💭 Iran-Backed Houthis Attack Saudi Oil Facilities, Slowing Refinery Output amid Global Crisis
The Iran-backed Houthi insurgents of Yemen, delisted as terrorists by President Joe Biden as one of his first acts in office, launched a massive terrorist strike on Saudi oil facilities and water desalination plants on Sunday.
Saudi officials said the Houthi attack targeted two petroleum distribution terminals, a natural gas plant, and an oil refinery. The targets were spread between several cities, including the Saudi capital of Riyadh and the major Red Sea port of Jeddah.
The Saudi military coalition said the Houthi attack involved cruise missiles made in Iran. The coalition said its air defenses intercepted many of the Houthi weapons, but Saudi state media carried photos and videos of fires and explosive damage from the missiles that made it through.
The coalition also charged the Houthis with launching at least 106 explosive-laden boats in an effort to compromise freedom of navigation in the Red Sea. The coalition said it was able to destroy most of these bomb boats, “protecting shipping lines and global trade.”
One of the Houthi missile strikes started a “limited fire” in a tank at the Jeddah distribution plant for Saudi Aramco, the national oil company. The fire was brought under control without loss of life
Another strike damaged a natural gas plant and refinery in the city of Yasref. The Saudi Energy Ministry said on Sunday the assault on Yasref “has led to a temporary reduction in the refinery’s production, which will be compensated for from the inventory.”
Aramco officials said the attacks did not cause enough damage to seriously disrupt gas and petroleum supplies, but the state-run Saudi news agency SPA on Monday quoted a Foreign Ministry source that said the Saudis would not be held responsible for disruptions to the already-stressed world oil market caused by Houthi attacks.
The Foreign Ministry source warned that continued drone and missile attacks “will affect the kingdom’s production capacity and its ability to fulfill its obligations, which undoubtedly threatens the security and stability of energy supplies to global markets.”
The Houthi attack – a major escalation of the insurgency’s conflict with Saudi Arabia, and one of the heaviest salvos it has launched against Saudi targets since the beginning of the Yemeni civil war – came after several days of intense diplomacy in Oman, where U.N. special envoy Hans Grundberg met with Houthi negotiators to discuss “a possible truce during the holy month of Ramadan.” Ramadan begins on April 2 this year.
White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan condemned the Houthi strikes on Sunday as “terrorist attacks” and complained about the insurgency constantly using such violent actions to sabotage peace negotiations.
“These attacks reportedly targeted water treatment facilities as well as oil and natural gas infrastructure. The Houthis launch these terrorist attacks with enabling by Iran, which supplies them with missile and UAV components, training, and expertise. This is done in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions prohibiting the import of weapons into Yemen,” Sullivan said.
“Saudi Arabia and the Yemeni Government have endorsed multiple U.N. calls for ceasefires and de-escalation over the last year. The Houthis have rejected these calls, responding instead with new offensives in Yemen and terrorist acts, such as those launched against Saudi Arabia last night,” he complained.
The Houthis were listed as terrorists by the Trump administration, but this designation was rescinded in the early days of the Biden administration, which has frequently complained about Houthi terrorism over the ensuing year.
The Biden administration has stubbornly resisted calls to relist the Houthis as a foreign terrorist organization, including advice from some White House officials. Resistance to reclassifying the Houthis as terrorists ostensbily flows from human rights advocates who fear the enraged insurgents would interfere with the delivery of humanitarian aid, but some critical observers believe the Biden administration is also worried about disrupting its nuclear deal negotiations with the Houthis’ patrons in Iran.
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.
💭“አዲሱን የዓለም ሥርዓት ለማስጠበቅ ልዩ ቀውስ ያስፈልጋል።…አዲሱን የዓለም ሥርዓት ለመጠበቅ የመንግስት ያልሆኑ ተዋናዮችን እና ስልጣን የተሰጣቸውን ግለሰቦችን ማስወገድ ግድ ነው”። “Extraordinary Crisis Needed to Preserve New World Order….The elimination of non-state actors and empowered individuals “must be done” in order to preserve the new world order.
💭 The Washington Post has analyzed photos of shrapnel and satellite imagery and cross-referenced video to confirm that Ethiopia used a Turkish drone in January in an attack that killed at least 59 civilians sheltering in a school in Tigray, the Stockholm Center for Freedom reported, citing an analysis by the paper published on Monday.
