💭 “The chairman of the committee, Bob Menendez, said: “We believe in fact these are war crimes. We cannot turn blindly away when such things happen in the world.”
💭 „He said it also took great notice of comments by the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Mathias, “who has termed the conflict a ‘genocide’ against the Tigrayan people“.
US increases pressure on Ethiopia with sanctions imposed and congressional oversight
US President Joe Biden’s administration is conducting a review into possible war crimes committed in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, a senior official told Congress on Thursday.
“We have a fact-based review under way that is being conducted very quickly and the secretary of state will have the final determination,” Robert Godec, acting assistant secretary of state for African affairs, told the Senate foreign relations committee.
Washington takes “extremely seriously” comments by UN Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on “atrocities that may well amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity”, Mr Godec said.
He said it also took great notice of comments by the patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Mathias, “who has termed the conflict a ‘genocide’ against the Tigrayan people”.
Fighting in the region is approaching its eighth month and the humanitarian situation continues to deteriorate.
Ethiopian and Eritrean troops, along with allied militias, began an offensive in November against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.
The fighting has displaced about two million people and left 5.2 million in urgent need, the UN says.
Human rights organisations such as Doctors without Borders and Amnesty International have documented cases of sexual violence, extrajudicial killings and massacres, as well as the use of starvation as a weapon.
“We are acutely aware of the need to determine whether the conduct meets the legal standard for atrocities or war crimes,” Mr Godec said.
The chairman of the committee, Bob Menendez, said: “We believe in fact these are war crimes. We cannot turn blindly away when such things happen in the world.”
Cameron Hudson, a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Centre, said a war crimes conclusion by the US government would go a long way in increasing pressure on Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 24, 2021
The United States has announced visa restrictions on Ethiopian and Eritrean officials who are accused of fuelling the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region. Thousands of people are estimated to have died in the six month-long conflict there between national troops and the region’s Tigray and People’s Liberation Front, with tens of thousands more having fled to Sudan.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on May 6, 2021
Delegation members have met some of the refugees who have fled across the border to escape the conflict in neighbouring Tigray at Um Rakuba camp in Sudan’s Gadarif state.
🔥 Prepare For a Massive Refugee Wave and a Return of The Horrors Of ISIS as Ethiopia and Eritrea Will Likely Descend into Chaos as a Bloodbath Ensues for US/NATO Control in Africa
👉 The chance of US intervention into the Horn of Africa region is very high
🔥 As predicted, things worsens and the country descends into a brutal civil war between the Tigray, Amhara, Oromo and Somali groups. This naturally is used to justify “humanitarian intervention”, so NATO and friends get involved and raze Ethiopia and Eritrea. Thousands die, the current food/famine situation goes from bad to nightmare mode, and fighting continues for power and Ethiopia becomes a war zone between what could be the Republics of Tigray, Amhara, Afan, Ogaden, and Gambela.
🔥 Sudan and South Sudan, sensing the blood in the water and wanting to maintain water access on their ends due to Ethiopia’s position as the motherland of the Nile, get involved and start taking pieces for themselves.
🔥 Meanwhile, countless people have died of famine, the conditions are the worst in all of Africa, and people are begging to leave. The region, which is now a combination between rebel occupied or US/UN/NATO occupied, becomes the worst place on the planet, and then suddenly, people begin to migrate, encouraged by the US/UN/NATO.
🔥 The Ethiopian dam project is in the dustbin, parts of Ethiopia- possibly some of the above mentioned pseudorepublics -go to Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia, meanwhile Ethiopia gets the “Gaddhafi treatment” given to Libya back in 2012 as “rebels” take control, and just like in the days of ISIS, the liquidations of common people in horrible ways are back on camera. The world watches in horror, except instead of Arabs and Semites, its Hamites and Afro-Semitic peoples who are suffering. The world watches in horror.
🔥 Referring to the Nile drying up, remember that wars often do not help human or natural circumstances. In fact, there is a strong chance that even if the US does blow up the Horn of Africa, it will not stop the environmental factors other than to worsen them. In other words, Egypt will still starve- it is just that they will be joined by the sub-Saharan African neighbors.
💭 Prepare For A Massive Refugee Wave And A Return Of The Horrors Of ISIS as Ethiopia And Eritrea Will Likely Descend Into Chaos As A Bloodbath Ensues For US/NATO Control In Africa
Back in 2015, Walid Shoebat wrote about a massive food crisis coming to the Middle East, where the Nile would dry up and millions would suffer.
You can read the full piece here. It is particularly interesting in light of developments taking place in Tigray that I have written about, where Tigrayans are crying ‘genocide’ as the fighting between Tigray against Ethiopia and Eritrea intensifies as the world watches with a sympathetic eye towards Tigray.
You have heard this from me over and over at Shoebat.com. I am going to say it again- watch for Ethiopia to start appearing in the news like a floodgate. Forget about the Chauvin trial and Black Lives Matter when it happens, because if this happens- and there is a strong chance it will -it is going to be world-shaking.
