
> The following is an article form of a story which I first shared as a
> twitter
> [thread](https://twitter.com/EliezerAbate/status/1484643064819826688?s=20).



![](/images/blog/a-secret-israeli-operation-out-of-tigray-61ed97d3333bc05afd7fb7f9_netan-bcad75cd.jpg)
*Former Israeli PMÂ Benjamin Netanyahu who authorized the operation.*

Here's a story that slipped under the radar, not receiving  much
coverage in the western press.

A few months ago, four war criminals wanted by the Ethiopian government
escaped out of Tigray in a secret Israeli airlift operation.

  
Early last November reports emerged in the Israeli Press that Ethiopian
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed [angrily phoned and complained to Israeli PM
Naftali Bennet about four war
criminals](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ethiopian-pm-said-to-complain-war-criminals-among-those-brought-to-israel/&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1642965154294583&usg=AOvVaw2x0kem722lurc-qushKUzM)
being among dozens of people the Israeli government evacuated out of
Tigray.  

  
Haaretz, which broke the news, described the evacuation as a ["daring
operation" which "endangered human lives and Israel's diplomatic
relations with
Ethiopia"](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-israel-secretly-brought-dozens-of-ethiopians-then-discovered-most-weren-t-jewish-1.10362179),
insinuating that Israel may have entered Tigray without the knowledge of
Ethiopian officials.  

  
Israel's Interior Minister, Ayelet Shaked, described the individuals as
["61
Tigres"](https://13tv.co.il/item/news/politics/politics/shaked-interview-1425810/)
in an interview following the news reports.

So, what are we to make of the PM's accusation that some war criminals
are among these "61 Tigres"?    

  
Hundreds of TPLF fighters and loyalists have been indicted on war crimes
charges including for the Mai Kadra massacre.

In Nov 2020, a TPLF youth off-shoot called Samri singled out Amhara
civilians and went on house-to-house raids massacring households with
axes and machetes.

  
The Ethiopian Attorney General's Office [identified 202 perpetrators of
Mai
Kadra](https://ethiopianembassy.org/a-summary-of-efforts-to-ensure-accountability-regarding-violations-of-international-humanitarian-law-and-other-legal-norms-in-the-regional-state-of-tigray-may-21-2021/)
last May and announced the arrest of 23 of them.

The office indicated the whereabouts of the rest remained unknown, with
most believed to have fled to Sudan.  

  
The PM's reaction suggests that the Ethiopian government was blindsided
by the operation.

What's strange about this operation is that it came at the request of
one man named Saraka Siom (Seyoum), described by Haaretz as "not a
well-known figure in Israel's Tigrayan community".

  
  
Israel's own Population Authority discovered in an investigation that
Seyoum brought his "ex-wife, two boys who claimed to be his sons" and
several others who "have worked in his businesses".  

The agency accuses the government of engaging in what it calls a
"conspiracy".

  
A senior Israeli official, on the other hand, said the Population
Authority's investigation was "conducted recklessly" and denies the
charges of conspiracy.  

The official insists Israel was acting on intelligence that  Ethiopian
Jews were in imminent danger in Tigray.

  
The Population Authority disputes this and asserts the individuals
“didn’t come from the conflict zone and their lives weren’t at risk at
all".

Yet Israeli gov officials insist "regardless of whether they can
truthfully claim Jewish ancestry ... the immigrants will remain here"

  
That this operation took place with the approval of the highest levels
of the Israeli government is remarkable.

Especially, when considered in the context of other contemporaneous
reports about [Israel's refusal to sell Ethiopia UAV
drones](https://www.debka.com/israeli-diplomatic-families-leave-as-rebels-advance-on-addis-iran-gives-ethiopia-exploding-drones/)
needed to halt the TPLF's advance.  

  
There's also a surprising claim in a story by DebkaFile, an Israeli
military intelligence site, that "Israel and the Tigrayans have engaged
in contacts in the past".

We're left wondering, is there an innocent explanation for why Israel
secretly evacuated 61 people from Tigray?

  
Over the past four decades, Israel has evacuated ~100K Ethiopian Jews
known as the Beta Israel and the Falash Mura.  

Today, the Beta Israel have all migrated out of Ethiopia while ~14K
Falash Mura remain in Addis, Gonder, and Tigray awaiting immigration to
Israel.

  
These members live in Jewish Agency compounds in Ethiopia which include
a synagogue, schools, and pre-immigration preparation.

2000 Falash Mura have left Ethiopia over the past year and just recently
an additional \$46 million was earmarked by Israel to bring 3000 more.



![](/images/blog/a-secret-israeli-operation-out-of-tigray-61ed97ba54d01c85cbfeb38f_jewis-33321d93.jpg)

*Entrance to Jewish Agency compound in Gonder.*

  
It's not clear why Israel didn't vet the Jewish identity of the 61
individuals while they were in Ethiopia rather than after they arrived
in Israel.

It also seems unlikely that Ethiopian officials vetted the group for any
indication of criminality.

An Israeli official asserts that PM Bennet "received the decision about
the immigration operation as done and dusted" from the outgoing PM
Netanyahu.

Regardless of who made the call, what's clear is that "61 Tigres" were
brought to Israel instead of Falash Mura Jews.  

Former Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu who authorized the
operation.

  

This story leaves us with more questions than answers and the identity
of the individuals remains a mystery.  

But, before looking into the outstanding questions, here's what we know
so far:

  
(1) Individuals on Ethiopia's most wanted list are part of a group
evacuated out of Tigray by the Israeli government.

$2$ Israel's own immigration agency accuses the Bennet admin of a
"conspiracy".

$3$ An individual named "Saraka Seyoum" engaged in massive immigration
fraud.  

How did Seyoum manage to get the ear of the Netanyahu admin?

Is he the informant who tipped them about the imminent danger of Jews in
Tigray?

What businesses does he have in Tigray?

Will Ethiopia verify his business dealings?

Will he be held accountable by Israel?

  
Does he exist or is he a front-man concealing a more nefarious reason?

For what it's worth, there are no public records for this individual.

A quick Google search returns just seven results all related to this
story of the evacuation.

  
Following the PM's phone call, The Times of Israel reported that Israel
has pledged to send back some individuals under the condition that it
would first have to verify that they're indeed war criminals.

It's possible the two sides may have resolved the issue behind the
scenes.

  
But it's hard to have confidence in Israel's attempts to verify these
charges after its failure to verify that "61 Tigres" are not Falash Mura
Jews.

So, we agree with the Population Authority's conclusion that "more
remains concealed than revealed" about this operation.

> On February 2 2022 an Israeli High Court has [halted the
> immigration](https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-high-court-halts-immigration-of-3-000-ethiopians-with-close-relatives-in-israel-1.10587089)
> of 3000 Falasha Jews due to a lawsuit from an Israeli organization
> that has challenged the process of immigration to Israel saying most
> individuals are on "unsupervised lists" and their Jewishness is not
> vetted until they arrive to Israel.


A Secret Israeli Operation out of Tigray


## Honorable Members of Parliament, 

I want to thank you for giving me another opportunity to answer some of
your questions. Your questions touch on our internal politics, peace and
security and I will make an attempt to elaborate on these matters.

### On the Law & Order Operation  

There are some that say war is necessary to bring peace; that war is
necessary to bring justice; that war is necessary to preserve
sovereignty. They provide all types of different rationales for why war
might sometimes be a good thing. War, however, whether in its planning
stages, in the height of battle, or in its aftermath doesn't benefit
anyone. If there is one thing it's useful for, its to demonstrate why
one should not start a war in the first place. Once a war has begun,
only death, looting, and destruction inevitably follow. At its very
spirit war is driven by hate, fear, and suspicion casting a very dark
shadow on a society.

If you recall, this is the very reason that I said to this parliament at
the turn of the new year, that the people of Tigray don't even deserve
to hear the sound of bullets. They've suffered enough. I said this to
the public, to this parliament, and even privately reached out
to leaders of the TPLF to no avail. Bullets are useless. Once they are
fired and war has started it’s only followed by destruction, looting,
rape, and propaganda. The best solution is not to enter war in the first
place. Once a war has begun, everyone’s attention turns to advancing on
the enemy territory and attacking their positions while the basic needs
of citizens get compromised.

Despite the TPLF's 27 year record of indiscriminate killing, looting,
and destruction, recall not too long ago I had stood before this very
parliament and pleaded with the Ethiopian public to forgive their sins
so that our country can collectively move forward and look to the
future. The Ethiopian people, to their credit, accepted and had let
bygones be bygones despite the blood that had been shed at the hands of
this group.  

  
I had spoken to TPLF key leaders, spokespeople, repeatedly. I had begged
them. Even when that was not successful I gathered 50 of the most
influential people in Addis Ababa and called them in secret to mediate
with the leaders of the TPLF. I said please convince these guys they are
headed to a mistake, they will not be able to win against Ethiopia. Not
just that, if they are interested in going to war, we had warned them
they will soundly be defeated. We are not fighting a small-scale militia
war and I told them that before the war.   

Everyone that returned always felt sorry for me. You can’t touch the
guys there, they can do whatever they want, and they look at the ones
here as impotent, they use to tell me to be careful. They used to say
maybe you should think twice about this. There was no one that thought
there could be danger coming from their side. One country’s ambassador
(I won’t mention his name), before the conflict went to Mekelle and
spoke with Debretsion to beg him to de-escalate the situation. To tell
him that this conflict is unnecessary. The answer he told him is don’t
worry about it, we don’t need more than two or three weeks, and we will
negotiate with them after we defeat them. 

Pride is a very dangerous thing. The saying pride comes before a fall is
absolutely true. This doesn’t just apply to TPLF, those of us who are
still politicians need to guard ourselves against pride. This principle
applies equally to everyone.  
  
TPLF’s preparations were all military shows, armaments, etc … When we
told them please rethink this, if we begged, they wouldn’t relent. They
bragged about their tales of war, as if it’s a good thing, saying this
is our cultural game, our drama. War cannot be a drama for anybody. For
anybody. All it does is take lives. Even for a single person who is
affected, many other families are affected due to their relationship
with him. It brings sorrow. It’s completely unnecessary.

That’s why I took pains to beg them even to the point where some of you
started murmuring that my government is appeasing them too much, when
are they going to take action and started criticizing. It was always
possible to take action, but I knew all that would happen is people
would die; destroy wealth; we know how much economic damage that we
incurred from this conflict. 

The biggest tragedy about TPLF’s desire to go to war is that for the
past 20 years, while TPLF was in power, 1.8 million people in Tigray
region were on the Safety Net program. And even from that program, they
would deduct some amounts. For example if there were 5 kilos allocated
they would give 4, if 3, they would give 2, but all in all its in the
Safety Net program. Then tack on to this the Coronavirus; then add the
locusts; then add to this that farmers didn’t harvest their goods; No
responsible person would start a war in these circumstances. Even if
there were deep grievances, they should have selected a better time.

  
The entire leadership was composed of preachers of war, confrontation
peddlers, war analysts, and wanted to enlarge the scope of the war to
include other parties. Not only that they started saying that if they
were touched the Horn of Africa would get destroyed. They believed this
and have convinced the international community as well. By the way the
Europeans and Americans actually believe this.  
  
Let me be clear, the only way the Horn of Africa will slide into chaos
is only after the people of Tigray get injured, the people of Amhara get
injured, the people of Oromo get injured. There will be no way that
others will get into chaos without you getting into chaos first. Do you
think everything stopped here?  
  
Many knowing what has reached us. The TPLF attacked 200 places at a time
on the Northern Command. It was a very organized campaign. We have
arrested more than 7000 perpetrators. When we first seized Mekelle, we
didn’t have 1000 in our hands. They were captured by the TPLF.  
  
Things didn’t stop here. Who started attacking the Amhara region. Who
hit the Amhara region and invited them? Who is the one that shot rockets
on Eritrea? 

People talk about infrastructure damage today. How do you justify
attacking Gonder & Bahir Dhar airport? We didn’t hit Axum or Mekelle
airport while we were fighting in Tigray. We only used rockets after
they went to the Mekelle desert even though we had it. They destroyed
the infrastructure.  
  
This is not it. Just in Mekelle, they released 10,000 prisoners. In the
entirety of Tigray 30,000 prisoners have been released. We don’t know
this number. They steal, their militia loots, some of our folks cause
damage. Even if the TPLF is the cause of all of this the people are
bearing the brunt of the suffering. 

The people living on 1.8 million safety net did not deserve this. The
force they had and their drunkenness on their power and blood brought
them more.  
  
We have three objectives in the law and order operation:

First, it’s to bring justice to the thousands of soldiers that the TPLF
massacred. We said we will bring them to justice. We didn’t kill them
just because they are captured.  
  
Second, we need to free all our prisoners which they released. 

Third, it’s to provide a stable interim administration.  
  
On the first objective we have captured a lot of fugitives. There are
people that try to tie this objective with the military operation. Note
that AfghanistanOn the second objective we have freed 100% of our
prisoners. We have buried the dead. We have reclaimed our
armaments. Third, we are stabilizing the Interim administration until
the elections. I want to note to this guys that there is not an Amhara
or Oromo that is part of this interim administration. The people of
Tigray have the right to administer themselves.  
  
Not just this, we tried all we could so that we couldn’t damage. Even
after we captured Axum Tsion Mariam was celebrated.  
  
There are problems that are coming when new provocations are coming
from.  
  
It’s important to look at the weapon war. If you look at the Iraq war
there were more than 60% civilian casualties. In Afghanistan there were
30% civilian casualties. The best solution for this is not to start a
conflict.  
  
TPLF sheltered religious stations, because it wanted.  
  
I want to be clear, to everybody, TPLF is like a dust that has been
scattered into the air. Even if we wanted to, we can’t regather them
into an entity.  
  
What needs to be done now. Even if they came back and wanted to be a
leader again who is going to believe them. Who is going to trust them
not just because their look is messed up.  
  
This reminds me of Colonel Mengistu.   

### On Human Rights Violations

There are reports that violations have been place. Ignore the propaganda
but there are credible reports. I just spent an entire week discussing
this with leaders of the army. We said attack the TPLF not civilians. I
want you to be aware that a lot of our causes of conflict today arise
from post-war civilian atrocities committed generations ago. Attacking
civilians will cause deep psychological distress. We need our troops to
operate with upmost ethics. We will promote the honorable and bring to
justice violators. There is a lot of propaganda, yet even if there is a
single violation we’ll take action. We expect there to be a difference
between Ethio Human Rights and our Attorney General’s Office.  
  
This being still, people are selective in the way they look at human
rights. All those calling and shouting about human rights. They don’t
mention a thing about the attack on the Northern Command. Our soldiers
were run over by cars. How do you use your left eye to look at …  
  
The Maikadra massacre was an organized massacred of citizens in their
own country. People don’t care about it. All they care about is what
happened. There is no violation that reaches the scale of MaiKadra.  
  
Even the attacks on the Bahir Dar and Gondar airport still requires
fixing. It requires billions from us. We know an entire family that was
killed from the attack. No one cares about them.  
  
Let’s leave Tigray, let’s go to the attack on Metekel Zone. No one
speaks about them. They don’t have money, … The fact that all the noise
in one end doesn’t reflect that everything is in Tigray. Our citizens
are equal. We should care about all of them. 

