Re: Africa
Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2021 2:40 pm
“Every Option is On the Table”: US Prepping for Libya-Style Intervention in Ethiopia
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 11, 2021
Alan Macleod
– Amid a bloody civil conflict and increasing great-power competition between the United States and China, there are a number of alarming signs that Ethiopia will become the next Libya – an African nation where the U.S. intervenes militarily under the pretext of stopping an impending genocide.
A considerable military buildup is now underway. Last week, the U.S. military announced it was sending over 1,000 National Guard members to nearby Djibouti. This is on top of the special operations forces already sent in November. Perhaps most notably, a government official told CNN that the aircraft carrier USS Essex – along with two other large amphibious vehicles – was steaming towards the Horn of Africa and standing by for further orders.
For weeks, the drums of war have been growing louder in our nation’s media. “Ethiopia’s civil war is a problem U.S. troops can help solve,” Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. wrote in Bloomberg and The Washington Post. “Sending peacekeepers to the pivotal nation of East Africa wouldn’t be popular domestically, but may be the only way to stop the conflict,” he added. Meanwhile, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer argued that the West should establish a “no fly zone” across Ethiopia – a country of 115 million people and twice the size of France.
When it comes to Ethiopia, said head of USAID Samantha Power, one of the architects of the U.S. intervention in Libya, “every option is on the table” – using a phrase that has long been understood to be a threat of war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also refused to rule out sending troops into Ethiopia when directly asked.
Given its bloody record, the talk of a “humanitarian” invasion has many Ethiopians worried. “The U.S. is looking for a pretext for military intervention in Ethiopia. The play books of interventions in Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia, and Libya are being referred to,” Dr. Berhanu Taye, an Ethiopian physician and member of the Global Ethiopian Advocacy Nexus, told MintPress.
The military buildup comes on the back of economic actions already taken. In September, President Joe Biden labeled Ethiopia a national security threat as he imposed sanctions upon government officials. Last month, the U.S. also placed sanctions on Eritrea, whose troops are also heavily involved in the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
The White House is currently withholding over a quarter-billion dollars of aid from Ethiopia and has ended the country’s special trade status under U.S. law, which had allowed it to export goods freely to the United States. Critics say that this could have the effect of crashing the already shaky economy, threatening over a million jobs.
Earlier this week, a number of Western governments (including the U.S.) signed a statement condemning the Ethiopian government for its human rights violations while fighting the TPLF, which they did not censure. The State Department is reportedly considering labeling the actions in Ethiopia a “genocide,” a word that would have considerable implications, given NATO’s self-declared “right to protect” doctrine, whereby it claims it has the right to intervene anywhere in the world to stop ethnic cleansing.
A year of deadly fighting
Bordering Eritrea and Sudan, Tigray is Ethiopia’s northernmost region, home to 7 million people. Although ethnic Tigrayans constitute only around 6% of Ethiopia’s population, they play an outsized role in public life, as the TPLF controlled the country between 1991 and 2018, when popular protests forced them out of power.
Tigrayans were near ubiquitous in the upper ranks of the country’s military and intelligence services, and were greatly overrepresented among its economic elite. This, for Dr. Taye, amounted to no less than a system of informal “Apartheid” that was ignored by most of the West. MintPress also contacted a spokesperson for the TPLF, but did not receive a response.
Since coming to power in 2018, the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has moved against the TPLF in a set of changes that supporters see as much needed reforms to reduce corruption and the TPLF’s grip over public life, but opponents see as overstepping his mandate and as the persecution of an ethnic minority.
The spark for war came in November 2020, when Ahmed attempted to remove military officers belonging to the TPLF from their command. The TPLF fought back, attacking Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. Later that month, TPLF forces also shelled Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. As the TPLF reportedly have drawn closer to the capital, Addis Ababa, a number of the country’s sports stars, including long-distance running hero Haile Gebrselassie, have volunteered for government military service.
Ethiopia
An Ethiopian woman argues with others over food aid in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, May 8, 2021. Ben Curtis | AP
The fighting has continued since then, save for a unilateral government ceasefire in the summer in order that the country’s harvest would not be ruined. Nevertheless, the humanitarian costs have been extremely grave. More than 9 million people live in conflict regions, an estimated 400,000 of those suffering under famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands have died in the conflict, which has seen documented atrocities from all sides. The number of displaced people, already high, has now grown to an estimated 4 million.