Ethiopia’s basically been in the middle of a long, historic, and like with many African conflicts, a brutal war between the formerly dominant Tigray ethnic group (where the WHO director Tedros is from) and the eastern region of the country. Ethiopia, as I have explained, straddles the US/NATO and Soviet blocs of influence, and now that things are losing control there again, they are ripe for exploitation. It is not a surprise that Biden’s foreign policy wing, from what it seems, is shifting a huge chunk of their attention there.
Basically, the rebellious group (Tigray People’s Liberation front, or TPLF) seems to have baited Ethiopia’s current and inexperienced leader into overplaying his hand by acting overly aggressive against them. This makes it so they can claim persecution as part of a an attempt to regain power in their region after having had been ousted decades ago. It seems they have succeeded, as Ethiopia started the war with the public relations “high ground” following TPLF attacks on an Ethiopian military base along with rocket incursions into Eritrea (and hence is why Eritrea became involved). However, because Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took a very strong hand against the TPLF without properly managing the image of the situation, he and Eritrea both have lost control over the public relations side, not to mention some of their own soldier’s actions. In other words, the militaries have mostly won the conflict, but lost the image battle. This is particularly serious considering that the TPLF has been used historically by NATO, such as during the 1970s and 1980s as proxy fighters against the Soviet-supported Derg that overthrew Haile Selassie and set up a communist dictatorship.
Just look at the news. CNN recently had an exclusive interview with the leader of TPLF. The TPLF also had a particularly strong relationship with the Obama administration, and remember, Biden has naturally maintained strong ties with the previous administration he was Vice President for.
Will the US put troops on the ground? I have suspected as much, but it would most likely all be done in the context of NATO- think Bosnia 1994 but more serious. The UN may have her own peacekeepers there too, but no matter what happens, at this point, where the USA goes NATO as a whole also goes.
Either way, the situation is bad, and the chance for intervention is very high. For example, consider the following situation as a possible, but clearly not inevitable scenario-
Ethiopia puts down the TPLF rebellion and occupies Tigray. Separatist movements move into the underground, as they gain support from the US and NATO as the “international community” condemns Ahmed. Ethiopia, Eritrea, and puts sanctions on them. Ethiopia continues to have sporadic bouts of violence both with Sudan and within its own borders as conditions in the country continue to deteriorate. Some of this is happening/may happen in the near future, such as with the major refugee crisis that has developed already.
A Tigray insurgency akin to IRA begins, and at the same time, the various other inter-country and border ethnic groups, particularly the Oromos and Somalis, start their own rebellions. In response, Ahmed tries to keep control and he cracks down and starts arresting opposition and leadership. IN response, the US/NATO uses it to accuse him of further “human rights abuses: while the media promotes the political line. As predicted, things worsens and the country descends into a brutal civil war between the Tigray, Amhara, Oromo and Somali groups. This naturally is used to justify “humanitarian intervention”, so NATO and friends get involved and raze Ethiopia and Eritrea. Thousands die, the current food/famine situation goes from bad to nightmare mode, and fighting continues for power and Ethiopia becomes a war zone between what could be the Republics of Tigray, Amhara, Afan, Ogaden, and Gambela.
Sudan and South Sudan, sensing the blood in the water and wanting to maintain water access on their ends due to Ethiopia’s position as the motherland of the Nile, get involved and start taking pieces for themselves. Egypt was already involved in the military action because she is the second largest recipient of US aid after Israel (and honestly, an Ethiopian denial of Egyptian water demands would be an attack on the image of US power projection abroad, which the US will never allow to happen), and now the nation is just a shadow of its former self. The Ethiopian dam project is in the dustbin, parts of Ethiopia- possibly some of the above mentioned pseudorepublics -go to Sudan, South Sudan, and Somalia, meanwhile Ethiopia gets the “Gaddhafi treatment” given to Libya back in 2012 as “rebels” take control, and just like in the days of ISIS, the liquidations of common people in horrible ways are back on camera. The world watches in horror, except instead of Arabs and Semites, its Hamites and Afro-Semitic peoples who are suffering. The world watches in horror.
Meanwhile, countless people have died of famine, the conditions are the worst in all of Africa, and people are begging to leave. The region, which is now a combination between rebel occupied or US/UN/NATO occupied, becomes the worst place on the planet, and then suddenly, people begin to migrate, encouraged by the US/UN/NATO. Where do they go? Sure enough they are being invited by Germany, France, England, and all of the European Union plus the US to migrate. The US does her part too, of course, and the nationalist in Europe and the US begin to become angry again, nationalism rises as people flood in and crime increases…
..And sure enough, it’s 2015 and 2016 all over again, except much larger and more serious. Plus, it just happens to have the added effects of flooding the area with German/Italian/French/American industries involved in the rare earth metals business, as well as other goods needed for war. To that, Russian and Chinese investment in the region, both being well-known and acknowledged as geopolitical threats (especially the Russians, since they have been making inroads into Ethiopia for centuries as a part of their own plans and struggles with Germany) are kicked out again, and left with the options of basically trolling western powers instead of actually having real power to influence the destination of those parts of the world by their own national actions. Russia continues to move further into isolation as does China, except the Russians are more serious because they know what is at stake and continue to play their side carefully in preparations for a coming global war. Meanwhile, the US and NATO militarizes the whole region, continuing already existing trends such as the French re-militarization of their former colony in Djibouti.