On January 7, a school was struck by a drone-delivered bomb, killing at least 59 people and gravely injuring dozens more, according to aid workers whose organizations worked at the camp for internally displaced people in Dedebit, located in the northern Ethiopian region of Tigray.
According to The Washington Post, more than 300 civilians have been killed by drone and air strikes since September, including more than 100 since the start of this year.
Weapon remnants recovered from the site of the strike by aid workers showed internal components and screw configurations that matched images of Turkish-made MAM-L munitions released by the weapons manufacturer. The MAM-L pairs exclusively with the Turkish-made Bayraktar TB-2 drone.
Military experts from the Dutch nongovernmental organization PAX and Amnesty International also identified the weapon used as a MAM-L bomb that is fitted to a TB2 drone, Politico earlier reported.
The attacks have drawn criticism from US President Joe Biden and a warning from the United Nations that they may constitute a grave violation of international law, Politico said.
Drones are rapidly turning into the decisive weapon of the conflict and have helped Ethiopian government forces turn the tide against rebels from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governed the country for nearly three decades before 2018.
Turkey has exported Bayraktar armed drones manufactured by defense contractor Baykar Makina Sanayi ve Ticaret Anonim Şirketi (Baykar), which is run by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son-in-law Selçuk Bayraktar. Ukraine, Poland, Qatar, Libya, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and Azerbaijan have all taken delivery of the armed drones.
According to Turkey’s 2021 export figures announced by the Turkish Exporters Assembly in early December, Turkey’s arms sales reached a record level, with the biggest increase to African countries.
In the first 11 months of 2021, Turkey exported $2.793 billion worth of defense products, an increase of 39.7 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. The Turkish defense industry, which set an export record of $2.7 billion in 2019, is preparing to set a new record by closing this year with exports of more than $3 billion. For the first time the defense sector had a 1.8 percent share of Turkey’s total exports in November 2021.
💭 Can you see the similarities between the Soumela St.Mary Monastery and the Mariam Dengelat St. Mary Monastery of Tigray, Ethiopia? On November, 2020 more than 100 Orthodox Christians were massacred by Turkish-allied evil leader of Ethiopia.
➡ CNN Investigation of Massacre at Maryam Dengelat Church in Ethiopia’s Tigray Region
💭 The courtyard of Panagia Soumela Monastery was recently turned into a nightclub for an advertising video clip, causing outrage in the Orthodox world.
The controversial video clip, with a DJ playing loud electronic music in the courtyard of the historic monastery and people dancing, had many Orthodox Christians reacting in anger.
Many comments in social media speak of the desecration of the historic monastery as along with the music, church bells can be heard in the background.
Some even demanded explanations from Turkish authorities, as the historic monastery had essentially been turned into a nightclub.
Greece’s Foreign Ministry said, on Monday, images showing a band dancing to electronic music at the former Orthodox Christian Sumela Monastery in Turkey were “offensive” and “a desecration” of the monument, Reuters reports.
The Ministry called on Turkish authorities “to do their utmost to prevent such acts from being repeated” and to respect the site, a candidate for UNESCO’s list of world heritage sites.
“The recent images that were displayed on social media, in which a foreign band seems to be dancing disco in the area of the Historical Monastery of Panagia Soumela, are a desecration of this Monument,” it said.
Turkish officials were not immediately available for comment.
Founded in the 4th century, Sumela is a monastic complex built into a sheer cliff above the Black Sea forest in eastern Turkey. It was long ago stripped of its official religious status and operates as a museum administered by the Culture Ministry in Turkey.
Thousands of tourists and Orthodox Christian worshippers journey to the monastery annually.
In 2010, Turkish authorities allowed the first Orthodox liturgy since ethnic Greeks were expelled in 1923 as part of a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. In 2015, the Sumela Monastery was shut for restoration and re-opened to tourists in 2019.
A liturgy to mark the Feast Day of the Virgin Mary was allowed in 2020 and 2021.
“It is surprising that the permit was given to the band, as the Monastery of Panagia Soumela opens only for pilgrims,” the Greek Foreign Ministry said. “These images are offensive and add to a series of actions by the Turkish authorities against World Heritage Sites,” its statement said, without elaborating.
Greece and Turkey disagree on a range of issues from airspace to maritime zones in the eastern Mediterranean and ethnically split Cyprus.