The TPLF maintains that the Ethiopian government is blocking international aid convoys from reaching Tigray and that Prime Minister Abiy must step down. Yet Abiy won a landslide victory earlier this year, and was only inaugurated in October. While there were clear drawbacks with the process (voting did not take place in war-ravaged regions like Tigray, for instance), it is difficult to interpret his party winning over 90% of the seats contested as anything other than a national mandate.
Media’s demonizing chorus
Thus, the conflict is ultimately a struggle between two political forces for the control of Ethiopia’s economy. Yet this is not at all how corporate media have presented the issue, preferring instead to frame it as the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments exterminating an ethnic minority group. CNN, for example, wrote:
Eritrean troops aren’t just working hand in glove with the Ethiopian government, assisting in a merciless campaign against the Tigrayan people; in some pockets they’re fully in control and waging a reign of terror… [that] bears the hallmarks of genocide and has the potential to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region.
The New York Times has followed a similar line in much of its reporting. Embedding themselves with the TPLF, they described their companions as “a scrappy force of local Tigrayan recruits” that had, against the odds, “scored a cascade of battlefield victories against the Ethiopian military, one of Africa’s strongest.”
Many Ethiopians have been critical of this coverage. Dr. Kassahun Melesse, an Ethiopian economist from the Oregon State University, noted:
Let alone the framing, the mainstream media got the most fundamental fact about the military conflict wrong: the date the military conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces and the TPLF began. For instance, in virtually all of its reporting on conflict, The New York Times has stated that the federal government launched the war on Nov. 4, 2020. And because the media got this basic fact wrong, all the major theories and framing based on this premise are wrong.”
Taye was even more blunt. “Western mainstream media continue to fabricate lies and disseminate disinformation intended to demonize the Ethiopian government,” he said.
One example of bias pro-Abiy Ethiopians have pointed to is the Times’ apparent whitewashing of the TPLF’s alleged use of child soldiers. Possibly referring to this, the Times describes the TPLF as consisting largely of “highly motivated young recruits.” Even more incriminating, the article’s co-author shared a series of (since deleted) images on his Instagram to promote the story, one of which shows not only children but obviously pre-pubescent boys carrying rifles, complete with a caption seemingly describing them as “highly motivated young recruits.” The TPLF maintains that it does not use child soldiers.
via @besabestin, a New York Times photographer shared this image of the “highly motivated young recruits” he was talking about. pic.twitter.com/RQJfkmRXpn
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 7, 2021
Unfortunately, many individuals challenging the established Western media narrative are now being excised from social media, including massive accounts – like @HornofAfricaHub, Simon Tesfamariam (@STesfa) and Abdirahiman Warsame’s @SomalianFacts – some of which had millions of followers. Ethiopian journalist Hermela Aregawi claimed that Twitter Senior Program Manager Martha Wolday, herself a Tigrayan, appeared to be abusing her position to ban anti-TPLF and pro-Abiy voices and suppress the anti-interventionist hashtag #NoMore.
Libya: a warning from history
At the height of the Arab Spring in 2011, demonstrations against Muammar al-Gaddafi broke out across Libya. Gaddafi had historically been a thorn in the side of the West, refusing to follow orders and attempting to unite both the Arab and African worlds against the established order. Seeing their chance, Western nations immediately began warning that the dictator was on the verge of massacring all those protesting his rule. Immediately, media were filled with lurid and false stories about Gaddafi giving his soldiers Viagra before making them rape protestors. We were, if accounts were to be believed, on the edge of genocide.
Obama era officials like Samantha Power and Susan Rice were among the loudest voices demanding a military response, invoking the controversial “Right to Protect” doctrine, which stated that NATO could intervene anywhere in the world to prevent human rights violations.
Media interest in Libyan human rights went through the roof, peaking in mid-March at the time of the intervention, before falling off a cliff and barely being discussed in the decade since, according to data from Google Trends. Despite the PR blitz, Americans remained dead against military intervention. Thus, it was intially sold to the public as merely imposing a “no-fly zone” on the country, to prevent Libyan planes from bombing forces we now know to have been U.S.-supported Jihadists.
