Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 21, 2022
🛑 In The Cities of Paderborn and Lippstadt
Leaving 50 injured and ten seriously hurt by 80mph winds as trees are uprooted and houses lose their roofsIncredible storm left ‘path of destruction’, with people hit by falling roof panels‘Countless’ houses’ roofs were torn off and many trees remain on top of carsRainfall up to 25L per square metre each hour, with storms causing huge damageTorrid conditions set to hit east of the country overnight after assaults on west.
❖❖❖[Luke Chapter 21፡25-26]❖❖❖
“And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.”
❖❖❖[Lukas 21:25-26]❖❖❖
Und es werden Zeichen geschehen an Sonne und Mond und Sternen; und auf Erden wird den Leuten bange sein, und sie werden zagen, und das Meer und die Wassermengen werden brausen, und Menschen werden verschmachten vor Furcht und vor Warten der Dinge, die kommen sollen auf Erden; denn auch der Himmel Kräfte werden sich bewegen.
😈 Turkey’s Simultaneous Genocide of the two oldest Christian nations of Armenia & Ethiopia
😈 The Muslim Azerbaijanis turned on Azan through the loudspeakers. Such messages are a primary threat to the Christian Armenian residents.
😈 Enemy of The CROSS ✞
Azerbaijan defiled the Holy Resurrection Church of Hadrut, dismantled THE CROSS & erased all Armenian inscriptions
💭 The Government of Azerbaijan Declares This Warning To All Armenians: “Leave Nagorno-Karabakh, or We Will Force You.”
Now that the world’s attention is diverted to Russia’s war with Ukraine, the Azeris and Turks are in the perfect opportunity to test the waters of the Russian brokered ceasefire. There are still Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh — that region that was governed by Armenians until 2020 when Azerbaijan, armed with Turkish Bayraktars, vanquished them — and the Azeris are beginning to pressure these Armenians to leave. There are Russian soldiers (part of a peacekeeping mission) present in Nagorno-Karabakh, but now with the war occurring in Donbas, the Azeris (and by extension, their Turkish patriarchs whom they ethnically identify with) are acting aggressively, testing the limits of the Russians. For example, in early March, Azeri forces were seen encircling Armenian villages and, with loudspeakers, demanding that the Armenian inhabitants leave Nagorno-Karabakh. This was seen in the village of Khramort where the Azeri military declared through a loudspeaker:
“Urgently leave the territory, otherwise we will force you. All responsibility for the casualties will fall on you․ Do not endanger your life and the lives of your loved ones. You are on the territory of Azerbaijan, and all actions are regulated by Azerbaijani law.”
What the Azeris want is not peace, but ethnic cleansing.
Depriving Armenians of natural gas has followed. On March 8th, a critical gas pipeline that was used to bring natural gas to the Armenians was cut off in Nagorno-Karabakh, leaving them without heat for two weeks. The pipeline was then “repaired” but was reportedly cut off again and then restored. The ethnic and religious hatred towards the Armenians was demonstrated in the recent desecration of the St. Harutyun church in Hadrut, which was condemned by Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Armenia:
“These pre-planned actions carried out by the authorities of Azerbaijan, aimed at destroying and desecrating the identity of Armenian religious, historical and cultural monuments in the territories under the control of the Azerbaijani armed forces, are another manifestation of Azerbaijan’s ethnic and religious intolerance and the continuation of the policy of depriving Artsakh of Armenians and the Armenian trace.”
Azerbaijani soldiers then entered the area occupied by Russian peacekeeping forces, forced the evacuation of an Armenian village and even used drone strikes to kill numerous Armenian soldiers. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that the Azeri soldiers left, but both Azeri and Armenian sources denied this, and even the US, France and Russia have all denounced Azerbaijan for its violation of the ceasefire.
Even with the ceasefire, there has still been violence taking place in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Investigative Committee of the Republic of Artsakh, in early February “two members of the Azerbaijani Armed Forces were killed on the spot near the village of Khramort in the Askeran region, on the grounds of national, racial or religious hatred or religious fanaticism.” Following this event, “Unidentified gunmen opened fire on three” Armenian employees who were working in a mine in the administrative area of Khramort village, Askeran region.
On February 11th of 2022, shots were fired from Azerbaijani military positions located near the communities of Karmir Shuka and Taghavard in the region of Artsakh’s Martuni, according to Ombudsman of Artsakh Gegham Stepanyan in a statement on social media. Stepanyan observed:
“Given the distance between the settlements and the Azerbaijani positions, and the fact that the residential part of the village is directly observed from the Azerbaijani positions, it is undeniable that the Azerbaijani side has directly targeted the houses of the residents as a result of which residential houses, mainly walls, roofs, have been damaged.