Expressing an important value among the places you should go to in Trabzon, one of the most beautiful cities of the Black Sea, Sumela Monastery was built on steep cliffs in Altındere Village located within the borders of Maçka district of Trabzon. It is known by the name of “Mama Maria” among the people. Located approximately 300 meters above Altındere village, the Virgin Mary was built in accordance with the tradition of steep cliffs, forests, and caves, which are traditional monastery construction sites. The monastery, which was founded in reference to the Virgin Mary, took the name Sumela from the word molasses, which means black.
Etymology of the Name Sumela
It is understood that the name of Sumela comes from the word “molasses” meaning black, black darkness in the local language of the years when the monastery was built, and the name of the region is Oros Melas. The original name of the monastery is “Panagia Sou Melas”. In the Ottoman Empire records, the monastery takes place as “Su (o)Mela.
💭 An accelerating wave of Ethiopian air strikes in Tigray region has killed a reported 108 civilians, jeopardizing fragile peace talks and further damaging an emergency aid effort that is already on the verge of ending because of blocked supplies.
Western leaders, including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, have been pushing for humanitarian aid and peace negotiations to end the 14-month-old war in northern Ethiopia that has killed tens of thousands of people. But the latest volley of air strikes and the rising civilian death toll have angered Tigrayan leaders and hampered the aid effort.
The United Nations human rights office, in a statement on Friday, said the air strikes could constitute a war crime if the perpetrators had not verified whether the targets were military objectives.
“We are alarmed by the multiple, deeply disturbing reports we continue to receive of civilian casualties and destruction of civilian objects resulting from air strikes in Ethiopia’s Tigray region,” said Liz Throssell, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.
She cited reports that the air strikes have killed 108 civilians and injured 75 in the past two weeks. The air strikes have reportedly hit a refugee camp, a training institute, a flour mill, an airport, a private minibus and a camp for internally displaced people.
The deadliest strike was last Friday at the Dedebit camp for displaced people, killing at least 59 people and injuring dozens of others. Another strike, on Monday, caused devastation at a mill where farmers had gathered to grind their grains into flour. The air strikes are believed to be inflicted by Turkish, Chinese and Iranian drones, imported by Ethiopia’s military in recent months.
Fisseha Tekle, an Ethiopia researcher for Amnesty International, told The Globe and Mail that the warring parties must “stop indiscriminate attacks” that hit civilians and civilian infrastructure. He called on the Ethiopian government to allow access for international and independent investigations of the air strikes.
Last week, as Ethiopia celebrated Orthodox Christmas, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the release of several imprisoned opposition leaders, including some from the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). He called for an “all-inclusive national dialogue” and a peaceful solution to Ethiopia’s problems.
But the air strikes have undermined the prospects for peace. A spokesman for the TPLF, Getachew Reda, tweeted last week that the Prime Minister’s rhetoric about peace was contradicted by “his daily routine of denying medication to helpless children and sending drones targeting civilians.”
This week, Mr. Getachew noted that a drone strike had hit Tigray just minutes after the departure of the African Union’s diplomatic envoy, former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, who had been discussing peace measures with Tigrayan leaders in the regional capital Mekelle.
Mr. Trudeau, in a quiet diplomatic campaign, has held repeated telephone talks with Mr. Abiy and other leaders in the Horn of Africa in recent weeks, including a conversation with Mr. Obasanjo on Thursday. His office said he had welcomed the envoy’s efforts, but “expressed concern over challenges in ensuring unhindered access to and delivery of humanitarian assistance for those affected by the conflict.”
The drone strikes are another obstacle to the desperately needed supply of aid in Tigray, where the UN estimates that 90 per cent of the population needs emergency assistance. Some aid agencies have already been forced to suspend operations in the area where the air strike hit the displaced people’s camp, because of the continuing threat of further drone attacks, the UN says.
Many humanitarian workers have been killed since the beginning of the Tigray conflict in November 2020. One aid agency, Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), says it is still trying to understand how three of its staff workers were killed in an apparent execution in Tigray last June. The three bodies were found within 400 metres of their well-marked MSF car and “their injuries showed that each suffered multiple close-range gunshot wounds,” the agency said in a statement this week.
This shows that the attack was an intentional killing, MSF said. It said it has asked the Ethiopian and Tigrayan authorities to provide information about the presence of their armed forces in the area at the time, but it is still awaiting answers.
A major UN agency, the World Food Programme, warned on Friday that its food assistance in northern Tigray is “about to grind to a halt” because intense fighting has blocked the transport of fuel and food.