### On Humanitarian Aid 

After the end of the operation, we have fed 4.2 million citizens. Our
goal was 3 million people. 4.2 million once we fed we set up more than
92 stations. If we are capable of feeding 4.2 million people in 2 months
it shows how capable we are.  
  
Everyone tweets concerns about Ethiopia. The people were fed. The people
of Tigray don’t eat Twitter concerns they eat wheat. We have covered
more than 70%. We have spent more than \$1 billion. We have repaired
airport, water, … If we didn’t do all this we would have been to manage
the inflation our country is facing.  
  
We feed our people, the international community voices empty twitter
concerns. Even if this wasn’t bad TPLF remnants are attacking aid
workers. Now the TPLF forces look like civilians. They destroy the
telephone and light infrastructure we just repaired.  
  
We want to thank all the other regions who have made efforts to help the
Tigray region. We need to have the people of Tigray and diaspora to help
their people instead of using the money to lobby.

### On Eritrean Troops 

Let’s touch the issue of Eritrean troops. First think what people need
to know. All our friends and foes. After Ethiopia had its soldiers
attacked and the way Eritrean government welcomed our soldiers we’re
forever thankful.  
  
I want you guys to be attentive to the fact that on danger day no one
will sit next to you. Let alone a person, your own shadow disappears in
the dark. And we’ll never forget this. No one or activist will cause us
to forget this.  
  
However, after that time, we don’t welcome any civilian casualties
caused by Eritrean troops. This is not because the troops are Eritrean,
we will not welcome it from our troops.  
  
We have discussed the issue at least five times with the government of
the area. They say that you have left the trenches and the TPLF has
invited us by throwing rockets. Now as you are going to central Tigray
to search for the remnants, it's a national security imperative for us
to guard these places.  
  
Secondly, we told them about looting, and other casualties. The Eritrean
government said if there is any we will take action immediately. 

  
Once the operation is done and we can guard our neighbor this setup will
not be necessary. As far as violations are concerned we are setting up a
forum to discuss it. We will fix the issues earlier.  
  
However, I am concerned about my health. We can’t both protect ourselves
from Eritrea and while our backs are being attacked. We need to first
fix those that fix that are hitting us at the back. We can’t do
everything at the same time. We cannot continue to guard the Eritrean
border as we are dispersed.  
  
The Eritrean government said our future is intertwined with Ethiopia and
the people of Tigray and we are collectively addressing this. We do not
want any attacks on our people. We need to look at the whole picture.
The Ethiopian defense forces has a finite resource.


Abiy Ahmed: Parliament Speech


The Abay river tumbles out of the Ethiopian highlands from its source in
[Lake Tana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tana) and embarks on an
800km journey through a deep gorge as large as the Grand Canyon of the
Colorado River until it makes a sharp western turn and meets the White
Nile near Khartoum, Sudan.

Ethiopia is constructing a hydroelectirc dam on this river (called Abay
in Ethiopia) at the edge of its western border with Sudan. [The Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance
Dam](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Ethiopian_Renaissance_Dam)
(GERD) broke ground in 2011 and is now nearing completion.  
  
This project has been fully financed by the Ethiopian public and has
cemented itself as a monument of national pride for the country.



![](/images/blog/ethiopia-egypt-and-the-abay-river-5f1c67f00ba49abc02c535ef_gerd--5b1d6969.jpg)

*Abay River Originating From Lake Tana*

  
  
Egypt, a downstream consumer of the Nile river has opposed the
construction of this dam from the beginning. Nonetheless, that didn't
stop Ethiopia from breaking ground on the project nearly a decade ago.  
  
The dam is now at the final stages of completion and these two countries
are at a crossroads again about the filling and operation of the dam.   
  
Egypt contends that the filling of this dam will reduce its current flow
of the Nile waters. Ethiopia argues that it has the right to fully
utilize waters of the Abay river which originates in its country in Lake
Tana.  
  
Furthermore, Ethiopia believes that it has already accommodated Egypt's
concerns by agreeing to fill this dam over a prolonged course of three
to seven years.   
  
The moral, historical, economic, and legal dimensions of this dispute
collectively make it one of the most interesting and important
geopolitical issues of the 21st century and a harbinger of other climate
and resource related conflicts to come.  
  
Arriving at a long-term solution to this dispute is crucial to the
development of both these countries and Africa's economic future.


Ethiopia, Egypt and The Abay River

A Conversation with Dr. Tirusew Asefa


> [**Addis Qnie**](http://www.twitter.com/Qnie_Addis) burst on to the
> twitter scene in July 2021 and has since proved himself to be a
> juggernaut of a media critic on western coverage of the
> [**conflict**](https://www.eliezerabate.com/blog/the-ethiopia-primer)
> in Ethiopia. Below is a complete list of Addis' threads. Last Update: 
> November 29 2021.

#### Newest Threads

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [My Twitter Will](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1465260431233236995?s=20) | How to counteracts Twitter's suspensions. | Nov 29 2021 |
| [No More Intervention](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1459168539328364548?s=20) | On James Starvidis article calling for US intervention. | Nov 12 2021 |
| [The Rosenthal Method](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1457731786465710083?s=20) | On the terrible journalist standards of Jon Rosenthal of the Economist. | Nov 8 2021 |
| [The Boy Who Cried Wolf](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1455973386178502660?s=20) | On Zeku Zelalem's complaints against UNHR and EHRC report. | Nov 3 2021 |
| [Your Vote Your Power](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1453274212148334607?s=20) | A calarion call for Ethiopian-Americans to make Democrats pay at the Ballot Box. | Oct 27 2021 |
| [Blind Insight](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1453040041169670152?s=20) | Response to an Ethiopia Insight Article arguing US intentions are genuine. | Oct 26 2021 |
| [Resist Ethiopia](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1450508276559405057?s=20) | On media blackout of pro-Ethiopian voices. | Oct 18 2021 |

#### Information Laundering: What is It? 

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [On Manufacturing Consent](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1417583660337881088?s=20) | How the West misuses the media and HR orgs before destabilizing a region. | Jul 20 2021 |
| [On Lies that Cost Millions of Lives](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1427137066652024832?s=20) | HR groups, whose lies impact millions, have zero oversight or accountability. | Aug 15 2021 |
| [On Information Laundering](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1428701464285884429?s=20) | Information laundering is defined and its key players named. | Aug 20 2021 |
| [On Sahan Research](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1432700377581895690?s=20) | On Kenya-based intel firm, Sahan Research and its disinformation operations. | Aug 31 2021 |
| [On Wikipedia as a Frontline](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1434488788907069445?s=20) | On TPLF activists saturating wikipedia with revisionist history. | Sep 5 2021 |
| [The Gaslighting of Ethiopia](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1443600329459879943?s=20) | Explains what gaslighting is and how it's applied in Ethiopian conflict. | Sep 30 2021 |
| [Bad Science](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1448006326483918854?s=20) | On Bad Activism Masquerading as Scholarship. | Oct 15 2021 |
| [Resist Ethiopia](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1450508276559405057?s=20) | On media blackout of pro-Ethiopian voices. | Oct 18 2021 |
| [The Boy Who Cried Wolf](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1455973386178502660?s=20) | On Zeku Zelalem's complaints against UNHR and EHRC report. | Nov 3 2021 |
| [The Rosenthal Method](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1457731786465710083?s=20) | On the terrible journalist standards of Jon Rosenthal of the Economist. | Nov 8 2021 |

#### An Exposé of Key Information Launderers

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [On Cara Anna](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1429757044945571842?s=20) | The Associated Press's [Cara Anna](https://muckrack.com/cara-anna) and her gory pro-TPLF writing is covered. | Aug 23 2021 |
| [On Martin Plaut](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1433358228641955841?s=20) | Former BBC reporter turned Horn of Africa racist gadfly [Martin Plaut](https://twitter.com/martinplaut?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) profiled. | Sep 2 2021 |
| [On Alex De Waal](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1434096713040547843?s=20) | The academic [Alex De Waal's](https://fletcher.tufts.edu/people/alex-de-waal) prolific pro-TPLF content is catalogued. | Sep 4 2021 |
| [On Lucy Berhe](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1435327654362763278?s=20) | Letter to Telegraph's editor about pro-TPLF journalist [Lucy Berhe's](https://twitter.com/berhe_lucy?lang=en) open [bigotry](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1435123997683945472?s=20). | Sep 6 2021 |
| [On William Davison](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1438513301281927172?s=20) | An exposé on prolific Crisis Entreprenour [William Davison](https://twitter.com/wdavison10). | Sep 16 2021 |
| [William Davison's Web of Deception](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1445418254835519491?s=20) | William Davison's Network of Information Launderers visualized. | Oct 5 2021 |

#### On the Fake Humera Massacre

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [On Nima Elbagir's Genocide Fiction](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1434526643255750656?s=20) | Nima Elbagir's [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/05/africa/ethiopia-tigray-humera-sudan-bodies-cmd-intl/index.html) piece claims a TPLF coordinated body-dump constitues "genocide". | Sep 5 2021 |
| [Humera Massacre Debunked Part I](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1434853035101073413?s=20) | A July 22 GOE tweet predicted TPLF was collecting bodies in Afar to choreograph a "massacre". | Sep 6 2021 |
| [Humera Massacre Debunked Part II](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1435745779151515648?s=20) | Nima's own foresnsic researchers disprove the findings in her article. | Sep 8 2021 |
| [The Origin Story of a Fake Massacre](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1435967574496333825?s=20) | TPLF drew inspiration from stories of bodies floating in rivers during Rwanda. | Sep 9 2021 |
| [On Nima's Salamander Tale](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1442826734651445251?s=20) | On Nima and CNN's [silent editing](https://mobile.twitter.com/mtaibbi/status/1388659201191383041) of their story. | Sep 28 2021 |

#### On Social Media Suppression

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [My Twitter Will](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1465260431233236995?s=20) | How to counteracts Twitter's suspensions. | Nov 29 2021 |

#### On the TPLF & Western Support

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Ethiopia is Not Yugoslavia](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1420642741042794498?s=20) | Why 2021 is not 1991 and Ethiopia won't implode like Yugoslavia. | July 29 2021 |
| [TPLF and Genocide: A Love Affair](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1437283829878767618?s=20) | TPLF instituted ethnic-federalism as ethnic-federalist Yugoslavia was imploding in 1991. | Sep 12 2021 |
| [On Missing UN Aid Trucks](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1438795219688992770?s=20) | On the TPLF hijacking of UN aid trucks. | Sep 17 2021 |
| [The Evolution of a Phantom Blockade](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1441674780885856256?s=20) | Questions whether there is a blockade on Tigray. | Sep 25 2021 |
| [The Juba Connection](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1444626818875678723?s=20) | Explains connection between UN official Dr. Kwesi Greenridge and Tsadkan Gebreselassie. | Oct 3 2021 |
| [Blind Insight](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1453040041169670152?s=20) | Response to an Ethiopia Insight Article arguing US intentions are genuine. | Oct 26 2021 |
| [No More Intervention](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1459168539328364548?s=20) | On James Starvidis article calling for US intervention. | Nov 12 2021 |

#### Critique's of Articles

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [A Hatchet Job of Journalism](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1434785688084418560?s=20) | [Telegraph](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2021/09/05/ethiopias-tigrayans-rounded-mutilated-dismembered-civil-war/) article falsely alleging presence of concentration camp in Humera by Lucy Berhe. | Sep 5 2021 |
| [From Sahan to the BBC](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1433042951245029385?s=20) | On [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-58319977) using [Sahan](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1420264246156439553?s=20) insiders for their doom and gloom article about Ethiopia's economy. | Aug 30 2021 |

#### On Racism

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Black Stories White Faces](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1419372629736235012?s=20) | Questioning why it's predominantly white reporters covering black stories. | Jul 25 2021 |
| [UNSC is a modern day Berlin Conference](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1430791797744283648?s=20) | A case for Africa's fair representation in UNSC. | Aug 26 2021 |
| [Let Africa Be the Black Man's Burden](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1431534733813555201?s=20) | A plea to the West to leave Africans to Africans. | Aug 28 2021 |
| [A Nation of Uppity N******s](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1435506299001884677?s=20) | A Rant on a CNN [hit piece](https://edition.cnn.com/2021/09/07/africa/abiy-ahmed-ethiopia-tigray-conflict-cmd-intl/index.html) on Ethiopian PM Abiy Ahmed. | Sep 5 2021 |
| [Black Bodies and White Newspapers](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1437756080814280711?s=20) | On all the white newspapers objectifying black bodies. | Sep 14 2021 |

#### On Ethiopia-Americans Voting

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Your Vote Your Power](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1453274212148334607?s=20) | A calarion call for Ethiopian-Americans to make Democrats pay at the Ballot Box. | Oct 27 2021 |

#### On the Western Spearheaded "African" Peace Initiative

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [On Letter by "African" Intellectuals](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1431272493701021699?s=20) | Unpacks motives of so-called African intellectuals mostly based in North America. | Aug 27 2021 |
| [On the Shifting Information War](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1431988389243494404?s=20) | On how the US/EU are behind the so-called African peace initiative. | Aug 29 2021 |

#### Project 11779

| Thread | Summary | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [A Brief History of a Twitter Hashtag](https://twitter.com/Qnie_Addis/status/1441127652903960577?s=20) | On the cynical origins of \#TigrayGenocide. | Sep 23 2021 |



![](/images/blog/the-collected-threads-of-addis-qnie-614b2b4472a096558b292626_infor-f33e1ed4.jpg)

*Key nodes of information laundering cluster.*


The Collected Threads of Addis Qnie


> *Insightful articles on the conflict in Ethiopia's northern Tigray
> region (which has now embroiled the Amhara and Afar regions as
> well) sorted in reverse chronological order. Last Update: Oct 26,
> 2021*

#### Background

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [The Atlantic Community Mistake On Ethiopia](https://www.ascleiden.nl/sites/default/files/ascl-working_paper_150_-_2nd_edition.pdf) | [Jon Abbink](https://twitter.com/JonAbbink?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor) | Mar 30, 2021 |
| [Background on the Tigray Conflict](https://www.eliezerabate.com/blog/whats-happening-in-tigray) | [Eliezer Abate](https://twitter.com/EliezerAbate) | Mar 20 2021 |
| [Operations to Restore Law and Order in Ethiopia](https://www.pmo.gov.et/articles/8/) | [Abiy Ahmed](https://twitter.com/AbiyAhmedAli) | Dec 24 2020 |
| [A War Won to Preserve the Nation-State](https://lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com/2020/11/29/ethiopias-conflict-a-war-won-to-preserve-the-nation-state/) | [Lawrence Freeman](https://twitter.com/lfreemansafrica) | Nov 29 2020 |
| [What is Happening in Ethiopia?](https://eastafricanist.com/2020/11/22/what-is-happening-in-ethiopia-and-what-should-be-done-about-it/) | [Neamin Zeleke](https://twitter.com/NeaminZeleke) | Nov 20 2020 |

