The threat of disorder emanating from Ethiopia may not only engulf the region but threaten the security of the Red Sea.
The longer the 12-month conflict in Ethiopia drags on, the greater the damage to the fragile stability of the Horn of Africa. It has already sown the seeds of regional destabilization that will accelerate if a political settlement is not sought urgently.
It is a sign of this concern that President Uhuru Kenyatta of neighbouring Kenya is actively engaged in trying to promote a resolution to the conflict and to lay the groundwork for a longer-term political settlement in Ethiopia.
At issue now is whether a country of 110 million people can be prevented from unravelling
From the moment the fighting began, Ethiopia’s neighbours sensed unprecedented danger. If not rapidly contained, which it was not, the conflict would trigger a chain reaction of claims for self-determination and drain the economy. The consequences would not be confined within the borders of Ethiopia. At issue now is whether a country of 110 million people can be prevented from unravelling.
The effects of failure will be felt in neighbouring states, in the fragile relations among the countries of the region and in the strategic environment surrounding the Horn of Africa.
Conflict and economic collapse beget displacement and the hardest hit by a migratory wave will be Kenya and probably Somalia. If this wave grows, migrants – and the numbers could be very high – will try to reach South Africa and Europe. All of Ethiopia’s neighbours have their own economic challenges and this additional influx will test their financial capacities.
Ethiopia’s centrifugal political forces were contained over the past 30 years by significant budget subsidies to the regions nearest to the frontier. This is no longer the case. The cost of war has diminished the subsidies to these already impoverished border populations, who will seek more opportunity across the frontier. Once the provider of stability in the region, Ethiopia has become an exporter of insecurity. Ethiopia is now over-armed and under-financed. Weapons are making their way across frontiers and one should be alarmed that the jihadist group al-Shabaab, for example, can buy guns more cheaply from the Ethiopian market than it does from Yemen.
Ethiopia’s deteriorating internal security is being exploited by al-Shabaab and other likeminded groups to infiltrate and recruit in Ethiopia. If this persists and succeeds, an entirely new front is opened making Kenya’s security even more fragile.
The dispute over centralization of political authority in Ethiopia, which spilled over into the war with Tigray, was accompanied by a deliberate and parallel strategy to realign influence in the Horn of Africa.
It is now emerging that the agreement between Isaias Afewerki, the president of Eritrea, and Abiy – for which the latter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 – supplemented by the inclusion of Somalia into a trilateral agreement, was to to create a bloc of countries with highly centralized and authoritarian political systems to control the eastern coastline of Africa, from Eritrea to Somalia. In the process, efforts to consolidate cooperative security and development in the region, under the umbrella of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, were jettisoned, leaving it with new divisions and no institution to manage differences.
Multilateral options, in short, were deliberately abandoned. The Horn of Africa thus hovers over how the fate of this political axis will be managed in an institutional vacuum. Djibouti is caught between the contending politics of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. In Sudan the move to overthrow the experiment in political reform in favour of the military is colliding with sustained popular resistance. South Sudan is prey to its own post-independence demons. Kenya is fighting to inoculate its open economy and competitive political system from the infection of a region where the centre – usually Ethiopia – no longer holds.
If this grim outlook is not reversed, the threat of disorder emanating from Ethiopia will not only engulf the region but threaten the security of the Red Sea.
Abiy’s war on Tigray has turned into the potential dissolution of Ethiopia. Nothing is permanent, not least in a region which has recognized two secessions and lives with another in Somaliland.
The current successor of the Ethiopian empire may collapse. Eritrea’s lethally eccentric regime cannot last forever. But Ethiopia’s vast population, whether living in a united country or as separate entities, will inevitably seek access to the sea.
For many years, Ethiopian hegemony in the region allowed for the containment of crises. Ethiopian troops served in peacekeeping operations and in AMISOM, the African Union Mission in Somalia. Ethiopia and Kenya had an understanding that dated back half a century. Ethiopia’s relations with Sudan were balanced by a Faustian bargain between Omar al-Bashir’s Islamists and the regime controlled by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front in Addis Ababa. Eritrea’s bizarre isolation could gradually have ended with the rapprochement with Abiy.
All these assumptions have now been shattered. Ethiopia must struggle to avoid dissolution. Eritrea’s authoritarian vision of order in the region will be replaced by that of the political victors in Addis and their vision of Ethiopia’s relations with its neighbours and the wider world.
Thus, a new transition beckons for Ethiopia. But this time, it must encompass the whole region which will have been so damaged by the events of the past few years.
The international community will have to consider how this transition is not hijacked again and under what conditions it can be sustained financially to give populations the belief that peace does not degenerate again into war and regional insecurity.