No convoys of WFP aid have reached Mekelle since mid-December, the agency said. Stocks of nutritionally fortified food for malnourished children and women are now exhausted, and the last of its cereals, pulses and oil will be distributed next week, it said.
“We’re now having to choose who goes hungry to prevent another from starving,” said WFP Eastern Africa director Michael Dunford in a statement. “We’re on the edge of a humanitarian disaster.”
Across northern Ethiopia, the WFP estimates that 9.4 million people need humanitarian food assistance – the highest number recorded so far, and an increase of 2.7 million in the past four months.
The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who is himself from Tigray, said this week that the Ethiopian government is denying food and medicine to its own people in the region.
“Nowhere in the world are we witnessing hell like in Tigray,” he told reporters. “Imagine a complete blockade of seven million people for more than a year. And there is no food. There is no medication, no medicine. No electricity. No telecom. No media.”
After his comments, the Ethiopian government said it had sent a letter of complaint to the WHO, accusing Dr. Tedros of “misconduct” and interference in Ethiopia’s internal affairs.
Other WHO officials, however, have made similar comments to those of Dr. Tedros. The agency’s director of emergencies, Michael Ryan, said this week that the lack of access to basic medicine in Tigray is “an insult to our humanity.” He warned of “catastrophic, imminent health consequences.”
💭 “At least 28 killed in Islamist attack on South Sudanese Christian community,”
At least 28 people were killed and 57 houses burned down in an attack by Islamist extremists against the Christian community of Yith Pabol, Aweil East county, South Sudan, in early January.
Bishop Joseph Mamer Manot said on 6 January that “massive displacement has happened, and the humanitarian situation is alarming as food and other property have been burned down into ashes, leaving survivors with no shelters, no food and no safe drinking water”.
The incident is the latest example of attacks against South Sudanese Christians by Arab Muslims from the Republic of Sudan, along the disputed border between the two countries.
A similar attack the same week in nearby Miodol village left at least four dead, with three others missing and several houses destroyed.
The state security adviser, Joseph Akook Aleu, said Monday that the state government decided to close the road to Sudan because of the ongoing attacks and killing of civilians.
South Sudan is about 60% Christian, mostly Roman Catholic and Anglican. By grace of God and the blessings of His Beatitude Theodore II, the Pope and Patriarch of Alexandria and All Africa, Metropolitan Narkissos (Gammoh) of Nubia founded the first Orthodox Christian missionary center in South Sudan in 2015.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on January 14, 2022
💭 “There’s a lot of areas we haven’t been able to access so we can’t assess what the humanitarian situation is.” 😠😠😠 😢😢😢
Steph Dujarric UN Spokesperson discusses the food, fuel and cash shortage that are adding to Tigray’s humanitarian crises.
“I’m looking at the clock right now. It’s just gone I think about 8:30 in the evening in Tigray. As we’re talking on this program. That means there are a lot of people, millions actually, who are likely going to bed hungry. It’s one thing not to be able to find food for yourself. It’s another thing altogether not to be able to find food for your children.” Zain Asher
In competition with among others Jair Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson, Abiy Ahmed has been named the worst head of state in 2021 by a panel of professors and researchers, on behalf of the Norwegian newspaper Morgenbladet.
An expert panel was put together by the newspaper to discuss and conclude: Who was the worst head of state in 2021?
👉 The final verdict: Abiy Ahmed. 😈
In 2019 he came to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, for his “efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” Two years later, Ethiopia is marred by civil war.
The New York times recently described the situation as “a year of conflict in Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and a linchpin of regional security, has left thousands dead, forced more than two million people from their homes and pushed parts of the country into famine.”
A wasted opportunity
While dictactors in general, like North-Koreas Kim Jong-un, suppress their people as a natural part of their leadership, 2021 has been a very active year for Prime Minister Ahmed, Morgenbladet writes.
“Abiy has done nothing to downscale the ongoing civil war in his country, because he wants to secure his own alliances and his own position. He is perhaps the most disappointing head of state of the year,” professor Carl Henrik Knutsen says to the newspaper.
Knutsen served in the newspaper’s expert panel on the topic.
“With the Nobel Prize in his pocket and the recognition that comes with it from international alliances, a lot was in place for Abiy to develop his country in a positive direction. He wasted that opportunity and seems to have put his own concerns over that of his citizens,” he says.
