A struggle does not become illegitimate because it is costly. A resistance does not become criminal because it bleeds. A people do not lose their rights because they are attacked. A cause does not die because fighters fall. History does not remember surrender. History does not honor submission. History does not record obedience as liberation. History records those who resisted — even when they lost.
By Ali Dan Ismael and Kemi Ashu of The Independentistnews
Recycling regime narratives, laundering propaganda through headlines, and repackaging psychological warfare as journalism has become a consistent editorial line. Same playbook. Same framing. Same objective: delegitimize resistance, normalize submission, and convert a political struggle into a criminal narrative. Not reporting. Not analysis. Narrative management for power. His recent commentaries follow the same rhetorical architecture — criminalization instead of contextualization, demoralization instead of analysis, surrender narratives instead of political diagnosis. His editorials no longer interrogate power; they orbit it. They no longer challenge structures; they sanitize them. They no longer inform the public; they condition it. Selective outrage, curated empathy, controlled framing, disciplined silence on state violence, structural repression, and root causes. This is not journalism in service of truth — it is messaging in service of stability. It is not media as accountability — it is media as conflict management. And the consistency of the line reveals the function: not to explain the crisis, but to manage perception of it.
Freedom Has Never Been Free — And History Has Never Been Bloodless
The Guardian Post’s headline — “Revisiting over 150 Amba ‘Generals’ ‘wasted’” — is not journalism. It is psychological warfare disguised as editorial commentary. The language is deliberate. The framing is deliberate. The objective is deliberate. Words like “wasted,” “surrender,” “let go independence struggle,” and “lesson for fighters” are not neutral descriptors — they are instruments of demoralization. They are designed to collapse a political struggle into a crime narrative and recode a liberation movement into criminality. This is not analysis. This is not reporting. This is counter-insurgency narrative engineering.
No people in human history have ever achieved freedom without cost. Not the Americans. Not the Haitians. Not the Algerians. Not the Vietnamese. Not the South Africans. Not the Kenyans. Not the Irish. Not the Eritreans. There is no bloodless liberation in history — only sanitized history written after victory. Freedom movements are not born in comfort; they are born in repression. They are not sustained by peace; they are sustained by resistance. They do not end through fear; they end through political settlement, victory, or exhaustion.
The Guardian Post commits a moral inversion: it counts bodies without counting causes, lists deaths without listing crimes, names fighters without naming the system, displays faces without displaying the structures that produced them. Where is the accounting of villages burned, civilians executed, mass displacement, military raids, collective punishment, extrajudicial killings, economic strangulation, political exclusion, cultural erasure, broken federations, and stolen sovereignty? The violence did not begin with resistance. It began with annexation, erasure, forced union, and structural domination. Resistance is a reaction, not a cause.
This publication is not aimed at fighters. It is aimed at families, communities, diaspora supporters, neutral civilians, and undecided populations. Its message is psychological: “Look at the bodies. Look at the deaths. Look at the cost. Give up. Surrender. Accept your place. Stop dreaming. Submit.” This is conflict-fatigue engineering, not journalism.
Freedom does not come without bloodshed, but neither does tyranny end without resistance. The real question is not “How many have died?” The real question is “Why are they fighting?” And the answer has never changed: because a people were absorbed, not united; because a federation was dissolved, not reformed; because autonomy was removed, not negotiated; because identity was erased, not respected; because sovereignty was denied, not debated.
A struggle does not become illegitimate because it is costly. A resistance does not become criminal because it bleeds. A people do not lose their rights because they are attacked. A cause does not die because fighters fall. History does not remember surrender. History does not honor submission. History does not record obedience as liberation. History records those who resisted — even when they lost.
You can kill fighters. You cannot kill a political question. You can suppress a movement. You cannot erase a people. You can control territory. You cannot control memory. You can dominate a population. You cannot manufacture legitimacy. Freedom movements are not measured by casualty counts. They are measured by political roots, historical justice, and legitimacy of cause. Freedom has never been free. Liberation has never been bloodless. History has never been kind to empires — and never gentle to resistance. The question is not whether people will stop resisting. The question is whether the system that created the resistance is willing to change. Because if injustice remains, resistance always returns.
Ali Dan Ismael and Kemi Ashu of The Independentistnews