This is just one scenario. But it is a very possible scenario. No matter what happens, however, the chance of US intervention into the Horn of Africa region is very high. Remember that back in 1993 the US was there for similar reasons (the Black Hawk Down incident), and in this sense, nothing had really changed, except the natural issues I mentioned before are closer to being realized than in the past.
Likewise, referring to the Nile drying up, remember that wars often do not help human or natural circumstances. In fact, there is a strong chance that even if the US does blow up the Horn of Africa, it will not stop the environmental factors other than to worsen them. In other words, Egypt will still starve- it is just that they will be joined by the sub-Saharan African neighbors.
Ethiopia’s government on Thursday faced mounting pressure to withdraw troops from the northern region of Tigray amid growing reports of war crimes in an embattled area that now faces a humanitarian crisis.
Criticism of the conduct of government troops and their allies from neighboring Eritrea grew after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken asserted Wednesday that “ethnic cleansing” has happened in parts of Tigray.
“The challenge in Ethiopia is very significant, and it’s one that we are very focused on, particularly the situation in Tigray, where we are seeing very credible reports of human rights abuses and atrocities that are ongoing,” Blinken told the foreign affairs committee of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Although Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed expressed concerns about the actions of the fugitive leaders of Tigray, Blinken said, “the situation in Tigray today is unacceptable and has to change, and that means a few things. It means making sure that we are getting into the region, into Tigray. Aid workers and others … to make sure that the people are cared for, provided for and protected.”
Eritrean troops as well as fighters from Amhara, an Ethiopian region bordering Tigray, “need to come out,” he said, adding that the region needs “a force that will not abuse the human rights of the people of Tigray or commit acts of ethnic cleansing, which we’ve seen in western Tigray. That has to stop.”
There was no immediate comment from Ethiopian authorities.
But the fugitive leaders of Tigray seized on Blinken’s comments, issuing a statement on Thursday condemning what they called “the genocidal campaign” targeting their people.
“Thousands of civilians have been massacred, hundreds of thousands forcibly displaced from their homes, civilian installations and Infrastructures systemically destroyed,” said the statement posted on Twitter by Getachew Reda, one of the fugitive leaders of Tigray. “Despite shamelessly protesting its innocence and profusely promising to allow access to humanitarian agencies and international investigation into allegations, Abiy Ahmed’s regime and its partners in crime have only stepped up their war crimes and crimes against humanity in recent weeks and days.”
A senior Ethiopian diplomat on Wednesday quit his post in Washington over concerns about the reported atrocities in Tigray. Berhane Kidanemariam, who served as the deputy chief of mission at the Ethiopian embassy in Washington, slammed Abiy as a reckless leader who is dividing his country.
Accounts of atrocities by Ethiopian and allied forces against residents of Tigray have been detailed in reports by The Associated Press and by Amnesty International. Ethiopia’s federal government and regional officials in Tigray both maintain that each other’s governments are illegitimate after the pandemic disrupted elections.
The conflict began in November, when Abiy sent government troops into Tigray after an attack there on federal military facilities. No one knows how many thousands of civilians have been killed in the conflict.
Humanitarian officials have warned that a growing number of people might be starving to death in Tigray. The fighting erupted on the brink of harvest in the largely agricultural region and sent an untold number of people fleeing their homes. Witnesses have described widespread looting by Eritrean soldiers as well as the burning of crops.
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 24, 2020
Refugees tell VICE World News stories of government-aligned militias checking IDs to identify ethnic Tigrayans, as border tensions between Sudan and Ethiopia rise.
“We know he is planning to exterminate us, all Tigrayans in general,” said Kahsay, the refugee who left everything behind in Ethiopia. “We don’t believe him at all,” he said of Abiy’s call for civilians to return to Tigray. “Until the Tigrayan government calls us to go, we’ll never go back.”●
After waiting for days at the Sudanese border with Ethiopia, Amanael Kahsay boarded the back of the cargo truck that would take him to the safety of a new refugee camp in Sudan.
In the span of days, his concerns had gone from the routine worries of making enough money at the farm where he works to send back to his family, to simply surviving another day.
“First, I want to save my life. Food and clothes come later,” he said from the truck bed.
Kahsay fled from his native Ethiopia, without notice and in the middle of his usual work day, leaving behind all of his belongings and any knowledge about his loved ones. He is part of the first wave of Ethiopian arrivals in Sudan, refugees fleeing war in the country’s northern Tigray region.
He was working as a day labourer on a farm near the city of Mai Kadra when Ethiopian government-aligned ethnic militias known as Fano, from the neighbouring region of Amhara, descended.
“Fano from the Amhara region came, then took us all out from our homes. We saw our neighbours killed and slaughtered, in the same way as you cut wood, with an axe and knife,” Kahsay told VICE World News.
As chaos tore through the city, Kahsay said Ethiopian federal forces stood by as Fano fighters went door to door, demanding to see IDs in order to identify ethnic Tigrayans.
