However, the people live in a quite different world. No foreign media takes the burden of asking, for instance, how the Ethiopian people feel about Meles Zenawi, 14 years in power, and yet setting the stage for five more years. Would Meles betray the Ethiopian people as he strikingly did in the 1998-2000 war with Eritrea, or has been baptized with Ethiopian holy waters, and would, in the case of Eritrea's flare-up of nerves for violence, fight against Eritrea?

Let's be honest. If the Ethiopian people had the freedom and power, they would not consider the threat of the Eritrean regime more pressing than the threat and ill-will embedded in the heart of Meles Zenawi. Because the people know they can confidently thwart an Eritrean aggression with ease. What became cynical to Ethiopia is when masked Eritrean agents succeeded in building a rebel organization in northern Ethiopia, specifically in Tigrai, under the name of Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), and used it as an Eritrean attack force in an Ethiopian clothing. Small wonder when many political observers refer to TPLF as an Eritrean Trojan horse.

Under the guise of a TPLF leader, the Ethiopia-born Eritrean agent leaped from sabotaging key military offensives to passing key documents in favor of Eritrea at The Hague Boundary Commission, from nailing Ethiopia to an obsolete, punitive Italian colonial treaties to purging thousands of army commanders and soldiers even in the wake of Ethiopia's aborted lightning offensives into Eritrea, a valid evidence that Meles Zenawi remains the undisputed, and more cynical enemy to the country called Ethiopia.

We can't blame Meles Zenawi enough. It is also time to examine whether we the people are able to break out of the dilemma that fools us everyday when we read news reports that say Meles warns Eritrea of any armed conflict, or "Ethiopian Army kills two Eritrean soldiers" etc.

Such news reports are often crafted to frame the mind of the Ethiopian people to persuade themselves, "if Meles is an Eritrean agent, how come he is piling up troops along the border?" Such news fodders are a daily dose the regime injects into the political vein of the public.

No conflict with Eritrea would eclipse The mercenary role of one man in Ethiopia

Ethiopia, the country that is the second most populous and third largest nation in Africa, is not economically vying along the lines of South Africa or Egypt, or even neighboring Kenya. This should not surprise anyone given the record that Ethiopia was an independent nation whose emperors were resolving conflicts with European powers either by diplomatic means, and when the that failed, broke triumphantly through successive wars waged to counter colonial conquests at the end of the 19th century. Citing Emperor Menelik and The Victory of the Battle of Adua is suffice to mention.

But today, Ethiopia is much more reduced that it is almost the playmate of Eritrea, the former Ethiopian province where a brutal warlord long known for mass murders and political assassinations has held it as his own private estate, and turned it into a prison-state where its 300,000 able-bodied citizens have been herded for years as forced conscripts along the barren landscape bordering the Sudan desert.

The Eritrean tyrant is fully aware that under what conditions Ethiopia is in too. Eritrea wouldn't have dared to touch the northern tip of Ethiopia leave alone to pose as a perennial threat to the Ethiopian people. Under normal conditions in Ethiopia, that is if Ethiopia were under an Ethiopian government, Shaebia knows inhabitants of northern Ethiopia alone were capable of defending themselves, if not wiping out the colonial vestige in Asmara.

But Shaebia knows Ethiopia has fallen under an Eritrean agent, who fought against Ethiopians even during the last war. We would not go into details to prove Meles is an Eritrean mercenary. This man, who spent the 1990s bombarding out of existence the settlements of our Afar people whose only crime was they would not change their Ethiopianness into Eritrean to please the prime minister, remains the singlemost threat to Ethiopia's quest for freedom and peaceful existence as a sovereign nation.

Ethiopians are fully aware the theatrics being played out by Meles Zenawi. One recent dramatic act by Meles to pose as Ethiopian was his response to Egypt's determination to fully own the Nile waters and turn part of its Toshka Depression into a lush green environment. Egypt is already reaping the fruits of turning the desert into an agricultural wonderland. It started the Toshka Project in 1997, a time when Meles was busy defending Eritrean interests and fighting Ethiopians who claimed the Red Sea littoral of the Afar people is an undisputed Ethiopian territory. When Meles was trying to fool us that it is an age of globalization and borders would soon be meaningless, he was not ignorant of the public secret that nations would fight waters wars in the next 50 years. However, he was busy telling the Ethiopian people that Ethiopia would be better suited to development if it is established as a landlocked state. The Eritrean agent deliberately worked to corner Ethiopia into a dangerously vulnerable position,i.e. a state ringed by hostile nations such as Egypt, and its fancied surrogate, Eritrea.

He uttered words that somewhat sounded discomforting to Egypt. The point is Egyptians know who the man is: a loyal servant of Eritrea, which in turn is the sworn enemy of Ethiopia the Egyptians equipped with arms and ammunition in its war against Ethiopia. Meles also fought against Ethiopia during that war. If aborting a victory is not fighting Ethiopia, nothing would be. Therefore, what provoked Mr. Meles to speak out against Egypt? He knew the Egyptians had a strike force in place against any African nation that would dare to draw water from the Nile. But Mr. Meles, who now tells us that Egypt has an army trained for jungle warfare, was busy tearing down the Ethiopian Defense Forces re-built at enormous cost even as recent as the yester-year war with Eritrea. It is only the politically myopic, or clearly the hired footsoldier of Meles, who would fail to distinguish between a leader who reinforces a foreign threat like from Egypt or Eritrea by tearing down ones own army? This glaring truth alone dismisses Meles Zenawi's boisterous response to Egypt as "self-serving," and quite dangerous to the survival, and re-emergence of Ethiopia as an economically and politically viable nation. Despite his daily pronouncements over the media, that his government would use any force to stem the invasion of Ethiopia, Meles in real life has been busy masterminding in the diplomatic corridors of international organizations how some legal agreements could be forged swiftly, and Ethiopia would be disarmed hands down.

Now could Meles Zenawi be a born-again Ethiopian, or it is the usual camouflage to pose as an Ethiopian leader who would rise up even to the challenges Egypt? Leaving Egypt aside, Meles could not even live up to the threat from Asmara, an enclave struggling to survive on smuggled Ethiopian agricultural produces. It is tantamount to asking the impossible. Rather Meles is in the business of perpetuating Eritrea's hegemony, which he thinks would consolidate Eritrean sovereignty during its endless confrontations with Ethiopia. If any conflict breaks out, no doubt the drama-man Meles would pose as a leader of Ethiopia. And he has too as long as the reigns of government are firmly in his hand. He was posing as an "Ethiopian leader" during the war with Eritrea as well. But who dusted off Eritrea from the stains of an ignominous defeat to standing on the victor's podium with a shining diplomatic victory?

Likewise, we know who in the end would bear the brunt of war under Meles. If we cannot learn today and devise ways to put an end to 14 years of mercenary rule that to this day struggles to open up employment opportunities for Eritreans in Ethiopia while dumping a mass of Ethiopian workers into the world of destitution and deprivation, we are afraid to say we don't know when we shall open up our eyes, and come to terms with the reality in our Ethiopia.