Of course, NATO’s intervention quickly escalated far beyond a no-fly zone, turning the tide of the war and helping the beleagured Jihadists take Tripoli and depose Gaddafi. Since then, Libya has descended into chaos, replete with slave markets where one can buy humans for as little as $400. Today, Rice and Power are back in charge and there is already serious talk of imposing a no fly zone on the Horn of Africa. For many Ethiopians, things are starting to feel worryingly similar to 2011.
US legitimizes TPLF insurgence
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front came to power in 1991 after a long and bloody conflict against the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The same conflict ultimately led to the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia.
During their 27 years in office, the TPLF enmeshed itself into the state, with Tigrayans continuing to occupy senior positions across the country. Throughout this time, Ethiopia was a loyal ally of the United States, in contrast with the Marxist-Leninist Mengistu. Ethiopia helped the U.S. carry out its foreign policy objectives across the region. This support led to the United States turning a blind eye to many of its excesses. In 2015, for instance, President Barack Obama endorsed the country’s elections, where the TPLF coalition won 100% of the seats, as legitimate, while his State Department described Ethiopia as a “democracy.” This was in contrast to Human Rights Watch, which claimed it was “one of the most inhospitable places in the world for people speaking out against government policies, as well as for any human rights research and advocacy,” noting that the TPLF held thousands of political prisoners in the country’s prison system.
Melesse said that, by refusing to formally take a side between an elected government and a group that it has declared a terrorist organization, the U.S. has effectively legitimized the TPLF struggle. The reasons for this position, he argues, include “the return of several Obama-era officials in the U.S. State Department, USAID, and other U.S. government agencies who are sympathetic to the causes of the rebels in Tigray,” and “the misguided view within the U.S. foreign policy establishment that conflates support to the people of Tigray with support to the TPLF.”
Samantha Power Ethiopia
Samantha Power meets with ministers from donor countries to drum up financial support for Tigray. Photo | DVIDS
In November, the TPLF met with nine opposition political groups in Washington, where they signed an agreement to work together to depose Abiy and to form a rival government of their own. “As a response to the major crisis facing various nations of the country and to reverse the harmful effects of Abiy Ahmed’s autocratic rule, to our peoples and beyond, we have recognized the urgent need to collaborate, join our forces towards a safe transition in the country,” a spokesperson told gathered reporters. The symbolism of holding the event in Washington could hardly be missed.
The government fired back, claiming that their war was not only against the TPLF, “but also with colonialism of the powerful states of the West.”
US “Help” unwelcome
The background of this conflict also includes the wider geopolitical struggle between the United States and China. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a long-term plan to develop much of Afro-Eurasia and bring it economically closer to China, Beijing has been investing massively across Africa, with Ethiopia one of the continent’s top recipients of Chinese investment. Between 2000 and 2018, Ethiopia borrowed $13.7 billion from China, compared to $9.2 billion from the U.S. Most of that money has gone into huge infrastructure projects or to developing Ethiopian manufacturing.
Chinese money has helped build more than 50,000 kilometers of new roads since 2000, including an $86 million ring road for Addis Ababa. It has also funded the construction of a $475 million light railway system for the capital and the 750 kilometer Addis Ababa to Djibouti railroad, which will greatly boost trade and has reduced transport times from three days to ten hours. The Chinese-built port of Djibouti is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most advanced and busiest trading centers.
Walking the streets in Addis Ababa, individuals are as likely to see Chinese brands as American ones. Huawei and Tecno far outrank Apple in smartphone sales, with Infinix and Itel poised to overtake the California giant as well. China has signed dozens of memoranda of understanding with Ethiopia, helping it to become, by most measures, the country’s number one import and export partner. Currently, there are more than 10,000 Chinese firms doing business in the country.
The big loser in this is the U.S., which was long ago overtaken as Ethiopia’s primary economic partner. Americans have warned that this relationship is little more than debt-trap diplomacy, and that China is engaging in neocolonialism across Africa.
In recent years, the United States has become increasingly alarmed by China’s economic rise, and has attempted to stymie it. In addition to sanctions on Beijing, it has also tried to block the growth of Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok, all the while building up its military in the South China Sea, under the guise of protecting Taiwan. Thus, there are fears that, as it is losing economic control over Ethiopia, the U.S. could be preparing to reassert control militarily.