#### On Western Pressure

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Ethiopia Made A Powerful Appeal To The US To Stop Its Hybrid War](https://thealtworld.com/andrew_korybko/ethiopia-made-a-powerful-appeal-to-the-us-to-stop-its-hybrid-war) | [Andrew Korybko](https://twitter.com/AKorybko) | Sep 21 2021 |
| [Getting It Wrong In Ethiopia's Tigray](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/09/02/west-support-abiy-tigray/) | [David Steinman](https://moneybloodandconscience.com/author-bio/) | Sep 2 2021 |
| [TPLF Rebels Pose Major Threat To Ethiopia](https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/tplf-rebels-pose-major-threat-to-ethiopia-in-future) | [Yohannes Gedamu](https://twitter.com/yohanethio) | Aug 11 2021 |
| [A Warm Welcome to Samantha Power to Ethiopia](https://www.the-star.co.ke/opinion/star-blogs/2021-08-01-a-warm-welcome-to-samantha-power-to-ethiopia-and-a-word-of-advice/) | Wossen Melaku | Aug 01 2021 |
| [Biden's Policy on Ethiopia is Misguided and Counterproductive](https://foreignpolicynews.org/2021/07/28/from-the-frying-pan-to-the-fire-bidens-policy-on-ethiopia-is-misguided-and-counterproductive/) | [Derese Kassa](https://twitter.com/nestaneth) | Jul 28 2021 |
| [Why US Policy on Ethiopia is Flawed](https://www.dailysabah.com/opinion/op-ed/why-us-policy-on-ethiopia-and-horn-of-africa-is-flawed) | [Yohannes Gedamu](https://twitter.com/yohanethio) | Jul 19 2021 |
| [Enigma of Western Crusade Against Ethiopia](https://www.ethiopiaobserver.com/2021/07/16/the-enigma-of-the-western-crusade-against-ethiopia-and-the-insidious-face-of-racism/) | [Messay Kebede](https://www.amazon.com/Messay-Kebede/e/B001JRZET0%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share) | Jul 16 2021 |
| [Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden](http://nemozen.semret.org/2021/06/pay-any-price-bear-any-burden.html) | [Nemo Semret](https://twitter.com/nemozen) | Jun 24 2021 |
| [Tigray Conflict: Homework Not Done](https://spp-fi.medium.com/tigray-conflict-homework-not-done-by-western-countries-has-led-to-wrong-policy-action-ce54592c54bf) | [Simo Parviainen](https://twitter.com/SPP_FI) | May 18 2021 |
| [How the UN is Betraying Ethiopia](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/a-morally-bankrupt-institution-how-the-un-is-betraying-ethiopia-1872ae8241b0) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | May 11 2021 |
| [Ethiopia: A New Proxy Battlespace?](https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/ethiopia-new-proxy-battlespace) | [Ann Fitz-Gerald](https://twitter.com/afitz3105) | Apr 19, 2021 |
| [Who Is Discussing Ethiopia, Eritrea &amp; Tigray?](https://www.laprogressive.com/ethiopia-eritrea-tigray-tplf/) | [Ann Garrison](https://twitter.com/AnnGarrison) | Mar 20 2021 |
| [The Americans are Coming](http://almariam.com/2021/03/18/the-americans-are-coming-the-americans-are-coming-imposing-susan-rices-imperial-pax-americana-on-ethiopia-and-eritrea/?fbclid=IwAR0Kr170Sx2dcTp6qKDOWLsAMsC7RsiOVqrKPqmXJ1pV5YzXU-8fdXCWZz8) | [Al Mariam](https://twitter.com/AlMariam1) | Mar 18 2021 |
| [The West Sides with a Terrorist Group](https://borkena.com/2021/03/03/in-the-ethiopian-war-the-west-sides-with-a-terrorist-group/) | [Yonas Biru](https://www.facebook.com/koki.abesolome.3) | Mar 3 2021 |
| [Calls for Negotiation Driving Ethiopia Deeper into War](https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/africasource/calls-for-negotiation-driving-ethiopia-deeper-into-war/) | [Bronwyn Bruton](https://twitter.com/BronwynBruton) | Nov 13 2020 |

#### **On the Ceasefire**

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [What Really Happened in Ethiopia?](https://eastafricanist.com/2021/07/05/what-really-happened-in-ethiopia-making-sense-of-events-in-tigray-region/) | [Neamin Zeleke](https://twitter.com/NeaminZeleke) | Jul 15 2021 |

#### **On Child Soldiers**

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Canada Must Respond to Use of Child Soldiers in Tigray](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-the-tplfs-sacrificial-lambs-e7b069747fdc) | [Ann Fitzgerald + Hugh Segal](https://twitter.com/afitz3105) | Jul 23 2021 |
| [Ethiopia: TPLF's Sacrificial Lambs](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-the-tplfs-sacrificial-lambs-e7b069747fdc) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | Jul 20 2021 |
| [Child Soldiers in Tigray: Biden's Hypocrisy and Moral Depravity](http://almariam.com/2021/07/17/child-soldiers-in-tigray-bidens-hypocrisy-moral-depravity-and-bankruptcy/) | [Al Mariam](https://twitter.com/almariam1) | Jul 17 2021 |

#### **On the Post-Ceasefire State of the War**

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Will Negotiations with the TPLF work?](https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/09/21/ethiopia-negotiations-tplf/amp/) | Yodahe Zemichael | Sep 21 2021 |
| [Getting Things Right on the Ethiopia Conflict](https://medium.com/@JonAbbink/getting-things-right-on-the-ethiopia-conflict-e128eaaf82d8) | [Jon Abbink](https://twitter.com/JonAbbink) | Aug 29 2021 |

#### **On Annexation of Welkait and other Territories**

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Welkait: Geo Strategic importance and Consequential Annexation](https://www.hornafricainsight.org/post/welkait-ethiopia-geo-strategic-importance-and-the-consequential-annexation-by-tplf) | [Moges Kelklie et. al](https://twitter.com/engmoges) | Aug 2 2021 |

#### On Western Media and UN Bias

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [The UN Literally Looks the Other Way When It Comes to TPLF Abuses](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/the-un-literally-looks-the-other-way-when-it-comes-to-tplf-human-rights-abuses-73b140aa5515) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | Oct 5 2021 |
| [Who Is Telling The Truth about Ethiopia's Internal Conflict](https://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/change-gonna-come/2021/08/who-telling-truth-about-ethiopias-internal-conflict) | [Doreen Nicholl](https://rabble.ca/category/bios/doreen-nicoll) | Aug 13 2021 |
| [A Brief Experiment With Truth](http://nemozen.semret.org/2021/07/a-brief-experiment-with-truth.html) | [Nemo Semret](https://twitter.com/nemozen) | Jul 7 2021 |
| [Ethiopia: Mao, Mango and the Guerilla Playbook](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-mao-mango-and-the-guerilla-playbook-a788aabcbcfe) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | July 14 2021 |
| [Ethiopia: Manufacturing More Outrage](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-manufacturing-outrage-f55f38232c3c) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | May 24 2021 |
| [Ethiopia: Manufacturing Outrage. How to Con a Superpower.](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-manufacturing-more-outrage-6c1e0d84ac9c) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | May 13 2021 |
| [Disinformation in Tigray: Manufacturing Consent For a Secessionist War](https://www.newafricainstitute.org/publications) | [New Africa Institute](https://twitter.com/newafricainst) | May 9 2021 |
| [Horn of Africa Endangered by Untrue Media Attacks](https://lawrencefreemanafricaandtheworld.com/2021/02/05/horn-of-africa-endangered-by-untrue-media-attacks-on-ethiopia/) | [Lawrence Freeman](https://twitter.com/lfreemansafrica) | Feb 5 2021 |
| [Tigray in Ethiopia: Sorry, Whose War Is It?](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/tigray-in-ethiopia-sorry-whose-war-is-it-a70796ac9c87) | [Jeff Pearce](https://twitter.com/jeffpropulsion) | Jan 31 2021 |

#### On Facebook

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Facebook's Role in Destabilizing Ethiopia](https://spp-fi.medium.com/facebooks-role-in-destabilizing-ethiopia-and-wider-horn-of-africa-region-98fcb08f40eb) | [Simo Parviainen](https://twitter.com/SPP_FI) | Oct 6 2021 |

#### On Ethiopia's PR Failure

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [What Explains Biden's Counterintuitive Policy on TPLF's War on Ethiopia](https://borkena.com/2021/08/01/what-explains-bidens-counterintuitive-policy-on-tplfs-war-on-ethiopia/) | [Yonas Biru](https://www.facebook.com/koki.abesolome.3) | Aug 02 2021 |
| [Ethiopia Risks Unravelling for Lack of PR](https://borkena.com/2021/04/10/ethiopia-risks-unravelling-for-lack-of-pr-when-pr-matters-the-most/) | [Yonas Biru](https://www.facebook.com/koki.abesolome.3) | Apr 10 2021 |
| [Lesson for Ethiopia's Engagement with Egypt](https://borkena.com/2021/04/08/egypt-ethiopia-tplf-pr-engagement-with-egypt/) | [Yonas Biru](https://www.facebook.com/koki.abesolome.3) | Mar 11 2021 |

#### Tigrayan Perspectives

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Our Suffering May Not Be Convenient But it Is Real](https://africanarguments.org/2021/08/tigray-our-suffering-may-not-be-convenient-but-it-is-real/) | [Temesgen Kahsay](https://www.twitter.com/temesgen_kahsay) | Aug 03 2021 |
| [Why We Don’t Agree on What We have Seen](https://www.tghat.com/2021/08/01/why-we-dont-agree-on-what-we-have-seen/) | [Teklai Gebremichael](https://www.twitter.com/Teklai_Michael) | Aug 01 2021 |
| [Interview with General Tsadkan](https://www.tghat.com/2021/08/01/why-we-dont-agree-on-what-we-have-seen/) | [Tghat Media](https://www.twitter.com/TghatMedia) | Jun 07 2021 |

#### Understanding the TPLF

| Article | Author | Date |
|----|----|----|
| [Ethnic Federalism and Authoritarian Survival in Ethiopia](https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/political_science_diss/45/) | Yohannes Gedamu | Dec 2017 |
| [Ethnosymbolism and the Dismemberment of the State](https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1132&amp;context=africancenter_icad_archive) | Assefa Mehretu | Aug 2009 |
| [The EPRDF and the Crisis of the Ethiopian State](https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1050&amp;context=africancenter_icad_archive) | Aregawi Berhe | Aug 2001 |
| [Ethiopia Holding Elections in Federal System](https://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/07/world/ethiopia-holding-elections-in-federal-system.html) | NY Times | May 1995 |
| [The Origins of the Tigray People's Liberation Front](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3518491) | Aregawi Berhe | Oct 2004 |
| [An Analysis of the New Constitution of Ethiopia](https://www.jstor.org/stable/41931136?read-now=1&amp;refreqid=excelsior%3A0ef4b8358dbb65ca21cf3016682dc3a5&amp;seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents) | Theodore Vestal | 1996 |
| [Political Development in Ethiopia](https://www.ethiopia-insight.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Huntington-A-Peasant-Based-Dominant-Party-Democracy.pdf) | Samuel Huntington | Apr 1993 |
| [Meles Zenawi Interview with the CIA's Paul Henze](https://tassew.wordpress.com/2012/06/17/meles-zenawis-interview-with-paul-henze-1990/amp/) | Meles Zenawi | Apr 1990 |


Articles on the Tigray Conflict


> The following story is article version of a
> [tweet](https://twitter.com/EliezerAbate/status/1428923904916033540?s=20)
> shared on Aug 20 2021 based on accounts from US Embassy and State
> Department cables from the Jimmy Carter Administration declassified by
> the US National Archives and Records Administration in April 2014. All
> the cables can be accessed in chronological order
> [here](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/?qproject%5B%5D=ps&qproject%5B%5D=cg&qproject%5B%5D=cc&qproject%5B%5D=fp&qproject%5B%5D=ee&q=&qftags=KROIS%2C+GEORGE+WILLIAM#result).

On October 31st, 1978 TPLF militants abducted an American helicopter
pilot and triggered an international hostage crisis. What follows is the
untold story of how the TPLF introduced itself to the United States
\[1\] .


Northern Ethiopia faced a [severe locust
invasion](https://www.nytimes.com/1978/06/06/archives/famineravaged-ethiopia-invaded-by-locust-swarm.html)
in 1978. According to a June 1978 Washington Post article, "43 swarms
\[of locusts\] have been spotted in Ethiopia" and locusts were devouring
"8,000 to 34,000 tons \[of vegetation\] each day". The UN's Desert
Locust Control Organization of Eastern Africa was at the forefront
addressing the crisis and had a fleet of 9 aircraft shared between seven
countries. One of these aircraft had been stranded near the Kola Tembien
region for three months and required several repairs.

At the time, George William Krois, was a 36 year old American helicopter
pilot and Canadian resident flying frequent locust control missions in
Tigray. George worked for Viking Helicopter Ltd., a Canadian contractor
performing services for the UN. On October 30th, Krois had flown two
missions ferrying mechanics to repair a UN spray aircraft that had been
grounded in Abiy Adi.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-6120628965485dad3c6e4bda_helic-e8078bb2.jpg)
*George William Krois with his Viking Helicopter.*

According to an
[account](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04721_d.html)
given by Canadian Pilot Bill Waugh, a co-worker of Krois' at Viking
Helicopter, wages for locals guarding the aircraft had been delayed for
several days. Soon, locals guarding the grounded aircraft had began to
grumble. Word soon started to spread of a third flight that would
deliver their payments. TPLF bandits in the countryside heard these
rumors and quickly moved to the area.

On the arrival of the third mission, TPLF gunmen charged the helicopter,
held Krois under gunpoint and ordered him to reroute and fly to a
TPLF-held location. The gunmen stole all the cash and also kidnapped
four Ethiopian mechanics who arrived with Krois and instructed them to
walk 70 kms on foot in the same direction. Krois and the TPLF bandits
landed at a remote site and curious local peasants flocked toward the
helicopter. TPLF told the peasants that the helicopter "[was a gift from
the Arabs and that there would be
more](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04877_d.html)" to come
and loaded it on a truck and drove away.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-612062ea5c8d9751c5d6135a_helic-2afb6875.jpg)
*Tigrayan Peasants flocking to George's Helicopter.*

#### Tigrayan Elders Enraged at TPLF

In Abiy Adi, Tigrayans were enraged by the abduction, fearing the UN
would suspend the highly effective Locust Control Program in their
community. The head of the UN's Locust Control Program in Addis, a man
by the name of Mulugetta Bizuneh heard the news of the abduction and
immediately dispatched locals from Abiy Adi to search for the TPLF
bandits in different directions, on foot, to try to contact the
guerillas and secure the release of his staff.


After a few days of searching, on the 5th of November, large crowds of
residents and church leaders finally found the TPLF bandits in the
countryside. The crowd, who had travelled a long distance, demanded the
TPLF release George Krois and the four Ethiopians.


The TPLF rebuffed their demands and told the crowd that the captives
were "[agents of the Ethiopian
government](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04820_d.html)".
The crowds forcefully protested and argued that the captives were civil
servants helping their community battle locust swarms.


When the uproar from the crowd wouldn't relent, the TPLF agreed to hold
a detailed deliberation under the [condition that church leaders
leave](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04820_d.html). The
crowds strongly objected. Then TPLF leaders began a one hour lecture
explaining their discomfort with crosses and church leaders.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-612064d53f212f12f8cbfe63_churc-3293b7e4.jpg)
*Ethiopian Orthodox Church Leader with a Cross.*


At last, the sides agreed to have a meeting in which church leaders were
cast to one side and villagers to another. The TPLF, then proceeded to
deliver another two hour lecture, this time about the goal of its
movement as described in its manifesto. The crowd, then became very
agitated.