The window of a house of Karmir Shuka resident was smashed during the same operations which are aimed at threatening civilians, and the bullet penetrated into the living room of the house”
“I reaffirm the claim that the criminal acts of Azerbaijan are of regular and systematic nature, aimed at creating an atmosphere of fear in Artsakh.
Azerbaijan will continue its criminal attempts against the people of Artsakh as long as the international community has not condemned unanimously the open Azerbaijani illegal acts against humanity”, he added.
The Azeris have found a loophole in the ceasefire to try to justify their actions. Article 4 of the ceasefire declaration calls for the withdrawal of Armenian soldiers. Three thousand Armenians reportedly left Nagorno-Karabakh, but local ethnic Armenian soldiers did not, giving the Azeris an avenue for their aggression. While Baku sees these self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh Defense soldiers as illegal, the local Armenian population sees them as necessary for security from violence by Azerbaijani soldiers. But now, with the local defense not allowed in the region, the only thing standing between the local Armenians and the Azeri soldiers are the Russian peacekeepers. There are nearly two thousand Russian soldiers in Nagorno-Karabakh (and also around two thousand Russian support staff), and Baku sees this foreign presence as temporary, as there is an expectation that these troops will be sent to fight in Ukraine. The importance of Russian peacekeepers for the security of the Armenians is obvious. For example,on the 15th of February, 2022, Azerbaijani servicemen opened fire in the direction of Armenian farmers near Khramort. While a tractor was damaged, the civilians were saved thanks to the intervention of the Russian peacekeepers, according to the Prosecutor’s Office of Artsakh.
With such recent events, it is obvious that whatever relative peace is ongoing in Nagorno-Karabakh, it will not last long. Violence will resume in the region, and it will most definitely escalate tensions between Russia and Turkey. Such conflict will carry with it a resuming of where the Ottomans left off in the genocide of the Armenian people.
I spent the last week of February teaching Old Testament at the newly-formed Trinity Fellowship Pastors College in Addis Ababa. Ethiopia is by far the oldest nation I’ve visited, one of the few Old Testament nations still on the map. Its existence is a theological fact, testimony to the reliability of God’s promises.
According to the “primeval history” of Genesis, descendants of Cush settled the area that is now Ethiopia and Sudan soon after the flood. The Da’amat Empire was established in the tenth century B.C. by Menilek I, reputedly the son of Solomon and Makeda, queen of Sheba. According to the Kebre Negast (“The Glory of the Kings”), which was compiled in the fourteenth century A.D., Queen Makeda made a pilgrimage to Israel to learn statecraft from Solomon, who seduced her. Makeda conceived and went home to give birth to her son. As a boy, Menilek visited his father in Jerusalem, where Solomon anointed him as king of Ethiopia. As retribution for the humiliation of his mother, Menilek stole the Ark of the Covenant and levitated it across the Red Sea to Ethiopia, where it purportedly remains to this day. It’s a persistent national myth. Until Emperor Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974, Ethiopian leaders claimed to be sons of Solomon, lions descended from the Lion of Judah.
There’s nothing of this legend in Scripture. To ancient Israelites, Ethiopia wasn’t an ally but an uncanny and terrifying threat. Cush’s son Nimrod founded Nineveh and Babylon (Gen. 10:8–12), cities that later conquered Israel. Aaron and Miriam objected when Moses took a Cushite wife (Num. 12:1). During the reign of King Asa, Zerah the Cushite came over the southern horizon to invade Judah with hundreds of chariots and a million-man army (2 Chron. 14).
Against this background, the heroism of Ebed-Melech is all the more notable (Jer. 38). Ebed-Melech was a Cushite eunuch who served in the court of King Zedekiah during the last days of Judah. The prophet Jeremiah counsels Zedekiah to surrender to Babylon. Enraged by this message, Jerusalem’s officials force Zedekiah to approve their plan to put the traitorous prophet to death. Like Joseph, Jeremiah is tossed into a muddy cistern without water, left to die of thirst.