💭 The Tekeze dam was hit by airstrikes, knocking off power to the entire Tigray region.
The evil monster Abiy Ahmed will continue stealing, killing and destroying – even the Grand Renaissance Dam – unless stopped abruptly. That’s what he promised Egypt’s Al-Sisi when he repeated these reassuring words in Arabic after him: “I swear to Allah, we will never harm you, Wallahi! Wallahi! Wallahi!”
In recent weeks the government has interned more than 30,000 ethnic Tigrayan civilians in Addis Ababa
The country has been scarred by violence on all sides, but there may be much worse to come as Tigrayan civilians are targeted.
enocide happens when warning signs are not heeded. The world looks away, refusing to believe that mass ethnic killing is possible. We hope that the worst will be avoided. But to prevent genocide, we must sound the alarm before we arrive at certainty.
Rarely before has the danger of genocide been so clearly signalled in advance than in Ethiopia.
No side to this conflict is angelic. All sides in Ethiopia’s conflict have committed violations. But only one side has committed violations on a scale and nature that could credibly qualify as genocide – and that, we regret to say, is the coalition of the Ethiopian government, under the prime minister, Abiy Ahmed; the Amhara regional government; and the state of Eritrea.
Twice in the past year, the world has stood by while this coalition has perpetrated international crimes against civilians of Tigrayan identity – including murder, rape, torture and starvation.
We may now be facing a third atrocity, even larger and bloodier than what has gone before: a possible mass killing of interned civilians in Addis Ababa and elsewhere.
Five warning signs for mass, ethnically targeted violence are flashing red.
First, figures in the Ethiopian government and their allies have promoted hate speech against Tigrayan people as an ethnic group. They have stoked violence in language that identifies all Tigrayans as enemies. This hate speech is escalating – Tigrayans have been referred to as “cancer”, “weeds”, “rats” and “terrorists”.
Second, the government has mobilised the instruments for mass atrocity, in the form of militias and vigilante groups, organised on an ethnic basis and with an ethnic agenda. It has armed them and granted them impunity.
Third, the government is eliminating any middle ground. It has silenced independent and critical voices. It has prevented media access to Tigray, closed down or censored independent national journalists, and intimidated foreign reporters and their local counterparts. Individuals who try to protect Tigrayans are also attacked. People who try to remain out of politics are condemned as “fence-sitters”.
Fourth, the government has begun large-scale detention of Tigrayan civilians in areas it controls. One year ago it interned at least 15,000 ethnic Tigrayan members of the armed forces, whom, we understand, it continues to keep in detention camps. It has interned Tigrayan civilians in western Tigray. In recent weeks it has interned more than 30,000 ethnic Tigrayan civilians in Addis Ababa and unknown numbers elsewhere.
Fifth, the international community is divided, confused and indecisive. The government has protectors at the UN security council. The African Union listened deferentially to the government’s denials and obfuscations. The main European powers have dithered. The US has toned down its condemnations, perhaps for fear of being diplomatically isolated. It also has conflicting priorities, including trying to facilitate humanitarian assistance and initiate negotiations for a ceasefire and political settlement – an agenda that can preclude calling out one party to the conflict for atrocity crimes or genocide.
In the 1990s, after mass atrocities in former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, there was renewed interest in the obligation to prevent genocide enshrined in the 1948 genocide convention. There have now been more than two decades of policy and institutional reforms on atrocities prevention and response. There has been a litany of mea culpas, of enjoinders to greater political will, and calls for “never again”.
Crucial reports were written in the decades after Rwanda and the wars of Yugoslavia’s dissolution that shaped the debate and policy over the use of coercive measures in pursuit of peace, humanitarian action and the prevention of atrocities. At the United Nations, the African Union, international expert commissions, and under the leadership of powerful countries – reams of paper were dedicated to analysing the past and pledging to heed warning signs and prevent genocide.
Those reports all stressed that genocide is preventable – if the political will is there to act on warnings.
Today in Ethiopia, these warnings could not be more clear. The time to act is now – to call out what is happening and for the UN security council to use every measure at its disposal to give meaning to the cry of “never again” and prevent catastrophe.
💭Interpol elects UAE official as president despite rights groups concerns
Global #police agency Interpol elected #Emirati Inspector General Ahmed Nasser #AlRaisi as its president on Thursday, despite accusations from rights groups that he failed to act on allegations of #torture of detainees in the United Arab Emirates.
💭 I believe this earthquake is The Almighty God-Egziabher’s wrath announcement-sign! The Ark of The Covenant is doing Its JOB! It’s just the beginning.