The meeting adjourned without a discussion on the captives. The evening
arrived and the frustrated crowd spent the night in the cold outdoors.
The next morning the people were restless and hungry. And yet again the
TPLF subjected them to another three hours of indoctrination.


After testing the limit of the crowd's patience, on November 7th, the
TPLF released the four Ethiopian detainees. George Krois, the American
pilot, was nowhere to be found. The TPLF said he would be released "very
soon" and sent the crowd and Ethiopian captives back to Abiy Adi.

#### The Americans and Canadians Informed


By this time, UN Locust Control Head, Mulugeta informed the US
Ambassador Fred Chapin of Krois' abduction. Ambassador Chapin dispatched
a cable to US Secretary of [State Cyrus
Vance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrus_Vance) to officially notify
the State Department of the abduction of an American citizen by the
TPLF.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-6120739d770f02af6741c20c_cyrus-2fbf367b.png)
*Fred Chapin, left,(Ambassador to Ethiopia) and Cyrus Vance, right Secretary of State 1977 - 80*


Secretary Vance then promptly made plans to notify Krois' father in
California. Unfamiliar with the TPLF bandits at this time, he [sent a
cable back](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE282814_d.html)
to Ambassador Chapin inquiring: if they "could. make a point that any
publicity TPLF garners from the kidnapping would be bad? Or would TPLF
care as long as they got publicity?"


Ambassador Chapin received the cable and looped in the Canadians which
had a stake in Krois' release since Krois was a Canadian resident with a
wife in Toronto.

Both determined to coordinate plans and "[to hold the story as tightly
as possible](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04739_d.html)"
to starve the TPLF of any publicity.

#### American Call on a Friend


Lacking a direct point of contact with the TPLF, the American Ambassador
in Sudan, Donald Bergus, [appealed to the Sudanese
Government](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05432_d.html)
of Jaafar Nimeiry. Nimeiry, a close US and Egyptian ally, was providing
financial support and a headquarters in Khartoum to the TPLF\[3\].

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61207403770f024c6a41c26d_jafar-cc9e568b.png)
*Jaafar Nimeiry (left), Sudanese President 1971-85, Donald Bergus (right) US Ambassador to Sudan, 1977-80*


Ambassador Bergus phoned General Omar Al-Tayeb, head of the Sudanese
State Security under Nimeiry, and pressed him to approach TPLF
representatives in Khartoum to negotiate Krois' release. After meeting
TPLF reps in Khartoum, General Omar reported: "[TPLF want money or
material assistance of some kind before release of
Krois](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05550_d.html)".

Omar told TPLF of US policy prohibiting ransom of any kind for release
of hostages and that any donation would be made "[under the
table](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05550_d.html)".


Ambassador Bergus then sent a cable to the State Department to update
Secretary of State Vance about the TPLF's demands as relayed by General
Omar. Bergus then waited for next steps from the State Department.

Meanwhile, the Canadians also hatched a plan of their own.

#### The Canadians Call on a Friend


The Canadian strategy involved reaching out to the British which dealt
with TPLF terrorists two years earlier when they ambushed and fired
bullets on a Land Rover of a British family, including a 5 and 8 year
old, and took the family hostage for 3 months demanding \$1M in
ransom\[2\].

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61206757c8b80c4075538adf_Scree-b2abed6e.png)
*Sep 7 1978 NY Times Article about abduction of British Family by TPLF.*


British officials reached out to their TPLF contacts and reported the
following:

"[An official of the British embassy who negotiated Tyler family release
was telephoned by TPLF rep late this morning. He refused to meet TPLF at
embassy but instead set up meeting this
evening](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05432_d.html)".


After meeting in secret with the TPLF rep, the British official notified
the Canadians that the rep said unless a ransom was given "[Krois would
continue to be held to draw attention to the TPLF cause" and that "his
group was immune to pressure applied by
governments](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS04980_d.html)".


Back in Washington, Secretary Vance emphatically rejected the TPLF
ransom demand, and updated his ambassadors in Addis and Khartoum
affirming that "[there is no question of USG paying ransom and TPLF will
only damage its public image by continuing to hold innocents
hostage](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE302460_d.html)".


He added, "[we should use as many channels as possible to bring pressure
to bear on TPLF, embassy should therefore again ask governments to make
another strong effort to persuade TPLF to release Krois immediately and
without
condition](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE302460_d.html)".


TPLF reps would not budge. They warned a French contact "[Krois is well
but that he will be kept as long as necessary 'six months or a year' to
bring western interlocutors to their
senses](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS05334_d.html)".

The contact also noted that although a clear ransom demand had not been
made yet, "[figure being contemplated is thought to be approximately
\$100,000 or \$200,000 in
cash](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS05334_d.html)".

#### TPLF Tries to Indoctrinate Krois' Mother


Now early one morning, TPLF reps approached a Red Cross official  in
Khartoum by the name of Fred Isler and demanded that he [deliver three
letters](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05432_d.html)
\[4\] addressed to Mrs. Beverely Krois (George Krois' mother in Toronto)
to the Canadian embassy to send to Mrs. Krois.


Isler accepted the first two letters which were letters from George to
his mother describing his situation, but according to a mid-November
cable, "[Isler refused to accept a third letter which was a
propagandistic explanation from TPLF to Mrs. Krois" justifying Krois'
captivity](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05432_d.html)".


Isler "[told TPLF Krois was not a POW but a civilian who'd been
kidnapped. He said @ICRC wouldn't be party to a case of kidnapping
except to carry humane messages. TPLF then took back letter from Krois
to his mother because they wanted it and their letter to reach her at
same time.](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978KHARTO05432_d.html)"


In the propaganda letter Isler refused, TPLF wrote to Mrs. Krois "the
inconvenience of one man for an indefinite period of time" is a
worthwhile price to pay for "five million Tigreans".

They also complained, stating "[for the last hundred years the Amhara
nation dominated
us](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978CAIRO25216_d.html)".


Though TPLF ultimately pulled back the letters, the gesture presumably
was an attempt to demonstrate that they have matured into humane
kidnappers. In 1976, a British man kidnapped by the TPLF remarked that
he "[had to suck water from cactuses to keep
going](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/yes-i-remember-holding-you-hostage-come-and-stay-hv8z0zst75m)"
on a 500 mile march under armed TPLF guards.

#### Canadians Want UN Involved, Americans Unconvinced


By December, the one month mark of Krois' abduction had passed. US and
Canadian officials were still no closer to securing Krois' release as
when they had started.

The Canadians proposed that the UN Secretary General make a public
appeal [to the TPLF on humanitarian
grounds](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS05334_d.html).

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61207451415c590de7aa2ce7_waldh-6c9fec1a.png)
*Kurt Waldheim, UN Secretary General 1972 - 81*


Ambassador Chapin and the Americans were unconvinced arguing "[an appeal
on humanitarian grounds would, in any case, fall on deaf ears. The TPLF
has clearly shown itself to be a politically unsophisticated group, not
concerned with the adverse nature of the publicity it might
get.](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978ADDIS05334_d.html)"


In Washington, Deputy Secretary of State [Warren
Christopher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Christopher) had now
taken over the Krois' file. (Christopher would become Secretary of State
under Bill Clinton). Christopher was displeased with the Sudanese effort
so far and called for more
"[aggressive](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978STATE322216_d.html)"
pressure against the Sudanese.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61206c2fe15fa7568ed939c8_warre-41ee67d2.jpg)
*Deputy Secretary of State Christopher (under Jimmy Carter). SOS under Bill Clinton*


Soon enough, the Sudanese feeling the heat, reassured the US Ambassador
in Khartoum that the matter was now personally being handled by Sudanese
President Nimeiry and promised renewed pressure would be applied on the
TPLF leadership in Khartoum.


Sudanese authorities would then summon TPLF reps in Khartoum. What
exactly happened next is unclear. The details of the exchange remain
classified. It's possible the Sudanese threatened the TPLF with
expulsion or the Eritreans who had leverage on the TPLF made them fold.


It's also unclear whether any of the TPLF's ransom demands were met
"under the table" by the Sudanese officials. The Sudanese promised the
TPLF a press conference in Khartoum and requested US officials send
media reps to the press conference. The US would grudgingly accept.


After more than 2 months of a dizzying diplomatic frenzy and 70 days
under TPLF captivity, George Krois' would finally be a free man on
January 9 after the TPLF handed him to Sudanese authorities in Khartoum.
A week later he boarded a flight to Toronto and reunited with his wife.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61206c63bc5a478f0dcaa38a_Scree-6bcea9fc.png)
*Jan 10 NY Times Article on release of George Krois*


President Nimeiry received a letter of thanks from President Jimmy
Carter for his efforts. Carter wrote: "[I would like to express my
gratitude for your government's efforts in bringing about the safe
release of Mr. George William Krois by the Tigre Peoples Liberation
Front](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1979STATE007630_e.html)".

#### Carter Falls, TPLF Terrorism Increases


Only a year later President Jimmy Carter would find himself confronting
another hostage crisis, only this time one which he could not keep under
wraps and would ultimately take down his Presidency.

![](/images/blog/the-untold-story-of-a-tplf-hostage-crisis-61206d24e80914504310ebfc_reaga-9aba6c36.jpg)
*Jimmy Carter Loses 1980 Election due in large part to his inability to handle Iran Hostage Crisis*

Carter would go down, but TPLF terrorists were just getting started.


TPLF also got its promised press conference with western media and said
"they were anxious to call attention of world opinion to plight of
Tigrean people who were fighting a fascist government".

If this language sounds familiar, we don't need to look further than the
recent words coming out of today's TPLF terrorists who have waged war on
the country:

> Forces of fascist Abiy
> [\#Ethiopia](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Ethiopia?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> & dictator Esayas
> [\#Eritrea](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Eritrea?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> could not be satisfied by killing innocent civilians in
> [\#Tigrai](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Tigrai?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw).
> They had to burn piled grasses of farmers so that there will not be
> livestock feed left on April 2 at Betesemaeti village, Adet,
> [\#Tigraigenocide](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Tigraigenocide?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)
> [pic.twitter.com/Sb3MbBaTXl](https://t.co/Sb3MbBaTXl)
>
> — Kindeya G.hiwot, PhD, Prof (@ProfKindeya) [April 11,
> 2021](https://twitter.com/ProfKindeya/status/1381155132864401412?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw)


For the George Krois' kidnapping and more than a dozen other documented
acts of international terrorism committed throughout the 70s and 80s,
 the TPLF found itself listed as a [Tier III terrorist
organization](https://bit.ly/2W8ow9l) under United States law.


Yet, despite their rocky beginning, the TPLF and the US would forge a
closer relationship in the late 80s. Ethiopia would expell Ambassador
Chapin and the Americans in July 1980 and the US wouldn't regain a
foothold in the country until facilitating a TPLF takeover in 1991.

Today, once again, true to its terrorist roots, the TPLF, with American
approval, is terrorizing the people of Tigray, Amhara, and Afar regions
and holding them hostage while demanding a ransom of more than 100
million Ethiopians.

#### Notes

1.  The US had [been aware of efforts to create a "Tigray Liberation
    Front"](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1975ADDIS05179_b.html) at
    least since April 1975, which is two months after TPLF's official
    founding.
2.  British Surgeon Lindsey Taylor was on vacation with his wife and his
    8 and 5 year old children when TPLF gunmen ambushed his vehicle and
    kidnapped the family. This
    [story](https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/yes-i-remember-holding-you-hostage-come-and-stay-hv8z0zst75m)
    on the Sunday Times recounts this event and also an addition TPLF
    kidnapping.
3.  Incidentally, just like today, in 1977-78 while Ethiopia was
    preoccupied with war with Somalia, Nimeiry's troops [invaded fertile
    lands](https://politicstoday.org/all-out-war-between-ethiopia-and-sudan-on-the-doorstep/)
    of Ethiopian farmers in Gonder and in later years, according to a
    [statement](https://ecadforum.com/2016/01/24/the-tigray-peoples-liberation-front-executes-its-longstanding-promise/)
    by the Ethiopian Border Affairs Committee, TPLF leaders promised
    Neimery that they would abrogate the 1902 Border Treaty if they took
    power in Ethiopia.
4.  Here's the full [content of the TPLF propaganda letter sent to Mrs.
    Krois](https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/1978CAIRO25216_d.html).


The Untold Story of a TPLF Hostage Crisis


## Tigray

####  

Joe Biden sent his close ally Senator [Chris
Coons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Coons) of Delaware to the
Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa to deliver what a White House official
termed a ["tough
message"](https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/18/biden-chris-coons-senator-ethiopia-tigray-crisis/)
to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed. Before Senator Coons landed in Addis
Ababa, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed tweeted a stern [warning to new TPLF
recruits and
allies](https://twitter.com/PMEthiopia/status/1372883442220826627?s=20)
to surrender giving an early signal that he is not likely to be swayed
by Senator Coon's request to end hostilities with the TPLF.  
  
On the day of Mr. Coons visit, The Eritrean Embassy to Addis Ababa
[telegraphed a message of
"self-reliance"](https://twitter.com/ERIEMBAET/status/1373347584341913601)
signaling that Asmara is keenly aware that the Senator was dispatched to
create [a rift between the two
countries](https://robertjprince.net/2021/03/18/ethiopia-following-in-the-path-of-yugoslavia-iraq-libya-and-what-washington-hoped-to-do-in-syria-susan-rices-war-washington-weaponizing-human-rights-again-this-time-in-ethiopia-prelude-to-a/)
through threats of economic and diplomatic strong-arming.

The United States also announced [\$52 million of humanitarian
aid](https://www.state.gov/u-s-announces-additional-humanitarian-assistance-for-the-tigray-crisis-response/)
to Tigray following last week's announcement that  it had halted
[assistance to most programs in the security
sector.](https://www.reuters.com/article/ethiopia-conflict-usa-assistance-idUSL1N2LA2QA)
Justice Department records indicate that both the TPLF and the Ethiopian
government are aggressively [lobbying politicians in Washington
DC.](https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-influence/2021/03/19/who-is-lobbying-in-the-ethiopia-conflict-as-coons-heads-to-addis-ababa-794124)

A spokesperson for the Amhara regional government confirmed that the
[Ethiopian government has
approved](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-16/ethiopia-s-amhara-seize-disputed-territory-amid-tigray-conflict)
the reincorporation of Wolkait, Tegede, Telemet, Humera, and Raya
regions and rejected US' assertion that ethnic-cleansing had taken place
in parts of these regions.

The UN Human rights chief Michelle Bachelet [accepted an
invitation](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-conflict-un-idUSKBN2B934E)
from the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to jointly investigate
alleged war crimes.