“We managed to escape and hide in a field for four days. On the fifth day, we made our way to the Sudanese border,” he explained, adding that Fano militants continued to terrorise civilians attempting to flee to Sudan.
On the way, he said, “youths were sent to kill us. [A group of] more than 70 were trying to kill us. We hid ourselves in the fields. They hunted us. On the way many were killed. We passed many dead bodies.”
In his own group of eight, only six of them made it to the border.
“They checked the IDs of people…if they find someone with Tigrayan origin…[they] slaughter with a knife.”
As Kahsay spoke of his journey from the relative safety of the camp in eastern Sudan, women and men sitting nearby wept quietly, reliving their own recent horrors as he spoke.
The violence he described was echoed by many firsthand accounts told to VICE World News at border crossings and at two new refugee camps that aid agencies are hurriedly setting up to accommodate the crush of over 50,000 new arrivals in under two months.
The nature of these attacks paint a stark contrast to the neat statements crafted by the office of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who until recently was celebrated by the international community as a reformer who had the potential to unite Ethiopia’s nine ethno-federal states.
Abiy declared war on the leadership of Ethiopia’s northernmost Tigray region in early November. The launch of large scale military operations on Tigray’s main cities and the capital, Mekelle, was in response to an attack by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front, or TPLF, on the northern command of the federal army.
The TPLF constitutes both the political party that runs the regional government there and the regional army which dwarfs the manpower of the federal army in the region.
Before their attack on the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Defense Forces, the TPLF leadership ratcheted up tensions with the federal government by holding regional elections in September, despite a national ban on elections due to COVID-19.
The elections and attack were framed as provocations by Prime Minister Abiy but the relationship between the TPLF and the prime minister has been strained since he took office in 2018, unseating TPLF leadership which had ruled the country for nearly 30 years.
Since then, the TPLF claims they have been marginalised from positions of power and targeted by overly aggressive corruption probes.
For his part, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2019 for ending a 20-year war with Eritrea, but has long had the TPLF in his sights.
“He felt as long as TPLF was lurking around and still held levers of economy and power, he would not be settled… And his fears were confirmed by [Eritrean Prime Minister Isaias] Afwerki, who has the same paranoia, related to the border war which goes back a decade… The two men met and confirmed their fears and suspicions about the TPLF,” said Rashid Abdi, a Kenya-based Horn of Africa analyst.
Planning for the war against Tigray “undoubtedly” dates back to before Abiy was feted by the international community as a great reformer and peacemaker.
“There is no doubt that both Abiy and Afwerki had a vested interest in this war and were planning it, probably going back two years,” Abdi told VICE World News. “All the to’ing and fro’ing between Eritrea and Ethiopia were actually related to this conflict. All the signs were there that the two leaders were planning something major.”
Now, with confirmed reports of Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian troops within Tigray, this early alliance with Eritrea is seen by regional analysts as a strategic move to bolster Eritrean support for his efforts to marginalise and eventually attack Tigray.
While Prime Minister Abiy has repeatedly assured the international community that no civilians were targeted in the offensive on Tigray, countless stories of refugees in Sudan contradict the official line.
“Their words and practices are unrelated,” Bahti Adal told VICE World News from Um Rukuba refugee camp in eastern Sudan. Adal is settling in at the camp 11 days after fleeing Humera, one of the first cities to be attacked by federal forces and the target of a reported bombardment campaign by Eritrea, to its north.
“Everything happened suddenly… children were outside walking in the street. Bombs were falling. How could you protect yourself? Innocents were killed, young [people] and elders also,” she said, seated next to her brother and husband, who fled across the border with her.
Prime Minister Abiy declared the war in Tigray over at the end of November when federal forces took the regional capital Mekelle, and has several times called for refugees to return home. But TPLF leadership has said the fight is ongoing and has simply shifted to guerrilla warfare. The TPLF is battle-hardened from decades of war with Eritrea and an insurgency to overthrow Ethiopia’s Marxist dictatorship in the 1990s, so while they lack heavy weaponry, they are well versed in guerrilla tactics.
Reports from inside Tigray remain murky as parts of the region emerge from a six-week total communications blackout.However recent arrivals at the refugee camps tell of a conflict that has morphed from a military offensive to a gruesome, ethnic-conflict.
Gebrehywit Aragawe, a 44-year-old priest, crossed through Eritrea to arrive in Sudan with his wife, Latakidan, and two-year-old daughter, Hewa, and a small group of other families. Dazed, Aragawe explained to medical workers at the arrival point that his daughter ran into a cooking fire when government-allied militias descended on their village, Shiglil. As his wife swatted flies away from Hewa’s blistering burn wounds, Aragawe quietly told VICE World News that they had seven other children. “The militias stripped them and beat them in front of us,” he said. “All of them died.”
Government backed ethnic-militias along with federal forces continue to target Tigrayan civilians. And as the conflict becomes more entrenched, humanitarians say there has been an alarming drop in the number of arrivals from Sudan, from thousands a day to hundreds or dozens.
