change in that nation. Meles told his military comanders that it is now or never! His rational is that America will support Ethiopia in "enforcing" sanctions imposed on Eritrea and that will render Eritrean defence capacity ineffective and eventually Ethiopian defence forces will achieve their objectives in hamering the "octopus' head". In responce to Meles' rethoric and other visible military movements along the border, Eritrea's defence forces are strenghtening the positions and also ordering all units who were working on varios developmental activities to report to their divisions.
Also on the diplomatic front, Eritrea;s defense minister is alerting allies on Ethiopia's intentions. Eritrea's defence minister message to Emir of Qatar is part and parcel of Eritrea's preparedness to face the recent threat from all directions.
Regional dimplomats are also hinting that Eritrea has been assured by the recently installed Egypt's Militray Council that the existing security arrangement with Eritrea remains in place and soon the council will send a deligation to Eritrea to put to rest any ambiguity on Eritrea's side. It has been reported publicly that Egyptian inteligence officers are agitated by Meles' activities on Nile that are designed to take advantage of the recent political upheval in their country. It seems Eritrea is still considered by Egyptian intelligence as their only hope to keep Meles in check from going highwire with his threat of bulding dams after dams to endenger Egypt's survival. The Nile issue for Egypt is a matter of survival not politics...
Political insiders in the region think Meles' approach is such a simplified approach and it fails to examine his own internal coherance and effectivenes in facing Eritrea's well oiled military machine. Others also catagorized Meles' recent rethoric as saber rattling designed to appease TPLF hardlines who are getting fed up by the continued strength of the Tigrayan Democratic Movement which is becoming nuesnace to the regime's homebase -Tigray.
The insiders also think Eritrea, for the last a year and so, has been amasing wepons of all kinds- thanks to the support of Mubarek , gadafi and Imir of qatar. So if Ethiopia started a war now, Eritrea could easly face Ethiopia without any shortage of weapon supply for a year and historically Eritrea's military takes into account arrmamanets that will be captured in future wars in their logistics decision making.
It seems if Meles decides to act on his promises of an immidiate action on Eritrea- he will have to also deal the unceratin future of Somalian Alsheba's , the thorn in his throat -the ogadenia issue and other mushrooming Ethiopian armed opposition forces. And, the hypothesis that he could "surgically remove Issaise" with a minimal cost seems to be very simplistic and far-fetched appraoch and he should know that if he ventures into a war with Eritrea to cause a regime change , then he has to commit himslef to a full blown war and repeat Mengistu's maxim "hulum neger wede tor ginbar" with uncertain outcome!
The recent response of Eritrea's ministry of information to Meles' offer of an olive branch to solve the border issue shows how the two protagonists views are dimetricaly opposite to eachother. The minister thinks that Meles is a spent force in Ethiopia's political landscape. So the next war is going to be a war for existence for both sides!!
My personal take in this issue is that Meles' tireless efforts in the last 20 years to win the hearts and minds of Ethiopians has failed on terribly...Meles' popularity- now let alone in "mehal ager" even in his home base Tigray is nose diving. Who would have thought that the main armed group(TPDM) that would wage an effective war against Meles' regime would emanate from Tigray? If Meles acted on his promise to attatck Eritrea, he will be in bad shape to even deal with his internal issues let alone solve the Eritrean one.
For all intensive purposes, Meles is considered as alien leader within his own country...he claimes to have won with land sliding victory -99.6% and at the same time deny his own people- who supposedly came in droves to vote for him -to stage peacefull demonstration and also implement a bizzare "terrorism" law that arrests people for even having a mental excersise of cuaisng any harm to his regime! These all actions show Meles is in deep state of panic and any action that emanates from such state of mind would only exacerbate the situation at hand. I think Meles is seening the light at the end of the tunnel which is the light of an oncoming train that will run over his regime!
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