Media organizations recently granted access to the Tigray region are
sounding the alarm about the high number of cases of
[rape](https://www.channel4.com/news/the-horrors-of-the-hidden-war-inside-the-tigray-conflict-in-ethiopia)
and [sexual
violence](https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/19/africa/ethiopia-tigray-rape-investigation-cmd-intl/index.html?utm_source=fbCNNi&utm_campaign=africa&utm_medium=social)
in the region. The Ethiopian government, through its UK embassy, has
responded to these reports and vowed to ["thoroughly investigate these
allegations and bring perpetrators to
justice".](https://twitter.com/EthioAmbUK/status/1372658106229010436?s=20)

## GERD, Egypt & Sudan

Sudan formally [requested the involvement of the European Union, United
States, and the
UN](https://www.voanews.com/africa/sudan-requests-un-us-eu-help-resolve-dam-conflict-ethiopia)
in the ongoing dispute over the filling and operation of the Grand
Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Ethiopian officials flatly rejected calls for external mediation. One of
the Ethiopian chief negotiators stated that Egypt & Sudan's calls to
involve these external parties is intended to ["pressurize Ethiopia to
accept their proposal which will strip the rights of the country to
develop its water resources"](https://www.ena.et/en/?p=22772).

Egypt also took to the UN General Assembly to [express concerns about
Ethiopia's plans to fill the dam this coming
summer](https://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/406345/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-expresses-worry-over-GERD-deadlock-to-UN-Gen.aspx).

Chairman of Sudan's Transitional Government, President Abdel Fattah Al
Burhan signaled that there will be [no diplomatic solution to the border
dispute](https://twitter.com/SUNA_AGENCY/status/1372265141883011075?s=20)
between the two countries and that the Sudanese Armed Forces will not
vacate to their pre-incursion positions.

## More Developments 

Ethnic Amhara civilians [continue to be massacred in several targeted
killings](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/3/20/worsening-violence-western-ethiopia-forcing-civilians-to-flee)
throughout the country. In Northern Shewa region, [more than 20
civilians were killed by Oromo Liberation Army
rebels](http://wazemaradio.com/%E1%89%A0%E1%88%B0%E1%88%9C%E1%8A%95-%E1%88%BD%E1%8B%8B-%E1%8B%A8%E1%8A%A6%E1%8A%90%E1%8C%8D-%E1%88%B8%E1%8A%94-%E1%89%B3%E1%8C%A3%E1%89%82%E1%8B%8E%E1%89%BD-%E1%89%A0%E1%8A%A8%E1%8D%88/).

Ethiopia is [having difficulty paying off its
debts](http://wazemaradio.com/%e1%8a%a2%e1%89%b5%e1%8b%ae%e1%8c%b5%e1%8b%ab-%e1%8b%95%e1%8b%b3-%e1%8a%a8%e1%89%a5%e1%8b%b7%e1%89%b3%e1%88%8d%e1%8d%a4-%e1%8a%a0%e1%89%a0%e1%8b%b3%e1%88%aa%e1%8b%8e%e1%89%bd-%e1%8a%a8%e1%8b%b0/)
and some high level US State Department advisors have suggested the US
[use debt negotiations as leverage to force the Ethiopian government to
negotiate with the
TPLF](https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/542145-fighting-in-ethiopia-threatens-us-security-interests?rl=1).

Elsewhere the US and Ethiopia are [clashing regarding final
conclusions](https://www.chicagobusiness.com/transportation/tensions-brewing-between-ethiopia-us-737-max-crash-probe)
of the March 2019 Boeing 737 crash.  

Ethiopia recorded the [highest number of weekly COVID-19 cases in
Africa](https://africa.cgtn.com/2021/03/19/ethiopia-records-highest-number-of-weekly-covid-19-cases-increase-in-africa/)
over the past week and the UK announced [a travel ban on travelers from
Ethiopia](https://www.gov.uk/government/news/more-countries-added-to-red-list-to-protect-uk-vaccination-programme-against-variants-of-concern). 

Opposition politician Lidetu Ayalew has been [banned from traveling
outside the country to seek medical
treatment](https://allafrica.com/stories/202103180215.html).


Ethiopia: Week in Review


#####  

Ethiopia is a diverse country of 110 million people made up of 80+
ethnic groups and languages. It's also the lone African country to
successfully repel European colonization in the late 19th century.

In the 20th century the country went through some of the most dramatic
political upheavals anywhere in the world. One of these was in 1991,
when a rebel group from Tigray, the TPLF, fighting alongside Eritrean
freedom fighters overthrew the government.

Eritrea became an independent country and the TPLF took over power in
Ethiopia.

The new TPLF-led government dramatically reshaped Ethiopia by rejecting
a single national Ethiopian identity and centering Ethiopian political
life along ethnic and tribal lines. This was formalized in a new
constitution introduced in 1995 where 9 ethnic states were created. This
was a radically new concept in Ethiopia.

Under the new framework, each territorial region belonged to a single
ethnic group. One of these ethnic regions is Tigray where the conflict
is centered today and the home-base of the TPLF.

As an illustration, what happened in 1995 would be like a new US
President or Congress deciding with a stroke of a pen that: Georgia
would belong \*only\* to black people; California only to Asians;
Arizona only to whites, Texas for only Mexicans etc ...



![](/images/blog/whats-happening-in-tigray-605680ed9ea8066927f2bf32_us-ra-185c8639.png)

*Example of ethnic-federalism*

Since the TPLF represented only 6% of the country, in order to gain
nationwide legitimacy, it invited (some say created) three more
compliant ethnic political parties and formed an umbrella organization
called the EPRDF through which it dominated Ethiopia for 3 decades.

The TPLF had sweeping control of the Ethiopian state, controlling more
than 70% of top positions in the military and security forces and
dominating the economy through a handful of state-owned companies which
funneled billions of dollars into the TPLF's own coffers.  

In 2018 following nearly three years of nationwide protests against the
EPRDF and TPLF's minority rule in Ethiopia, the Ethiopian people
demanded reforms & democratization. After internal deliberations within
the EPRDF, a man named Abiy Ahmed was selected to lead the reforms.  

Immediately the new leader introduced radical reforms by welcoming back
exiled politicians; cracking down on corruption; filling half of his
cabinet with women and making peace with Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the
former TPLF-led government.

Abiy won the Noble prize for the peace deal with Eritrea. The Prime
Minister's new relationship with Eritrea deeply angered the TPLF and
made them suspicious of his motives.

Under the peace agreement Ethiopia would cede a small part of the
disputed territory in Tigray which the TPLF's leaders laid claim to and
which the Ethiopian military had been protecting for close to two
decades following a bitter border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The straw that broke the camel's back between the TPLF and the new Prime
Minister occurred in late 2019 when the new PM disavowed the ethnic
makeup of the EPRDF and created a single non-ethnic political party to
replace it.

The TPLF refused to join the new party and finalized its retreat back to
its home-base of Tigray to govern the region with as little interference
as possible from the new PM based in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa.

As the PM cracked down on the previous regime's corruption, the TPLF
promptly began accusing him of ethnic-profiling and shielded their
members from arrest in their home region of Tigray.  (They had a sizable
armed regional militia).

Their accusation was certainly ridiculous given that they themselves
were the ones which constructed Ethiopia along ethnic lines and made
themselves vulnerable by ensuring that their party representing 6% of
the country controlled every lever of state power.

In mid-2020 Ethiopia postponed its upcoming elections due to the COVID
19 pandemic. Ethiopia's election postponement was one of 76 elections
globally that was postponed due to COVID and certainly wasn't an eyebrow
raising move.



![](/images/blog/whats-happening-in-tigray-605681196f7f703ae1ef1940_Scree-3fa580d0.png)

*Elections postponed during COVID*

The TPLF however charged that the PM didn't have the constitutional
authority to postpone elections and that they would go ahead and pursue
their regional elections as scheduled in September 2020 in Tigray.

The TPLF was itching for a confrontation with the Prime Minister and
declared that after October 5 2020 (when the PM's term 'expired') they
would not accept the federal government's legitimacy and all rules &
regulations coming from the PM would not be accepted in Tigray.

The PM on the other hand declared that the elections conducted in Tigray
in which the TPLF won more than "99%" of seats were invalid and stopped
federal funding for the region.  In the mean time, the TPLF refused all
bilateral peaceful dialogue with the Prime Minister insisting on banal
demands such as freeing political prisoners & having other parties
participate in a dialogue in order to presumably share power until the
new elections.  

When the PM appointed a new commander to lead the country's Northern
Command military branch stationed in Tigray, the TPLF poisoned the man
and sent him packing back declaring that the PM is illegitimate and does
not have authority to appoint military leaders.

Then on Nov 3, election eve in the United States, in what it called a
"pre-emptive" attack the TPLF ambushed and massacred hundreds of
Ethiopia's non-Tigrayan national military soldiers in their sleep.

The following day, the Prime Minister made an address to the country
saying that he has begun a law and order operation and military
offensive to respond to this unprecedented and treasonous attack and
bring the TPLF's leaders to justice.  

After about three weeks Ethiopian and allied regional forces had
captured all the major towns in Tigray and the TPLF's leaders went into
hiding. A few weeks later some of the major architects of the party were
captured and/or killed when they refused to surrender.

On social media, since the first day of the conflict, TPLF's supporters
began constructing a narrative that a war had been declared "on the
people Tigray" instead of the TPLF. That's like saying a war has been
declared on California because people are trying to recall governor
Gavin Newsom.  

TPLF supporters completely disregarded the fact that it was the TPLF
that had goaded the PM into a military offensive and that the operation
was intended to remove the party from power (not the people) and bring
them to justice for their massacre of Ethiopian soldiers.

Soon thereafter, "the war on Tigray" narrative morphed into what
activists began calling \#TigrayGenocide again to give the false
impression that there is some bloodthirsty African dictator that is out
to kill the Tigrayan people that they knew the western media would eat
up.

The Ethiopian government on the other hand had been hesitant to allow
western media or humanitarian agencies because it presumably feared
these organizations would be exploited by the TPLF (this was not
unfounded as the TPLF used aid orgs to smuggle weapons in the 80s).

As Joe Biden's administration came to power on Jan 20, it set an
aggressive tone against the Prime Minister's government which was
fulfilling its obligations in trying to restore law and order after an
insurrection had occurred just like the minor one that occurred in the
US. The US government along with international aid agencies began to
demand "unfettered" and "unrestricted access" to Tigray along with media
access. Journalists began to clamor daily on news articles and on
Twitter and started singularly assigning blame to the Ethiopian
government.

Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch
[began to
publish](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/02/ethiopia-eritrean-troops-massacre-of-hundreds-of-axum-civilians-may-amount-to-crime-against-humanity/)
what they claimed are unassailable evidence of massacres in a city
called Axum using nothing but phone calls to a few dozen people [with no
evidence of dead bodies or bullet
holes](https://jeffpearce.medium.com/ethiopia-lies-damn-lies-axum-and-the-west-242f471c45ae).

Slowly but surely the "genocide" narrative started by TPLF supporters as
a cynical ploy to draw attention \*away\* from the TPLF's atrocious
crimes and intransigence which led to the conflict  began to gain
support in western media. The tide of western public opinion decisively
turned against the Ethiopian government.

Nonetheless, there is NO genocide in Tigray. Genocide is the deliberate
killing of a large number of people from a particular ethnic group with
the aim of destroying that group.

There is  no force that is trying to destroy Tigrayans, they are
peace-loving Ethiopians, but there certainly are forces that will not
sleep until the remaining members of the TPLF are brought to justice.

That is not to say that there is no suffering in Tigray. The
humanitarian situation is real. People need food.  Medical facilities
and other critical infrastructure are badly damaged. The Ethiopian
government has reported massive destruction of infrastructure by the
TPLF as it was fleeing the major towns. And the government has opened up
full access to humanitarian aid and it reports that it is proving 70% of
the aid itself.

There is a PR campaign going on by western governments to see which one
of them can look most concerned about the situation in Tigray. Every day
or so a western politician releases a statement saying "I have deep
concerns about what's going on in Tigray" but the Ethiopian government
has reported they are coming empty handed and their concerns don't match
their action on the ground.

Supporters of the TPLF have one major goal: that is to revive the TPLF
from its sorry condition and bring it back to power somehow someway by
hook or by crook. They are using the real humanitarian challenges &
abusing the word genocide to paint a sensationalized picture that evokes
memories of gas chambers and machetes in the casual mind.  

The US government has also used terms like "ethnic cleansing" to
describe what appears to be displacement of people. These charged and
sensationalized headlines have made the propagators of the false
genocide narrative feel vindicated.

As with all conflicts, the conflict in Tigray is ugly and has incurred
collateral damage and casualties. The party responsible for the
suffering of Tigrayans is the TPLF which started an unprovoked conflict
because it was suffering from withdrawal symptoms from losing power.  

There is a legitimate humanitarian crisis in Tigray and the Ethiopian
government along with some international partners like the World Food
Program are addressing it. There are also some civilian casualties of
the conflict. But there is NO GENOCIDE in Tigray & it's deeply insulting
to real victims of genocide throughout history to use this term to
advance a political objective.

The Tigrayan people are suffering because their region was run by
deranged leaders of the TPLF who willingly decided to burn the house
down and chose self-destruction over peaceful co-existence with the rest
of the Ethiopian polity.


Background on the Tigray Conflict


> The following is a repost of a June 19 twitter
> [thread](https://twitter.com/EliezerAbate/status/1406189732346798088).

On Monday June 15, EU envoy to Ethiopia [Pekka
Haavisto](https://twitter.com/haavisto?lang=en) unleashed one of the
most disgusting slanders to date against Ethiopia's leadership falsely
accusing officials of saying "they are going to [wipe out the
Tigrayans](https://apnews.com/article/europe-ethiopia-africa-ffd3dc3faf15d0501fd87cafe274e65a)
for 100 years" in a February closed door meeting.

  
This derogatory fabrication was [swiftly
condemned](https://www.facebook.com/MFAEthiopia/photos/pcb.4826141894079682/4826140767413128/?type=3&theater)
by the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry as the ludicrous babbling of a
deranged old man suffering from a "hallucination of sorts or a lapse in
memory of some kind".

  
The Foreign Ministry went even further and bluntly called out Haavisto
as a flat out racist and banned him from ever setting foot on Ethiopian
soil again.

  
How did this disgraceful episode get covered by the media? If you were
to glance at the headlines and coverage by the AP and other western
sources, Haavisto's inflammatory accusation is presented as if it were a
true statement.

  
The American and European press which pat each other in the back in
perennial award ceremonies and tout themselves as paragons of
independent journalism have demonstrated that they are nothing more than
propagandists for their governments.

  
Statements coming from EU or American officials are uncritically
accepted as fact and those of Ethiopia's leaders as unmitigated lies.
The western diplomats and press aren't just failing to meet basic
ethical standards of journalism and diplomacy but are in an outright war
with the truth

  
Even the incontrovertible fact that the TPLF attacked an Ethiopian army
base to ignite the Tigray conflict is cast aside with suspicion and
qualified with "Abiy accuses the TPLF of attacking a federal army base"
as if the massacre of thousands of Ethiopian soldiers is a footnote.

  
In a Tuesday [NYTimes
podcast](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/podcasts/the-daily/ethiopia-tigray.html)
Sabrina
[Tavernise](https://twitter.com/stavernise?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
asks Declan
[Walsh](https://twitter.com/declanwalsh?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
"How did Abiy Ahmed go from Nobel Prize winner to alleged ethnic
cleanser?" in which the two spend 30 minutes painting a prejudicial
trope of Abiy Ahmed as a sadistic leader who delights in rape, famine,
and torture.

  
[Nikolas](https://twitter.com/NickKristof?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor)
Kristof [wrote on
Tuesday](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/opinion/ethiopia-tigray-crisis.html)
that "We should apply every ounce of leverage we have to rein in a
savagery in Tigray that increasingly reeks of genocide".