According to those still managing to cross and humanitarian sources, members of the Fano militias and federal troops are blocking refugees trying to cross along the main border posts.
Those still managing to flee Tigray have sought out alternative, riskier routes, including crossing through Eritrean territory to arrive at a transit centre in the border city of Hamdayet. From here, they wait to be transferred to refugee camps.
A Sudanese businessman who makes his living smuggling illegal goods and people across the border with Ethiopia told VICE World News that requests for his services from Tigrayans has increased significantly since the start of the war but that militias operating near the border have made his routes perilous.
Further south, others sneak through shoulder-high stalks of sorghum overnight, passing through farms that span the Sudanese border with Ethiopia, hoping to arrive to a welcoming farmer Adam Mohammed Rahma.
Rahma manages a sorghum and cotton farm and knew from the beginning of the conflict that he and his neighbours living along the porous, vast border would soon see the fallout.
“We heard the sounds of clashes and we expected that civilians and soldiers would come. They were afraid of the tarmac road because of their Federal army. So when this route is safe, they take it,” he told VICE World News from a farm that straddles a border area that now threatens to draw Sudan into its own conflict with Ethiopia.
Sudanese authorities have welcomed the influx of refugees and Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdullah Hamdok has offered to broker a ceasefire between the TPLF and the federal government.
But the issue of disputed agricultural land at the border could tip Ethiopia’s civil war into a regional conflict that could entangle Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.
Military sources at the border told VICE World News that they have recently advanced further into the long-disputed border territory, taking advantage of the removal of Ethiopian troops from the border to fight inside Tigray. The claim gives credence to an accusation lobbed by Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy.
Last week, the Sudanese military claimed their forces were “ambushed by Ethiopian forces and militias inside Sudanese territory” in a December 15 cross-border attack that led to several deaths and casualties on the Sudanese side.
Military sources told VICE World News that the two countries are unlikely to go to war on the border, however increasingly strained ties between Sudan and Ethiopia might tip the scales for the TPLF.
Historically, the former regime in Sudan – toppled after a revolution in 2018-19 – supported the TPLF in a successful insurgency against Ethiopia’s Marxist dictatorship in the 1990s.
Today, the possibility of establishing supply routes from Sudan into Tigray could be instrumental to the potential success of the TPLF against the federal government. As it stands, the TPLF leadership has fled the main cities to regroup in the mountains and Tigray is fenced in: the federal government controls the roads into the region and Eritrea, to Tigray’s North, is supporting the federal army.
Prime Minister Hamdok has signalled an interest in neutrality and diplomacy but military leaders in Sudan wield significant power in the national government.
Lt-Col Swarmi Khalid, who served as the spokesman for the Sudanese army for several decades, told VICE World News that the Sudanese forces have not yet offered material or logistical support at the border to the TPLF.
But he added, “If Ethiopia continues to escalate, this may change things.”
“Sudan is particularly influential with Ethiopia and Eritrea,” Khalid told VICE News, “Ethiopia must remember that it must have a peaceful stand with the Sudanese government so that Sudan is not forced to enter into any conflict to support Tigray.”
And if Sudan does decide to lend support to the TPLF, through opening supply routes or otherwise, analyst Rashid Abdi agrees their influence could be decisive and extremely dangerous for the stability across the Horn of Africa.
“Sudan is extremely adept at these kinds of proxy conflicts and very opportunistic. [And] Abiy’s hands are so tied with Tigray so he cannot move against them. The Ethiopians will probably move at some point [but] if they move now, the Sudanese will just open a supply route to the TPLF and Egyptians will get in on the act so it could become a much more serious, regional conflict.”
Ethiopia’s international backers, including the US, have repeatedly urged negotiations between Addis Ababa and Tigrayan leadership but Abiy’s tough talk painting the TPLF leadership as a “criminal clique” may have backed him into a corner.
“The only path out of this is negotiated settlement yet he has criminalised the entire TPLF, tagged them with treason. So he’s locked himself to a place where he either fights to the death or surrenders,” analyst Abdi told VICE World News.
With the conflict unlikely to end any time soon, tens of thousands of refugees remain in Sudan, terrified to return despite the sweeping promises of safety from their prime minister.
“We know he is planning to exterminate us, all Tigrayans in general,” said Kahsay, the refugee who left everything behind in Ethiopia. “We don’t believe him at all,” he said of Abiy’s call for civilians to return to Tigray. “Until the Tigrayan government calls us to go, we’ll never go back.”
Posted by addisethiopia / አዲስ ኢትዮጵያ on December 24, 2020
Human Tragedy Aside, How is a Nation Dependent on Aid Financing a Costly War on Tigray?
Considering a US AFRICOM Angle to Tigray, Ethiopia, and Uncle Sam’s role on Africa’s Horn.
Ethiopia has pursued “legitimate” military action in its Tigray province since early November, according Moussa Faki Mahamat, the chairman of the African Union (AU) Commission. Maybe.