For its part, the Chinese government has unequivocally backed Abiy. “China will steadfastly stand with the Ethiopian people, and keep to the consistent position of opposing external intervention in Ethiopia’s internal affairs with the disguise of human rights or democracy,” Zhao Zhiyuan, Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, said last week.
However, it would be a mistake to label Abiy as some sort of communist Trojan Horse. As Melesse noted, this rupture with the U.S. was unexpected, as his government, “both in ideology and practice is more aligned with the West’s capitalist, liberal democratic order than was the TPLF-led regime it succeeded.” The new prime minister has passed a number of pro-market reforms and privatized government-owned businesses. He has also been willing to borrow money from both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, two institutions often seen as extensions of American power.
HAPPENING NOW: At least 500 members of Ethiopian & Eritrean diaspora are outside the State Dept demanding the US stop supporting TPLF terror & stop its economic aggression in the region.
“Joe Biden: Hands Off Ethiopia!”
“Hands off Eritrea!”
“USA! Stop supporting TPLF!”#NoMore pic.twitter.com/7hxS6WjgKi
— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 10, 2021
The conflict in Tigray and other regions has devastated Ethiopian society. With the TPLF in a strong position and promising to march all the way to Addis Ababa to depose Abiy, it is unlikely that there will be any decisive military victory one way or another any time soon. This means that the humanitarian crisis will continue. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states, while continued violence threatens supplies of food and medicines.
While many clearly need help, judging by the large rallies held across the world, including in Washington, demanding “No More” U.S. intervention in Ethiopia and Eritrea, it seems clear that they are aware that the Biden administration’s idea of “help” might not be exactly what they had in mind.
Feature photo | A protester from Ethiopia’s community in Lebanon holds a placard against the U.S. and other western country’s intervention in her country in Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 5, 2021. Hussein Malla | AP
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... -ethiopia/
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Ethiopia: ‘UN WFP and USAID Have Been Using Humanitarian Crisis to Prepare Grounds for Western Intervention’
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 13, 2021
Pavan Kulkarni
People participate in a rally to condemn the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Western intervention in the internal affairs of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dec. 5, 2021. Photo: Xinhua/Wang Ping
Horn of Africa TV’s editor, Elias Amare, talks to Peoples Dispatch on the latest military developments in Ethiopia, the setbacks faced by the TPLF and the collusion of international aid agencies
The UN World Food Program’s (WFP) suspension of food aid to Dessie and Kombolcha after the liberation of these two strategically important cities in the war-torn northern Ethiopian state, Amhara, is a “travesty of the highest degree”, said Horn of Africa TV’s editor, Elias Amare.
The UN has cited as its reason the looting of WFP’s warehouses and the intimidation of its staff in these cities by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF started the war by attacking a federal army base in Tigray in November 2020, and subsequently invaded the neighboring states of Amhara and Afar in July 2021.
However, the UN’s decision to suspend aid to the two cities came after the TPLF was pushed out of it by the joint force of the national army and Amharan militias. “All this while, when the TPLF had been occupying these cities and other towns in Amhara and openly raiding the UN’s storage facilities, they said nothing about it,” Amare told Peoples Dispatch in a phone interview.
Suspending food-aid to cities brought back under government control – while continuing to send aid into TPLF-controlled Tigray where over a thousand aid-trucks are allegedly being commandeered by TPLF for military purposes – “is a crime,” he said. “It amounts to using food-aid as a weapon of war.”
Despite the support the TPLF is receiving from allegedly partisan international bodies and from the US, which is using its “client states in the region” to diplomatically isolate and encircle the Ethiopian state, Amare remains confident that the TPLF is losing.
While the fight is ongoing in Weldiya [about 120 km to the north of Dessie], the TPLF’s forces “are in a disarray” he said. “More importantly, the federal government’s forces have taken control of the highway connecting Weldiya to Tigray’s capital, Mekele. So their logistics line and their route to retreat has been choked. Apart from this, it is mostly some villages along the border with Tigray and some mountain areas that remain under TPLF’s control in Amhara. Soon, TPLF will be kicked back to its base in Tigray.”
Amare believes the government will pursue the TPLF into the state of Tigray, and not stop at the border and seek negotiation – an end towards which the US appears to be mobilizing the diplomatic positions.
“TPLF has to be held accountable for the massive atrocities in the Amhara and Afar – killing of civilians, sexual violence and rapes, destruction of medical facilities, schools and what have you,” he said. “It has committed war crimes.. It has openly declared its intention to march on Addis Ababa and overthrow the government. So it is an existential threat.”