Ebed-Melech bursts onto the scene as an unexpected deliverer. As the wonderfully-named Deusdedit Musinguzi points out in a monograph on the passage, Ebed-Melech is a model of compassion, justice, and courage. Though a foreigner, he charges Jerusalem’s leaders with “evil” in open court, and persuades the king to let him pull Jeremiah up from the pit. Ebed-Melech’s name, “Servant of the King,” indicates he’s Zedekiah’s servant, but he proves himself loyal to the King. As a Gentile deliverer, he foreshadows Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus. He literally rescues Jeremiah from death, raising him from beneath the earth, a figure of the Spirit who brings a greater Prophet from the grave. In every way, Ebed-Melech is the antithesis of the corrupt Jewish courtiers, a Gentile without Torah who keeps the Torah written on his heart (Rom. 2:14–15).
Ebed-Melech is firstfruits of a great harvest from the land of Cush. According to Orthodox tradition, Christianity came to the country in the late third century through two shipwrecked Syrian boys, the brothers Aedisius and Frumentius, who were brought to the court of the Axum emperor. Through their faithful service, the boys rose to high positions, and their witness convinced the emperor to become a Christian. In 305, the emperor’s successor sent Frumentius to Alexandria to ask the patriarch—none other than Athanasius—to send a bishop to Axum to promote evangelism and church construction. Athanasius ordained Frumentius, who returned to baptize Emperor Ezana, who made Christianity the official religion of his empire. Ethiopia is among the oldest of Christian nations.
In Acts, Luke tells us that Christianity arrived in Ethiopia already in the early first century. The first known Gentile to be baptized was another Ethiopian eunuch, a latter-day Ebed-Melech, who meets Philip in a Spirit-arranged encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza (Acts 8). Though “cut off” like the Suffering Servant in the text he reads, the Ethiopian eunuch becomes fruitful, with a place in the house of his God (Isa. 56:1–8; Deut. 23:1–5).
Already in the old covenant, when the very name “Cush” could send chills down Israelite spines, the Lord promised he would one day adopt Ethiopia as a “home-born” son and a child of Zion (Ps. 87:4). One day, he promised, Cush would bring tribute to Jerusalem (Isa. 45:14). These promises form the story arc of Ethiopia’s long history. Every time you see Ethiopia is still on the map, you’re seeing real-world proof of the faithfulness of God.
👉 Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute.
💭 Abune Mathias is an Ethiopian patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church since 2013. His full title is “His Holiness Abune Mathias I, Sixth Patriarch and Catholicos of Ethiopia, Archbishop of Axum and Ichege of the See of Saint Taklehaimanot”.
💭 Israel said barring Ethiopian Christian pilgrims from entering country
In letter cited by Israeli TV, immigration authorities tell tourism agencies not to let groups in over fears they won’t return home due to ongoing civil war
Israeli authorities have banned Ethiopian Christian pilgrims groups from visiting the country for the upcoming Easter holiday over fears they will not return home, Israeli television reported Sunday.
According to Channel 13 news, tourism agencies recently received a letter from the Population and Immigration Authority that said due to the ongoing civil war in Ethiopia, there were concerns “these tourists will not head back due to it.”
The letter also said that any Ethiopian who wishes to visit Israel must do so personally by contacting the authorities online.
The network noted Israel has not imposed any such restrictions on pilgrims from other countries.
Yossi Fatal, head of the Israel Incoming Tour Operators Association, wrote to Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked to decry the policy as “severely discriminatory.” He said groups in Ethiopia have contacted Israeli officials in protest.
In response to the report, the population authority justified the policy, saying that “many tourist groups arriving from Ethiopia over the past years have indeed not returned and remained in Israel illegally.”
Competing regional powers have quietly backed Abiy Ahmed in Ethiopia’s deadly conflict
👉 From The New Arab
The war that started in November 2020 as a conflict between the Ethiopian Federal Government and the Tigray Regional Government has turned the country into an arena where many regional and international powers are active.
Like a Pandora’s box suddenly opened, the conflict has borne many geopolitical surprises, but one of its most important ironies is the reported use of drones and weapons supplied by competing powers in the Middle East, who seem to have agreed on their support for Ethiopia’s government.
U A E, the first player
The United Arab Emirates (U A E) has intervened in the Ethiopian war since it began, with leaders from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) accusing Abu Dhabi of targeting Tigray an forces in November 2020 with drones stationed at its Assab military base in Eritrea.
In the wake of the Ethiopian withdrawal in the face of the advancing Tigray an forces in the summer of 2021, an Emirati air bridge supporting the government was monitored. This comprised more than 90 flights between the two countries in the period between September and November 2021.
Satellite images identified Emirati drones at Harar Meda Airport in Ethiopia and at a military base in Deirdawa in the east of the country.