❖❖❖ [Revelation 11:15–19]❖❖❖
🎺 The Seventh Trumpet
“Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and she shall reign forever and ever.” And the twenty-four elders who sit on their thrones before God fell on their faces and worshiped God, saying, We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty, who is and who was, for you have taken your great power and begun to reign. The nations raged, but your wrath came, and the time for the dead to be judged, and for rewarding your servants, the prophets and saints, and those who fear your name, both small and great, and for destroying the destroyers of the earth.” Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen within his temple. There were flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and heavy hail.”
💭 Five million civilians are in need of food aid as a result of the conflict, and yet the fascist Oromo regime of Ethiopia is still shopping for drones and other arms. Very evil, very wicked! There are no historical parallels to what has happened in Tigray.
🔥 The weapons airlift to criminal fascist Oromo regime of evil Abiy Ahmed Ali
The war that Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and President Isaias Afwerki have been waging against Tigray for over a year has been fuelled by drones provided by Turkey, China and Iran. Arming by these states has been openly discussed – but not the airlift of the weapons themselves.
☆ China has been reportedly provided Wing Loong drone to Addis.
☆ Turkey has supplied drones to Ethiopia after a visit to Ankara on 18 August 2021 by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali.
☆ In August 2021 it was reported that “Ethiopia has managed to secure a hasty contract with Iran for the delivery of a number of Mohajer-6 unmanned combat aerial vehicles (UCAVs).”
☆ Israel is apparently one of the outside powers that has refused to provide military drones to Ethiopia.
💭 My Note: Yeah! That’s why we are „Addis Ethiopia/ አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ” = New Ethiopia
💭 One year after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent in troops who committed unspeakable atrocities in an attempt to crush the rebellious Tigray region, the army that he sought to vanquish is heading down the highway towards Addis Ababa. The fate of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s regime now hangs in a precarious balance
Over the weekend, fighters from the Tigrayan Defence Force seized control of parts of Dessie, a city 400km from Addis Ababa, and captured Kembolcha, with its major airport.
Abiy gambled everything on a massive offensive that he launched on 9 October, throwing tens of thousands of poorly trained and poorly equipped rookies into the fight and bragging that it would take 10 days to recapture Mekelle, the Tigray capital.
That offensive has collapsed.
Over the weekend, fighters from the Tigrayan Defence Force (TDF) seized control of parts of Dessie, a city 400km from Addis Ababa, and captured Kembolcha, with its major airport. The French analyst René Lefort wrote that in 1991 when the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) overthrew Mengistu Haile Mariam’s military junta (the Derg), it took them only a few days to travel from Dessie to Addis.
Some of the TDF military leaders were among those who liberated Addis that day, among them General Tsadkan Gebretensae, the TDF commander and military strategist who is credited with outplaying and outfoxing Abiy’s forces. No one knows the geography of the country or the road into Addis better than he does.
Having failed with the ground attack, the Ethiopian air force has repeatedly bombed Mekelle over the past fortnight, killing many civilians. The Amhara ethno-nationalists have resorted to ever more extreme language, with calls for the extermination of the Tigrayans that were reminiscent of Rwanda in 1994.
How was this setback possible, with Abiy holding such a huge advantage in numbers against a largely guerrilla force from a landlocked province, without an air force or international support? Why have the sophisticated weaponry and drones from Iran, Turkey and China proved no match for this low-tech army of footsoldiers?
“PM Abiy threw an ill-trained peasant army against a battle-hardened, formidable army with an iron will to fight and expected to win,” explained Rashid Abdi, the Kenyan expert on the Horn of Africa.
Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic country with a long history of inter-ethnic conflict, violence and resentment. The country has 80 ethnic groups, but the top five — Oromo, Amhara, Tigrayan, Afar and Somali — represent 85% of the population.
The political system that kept these tensions in check has been breaking down for decades and the forces of violent ethno-nationalism have grown.
The immediate trigger for the military conflict was Tigray’s decision to hold an unauthorised election in 2020 after Abiy postponed the country’s elections, citing Covid-19 as a pretext.
On 4 November 2020, Abiy sent a combination of ENDF troops, the Eritrean military and Amhara militias into Tigray, claiming he was responding to an attack by the Tigray military on a federal military camp.
Abiy sought to exploit the anti-Tigrayan resentment of the Amhara ethno-nationalists to crush the Tigrayans, who had been dominant in the country’s political system during the authoritarian rule of Meles Zenawi between 1991 and 2012. After Abiy’s succession to power in 2015, they remained a significant check on his power.