Reports of civilians fleeing Tigray into Amhara, Afar and even Eritrea to avoid conscription by the TPLF is an indication of its weakening military and political position inside its home-state.
“Every family is forced to provide at least one son or daughter for conscription. The use of child soldiers is a common practice,” he added. “It’s a very terrible situation inside Tigray. Many families are beginning to openly ask where their children are.”
Frontlines are closing in on this eroding base of TPLF inside Tigray from Amhara in the south and from Afar in the east. Eritrea on its north is supporting the Ethiopian government. While Sudan is alleged to be supporting the TPLF, the region of Welkait and Humera along the border with Sudan is held by a joint force of federal army and Amharan militias, blocking TPLF’s corridor to Sudan.
“They are surrounded. This is the beginning of TPLF’s end,” he said. Following the phone interview, reports emerged on December 12 that the TPLF had recaptured the Amharan town of Lalibela (about 115 km to the west of Weldiya). Asked in a follow up conversation if this could be an indication that the direction in which the frontline is moving is once again changing in favor of the TPLF, Amare replied in the negative.
Rather than having captured the town of Lalibela, the TPLF, he argued, is trying to break through it to find an alternative escape route to Tigray for its forces surrounded in Weldiya, since the highway connecting it to Mekelle has been cut-off.
Having been marginalized by mass pro-democracy protests in 2018, after 27-years of dictatorial rule over Ethiopia, the TPLF, while capable of causing much destruction, is highly unlikely to be able to reign over Ethiopia again.
Nevertheless, Amare maintains, the US continues to support it, “because when imperialism cannot control an area, it seeks to unleash chaos and destabilize it until such time as it can take control.”
Controlling the Horn of Africa is a strategically important objective for the US because the region “is a part of the Red Sea Arena and the Nile Basin. It is part of the Belt and Road Initiative of China. The US believes that in order to control Africa, it has to expand US Africa Command (AFRICOM) across the Horn of Africa.”
But the coming together of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia for the “New Horn of Africa Project”, after the TPLF was sidelined and Abiy Ahmed took charge as Ethiopia’s prime minister, is a major setback to the American ambitions. It is to neutralize this threat to its objectives, posed by the prospects of peace in the region, that the US is attempting to destabilize the Horn of Africa by supporting the TPLF, he argued.
However, the civil society’s resistance to this attempt – started by the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali diaspora who organized the #NoMore movement in the US – has become an important factor that will determine the outcome.
“It started as an opposition to the war in Ethiopia and the destabilization of the Horn of Africa, and grew into a pan-African movement against imperialism. Tomorrow its echoes might be heard in Latin America as well,” he said, adding, “It has the potential to evolve into a global anti-imperialist movement against endless wars.”
Read the edited interview below:
Peoples Dispatch: Can you begin by explaining the strategic importance of the retaking of Dessie and Kombolcha by government forces?
Elias Amare: Dessie is the capital of Amhara’s Wollo province. Kombolcha is an industrial town. It is a center of manufacturing and production. So retaking those two towns means that the entire province of Wollo will be liberated soon.
PD: Which portions of Amhara and Afar remain under the TPLF’s control?
EA: Afar is completely liberated. TPLF has been kicked out of the region. In Amhara, fighting is ongoing in Weldiya [about 120 km to the north of Dessie]. But their forces are in a disarray. More importantly, the federal government’s forces have taken control of the highway connecting Weldiya to Tigray’s capital, Mekele. So their logistics line and their route to retreat has been choked. Apart from this, it is mostly some villages along the border with Tigray and some mountain areas that remain under TPLF’s control in Amhara. Soon, TPLF will be kicked back to its base in Tigray.
PD: Does it seem to you that the government intends to stop at the Tigray border and seek to negotiate, or is it likely to pursue the TPLF into Tigray?
EA: I doubt it would stop at the border. TPLF has to be held accountable for the massive atrocities in the Amhara and Afar – killing of civilians, sexual violence and rapes, destruction of medical facilities, schools and what have you. It has been exposed as an ethno-fascist group. It has committed war crimes. Many human rights organizations are condemning this. It has openly declared its intention to march on Addis Ababa and overthrow the government. So this is an existential threat. I don’t think the government will stop at Tigray’s border.