The U A E’s intervention was an extension of its strategy to build an allied political and security system across the Red Sea and the Horn of Africa, most notably following Who Tea gains around Bab al-Mandab at the beginning of Yemen’s conflict.
Abiy Ahmed’s election as Ethiopia’s prime minister in 2018 further accelerated an alliance between Addis Ababa and Abu Dhabi.
That same year, the U A E-sponsored Eritrean-Ethiopia peace agreement pledged to support the Ethiopian treasury with three billion dollars, and made huge investments in various sectors.
From this perspective, the possibility of the Tigray ans seizing power in Addis Ababa was a threat to these political arrangements, and Emirati investments, especially since the TPLF view Abu Dhabi with hostility after its role in their first defeat in November 2020.
Turkish drones in the Habesha sky.
The visit of the Ethiopian prime minister to Ankara in August 2021 represented a turning point in the relationship between the two countries, which had become estranged in parallel with the development of Ethiopian ties with the U A E-Saudi axis.
During the visit, a package of agreements was signed that included “military cooperation”. Indeed, according to the Turkish Defence Industries Corporation, the value of Turkish military exports to Ethiopia increased from just $234,000 in 2020 to nearly $95 million in 2021.
Although in July 2021 the Turkish embassy in Addis Ababa denied that it had supplied drones to Addis Ababa, reports alleged the participation of Bayraktar TB2 drones in military operations in Ethiopia’s conflict after Ahmed’s visit to Ankara, which were not denied by either side this time.
This development is an extension of the Turkish approach in the region described by Jason Moseley, a Research Associate at the African Studies Centre at Oxford University. “Turkey has adopted an interventionist attitude in the regional crisis, with the consequent rebalancing between soft and hard power in favor of the latter,” he wrote last year.
In fact, Turkey saw drone support for the Ethiopian government as a strategic gain, bolstering its reputation in the African military and security market after it had proven its success in an African war arena, with growing demand for this type of weapon.
Ankara’s participation also indicates that Turkish construction companies could make a significant contribution to the reconstruction of infrastructure in the areas destroyed by the war
Preventing Ethiopia from sliding into a civil war protects Ankara’s large investments inside the country and ensures that the ensuing chaos does not spread into neighbouring Somalia, the most important centre of Turkish influence in the African continent.
Additionally, Turkish support for the Ethiopian government appears to be a strategic necessity due to Ankara’s fears of the Tigray ans, who Ethiopia has accused of being supported by Egypt.
In this sense, Ankara’s ties with Ethiopia are related to the exchange of support between the two countries, which is taking place in the context of their conflict with Egypt.
Iran seeks an opportunity
In a letter to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, on 7 December 2021, TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael accused Iran, along with the UAE and Turkey, of providing the Ethiopian army with weapons, including drones.
Prior to that, the US government had accused Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF) of providing drones to Ethiopia, and on 29 October 2021, sanctions were issued by the US Treasury Department.
According to investigative websites, Iranian drones have been seen in Ethiopia and 15 flights from two airlines linked to the IRGC have been monitored from Iran to the Harar Meda military base in Ethiopia.
Both the Iranian and Ethiopian governments have not yet commented on these reports.
The sharp dispute between Ethiopia and the United States over the war in Tigray, and Washington’s continuous pressure on Ahmed’s government, who has framed the conflict as a colonial attack on Ethiopia’s unity, has apparently brought Tehran and Addis Ababa closer.
Iran sees the Ethiopian PM’s need for military equipment as an opportunity to expand its strategic presence in a country that is historically an ally of the United States and Israel.
This level of Iranian engagement demonstrates the importance of the Ethiopian arena for Tehran, and indicates Iran’s desire to enter the burgeoning military and security market in Africa.
However, the most important prize for Tehran is a return to Ethiopia, which is situated close to Yemen, the Arabian Peninsula, and the Horn of Africa, after losing its influence in recent years with allies Eritrea and Sudan following Emirati-Saudi pressure, and the fall of Omar al-Bashir’s regime in Khartoum after popular protests.
Ultimately, all three powers are trying to exploit a moment of Ethiopian weakness to create or consolidate their influence.
The weight and extent of their involvement are best indicated, perhaps, by consultations the US envoy to the Horn of Africa, which has historical influence in Ethiopia, has been having with Middle Eastern capitals to try to find a solution to the Ethiopian crisis.
_______
_______
_______
_______
_______
______
________
_______
Addis Ethiopia Weblog 