All these sanctimonious journalists and diplomats are clearly deluded
and believe they are morally superior to Ethiopians.

  
They concoct salacious stories putting words in their unsuspecting
Tigrayan sources mouths like: "they want to cleanse your bloodline?" and
bask in self-adulation: "after our report the American government dished
out sanctions on Ethiopian officials. We're so damn good!"

  
The unrelenting, months long, character assassination of Ethiopia, Prime
Minister Abiy Ahmed, Eritrea and the Amhara by a morally bankrupt lot of
European and American officials and journalists does not stem from a
single ounce of concern for the people of Tigray.

  
These defamation campaigns waged against Ethiopia by the journalist and
diplomat descendants of slaveholders, colonialists, and genociders stem
from the same tree whose bitter fruit made their forefathers view
Africans as subhuman savages that need to be civilized.


The Character Assassination of Ethiopia


![](/images/blog/binary-search-609c9e97e0ccb1d020cc91db_Scree-57f0d5dc.png)
*Loop condition to check first value larger than the target.*



![](/images/blog/binary-search-609c7695f9519a29155c65c3_Scree-fa15ca61.png)
*Binary Search (first infindPivotthen insearch)*

#### Introduction

Suppose a group of 100 people are in a line and they are standing from
shortest to tallest where the shortest person is on the left side and
the tallest person is on the right side. You want to join the line but
to do so you must honor the rules of the line and find a position where
the person to your left is shorter than you and the person to your right
is taller than you and insert yourself the middle. Of course if you are
the shortest you can simply go to the far left and if you are the
tallest to the right without having to do much work. But like most
people, if you are somewhere in between, you need to do some
searching.  

One approach to find where you belong is to begin from the shortest
person and one by one move to the right until the right conditions are
satisfied. Although this approach works it is not the most efficient. A
better approach would be to find the person at the middle of the line
and compare your height to that person. If you are taller than that
person you know that you can eliminate searching through all people to
the left. Similarly if you are shorter than the middle person you can
eliminate searching through the taller half of the line on the right
side.  
  
The binary search algorithm works exactly this way. Binary search is
used to find an element in a sorted array and to do so the algorithm
first finds the middle element and based on the result it eliminates one
half of the array which is irrelevant to it. It continues this process
until the element is found or it determines the element does not
exist.   

#### An Example

*Problem Description*

An integer array *nums* is sorted in ascending order and contains
**distinct** values. We rotate the array **k** positions to the right.
Your task is to determine if a value **target** belongs to the array and
return the index at which it's located. If target is not in the array,
we should return -1. For example if we had an initial array
\[1,2,3,4,5\] if we rotate it by k=2, it becomes \[4,5,1,2,3\] and
target = 1. In this case target is located at index 3.  
  
The key insight to to solving this problem is to find the pivot element
first in O(logN) time doing a binary search. The pivot element is the
single element which is greater than the element to its right. If the
array is not rotated at all the pivot element is the last element. Then
after finding the pivot element we need to determine whether the target
value falls to the left or to the right of the array and perform binary
search to find it.  
  
The code follows below:

Binary Search (first in findPivot then in
search)

Observe in the above example we had *L

Loop condition to check first value larger than the
target.

#### Practice Problems

**EASY**

○ [Kth Missing Positive
Number](https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-missing-positive-number/)

**MEDIUM**

○ [Capacity to Ship Packages in N
Days](https://leetcode.com/problems/capacity-to-ship-packages-within-d-days/)

○ [Koko Eating
Bananas](https://leetcode.com/problems/koko-eating-bananas/)

○ [Find the Smallest Divisor Given
Threshold](https://leetcode.com/problems/find-the-smallest-divisor-given-a-threshold/)  
○ [Search in Rotated Sorted
Array](https://leetcode.com/problems/search-in-rotated-sorted-array)

○ [Minimum Number of Days to Make m
Bouquets](https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-number-of-days-to-make-m-bouquets/)

○ [Longest Increasing
Subsequence](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-subsequence)

○ [Divide Two
Integers](https://leetcode.com/problems/divide-two-integers)

○ [Find K Closest
Elements](https://leetcode.com/problems/find-k-closest-elements)

○ [4Sum II](https://leetcode.com/problems/4sum-ii)

○ [Kth Smallest Element in
BST](https://leetcode.com/problems/kth-smallest-element-in-a-bst)

**HARD**

○ [Median of Two Sorted
Arrays](https://leetcode.com/problems/median-of-two-sorted-arrays)

○ [Maximum Profit in Job
Scheduling](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-profit-in-job-scheduling)

○ [Count of Smaller Number After
Self](https://leetcode.com/problems/count-of-smaller-numbers-after-self)

○ [Divide Chocolate](https://leetcode.com/problems/divide-chocolate/)

○ [Minimize Max Distance to Gas
Station](https://leetcode.com/problems/minimize-max-distance-to-gas-station/)

○ [Split Array Largest
Sum](https://leetcode.com/problems/split-array-largest-sum/)


Binary Search


![](/images/blog/bit-manipulation-60986f09088fb25e9d689cc9_Scree-96dc9156.png)

#### Introduction

Technical interviews at large tech companies such as Facebook, Google,
Netflix etc … will test your understanding of fundamental Computer
Science techniques.   

Bit manipulation questions come up frequently and are intended to test
one’s fluency with working with unary bit operators such as: ^ (xor), \|
(or), & (and), \\> (right shift), ~ (not).  
  
For example to check if the *3rd* bit of the integer 7 is set (7 is
represented as 0111 in binary), all we have to do is the
following: (0111) & (1 \ 3 neighbors dies
- A dead cell with 3 live neighbors becomes alive  

This question asks us to compute the next state of the matrix *without*
utilizing another matrix. 



![](/images/blog/bit-manipulation-60986e4b49833285ad021878_game--804d6480.jpg)

*Applying above rules to 4 x 3 matrix*

  
The key insight to solve this problem is to realize that each cell
utilizes exactly a single bit to store information even though each cell
is made up of 32-bit integers. Thus we can solve this problem by storing
the next state in the second least significant bit position and when we
are done processing every cell we can shift the value in the second bit
back to the least significant bit and return the answer in the original
matrix we were given. The solution follows below.

Observe that in line 19 *n* the number of neighbors and we perform a
bitwise OR (\|) with the value. If we have a live cell denoted by the
integer 1, 01 then the bitwise or of n=2, 10 or n=3 11 and 1 will always
be three and we set the second bit by adding 2. For a dead cell, 00, we
set the second bit only if the count is n=3, 11 which will result in a
value of three when we do 00 \| 11.  
  
Finally we move the second bit values to the first bit and place the
matrix in its final position.

#### Some Bit Tricks

Set ith bit: num \|= num & (1 \<\< i)

Clear ith bit: num &= ~(1 \<\< i)

Clear least significant set bit: num &= num-1

#### Practice Problems

**EASY**

○ [Hamming Distance](https://leetcode.com/problems/hamming-distance/)

○ [Single Number](https://leetcode.com/problems/single-number)

○ [Missing Number](https://leetcode.com/problems/missing-number/)

○ [Majority Element](https://leetcode.com/problems/majority-element)
(hint: try bit by bit construction)

○ [Reverse Bits](https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-bits/)

**MEDIUM**

○ [Game of Life](https://leetcode.com/problems/game-of-life) (hint: see
example above)

○ [Maximum XOR of Two Numbers in an
Array](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-xor-of-two-numbers-in-an-array)
(hint: try bit by bit construction)

○ [Counting Bits](https://leetcode.com/problems/counting-bits)

○ [Single Number II](https://leetcode.com/problems/single-number-ii)

○ [Subsets](https://leetcode.com/problems/subsets)

○ [Repeated
DNA Sequences](https://leetcode.com/problems/repeated-dna-sequences/)

○ [Single Number III](https://leetcode.com/problems/single-number-iii/)

○ [Sum of Two
Integers](https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-of-two-integers/)

**HARD**

○ [Minimum One Bit Operations to Make Integers
Zero](https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-one-bit-operations-to-make-integers-zero)

To learn more about Bit Manipulation refer to the following [excellent
post](https://leetcode.com/problems/sum-of-two-integers/discuss/84278/A-summary%3A-how-to-use-bit-manipulation-to-solve-problems-easily-and-efficiently).


Bit Manipulation


#### Introduction

There are a class of problems in technical interviews that will ask you
to design a typically known game or data structure using object oriented
principles. You may be asked to design a data structure like a Hash Map
or an LRU cache or simulate a game like Tic Tac Toe or a system like a
Browser's history functionality.

#### An Example

Design Tic Tac Toe. You have to implement a class named *TicTacToe*
which will take an integer n representing an nxn grid and you need to
implement a method called *move* that will take a row, column and player
that will place an item. The player id is either 1 or 2 and the move
method will return the winner everytime it's called. If there is no
winner it returns 0 otherwise it will return either player 1 or 2.

The key insight to realize for this problem is that a tic tac toe game
can only be won if a player places an item entirely in a row, column or
one of the two diagonals. So we only need to keep track of the number of
placements by each player for each row, column, diagonal, and
*antidiagonal.* One clever way to do this is to keep for arrays of size
N and if player 1 places an item add 1 to the respective
row,column,diagonal, or antidiagonal or if player 2 places an item add
-1. If at anypoint any of these four arrays contains total value of size
N for a row,column, diagonal or antidiagonal, then the player that just
placed the item is the winner. The code follows below: 



![](/images/blog/design-x-609dadfaae19b93085715ce7_Scree-91c095c9.png)

*TitTacToe solution*

#### Practice Problems

**EASY**

○ [Design HashMap](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-hashmap)

**MEDIUM**

○ [Design an Underground
System](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-underground-system)

○ [Design Hit Counter](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-hit-counter)

○ [Design Tic-Tac-Toe](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-tic-tac-toe)

○ [Design Browser
History](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-browser-history)

○ [Design a
Leaderboard](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-a-leaderboard)****

**HARD**

○ [Design In-Memory File
System](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-in-memory-file-system)

○ [Design Excel Sum
Formula](https://leetcode.com/problems/design-excel-sum-formula)


Design X


![](/images/blog/dfs-bfs-60a68bbe6631805ee5c78743_Scree-536c8658.png)
*BFSÂ solution*

#### Introduction

Depth First Search and Breath First Search are extremely common graph
traversal algorithms. The main difference is that in BFS visits nodes of
the same level one at the same time, whereas DFS follows a node through
the rabbit hole until the node no longer has any neighbors to visit.
You'll typically perform DFS or BFS when the problem statement has a
2D matrix that requires non-obvious navigation, or a binary tree. There
are also other deceptive inputs that initially seem like they require
simple array processing or two-pointer processing but can only be
answered via DFS/BFS. The example that follows will illustrate this.

#### An Example

*Problem Statement*

Given a string s that contains parentheses and letters, remove the
minimum number of invalid parentheses to make the input string valid.

Return *all the possible results*. You may return the answer in **any
order**.

*BFS Algorithm*

The key to this problem is to realize that we will need to remove a
single open or close parentheses from *every possible position* and
check to see if the newly formed string is a valid parentheses. If we go
about removing 1 parentheses the first time from all possible positions,
then another (which makes a total of two), then another on the third
round, we can treat this like a BFS problem.

The code follows below:

BFS solution

The problem can also be solved via DFS. They key thing to remember is
that we need to remove the minimum amount of characters until we
encounter a valid parentheses. So we need to keep the track of the
running minimum value so that our other depth first traversals don't go
to deeper levels than the minimum we have encountered. The solution
follows below:



![](/images/blog/dfs-bfs-60a68d54375aadeea6662dfc_Scree-73cb7e1a.png)

*DFS Solution*

#### Practice Problems

**MEDIUM**

○ [Number of Islands](https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands)

○ [Letter Combinations of a Phone
Number](https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii)

○ [Course Schedule II](https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii)

○ [Course Schedule](https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule)

○ [Pacific Atlantic Water
Flow](https://leetcode.com/problems/pacific-atlantic-water-flow)

○ [Minesweeper](https://leetcode.com/problems/minesweeper)

○ [Populating Next Right Pointers in Each Node
II](https://leetcode.com/problems/populating-next-right-pointers-in-each-node-ii)

○ [Construct Binary Tree from Inorder and Postorder
Traversal](https://leetcode.com/problems/construct-binary-tree-from-inorder-and-postorder-traversal)

**HARD**

○ [Longest Increasing Path in a
Matrix](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-path-in-a-matrix/)

○ [Binary Tree Maximum Path
Sum](https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-tree-maximum-path-sum)

○ [Remove Invalid
Parentheses](https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-invalid-parentheses/)

○ [Concatenated
Words](https://leetcode.com/problems/concatenated-words/)

○ [Recover Binary Search
Tree](https://leetcode.com/problems/recover-binary-search-tree/)


DFS & BFS


#### Introduction

There are a lot of interesting basic math questions that make for good
algorithm questions. Most of these questions don't require any
specialized knowledge except for elementary school level math, but they
will require careful thinking to answer correctly.

#### An Example

Count the number of primes less than a non-negative number n. The naive
way to solve this problem would be to check each number and test whether
it is divisible by any other number other than 1. But there is a better
algorithm called the sieve of Eratosthenes named after Eratosthenes of
Alexandria. The idea is to initially declare an array of booleans called
primes and set every value between 0 - n to true as 'probably prime'.
Then we set 1 and 0 to false. Then we consider all factors of the number
less than its square root. Then beginning with 2 (which is set to true
as a prime) we cross out all multiples of two as non-prime. We do this
with 3 and all numbers until we hit out end condition,



![](/images/blog/math-609ddb3d4b9317ff784d32cd_Scree-e498fa2c.png)

*Sieve of Eratosthenes*

#### Practice Problems

**EASY**

○ [Reverse Integer](https://leetcode.com/problems/reverse-integer/)

○ [Count Primes](https://leetcode.com/problems/count-primes)

**MEDIUM**

○ [Add Two Numbers](https://leetcode.com/problems/add-two-numbers)

○ [Divide Two
Integers](https://leetcode.com/problems/divide-two-integers)

○ [Fraction to Recurring
Decimal](https://leetcode.com/problems/fraction-to-recurring-decimal)

**HARD**

○ [Basic Calculator](https://leetcode.com/problems/basic-calculator)


Math


![](/images/blog/sliding-window-60a1acf057a0d42067b63c82_Scree-86b7b504.png)
*Longest Continuous Subarray with Absolute Diff Less Than or Equal to Limit*

#### Introduction

Sliding window problems require you to keep a fixed size window that
satisfies a certain criteria and shift or slide the window as soon as a
violation is encountered.

#### A Few Examples

*Problem*

Given an array of integers *A* and an integer *limit*, return the size
of the longest **non-empty** subarray such that the absolute difference
between any two elements of this subarray is less than or equal to
*limit.*

*Algorithm*

The key idea is to maintain an ordered
[multiset](http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/set/multiset/) of elements
and compare the max and the min values to see if they exceed limit. Each
time we encounter a violation we will decrease the window size by one
beginning from the left hand side. The gap of the largest possible
subarray we have seen will remain and at the end the array size - our
ending left pointer (i) will give us the answer.

Longest Continuous Subarray with Absolute Diff Less Than or
Equal to Limit

*Problem*

Given an array of integers nums and an integer k. A continuous subarray
is called **nice** if there are k odd numbers on it. Return *the number
of* ***nice*** *sub-arrays*.