The Lalibela Airport in Amhara, Ethiopia was ransacked by TPLF forces while under their control. The city has since been liberated by government forces. Photo: Breakthrough News
PD: Inside Tigray, the TPLF remains strong militarily and politically, doesn’t it?
EA: Well, it’s difficult to say because it is inaccessible right now. But from reports we are hearing, civilians are fleeing Tigray to Amhara and Afar region. Some are even fleeing to Eritrea. Fear of conscription by TPLF is the number one reason. Every family is forced to provide at least one son or daughter for conscription. The use of child soldiers is a common practice. It’s a very terrible situation inside the Tigray. Many families are beginning to openly ask where their children are.
Initially, when the TPLF expanded the war into Amhara and Afar after the government’s unilateral ceasefire on June 29, Tigrayans forced to join the war were told that the TPLF would undertake a quick march to Addis Ababa and capture the capital in two or three months. Now it has been six months. They have suffered massive losses and are being forced into retreat.
PD: The frontlines appear to be closing in on the TPLF in Tigray from the south in Amhara and the east in Afar. With its historic enemy, Eritrea as its northern neighbor, it appears that if TPLF’s forces have to retreat and regroup, the best chance is to push across the western border into Sudan, which is believed to be supporting it. How well defended is this border region of Western Tigray, which for now remains under the control of Ethiopian army and Amharan militias?
EA: The Welkait and Humera region, which has come to be known as Western Tigray, was never traditionally a part of Tigray. Tigrayans did not live in this part; it was Amaharan land. Tigray did not have a border with Sudan. The TPLF annexed this land when they took Ethiopian state power in 1991. But this portion of the land has been reclaimed into Amhara during the war.
When the government had withdrawn its forces from Tigray after declaring the unilateral ceasefire in June, it was only from traditional Tigray that it had withdrawn – the land to the east of Tekeze river on today’s Tigray map. To its west is Amharan land, which is very well defended. The TPLF cannot access it anymore. In fact, they had waged several military campaigns since the ceasefire to break through Welkait and Humera and open the corridor to Sudan. They were defeated every time. They are surrounded. This is the beginning of TPLF’s end.
PD: If TPLF’s end has begun, what about the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which had joined forces with the TPLF? OLF is one of the oldest political parties with deep roots in Ethiopia’s largest state, Oromia.
EA: It is not correct to say that OLF [as a whole] has joined the TPLF. OLF has several factions. Only its most extreme [ethno-centric] faction has joined the TPLF, waging an insurgency in the Western part of the country. But I don’t think they are a significant threat. This faction does not have that much of a following in Oromia. It was the TPLF which was a real threat, with all the financing and armed force it had. Once the TPLF is finished off, all other ethno-nationalist insurgencies in the country do not pose a major threat.
PD: What is the picture emerging from the recently liberated towns of Dessie and Kombulcha? Have they suffered serious destruction?
EA: An inventory is being made. The government is yet to come out with figures. But from reports and pictures, we know that destruction has been massive, systematic and wanton. 80% of the enterprises in Kombolcha have been looted. Factories and industrial centers have been destroyed. Any machinery the TPLF could not take with them to Tigray has been destroyed. Other institutions like schools and hospitals have also been vindictively attacked when they had to retreat. Rebuilding these two cities, especially Kombolcha which is an industrial hub, will take many years.
PD: The UN has suspended food aid to Dessie and Kombolcha after they were liberated and brought under government control. This is reportedly because of widespread looting of its storage facilities and intimidation of the UN staff while it was under TPLF’s control. But what is the rationale behind suspending aid after the TPLF has been pushed out of the area?
EA: It is incredible, isn’t it? All this while, when the TPLF had been occupying these cities and other towns in Amhara and openly raiding the UN’s storage facilities, they said nothing about it. But now, after the two cities have been liberated, the UN World Food Program (WFP) has suspended food-aid distribution. Now that the cities are in government control, they should step up the distribution. There are more than a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Amhara, sleeping in temporary shelters. They are in critical need of food aid. Suspension of food aid under these circumstances is a travesty of the highest degree. It is a crime. It amounts to using food-aid as a weapon of war. The government, you see, is allowing food aid to go into the TPLF-controlled Tigray from air and via land through the Afar region.