It does seem that the northern state’s regional forces – the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) – attacked federal military bases on November 4 and may even have executed some surrendering soldiers. Still, one suspects something a bit more complicated afoot inside America’s “strategic linchpin” partner on Africa’s Horn. In fact, that Ethiopia – particularly its Western-favorite of a prime minister, Abiy Ahmed – is a U.S. partner at all, is reason enough to smell a rat in the AU chairman’s a bit too confident, yet also decidedly bland, judgment.
Consider the Source
Let’s start with the source – Mr. Faki himself. Because it doesn’t take too much research at all for an authorial judge to question this witness’s credibility. Faki is a former prime minister and longtime foreign minister of Chad – the highly authoritarian and longtime corrupt kleptocratic hub of Africa. He also just so happens to belong to the same Zaghawa ethnic group as Chad’s president-for-life (or at least since 1990), Idriss Déby. And just who is the farcically titled “Marshal” Déby?
Well, he’s a previous chair of the esteemed African Union body – preceded by that other human rights stalwart, deceased Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe – and was later African Union president. In fact, he managed to secure his 11-year veteran as foreign minister, Faki, the African Union chairman position on the same day that he handed over the rotating presidency of the organization. Rather convenient, that.
Additionally, President Déby is an alumni of late Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi’s World Revolutionary Center – which a 2011 Foreign Policypiece cheekily labeled “Harvard for tyrants.” On those merits, Déby has lived up to the school’s hype. He leads one the world’s most authoritarian regimes, bans demonstrations critical of his government, and has even been known to shut down social media in Chad for years at a time.
So maybe Ethiopia’s own oft-Western-hyped prime minister’s brutal ongoing campaign in Tigray was, in fact, totally on the legal up-and-up. A big maybe, by the way. Nevertheless, that the judgment was passed by the crony of a Chadian dictator known to collude with US and French neo-imperialism – yea, that’s enough to raise serious questions.
Peace Laureate at War
There’s something tragic-comic about euphemisms and contradictory concepts – they’re almost as beautiful as they are abominable. So it is with the very notion of Ethiopia’s own Nobel Peace Laureate waging war on a massive – and mostly unquestioned – scale inside his own country. Prime Minister Abiy absurdly claims Ethiopia’s federal forces have not killed a single civilian in Tigray, and his administration insists they “don’t need a babysitter” of an independent probe into their prosecution of the war.
Naturally there’s counter evidence galore. Like, why would the otherwise Abiy-amenable European Union (EU) withhold nearly $109 million in budget support payments to Addis Ababa because of unanswered questions about Ethiopian federal troop behavior in the conflict? Actually the EU was quite clear about their concerns. According to a spokesman, they “need to see certain conditions fulfilled by the Government of Ethiopia” – including full humanitarian access for relief workers, open refugee access to neighboring countries, an end to ethnic-based targeting, and restoring communications to the Tigray region.
Moreover, just what sort of routine “law enforcement operation” – which is how Abiy describes a war that’s killed thousands and displaced about a million Ethiopians – requires the intervention of thousands of traditionally mortal enemy troops from neighboring Eritrea, according to corroborated eyewitness accounts from aid workers and diplomats? Heck, even the normally pro-Abiy US State Department admitted it was “aware of credible reports of Eritrean military involvement in Tigray.” What’s more, a former Eritrean defense minister turned opposition figure cited sources currently inside its defense ministry claiming the country deployed no less than four mechanized divisions, seven infantry divisions, and a commando brigade, to open a second (northern) front for the invasion of Tigray.
Peculiar too, that the country’s single available broadcast source – Eritrean state television – hasn’t even mentioned the nearby Ethiopian conflict since it began some 50 days ago. Plus, the normally bellicose Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has not uttered a public word in response to missiles the TPLF fired at his capital of Asmara in November. Me thinks the lady doth protest too little. Look, here in the real world, the Eritrean Army absolutely took part in this war – and they apparently did more than offer their Ethiopian peacemaking partner of a prime minister a selfless assist with his internal turmoil.
According to one of the nearly 100,000 Eritrean refugees in northern Ethiopia – who’ve previously fled state repression and indefinite military conscription across the border – Eritrean soldiers accompanied by Ethiopian troops patrolled his camp “searching name-by-name and home-to-home” for select individuals. He said “their main target seems to be opposition members.” Sounds like a win win for ever-authoritarian Asmara. If true – and there’s enough stored Eritrean state motive to assume it is – this would amount to direct Ethiopian complicity in a flagrant violation of international laws covering the protection of refugees.
Internal Vietnam?
Back on November 28, the Ethiopian government declared an end to military operations in Tigray – insisting federal forces were in “full control” of the region – but the TPLF leadership hasn’t been captured and claims, somewhat credibly, that their resistance continues. Could broad and persistent internal insurgency break out – which proves to be an Ethiopian Vietnam?
Well, Addis Ababa’s troops have faced a short version of African ‘Nam before – just over the border in Ethiopia’s longtime favorite intervention and manipulation spot: Somalia. Most recently from 2006-09, when Washington green-lighted – then actively assisted (with special forces teams and airpower) – an Ethiopian invasion and occupation that quickly turned into a bloody morass. The ostensible – and strictly achieved – purpose was a decapitating regime change of Somalia’s stabilizing, and reasonably moderate, Islamic Courts Union (ICU).