The ensuing conflict has been particularly violent, with upwards of several hundred thousand dead — but these are just estimates; no one seems to be counting and few independent reporters have been near the battlefields. Reports of atrocities have been random and episodic.
After the November invasion drove the TDF into the mountains, the Amhara fighters were accused of ethnic cleansing of Tigrayan villages and Amnesty International claimed that troops from Eritrea massacred hundreds of unarmed Tigrayan civilians in the town of Axum.
The turning point in the war came in June, when the TDF routed the ENDF and recaptured Mekelle. Since then, it has been a slow march to the south and the east, a war on several fronts, while Abiy tried to rebuild his army; he also signed military cooperation agreements with Russia and Turkey.
Abiy has attempted to starve the encircled Tigray into submission by blocking food aid convoys from reaching up to a million people, mostly women and children, who are near starvation. UN officials who complained of this use of hunger as a weapon — a war crime — were expelled from the country.
Abiy’s incitement of ethnic hatred in a combustible world further undermined the standing of this former hero of progressives worldwide, who won the Nobel Peace Prize a short two years ago.
His legacy, if he falls, will be a shattered country and ruined economy. With the destruction of the ENDF, and the Eritreans staying out of the recent fighting, the conflict could be entering a new phase between the Tigrayans and the Amhara that will go on even after Abiy has fallen. The more extreme Amhara faction has launched a “call to arms”.
The Tigrayans are mindful of the fact that they represent less than 5% of the country’s population and cannot rule Ethiopia alone, so they have been building alliances with other ethnic groups and political movements.
Their victories this weekend coincided with Abiy’s recent losses on other fronts to the Oromo Liberation Army (OLA), now allied with the Tigrayans. There are reports that the Tigrayans have agreed to let the OLA be the ones to march into Addis, an important symbolic gesture — but the OLA do not have the same firepower as the TDF.
😈 The Oromo should be the big winners, but they are divided between those in opposition and those in Abiy’s Prosperity Party. Abiy himself is Oromo, but his support within that group is mixed.
Further ethnic conflict will cause broader turmoil in the Horn of Africa that was highlighted this past week with a military coup in Sudan.
The brutality and hatred that has been aroused by the war have cast doubt on the very survival of Ethiopia. But Ethiopia is a multi-ethnic country and dismembering it, similar to what happened to Yugoslavia in the 1990s, might precipitate a level of death and suffering that is unimaginable.
The only alternative is a national conference, an attempt to forge a viable compact, one that, unlike the EPRDF victory in 1991, opens itself to the many voices and groups in Ethiopia. Echoing South Africa’s Codesa process of the early 1990s, the call has gone out for a “new Ethiopia”.
The response of the international community, including the African Union, to the crisis in Ethiopia, has ranged from negligent to complicit. It has so far failed to construct any kind of useful framework for peace. We can only hope that in the months ahead, with a potential changing of the guard in Addis, that will change.
💭 My Note: This was exactly my thought when I heard this news, and saw the Satanic Crescent moon & star aka „Red Crescent„. Those deadly UAE drone that massacred thousands of Tigrayans is not enough. Dr. Liya Tadesse, Minister of Health is even dressed in green to thank her Emirati ‘ambulance’ deliverer. During the crusades, Islamic soldiers wore green to identify themselves.
👉 I wrote a few months earlier this:
💭Connecting the dots:
According to this new report rightly described as “horrifying”, Ethiopian Airlines is transporting weapons to Tigray via its commercial flight. Using commercial flight to transport weapons is prohibited worldwide.
It is very curious; preparing for The #TigrayGenocide evil Abiy Ahmed and his luciferian overlords brought Tigrayans to occupy key positions nationally and internationally:
The number of cargo flights between the United Arab Emirates and Ethiopia has left little doubt that the U A E has taken an active role in supporting the Ethiopian military in its fight against Tigray forces in the northern parts of Ethiopia. In two months, some 70 Il-76 cargo aircraft flying out of the U A E landed in Ethiopia. While some of the large cargo aircraft appear to have landed at Addis Ababa international airport, in most other cases they landed at Harar Meda air base, undoubtedly to unload their military cargo away from prying eyes and cameras.
Still, relatively little is known about the types of weaponry and other military equipment that the U A E has supplied to the Ethiopian National Defence Force ENDF. What is known is that the Ethiopian military is deploying a large VTOL type unmanned combat aerial vehicle UCAV armed with two mortar rounds supplied by the U A E, while Ethiopia’s Republican Guard makes use of at least three types of Emirati-supplied carbines and sniper rifles. It is likely only a matter of time before more U A E-supplied weaponry starts showing up in footage from the war in Tigray.