PD: UN Ethiopia had revealed in September that more than 400 of its trucks which entered Tigray since mid-July had failed to return. These are reportedly being used by the TPLF for its military maneuvers. Has there any progress towards securing the return of these trucks?
EA: They have not been returned. And the latest figure now is 1,010 trucks. Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the UN, Taye Atske Selassie, recently said in a statement that 1,010 food-aid trucks of the UN are being commandeered by the TPLF for its military purposes. No condemnation whatsoever from the UN. And yet, they are making noise about three trucks that have apparently gone missing on the government’s side. They are playing politics with relief and food-aid. This had been going on all along the past year of this tragic conflict. There has been no neutrality, whatsoever.
In fact, UN personnel in the Tigray region have exposed the UN organizations to be working in cahoots with the TPLF. And they were suspended for exposing this. The UN WFP and USAID have been using this humanitarian crisis to prepare the grounds for Western intervention. This is what we are nearing, in my opinion.
PD: In the meantime, US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, has been on a tour to Turkey, UAE and Egypt to discuss this war in Ethiopia. How is the geopolitical alignment of Ethiopia’s neighboring countries evolving?
EA: Feltman has been traveling back and forth between Ethiopia’s neighboring Sudan and Egypt, East Africa and the Gulf countries to bring pressure on Ethiopia by encircling it. So I think his recent tour is a continuation of this shuttle diplomacy to isolate Ethiopia in the region. It is a precursor to the imposition of sanctions. But the Ethiopian government has been firm in its position that this war is an internal, sovereign matter and it will not give in to foreign pressures.
PD: It is quite evident that the TPLF retaking state power in Ethiopia is a highly unlikely scenario. Under the circumstances, what interests of the US, or of the neighboring states like Sudan and Egypt, are served by supporting the TPLF?
EA: Sudan and Egypt are simply toeing the US-line. None of their national interests will be served by destabilizing Ethiopia. But client states don’t have an independent foreign policy in such matters of geopolitical importance. They have to blindly follow their imperial patrons. And the US is putting all kinds of pressure on its client states in the neighborhood to isolate Ethiopia and prevent the emergence of what we call the New Horn of Africa: a Horn of Africa that is at peace with itself, stable and without the vicious cycles of conflict between its countries.
This coming together of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia undermines the expansion of the US military garrisons in this region, which is strategically very important. It is a part of the Red Sea Arena and the Nile Basin. It is part of the Belt and Road Initiative of China.
The US further believes that in order to control Africa, it has to expand US Africa Command (AFRICOM) across the Horn of Africa, the Greater Horn of Africa and East Africa all the way to Congo and the Great Lakes Region. And always, when imperialism cannot control an area, it seeks to unleash chaos and destabilize it until such time as it can take control.
So it is doing everything it can to disrupt the New Horn of Africa Project. It has already sanctioned Eritrea. It is en route to sanctioning Ethiopia. And who knows, with Somalia beginning to reconstitute itself after decades of war, more proxy wars seem to be in offing there too.
PD: The Horn of Africa’s diaspora, particularly the Ethiopians and Eritreans in the US, have started #NoMore movement against the US sanctions on these countries and its support for the TPLF. How impactful has this movement been?
EA: This is really an incredible phenomenon. Within a month since it was started by the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali diaspora, it has grown global. Massive demonstrations and protests have been held in Washington D.C, in San Francisco and many other cities in the US and other Western countries, with the slogan: “Hands off Ethiopia; Hands of Eritrea; Hands of Horn of Africa”. They are saying “#NoMore” to western intervention; to economic warfare on countries in the form of sanctions.
Inside the continent, we have also seen demonstrations outside the Horn of Africa in countries as far as West Africa and Niger, raising the slogan “#NoMore Neo-colonialism” in French. Echoes of #NoMore are found in the murals on walls in South Africa. It started as an opposition to the war in Ethiopia and to the American attempts to destabilize the Horn of Africa, but grew into a pan-African movement against imperialism. Tomorrow its echoes might be heard in Latin America as well. It has the potential to evolve into a global anti-imperialist movement against endless wars.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... ervention/
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 11, 2021
Alan Macleod
– Amid a bloody civil conflict and increasing great-power competition between the United States and China, there are a number of alarming signs that Ethiopia will become the next Libya – an African nation where the U.S. intervenes militarily under the pretext of stopping an impending genocide.