Only, as they do, this occupation proved complicated, indecisive, and ultimately counterproductive. The ICU’s moderates were assuredly toppled, but this empowered its more radical Al Shabaab youth wing – and lent legitimacy to a hard-liner Somali resistance that not only remains undefeated, but has spread its tentacles into another US partner state, Kenya. In fact, call me crazy but I think far more Americans ought know that three US troops and contractors were killed in Kenya this January – proof positive that global wars on terror sure can go truly global if they continue for two decades.
It is hard to know if Tigrayan resistance will prove persistent, or rise to Somali intervention levels – where, by the way, Ethiopia still maintains 4,000 troops. What’s certain is there’s plenty of foundational kindling for an insurgency in the region, if not a countrywide ethnic civil war. Abiy’s victory pronouncement is likely to be – historically speaking – absurdly premature. According to last week’s European Council on Foreign Relations report, there are “three dynamics” accounting for this.
First, the Tigray War has heightened ethnic tensions in a country with at least 80 such groups – many of which have long been at each other’s throats. In the wake of the Abiy’s brutal suppression of the regional rebellion with ground, armored, air, and Eritrean power, many average Tigrayans feel more alienated than ever from the federal government. That’s not good.
Second, the war – and the prime minister’s prosecution of it – have tainted perceptions of his broader national goals of modernization, infrastructure development, and general Western-backed neoliberalism. For the many Ethiopians already skeptical of Abiy’s corporatist “medemer” (“synergy”) project, the raw and reflexive violence of the Tigray campaign has exposed the prime minister’s goals as – just as they suspected – ultimately motivated by power centralization.
Finally, by calling in Asmara’s soldierly dogs, Abiy turned the rebellion into a regional conflict. This plays right into the hands of a TPLF narrative that has long sought a Greater Tigray including ethnic brethren across the Eritrean border. It may even motivate a desperate move by the TPLF to pursue a strategy that expands any future insurgency into Tigray’s neighboring country. At that point, it’s game on!
Right now, let’s focus on the first couple of insurgency-accelerants. For starters, there’s been far too little media emphasis on one crucial and disturbing fact. That is, Ethiopia’s federal army – and longtime foes cum friends in Ethiopia – had two other allies in the Tigray fight: bordering Amhara State regional forces and ethnic Amhara militias. This is wildly problematic for two reasons.
One, the Amhara – Ethiopia’s second largest ethnic group – are widely resented nationwide for their millennia’s worth of traditional dominance of the country’s political and cultural institutions. Two, the chauvinist ethnic militiamen – often youth-based – have tribalistic scores to settle and are often unhinged murderers. By utilizing Amhara regional forces engaged in active border disputes with neighboring Tigray, and then deputizing bigoted substate young ethnic militiamen – both with a vested interest in punishing the Tigrayans – Prime Minister Abiy instantly poisoned the well of his internal “law enforcement operation.”
The proof is in the proceeding pudding. Because, wouldn’t you know that after the TPLF retreated in the face massive onslaught, Amhara state forces occupied all the previously contested territories – nearly one-third of Tigray – and then the Abiy government (can we say “regime” at this point?) appointed Amhara administrators for these disputed areas. There have also been credible reports of Amhara militiamen carrying out ethnic massacres of Tigrayan civilians in these newly occupied zones.
Secondly, Ethiopia’s ten other regional states, and its other 79 odd ethno-linguistic groups, are no doubt keeping a keen eye on what’s unfolding in the Tigray tumult. There are rising, serious, and countless reports of ethnic profiling, discrimination, retaliation, and even murder, in the war’s wake – not just in Tigray, but nationwide. And the truth is, Abiy’s “reform” agendas were always so many castles of sand – the prime minister long more popular with global elites than many Ethiopian locals.
For those suspicious of his motives from the first, the overwhelming and oppressive force applied in Tigray – in cahoots with their mortal Eritrean enemies – may be viewed as exposing Abiy’s real centralization plans and/or desire to reestablish traditional Amhara dominance (though typically identified as a member of the Oromo ethnic group – multiple sources identify his mother as Amhara). Are they next, many ethnic minorities and their regional leaders may wonder? Is it Tigray that’s been under attack – or ethnic federalism itself?
In such a scenario – their own instances of brutality aside – Abiy’s assault and metropole-centripetal policies may turn the TPLF fighters into bandit folk heroes like some band of African Jesse Jameses or Bonnies and Clydes. In fact, perhaps the analogy sticks – since it’s already replete with an old fashioned bounty on their bandit heads. Last week, the Ethiopia government announced a 10 million birr ($260,000) reward for information on the whereabouts of the fugitive Tigrayan leaders – or, if Abiy keeps it up: newfound Robin Hoods!
There’s also some dangerous – if anecdotal – language circulating among Tigrayans that I’ve personally heard fuel insurgencies and sectarian civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One half-Tigrayan, half-Eritrean, civilian refugee – who barely escaped after five family members were shot – said that since the war, “The people that I know, they hate the TPLF. But now they want the TPLF to win. They want them to take over the power. Even people who had hope in [Prime Minister Abiy].”