In the meantime, the Ethiopian government made a rare acknowledgement regarding some of the equipment received from the U A E. But rather than consisting of guns or ammunition, the donated cargo on this occasion instead consisted of 50 Toyota Land Cruiser ambulances equipped for basic emergency services. The delivery of 50 ambulances would account for the cargo content of seventeen out of 68 confirmed flights by Il-76s to Ethiopia. This means that the content of 51 Il-76 cargo aircraft is unaccounted for, likely consisting of various types of armament that have yet to make their public debut in Ethiopia.
Although one might argue that the delivery of ambulances to Ethiopia’s health sector is completely unrelated to the conflict in the Tigray Region, the U A E’s decision to supply Ethiopia with Toyota Land Cruisers as ambulances strongly suggests that most of these vehicles will immediately be pressed into service with the Ethiopian military in the Tigray Region instead. The excellent off-road capabilities of the Toyota Land Cruiser 4×4 and the fact that the vehicles appear to have been drawn from military stocks, judging by their khaki paintjob certainly hints that this is indeed their intended use.
At least part of the contents carried aboard the U A E air bridge between Ethiopia and the U A E has meanwhile been identified. Their ostensibly civilian status set aside, it doesn’t seem far-fetched that many of these ambulances will end up being used on the frontline to transport wounded Ethiopian soldiers to hospitals. If this indeed is the case, it will be just one more facet of a conflict that is still growing in its totality, forcing its unwilling participants to commit ever greater amounts of manpower and equipment lest they eventually succumb to the pressures of war.
You see, what I saw? The Gospel in Babylon UAE? Whaat!?
“The Garima Gospels” The World’s Earliest Known Gospel Book is in an Ethiopian Monastery. Have the Luciferians and their UAE marionettes stolen it from Tigray? In November 2020, ancient Monasteries & Churches Have Been Bombed by UAE Drones & Heavy weapons. Is it part of Luciferian March for One World religion. For that they have decided to annihilate ancient Christians of Tigray – keepers of The Ark of The Covenant and many other sacred Christian Treasures. They did that earlier in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Armenia.
👉 We see some manuscripts from “The Garima Gospels” in Babylon New York – at The New York Public Library
❖ Where Are The Garima Gospels? Some Fear The Worst
After having survived 1,500 years of history in a remote monastery, the Garima Gospels now face their most serious threat.
One of the greatest treasures in the Christian world, guarded for over 1,500 years in northern Ethiopia, may not have survived the latest threat.
You Garima Gospels, written in goatskin and dated between 330 and 650 AD, are in an area that has been under siege for months by the armies of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Religious sites near the Abba Garima monastery in Tigray were bombed and precious looted artifacts, so it is feared that the worst happened to this treasure.
“It is frightening for many of us to think that these Gospels and other ancient artifacts are on the road to danger,” said Suleyman Dost, a professor in the Department of Jewish and Near Eastern Studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, quoted by The Globe and Mail.
“The Garima Gospels are not only among the first complete texts of the Christian scriptures, but they also offer us a rare glimpse into the language, religion and history of ancient Ethiopia,” he added.
The online newspaper advances that the Garima Gospels, bound and illustrated copies of the Four New Testament Gospels written in the classic Ethiopian language Ge’ez, are one of the treasures of the ancient Axumite kingdom, whose heart is now engulfed by the war zone in Tigray.
“The war threatens countless priceless traces of this period, including inscriptions, religious buildings and manuscripts that have been diligently preserved in monasteries for centuries,” said Dost.
The Axumite kingdom, whose territories extended across the Red Sea to Yemen, was one of the great cultural and economic empires of that time and one of the first states to accept Christianity as an official religion, in the early fourth century, even before the Roman Empire.
The capital, Axum, is known as the home of Ark of the Covenant – another sacred relic whose fate is currently unknown.
The Garima Gospels are older than the most famous Western manuscripts, such as the Book of Kells, and are more closely linked to the original Greek Gospels.
To the morning man, Michael Gervers, a historian at the University of Toronto, explained that “they are of extreme importance for the Christian culture as a whole”. “Yours loss would be disastrous for the Judeo-Christian cultural heritage. ”
The war in Tigray destroyed much of Ethiopia’s religious and cultural heritage, even more than the invasions of Ahmad ibn Ibrahim al-Ghazi, who burned churches and manuscripts across the country in the 16th century.
The historian and his colleagues are attentive to the antique markets, if someone tries to sell the manuscripts. “It would be an offense against Christianity if the Garima Gospels ended up for sale,” he said, adding that there was still a possibility that soldiers had burned the manuscripts “out of spite”.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 