*Algorithm*

There are several problems that will ask you to find the number of
continuous subarrays containing k properties (odd \#s in this example).
The key insight to remember here is that to arrive at *exactly* k items
which satisfy a certain property, we just have to count the total length
of continuous subarrays which satisfy *atmost* k elements and those that
satisfy at most k-1 elements and take the difference between two. Where
the at most k-1 and the at most k differ means we have exclusive
subarrays that only work for the *exactly k case.* Solution follows
below:



![](/images/blog/sliding-window-60a2ba52eaf39962458b7074_Scree-b81a0896.png)

*exactly(k) = atmost(k) - atmost(k-1)*

#### Practice Problems

**MEDIUM**

[Minimum size subarray
sum](https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-size-subarray-sum/)

[Binary Subarrays with
Sum](https://leetcode.com/problems/binary-subarrays-with-sum/)

[Max Consecutive Ones
III](https://leetcode.com/problems/max-consecutive-ones-iii/)

[Count Number of Nice
Subarrays](https://leetcode.com/problems/count-number-of-nice-subarrays/)

[Number of Substrings Containing All Three
Characters](https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-substrings-containing-all-three-characters/)

[Replace the Substring for Balanced
String](https://leetcode.com/problems/replace-the-substring-for-balanced-string/)

[Fruit Into Baskets](https://leetcode.com/problems/fruit-into-baskets/)

**HARD**

[Shortest Subarray with Sum at least
K](https://leetcode.com/problems/shortest-subarray-with-sum-at-least-k/)

[Subarrays with K Different
Integers](https://leetcode.com/problems/subarrays-with-k-different-integers/)

[Constrained Subsequence
Sum](https://leetcode.com/problems/constrained-subsequence-sum/)


Sliding Window


#### Introduction

In typical interviews you will rarely encounter problems that will
directly ask you to sort an array of integers. You might, however,
encounter a question that asks you to sort a linked list. Thus it’s
important to become familiar with the techniques used in common sorting
algorithms.  
  
Usually sorting creeps its head in when it is *an intermediate* step in
a multi-step process to solve a problem. At other times the problem
statement will make clear that you are dealing with a sorted array and
you should use that information to help you arrive at an optimal
solution. If the input array you are dealing with is already sorted then
that’s a big hint you should probably consider binary search before
considering a less optimal linear time solution.   
  

#### O(N) algorithms 

*Counting Sort*

Counting sort works by counting the frequency of each unique item and
then outputting the items in order. If an item occurs k times , we'll
place it k consecutive times. We will assume that we know the ordering
of the unique items. For example if we have items 0 - 6, we know 0 



![](/images/blog/sorting-609adee6386d8046fd5ab293_Scree-bad9e051.png)

*Insertion Sort.*

*

![](/images/blog/sorting-609af1195fa3314d173a4ee6_Scree-c18a02ed.png)

*Selection Sort**

Selection sort also uses the same principle as insertion sort and keeps
a partially sorted array to the left of the item currently being
processed. While in insertion sort we continually modify the partially
sorted array by inserting a new element somewhere in between its
smallest and largest value, in selection sort the partially sorted items
are in their final position.

We front load the work and each time try to find the smallest value to
the right and adding it as the next item in the partially sorted array
to our left. This contrasts with insertion sort where we never examine
the items to the right of the value we are processing.

Selection Sort

*

![](/images/blog/sorting-609af6573b6872bdb4c39fe6_Scree-f315d57e.png)

*Bubble Sort**

Bubble sort will keep a partially sorted array on the far right hand
side. Assuming we want to sort in ascending order we will continually
bubbling the largest items to the right by finding the largest item seen
so far and move it to the right, then the second largest item and so
forth. Once we have processed all elements our final array will be
sorted. For bubble sort the partial sort is on the right hand side and
thus its different from selection sort and insertion sort in this
manner. It is similar to the selection sort though in that the partially
sorted items in the right are in their final position.

Bubble Sort

  

#### O(NLogN) Algorithms

Merge Sort (Todo)

Quick Sort (Todo)

Heap Sort (Todo)

#### Other Notes

A sorting algorithm is **stable** if two elements in the input array
with identical keys appear in the same order when the sorted output is
processed. Heapsort and Quicksort algorithms are unstable, whereas merge
sort and insertion sort are. The key takeaway is stability only matters
when the input array contains duplicate values.

Check out the following tool to see a
[visualization](https://visualgo.net/en/sorting) your favorite sorting
algorithms.


Sorting


##### [ ](https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/)

##### Classic Papers

Paper
Topic
Authors
What is it?

[Amazon Dynamo](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/courses/cs5414/2017fa/papers/dynamo.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Amazon
A highly available distributed data store built for
Amazon's massive scale.

[Big Table](https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//archive/bigtable-osdi06.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Google
A distributed storage system for managing structured
data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data
across thousands of commodity servers

[Google File System](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/gfs.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Google
A scalable distributed file system for large
distributed data-intensive applications

[Memcache at Facebook](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/nsdi13/nsdi13-final170_update.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Facebook
How Facebook leverages memcached as a building block
to construct and scale a distributed key-value store that supports the
world’s largest social network.

[Cassandra](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/projects/ladis2009/papers/lakshman-ladis2009.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Facebook
A distributed storage system for managing very large
amounts of structured data spread out across many commodity servers,
while providing highly available service with no single point of
failure.

[Spanner](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/spanner.pdf)
Distributed Storage
Google
A scalable, multi-version, globallydistributed, and
synchronously-replicated database.

[Map Reduce](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/mapreduce.pdf)
Distributed Processing
Google
A programming model and an associated implementation
for processing and generating large data sets

[Spark](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/zaharia-spark.pdf)
Distributed Processing
UC Berkeley
A distributed memory abstraction that lets
programmers perform in-memory computations on large clusters in a
fault-tolerant manner

[Apache Kafka](https://cs.uwaterloo.ca/~ssalihog/courses/papers/netdb11-final12.pdf)
Distributed Messaging
LinkedIn
A distributed messaging system for collecting and
delivering high volumes of log data with low latency

[Raft](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/raft-extended.pdf)
Distributed Consensus
Stanford
A consensus algorithm for managing a replicated log.
[See MIT Lecture for more.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Zp3tzNbpE&amp;t=88s)

[TAO](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/atc13/atc13-bronson.pdf)
Architecture
Facebook
A simple data model and API tailored for serving
Facebook's massive social graph, and TAO, its implementation.

[Zookeeper](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/zookeeper.pdf)
Architecture
Yahoo
A service for coordinating processes of distributed
applications.

[Google Search](http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html)
Architecture
Stanford
Sergey and Larry Page's The Anatomy of a
Hypertextual Web Search Engine Describing Google's Early
Architecture.

[Bitcoin](https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.824/papers/bitcoin.pdf)
Architecture
Satoshi Nakomoto
The White Paper that introduced Bitcoin to the
world.

[CAP Theorem](https://www.infoq.com/articles/cap-twelve-years-later-how-the-rules-have-changed/)
Reflections
Eric Brewer
Eric Brewer Reflecting on the CAP Theorem.

##### Good Systems Blogs

[All Things Distributed](https://www.allthingsdistributed.com/) by
Werner Vogels

[High Scalability](http://highscalability.com/) by Todd Hoff

[On Digital Money](http://www.ignaciomas.com/) by Ignacio Mas

[Irrational Exuberance](https://lethain.com/) by Will Larson

##### Aggregated Resources

[System Design
Primer](https://github.com/donnemartin/system-design-primer#index-of-system-design-topics)
by Donne Martin (comprehensive guide)

[Cracking the System Design
Interview](https://tianpan.co/notes/2016-02-13-crack-the-system-design-interview)
by Tian Pan (Good practical examples)

##### Videos

[Whats App](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJx6mUEFAqQ) - A Reflection
on Building Whats App Server

##### To Understand a new Systems Design Ask:

- What is it? 
- Why was it invented? 
- How does it work?


Systems Design Resources


#### Introduction

A topological sort of a directed acyclic graph (DAG) is a linear
ordering of all the nodes of the graph such that *a comes before b* if
the edge *a-\>b* exists in the DAG. A DAG will always have one or
possibly more topologically sorted orderings.  

Figure1: Directed Acyclic Graph

Consider the DAG above. One possible topological sort for this DAG
is: A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I. Observe that for any pair of characters
(p1, p2) in ordering (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I) p1 comes before p2.  
  
In a typical technical interview you will most likely encounter a
question that asks you to determine whether a topological ordering is
possible for a graph rather than generating the ordering itself.
Furthermore, the graph will not be given to you as a variable, you'll
need to infer that the problem is a topological sort problem by paying
close attention to the problem description.

#### An Example

> **There are a total of N courses you have to take, labeled from 0 to
> N - 1. You are given an array prerequisites where prereq\[i\] = \[ai,
> bi\] indicates that you **must** take course bi first if you want to
> take course ai. For example, the pair \[0, 1\], indicates that to take
> course 0 you have to first take course 1. Return true if you can
> finish all courses. Otherwise, return false.



![](/images/blog/topological-sort-6099a9af4c166e5d4e774de5_dag-84d1361b.png)
*Figure1:Â Directed Acyclic Graph*

The key to solving this problem is to understand that prerequisites
*cannot* be cyclic. For example if course A is a prereq to course B and
course B is a prereq to course C then course C cannot be a prereq to
course A otherwise we have a cycle and we would not be able to take any
of the courses.

This problem can be modeled as a directed acyclic graph where the
courses, 0, 1, 2, ..., N-1 are the nodes in the graph and an edge exists
from a -\> b iff a is a prerequisite of b.

For our case, the way our input is given \[ai, bi\] indicates that
course bi must be taken before course ai so we need to be careful and
make sure that we have bi -\> ai in the graph we construct.  
  
*Algorithm & Code*

- construct a directed graph using the prerequisites array (may be
  cyclic or acylic. we don't know yet)
- we determine all the *in* degrees for each node and store them in an
  array
- we loop through our array and store all our *0 degree* nodes in a
  queue
- while our queue is not empty we remove the front element and for all
  neighbors of the node we decrease their in degree
- the above action simulates the removal of the node and all its
  corresponding edges from the graph
- if there are neighbor nodes with an in degree of 0 we place them in
  the queue
- while we do this we keep track of how many nodes we have processed
- at the end of this operation if we haven't processed all nodes, then
  there must be a cycle in the graph



![](/images/blog/topological-sort-6099af444fc3ce6b12cfe256_Scree-839fb272.png)

*Topological Sort (Kahn's Algorithm)*

The above algorithm where we remove nodes and decrease in-degrees is
called Kahn's algorithm. There is also a way to determine whether a we
can topologically sort a directed graph using a depth first first
approach. The key idea is to have two arrays, one which determines if a
node has been visited, and another which determines whether a node is in
a current dfs path.

Then for each unvisited node we perform dfs. If on entry we find that
the node is on the current dfs path, that means we just encountered a
cycle and the graph is not a directly acyclic graph. If on the other
hand if the node *is not* on the current path, but has been visited
before then we can confidently return true to the question of whether
the graph is acyclic because a previous dfs search has already told us
the graph is acyclic. Then if we get past both these checks, we mark
both visted and on current path to true and perform dfs on the neighbors
of the node. If at any point we find a cyclic path we stop the loop and
return early. Otherwise we reset to onCurrentPath to false and return
true. The code follows below.



![](/images/blog/topological-sort-6099b4520d9873470d3ac717_Scree-147db435.png)

*Topological Sort using Depth First Search*

Note if we actually wanted to track the linear ordering, all we have to
do is add an additional parameter for a list that can track the nodes as
we enter the dfs. Then at the end of every successful acyclic path, we
push the node to the list. It's important to *make sure* though to
reverse the list at the end of the process because we will be visiting
the most "dependent" node at the very end. Also the *onCurrentPath*
check should precede the visited check in this scenario because only
when a node IS NOT on a current path but is visited can we be sure that
it's acyclic.

#### Practice Problems

**MEDIUM**

○ [Course Schedule](https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule/)

○ [Course Schedule II](https://leetcode.com/problems/course-schedule-ii)

**HARD**

○ [Alien Dictionary](https://leetcode.com/problems/alien-dictionary/)

○ [Longest Increasing Path in a
Matrix](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-increasing-path-in-a-matrix/)


Topological Sort


#### Introduction

Two pointer problems require you to use two (or more) pointers whose
values shift one at a time. These problems are similar to sliding window
problems but unlike sliding window problems which usually have a fixed
window size that moves from right to left or left to right, two pointer
problems don't usually keep a fixed window. Two pointers problems can be
some of the trickest problems to intuit so it's important to put in the
reps and do as many problems as possible.

#### A Couple Examples

*Problem*

Given two sorted integer arrays *nums1* and *nums2*, merge *nums2* into
*nums1* as one sorted array.

The number of elements initialized in *nums1* and *nums2* are m and n
respectively. You may assume that *nums1* has a size equal to m + n such
that it has enough space to hold additional elements from *nums2*.

*Algorithm*

The main trick required to solve this problem is to recognize that we
need to solve it from right to left so that we don't overwrite the
values in *nums1.* If we have one pointer at m-1 and another at n-1, and
a final pointer at m+n-1 and work from right to left comparing values
one at a time and placing the larger value at the right, then once both
the right and left pointer reach 0 we know we will have processed all
elements and the array will be in sorted order.



![](/images/blog/two-pointers-609ed69028c08210061c7511_Scree-5ed43bab.png)

*Example of three pointers.*

*Problem*

Given an integer array nums sorted in **non-decreasing** order, return
*an array of* ***the squares of each number*** *sorted in non-decreasing
order*.

*Algorithm*

This problem would require an *unchanged* array if the numbers are all
positive. The only hiccup comes from the fact that the smallest value in
the original array could have the largest square in the new array. For
example if we had \[-4,2,1\] the square of these values would be
\[1,4,16\]. So we use two pointers one on the far left and one on the
right hand and compare the squares of each one by one and place the
largest value on the far right in a new array.