So here we go again, with military overreach and overreaction alienating broad swathes of already unstable countries, thereby empowering – by dint of communal fear and perceived necessity – dubious violent actors previously lent less legitimacy. Oh, and all with an amoral American assist, enable, or authorization. I don’t know about you, but I’ve seen this movie before – including a sequel! – and it never ends well.
AFRICOM’s Ethiopian Opacity
Ethiopia’s hardly always been Washington’s East African linchpin. On the contrary, for a long while – and not so long ago – Addis Ababa was America’s regional nemesis, the foil to Uncle Sam’s best laid plans for the Red Sea region. Ethiopia, in fact, was a Soviet linchpin from the 1970s to the fall of the Berlin Wall – and Somalia’s autocrat was America’s man on the Horn. Talk about a turnabout! How soon Washington’s professional policymakers forget what they likely never knew in the first place. One wonders if the US generals charged with policing – I’m sorry, “security assisting” and “capacity building” – Africa have the slightest inkling of what’s under the continent’s hood. Given their record in East Africa – specifically Ethiopia – the safe money says hell no.
Strange isn’t it (or is it?), that in the month and a half since this semi-major regional war broke out over Tigray, that AFRICOM hasn’t published a single press release on the subject? Not even something mundane like otherwise obligatory calls for restraint, ceasefire, or respect for civilian life. The command did, of course, brag about – and release war porn footage – its airstrikes targeting Al Shabaab just across the border in the US military’s Somalian sinkhole. Could it be because Tigrayan victims of America’s East African linchpin don’t count?
See these poor, erased souls happened to be killed by the wrong people – Washington’s allies. And so it always goes in America’s deadly and language-distorting proxy campaigns on this – and other – troubled continents. Good news though! While thousands of Tigrayan Ethiopians were being killed, those sweethearts at AFRICOM donated a field hospital to the Kenyan Border Police – but hey, those guys keep our naughty shared Somali enemies outside of their US”partnered” colonial-legacy boundaries. They deserve humanitarian aid – Kenyan lives matter!
It’s actually rather hard to parse out the exact nature of AFRICOM’s agreements with and assessments of Ethiopia. After all, the command’s Fiscal Year 2020 Theater Posture Plan redacts the entire section identifying “gaps and risks” in US agreements with Addis Ababa. What our troops and our taxpayer dollars do in We the People’s name is by necessity secret squirrel stuff, I guess. That includes, especially, any problems with partner-relationships.
So about all AFRICOM’s more than 50 percent redacted overall posture reveals is that the US has an “enduring” Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement (ACSA) with Ethiopia – this excessive acronym vaguely described as a “bilateral agreement [that] allows exchange of Logistics support, supplies, and services (LSS)” offering the “benefit” of “support for combined operations [to] strengthen strategic partnerships.” Odd too, that America’s ally on Africa’s Horn didn’t receive a single mention in 43 pages worth of AFRICOM commander General Stephen Townsend’s testimony before the House Armed Services Committee this past March. Not one.
Strange because, just weeks earlier, the general took a two-day trip to Ethiopia and addressed the closing ceremony of the African Land Forces Summit (ALFS) – co-hosted by the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) and US Army Africa. While there, the AFRICOM chief met with General Birhanu Jula, Ethiopian military’s Deputy – and now primary – Chief of General Staff. You know, the same East African “land force chief partner” who recently accused the Word Health Organization’s first African director-general – “without offering any evidence” – of leaving “no stone unturned” to procure weapons for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). No matter, Ethiopian military’s conspiracy theorist in chief and his subordinate officers can still expect a cool $1 million in Uncle Sam’s International Military Education and Training (IMET) largesse next year.
Plus, a couple of months before that, in November 2019, Townsend had praised Ethiopia’s “critical and significant leadership role in the region, and across the continent,” and how “their willingness to develop and enhance security capabilities, have helped create a safer region.” As the Pentagon’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) – the continent’s largest and most enduring US base and headquarters in nearby Djibouti – put it in their 2019 “Command Year in Review:” They “are proud to be on the same team building a safe and secure Africa with our coalition partners” – including “Ethiopia.”
See, shooting down protesters in the streets, failing to control widespread nationwide ethnic killings, or the late brutality – including at least one credible massacre that could be the “tip of the iceberg” – of the ENDF’s recent operation to cow Tigrayan separatism: none of this warrants Washington halting the flow of aid to Addis Ababa.
What can, and recently did put Ethiopia’s development assistance at risk – to the tune of $130 million cut by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in September – is angering an even more staunch and autocratic American ally, Egypt. The unforgivable crime: daring to begin filling a damn for a Nile River – 85 percent of which’s water sources are inside Ethiopia’s borders – to perhaps more than double the power capacity of a country where 60 percent of the people still lack electricity.
There’s a hierarchy to US favoritism, Prime Minster Abiy – you should know that by now – and it has little to do with a country’s respective stability, democracy, or humanitarian record.
Get with the program, doctor! It’s big boys rules on the Horn of Africa this Christmas…