The worst of the bad
The expert panel consisted of Carl Henrik Knutsen, professor of political science at the University of Oslo, Lise Rakner, professor of political science at the University of Bergen, Helle Malmvig, senior researcher at the Danish Institute for International Studies and Dan Smith, Director at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
“A truly bad head of state is an authoritarian and oppressive leader who undermines the political institutions in the country and concentrates all power in his own hands, at any cost,” according to Knutsen.
Discussions that included Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and the king of Saudi-Arabia, Salman bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, finally narrowed down to a list of six nominees:
Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the UK
Alexander Lukashenko, President of Belarus
Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India
Jair Bolsonaro, President of Brasil
Michel Aoun, President of Lebanon
Abiy Ahmed, Prime Minister of Ethiopia
Watching people die during a pandemic
Questions that were discussed were whether the head of state has contributed to financial decline in their own country, supported or started a civil war and suppressed civil or political rights. Handling of the pandemic was also an important criterion.
“Leaders who are in denial, who with open eyes watch a large number of people dying during the pandemic and call information about this mortality “fake news” – I believe this is a form of genocide,” said Professor Lise Rakner.
On the more unusual suspect on the list, Boris Johson, Rakner has the following to say:
“The United Kingdom still have a free press, a stable legal system and an independent central bank, which means that Johnson cannot control things in any way he would like to. But if you had given Brasil to Johnson, a lot of things would have gone very wrong. What a clown.”
The violent solution
According to Dan Smith from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the most important criterion in deciding on the worst head of state in 2021 was starting an irresponsible war and using systematic violence. This is why Abiy ends up top, he says to Morgenbladet.
“Since the outbreak of the war, there have been obvious alternative ways of acting, but all of them have been rejected. Both sides have blocked a politically negotiated solution. Instead, Abiy has chosen the most violent solution,” he says.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which awards the Nobel Peace Prize, said Thursday that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the honour in 2019, bore special responsibility for ending the bloodshed in Tigray.
“As Prime Minister and winner of the Peace Prize, Abiy Ahmed has a special responsibility to end the conflict and contribute to peace,” Berit Reiss-Andersen, chair of the committee, said in a statement to AFP.
Northern Ethiopia has been beset by conflict since November 2020 when Abiy sent troops into Tigray after accusing the region’s ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), of attacks on federal army camps.
The fighting between forces loyal to Abiy and the TPLF and their allies has killed thousands of people and forced several million from their homes.
Spokeswoman Billene Seyoum responded to the committee’s comments, saying Abiy had already shouldered his responsibilities.
“The Prime Minister has indeed taken up this ‘special responsibility’ of ending the conflict waged on the state by TPLF and has been engaged in putting an end not only to the past year’s conflict but the destabilising activities of the TPLF, designated a terrorist organisation by parliament,” Billen told AFP.
Tigray is under what the United Nations calls a de facto blockade that is preventing life-saving medicine and food from reaching millions, including hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.
Millions of people have fled their homes since the conflict in Tigray erupted in November 2020
“The humanitarian situation is very serious and it is not acceptable that humanitarian aid does not get through sufficiently,” Reiss-Andersen said.
Speaking at a press conference, Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth appealed for countries to press Abiy to allow aid to get through.
“The big threat there is the Ethiopian government’s blockade of humanitarian assistance that is desperately needed by millions of people in the region,” Roth told reporters.
“This is a classic case of collective punishment. This is not punishing Tigrayan military forces. It is punishing the people… in Tigray,” he added.
The conflict in Tigray has sparked calls to strip Abiy of the Nobel, but this is not possible under the award’s statutes.
The Norwegian committee said it could not comment on what factors were emphasised when the prize was awarded to Abiy beyond “the reasons given in connection with the award,” as the panel’s discussions are confidential.
In November 2020, Abiy’s government allowed Eritrean forces into Tigray as they together pursued the Tigray leaders after political tensions erupted into war. Some tens of thousands of people have been killed, and hundreds of thousands now face famine as Ethiopia’s government has kept almost all food and medical aid from Tigray since late June.
“Since the autumn of 2020, developments in Ethiopia have escalated to a comprehensive armed conflict,” the statement said. “The humanitarian situation is very serious, and it is not acceptable that humanitarian aid does not emerge to a sufficient degree.”
The conflict entered a new phase in late December when Tigray forces retreated into their region amid a new military offensive and Ethiopian forces said they would not advance further there.
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Addis Ethiopia Weblog 