![](/images/blog/two-pointers-609ef115b8c5224ee8b57b6b_Scree-cb722d50.png)

*Two pointers.*

#### Practice Problems

**EASY**

○ [Merge Sorted
Array](https://leetcode.com/problems/merge-sorted-array/)

○ [Squares of a Sorted
Array](https://leetcode.com/problems/squares-of-a-sorted-array/)

○ [Backspace String
Compare](https://leetcode.com/problems/backspace-string-compare/)

**MEDIUM**

○ [Longest Substring Without Repeating
Characters](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-substring-without-repeating-characters)

○ [Container With Most
Water](https://leetcode.com/problems/container-with-most-water)

○ [Partition Labels](https://leetcode.com/problems/partition-labels)

○ [Longest Repeating Character
Replacement](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-repeating-character-replacement)

○ [Sort Colors](https://leetcode.com/problems/sort-colors)

○ [Three Sum Closest](https://leetcode.com/problems/3sum-closest/)

**HARD**

○ [Trapping Rain
Water](https://leetcode.com/problems/trapping-rain-water/)


Two Pointers


Array problems are many and can be some of the trickiest in the
business. There are many problems that seek the maximum or minimum value
of subarrays and subsequences and there could be many ways to solve a
problem. Problems with arrays can be solved with Dynamic Programming,
Two Pointers, Sliding Window or using a data structure such as a Hash
Map or a Heap. Below are some problems categorized by problem solving
strategy.

| Problem | Strategy | Description |
|----|----|----|
| [Maximum Size Subarray Sum Equals K](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-size-subarray-sum-equals-k/) | HashMap | Find maximum length subarray whose sum equals to K. |
| [Subarray Sum Equals K](https://leetcode.com/problems/subarray-sum-equals-k/) | HashMap | Find total number of subarrays whose sum equals to K. |
| [Contiguous Array](https://leetcode.com/problems/contiguous-array/) | HashMap | Find maximum length subarray with equal numbers of 1's and 0's. |
| [Maximum Product Subarray](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-product-subarray/) | Visualize | Find largest product of any subarray. |
| [Maximum Subarray](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-subarray/) | Visualize | Find largest sum of any subarray.  |
| [Maximum Product of Three Numbers](https://leetcode.com/problems/maximum-product-of-three-numbers/) | Visualize | Find maximum product of three numbers in array. |


Arrays


![](/images/blog/union-find-609c219e25d3736b060925f1_Scree-5ea35024.png)

#### Introduction

Imagine you’re back in elementary school and its recess and you and your
friends have chosen captains to form teams. No single player can belong
to more than one team and at some point after you have played some games
some players can switch teams. What if someone came while you guys are
on break and wanted to know to which team a player belonged to?  
  
The Union Find data structure was invented by Bernard Galler and Michael
Fischer to efficiently determine which non-overlapping group and item
belongs to (for ex. which team a player belongs to) and to quickly join
two items into a single group (i.e. the captain selects you into his
team). It has the following two operations:

  

- join(item A, item B) -\> joins two items together
- find(item) -\> group it belongs to

#### How It Works

Like many other data structures, the union find data structure is
modeled as a tree, but like the common heap implementation the tree
operations are performed on an array. The key to the union find data
structure is assigning a representative value as an id to each disjoint
(non-overlapping) group.   

We allocate an array to store the representative id of the *immediate*
parent of each of our N items. Initially each item belongs to its own
group the parent\[i\] = i. We will also allocate an array to store the
*rank* (which is the height of a tree beginning at the node itself) for
each item.

  
Then if we want to join two items into the same group, we first have to
check to see if they’re already in the same group. If they are not, then
we will assign the *root* of the item with the smaller rank to be a
direct child of the root of the item with the larger rank so as not to
increase the maximum rank between the two items. If the two items have
exactly the same rank, we can arbitrarily choose one item and assign it
as the parent of the other.  
  
For the find operation we will walk back parents until we land on the
root node. And as we walk back we can reduce the distance for our next
search by assigning to each descendent of the root node, the root node
as its parent, so next time we call find we can immediately find it.
This is called *path compression*. The implementation of the data
structure follows below: 

The key thing to observe is that in the recursive *find* function above
we'll continue to call find on the parent until the parent becomes
itself while setting the parent of any descendants of the root to the
root. The path compression allows us to achieve a worst case
O(LogN) time for the find and join operations (In fact they are slightly
faster than O(LogN). You can read more
[here](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Efficiency-of-a-Good-But-Not-Linear-Set-Union-Tarjan/449230e4ebcf6ba071636e07cdca76ef85213a43)).
This is how we compress the path. It's usually the case that if a
problem can be solved using the Union Find data structure, then it can
alternatively be solved using BFS or DFS as well. It's good to practice
all three approaches.

#### Practice Problems

**MEDIUM**

○ [Number of Islands](https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-islands/)

○ [Number of
Provinces](https://leetcode.com/problems/number-of-provinces/)

○ [Accounts Merge](https://leetcode.com/problems/accounts-merge/)

○ [Evaluate Division](https://leetcode.com/problems/evaluate-division/)

**HARD**

○ [Longest Consecutive
Sequence](https://leetcode.com/problems/longest-consecutive-sequence)


Union Find


[Skunkworks](https://www.amazon.com/Skunk-Works-Personal-Memoir-Lockheed/dp/0316743003)
is a riveting memoir by Ben Rich about his years working at Lockheed’s
top-secret Skunkworks program first as an engineer, then as the head of
the organization for close to twenty years. In this first-person
account, we get to peek into the brilliant mind of a manager and a group
of enterprising engineers, chemists, physicists and all-around doers
that made the impossible possible and produced some of America’s most
iconic military aircraft from the U2 spy plane to the record-setting


![](/images/blog/book-review-skunkworks-604bffef3fdf20d110204df1_sr-71-49d98330.jpg)

*SR-71 Blackbird* which blazed at three times the speed of sound.  

In the first half of the book Rich chronicles the story of Kelly
Johnson, the formidable and charismatic chief engineer who founded the
program. Johnson is a larger-than-life figure that reminds one of the
legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden who left an impression on
his players that extended far beyond the basketball court. Similarly,
the lessons and fear that Johnson instilled in his employees is palpable
throughout Rich’s words and the accounts of other employees, pilots,
generals, and Secretaries of State who are profiled in the book.



Indeed one of the highlights of the books is we get to hear from some of
the most towering figures of the Cold War from former National Security
Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski to Secretary of State William Perry about
how crucial a role the Skunkworks team played in ensuring America’s
military advantage during the era.  
  
We also get to peek inside the Pentagon’s bureaucracy and its Byzantine
rules and regulations which made life somewhat frustrating for both Rich
and Johnson. Despite their stellar record, the team ran into the same
issues that most of us run into in the corporate world today from
inflated egos, unexpected change of direction from the top, and
backbiting characters.  
  
The pace at which most of the planes got built is truly astonishing.
Most of the planes that were took less than 24 months from conception to
prototype. The focus, grit, ingenuity, and high degree of excellence
that was expected of SkunkWorks employees can be credited for this rapid
and prolific output which didn’t sacrifice quality.  
  
My biggest takeaway from this book is that we should be fearless about
tackling challenges that may seem uncomfortable or unknown at first.
Most of the projects that the Skunkworks team undertook were zero-to-one
projects that had never been done before. The team had mastered the
fundamentals in each of their endeavors and was able to improvise to
create products that revolutionized the game.


Book Review: SkunkWorks


> "I've always said that I wanted to be remembered as a player that
> didn't waste a moment ... didn't waste a day." - Kobe Bryant

The skies over Southern California were unusually overcast on the
morning of Sunday January 26 2020. I had arrived in the area around
midnight after an eighteen hour drive from Washington state. That
morning, I decided to accompany my family to church. My good friend
Yafet was preaching and I attended his service along with my brother. In
the middle of the service, my brother who was sitting next to me, had
the blankest stare that I had ever seen on his face. He looked at me,
and said, “Kobe died”. 

Kobe who? Not Kobe Bryant! It couldn’t be. How? What happened? What do
you mean he died? I couldn’t believe it. I opened up my phone and my
heart dropped as soon as the internet confirmed what I hoped was cruel
joke. The shock and unsettling that followed wouldn’t subside for days
and still stings to this day on the one year anniversary of his passing.
On this day, I want to offer a note of gratitude to Kobe Bean Bryant. 

Kobe you were an artist and a marvelous basketball player. You gave
everything to the game you loved and showed all of us what giving your
absolute best looks like. You came to the NBA as an 18 year old boy and
left as a legend. Despite your God-given talents, you weren’t satisfied
for one second. You wanted to be the best. While your peers spent their
summers relaxing, you were up at 3am honing your craft. Day after day.

You were clutch like no other player I’ve seen. With the game on the
line the entire league knew there was no one better to have the ball;
double teams, triple teams, didn’t matter! You wanted the ball and you
delivered *every time*. Your ability to focus under pressure and execute
were superhuman. 

Your obsession with perfection and becoming the best version of yourself
raised the level of everyone around you. Regardless of our profession,
you reminded us to focus on the fundamentals, put in the the time, go
deep, and to become craftsmen rather than going through the motions.
[*Mamba
mentality*](https://www.amazon.com/Mamba-Mentality-How-Play/dp/0374201234)
wasn’t confined to the world of basketball. You were an inspiration to
an entire generation of athletes and admirers of art and excellence. 

You deconstructed what greatness looks like in a way mere mortals can
understand. We know your greatness came at a great cost in time. Yet you
managed to be an exceptional and loving father to your daughters. 

You were not a perfect man. You made mistakes as a young man but you
didn’t make excuses. You owned up to it. Your contrition on the public
stage at the tender age of 24 was courageous and honorable to both man
and God. Most of us will never know what it feels like to be publicly
shamed and reviled by millions of people as you were at that time. Yet
you channeled all your energy to drop forty, fifty points a game and
thrill many millions more than those that cursed you.

You showed us what staying grounded looks like regardless of how wealthy
you got. You left nothing on the table and inspired all of us to give
our very best until we put our sneakers, pens, cameras, or scalpels up.
Dropping 60 points in your very last game! Really?

You have a special place in our hearts & will be forever missed. Your
spirit carries on. Your example and dedication inspires hundreds of
millions of people around the world. Congratulations on a life
well-lived. We were lucky to be alive when you played basketball.

  
*Rest In Peace*


Thank you Kobe


This essay is a retrospective about my journey founding a food discovery
startup called idk over the course of the past of 2019. I have written
the tldr of the major lessons I took away right below, and if you’re
interested in the longer form narrative, keep reading, hopefully you’ll
find other useful nuggets.

  

TLDR: 

  

- Have one founder, (hopefully the CEO), whose sole responsibility is to
  raise money so that your startup can get off the ground. 
- Start thinking about potential investment partners as early as you
  think about a startup and prepare for the long haul (6months -
  12months) of fundraising. 
- As a first-time founder with no-exit, realize that 9/10 investors will
  look at you skeptically and so make sure either your product blows
  them away, you have revenue numbers to show off, or engagement numbers
  to show off. 
- If you decide to self-fund, make sure you have at least 12 months of
  living expenses covered -- among your founding team -- so that you put
  yourself in a position to make solid headway with your product. 

  

Over the course of 2019, I worked on a startup called idk. I began
working on this project when I got together with my co-founder, who was
a childhood friend of mine. We both had grand ambitions about succeeding
in technology and becoming very rich. Other than this grand ambition, we
did not have a clear-cut idea of what to build, how to raise money, and
how to monetize the product we were building.  
  
It seems obvious, in hindsight, that these should have been topics that
we should have spent considerable time breaking down, but because of our
preternatural bias towards action, we felt that if we continued to
build, talk to users, and just keep making progress day by day, that
these issues would resolve themselves. Or more likely, we felt that we
would have a better mental model and framework with which we can come up
with solutions to the questions above.  
  
I went to Stanford and studied Computer Science as an undergrad.
Everyone in Silicon Valley and beyond knows that countless tech
entrepreneurs came out of this storied institution and founded iconic
companies from Google to Snap to endless others. Still, as an undergrad,
I was focused on obtaining the technical skills necessary to build these
companies. I had mistakenly believed that all it took to build great
technology companies was technical prowess. Basically the idea that I
can build a great software product with the CS skills that I was
learning, and commercialize that product and make a lot of money.  
  
Part of the reason that I had this mistaken belief was because I knew
that having great technical chops was *necessary* to build a great
software startup and that those who did not have these technical skills
had no chance succeeding in founding a technology startup. Most of the
widely heralded founders and CEOs that I observed in the tech press I
was consuming -- from Zuck, to Sergey and Larry, to Jeff Bezos and Elon
-- were all highly technical people with a software background at some
point in their lives. So I had this conviction that there would be
absolutely no way to make it in technology as a startup founder unless
one had experience building software at some point in their lives.  
  
Furthermore, from reading dozens of
[essays](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html) from Paul Graham, I
picked up the idea that traditional business-minded, MBA types, were
held in disdain by the tech community. So I was committed to not having
a business co-founder when I pursued my tech startup at some point. My
plan was to pursue an enterprise or B2B unglamorous startup that was
very product and software heavy. 

  

However, when I got together with my co-founder in March of 2019, he had
a very consumer-centric mobile app idea and it became clear to me that
he hadn’t even explored the realm of non-consumer ideas. He was even
more of a novice than I was. He had never seen how products are actually
built in a startup or software setting and so he came with a layman’s
understanding of what was possible. His background was in door-to-door
sales selling copiers to local businesses on foot.  
  
I hadn’t obviously built my own startup before, but I had built software
projects with teams composed of product managers, designers, data
analysts, and many top-notch engineers at some of the top companies in
Silicon Valley and I had a good sense of what was technically required
to get our product off the ground into a usable stage.  
  
We were first-time founders and convinced that we needed to get the
product live out to users before we had any shot at raising money from
angel investors and early stage venture capitalists. So we built and
built and built some more for about five months and we launched our
first product to public users in September of 2019. During our launch
day, we had about four-hundred people download and use our app, mostly
people that my co-founder knew from social media.  
  
We had a toast to celebrate our first launch, and immediately several
things started becoming very clear about our business. First, we
realized that we were geographically limited. Our food discovery app
only served people in a particular geographical location at a time. It
was not a photo-sharing app that can be used by anybody anywhere in the
world. So even though we were getting downloads from across the United
States, we knew that the usability of our app was limited only to folks
living in the southern California area. 

  

Secondly, we now wanted to know what it took to raise money. I had
talked to friends that had raised money without getting as far into a
launch as we had gotten and had the idea that all we needed was to just
check off a bunch of checklists and thresholds and we would eventually
become acceptable to investors. I was conditioned to having this
mistaken idea from my experience getting into college or other highly
competitive programs where the application was clearcut and all one had
to do was make sure she meets all the pre-specified criteria.  
  
But I soon realized that the venture capital world was different. The
entrepreneur not only had to go out and sell the product, but more
importantly she has to relentlessly hustle and sell her vision to a
peculiar group of people who hear ideas and pitches hundreds and
sometimes thousands of times a year. Finding the door and connections to
decision-makers that can potentially invest in your company is actually
intentionally *not* clear cut at all.  
  
At this point it became abundantly clear that raising money was going to
be difficult no matter how much we improved our product. The investors
and accelerators we ended up meeting all wanted to see significant
traction in the way of users or revenue. As our personal savings were
dwindling down with no investor’s in sight, the rate of our product
iterations also began to suffer. We were concerned that we were going to
run out of runway, we didn’t have any investor meetings lined up, and
our product was getting stale to our users and we were spending lots of
money on paid traffic in order to satisfy the whims of a potential angel
investor who wanted to see 10000 users before he can make a decision to
invest. Just like a guy trying too hard to woo an attractive girl, we
began to reek of desperation and to see the writing on the wall.  
  
IDK did not work out because we couldn’t figure out how to pursue
building the product while providing for our living expenses. In other
words, we ran out of money -- *our own* money.  
  

Like most people, I thought if we got a product out, that would signal
to investors that we were ahead of most of our early stage competition
and investment dollars would follow. But that was actually quite
foolish. Investors are more than anything looking for a battle-tested
team, social validation from other investors or notable accelerators,
and a history of getting impressive things accomplished. To be clear,
having the technical chops necessary to get your product out is a
*necessary* condition, but not a *sufficient* one to impress the
investorati. So my advice to my current and previous self would be to
focus more on getting the overall vision, and storyline, and investor
connection set up right, before hunkering down and writing the first
line of code.


Writings from 2020–2022

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