A considerable military buildup is now underway. Last week, the U.S. military announced it was sending over 1,000 National Guard members to nearby Djibouti. This is on top of the special operations forces already sent in November. Perhaps most notably, a government official told CNN that the aircraft carrier USS Essex – along with two other large amphibious vehicles – was steaming towards the Horn of Africa and standing by for further orders.
For weeks, the drums of war have been growing louder in our nation’s media. “Ethiopia’s civil war is a problem U.S. troops can help solve,” Admiral James Stavridis, former supreme allied commander of NATO. wrote in Bloomberg and The Washington Post. “Sending peacekeepers to the pivotal nation of East Africa wouldn’t be popular domestically, but may be the only way to stop the conflict,” he added. Meanwhile, former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer argued that the West should establish a “no fly zone” across Ethiopia – a country of 115 million people and twice the size of France.
When it comes to Ethiopia, said head of USAID Samantha Power, one of the architects of the U.S. intervention in Libya, “every option is on the table” – using a phrase that has long been understood to be a threat of war. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also refused to rule out sending troops into Ethiopia when directly asked.
Given its bloody record, the talk of a “humanitarian” invasion has many Ethiopians worried. “The U.S. is looking for a pretext for military intervention in Ethiopia. The play books of interventions in Iraq, Syria, Yugoslavia, and Libya are being referred to,” Dr. Berhanu Taye, an Ethiopian physician and member of the Global Ethiopian Advocacy Nexus, told MintPress.
The military buildup comes on the back of economic actions already taken. In September, President Joe Biden labeled Ethiopia a national security threat as he imposed sanctions upon government officials. Last month, the U.S. also placed sanctions on Eritrea, whose troops are also heavily involved in the fight against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF).
The White House is currently withholding over a quarter-billion dollars of aid from Ethiopia and has ended the country’s special trade status under U.S. law, which had allowed it to export goods freely to the United States. Critics say that this could have the effect of crashing the already shaky economy, threatening over a million jobs.
Earlier this week, a number of Western governments (including the U.S.) signed a statement condemning the Ethiopian government for its human rights violations while fighting the TPLF, which they did not censure. The State Department is reportedly considering labeling the actions in Ethiopia a “genocide,” a word that would have considerable implications, given NATO’s self-declared “right to protect” doctrine, whereby it claims it has the right to intervene anywhere in the world to stop ethnic cleansing.
A year of deadly fighting
Bordering Eritrea and Sudan, Tigray is Ethiopia’s northernmost region, home to 7 million people. Although ethnic Tigrayans constitute only around 6% of Ethiopia’s population, they play an outsized role in public life, as the TPLF controlled the country between 1991 and 2018, when popular protests forced them out of power.
Tigrayans were near ubiquitous in the upper ranks of the country’s military and intelligence services, and were greatly overrepresented among its economic elite. This, for Dr. Taye, amounted to no less than a system of informal “Apartheid” that was ignored by most of the West. MintPress also contacted a spokesperson for the TPLF, but did not receive a response.
Since coming to power in 2018, the new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, has moved against the TPLF in a set of changes that supporters see as much needed reforms to reduce corruption and the TPLF’s grip over public life, but opponents see as overstepping his mandate and as the persecution of an ethnic minority.
The spark for war came in November 2020, when Ahmed attempted to remove military officers belonging to the TPLF from their command. The TPLF fought back, attacking Northern Command headquarters in Mekelle, the capital of the Tigray region. Later that month, TPLF forces also shelled Asmara, the capital of Eritrea. As the TPLF reportedly have drawn closer to the capital, Addis Ababa, a number of the country’s sports stars, including long-distance running hero Haile Gebrselassie, have volunteered for government military service.
Ethiopia
An Ethiopian woman argues with others over food aid in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, May 8, 2021. Ben Curtis | AP
The fighting has continued since then, save for a unilateral government ceasefire in the summer in order that the country’s harvest would not be ruined. Nevertheless, the humanitarian costs have been extremely grave. More than 9 million people live in conflict regions, an estimated 400,000 of those suffering under famine-like conditions, according to the United Nations. Tens of thousands have died in the conflict, which has seen documented atrocities from all sides. The number of displaced people, already high, has now grown to an estimated 4 million.
The TPLF maintains that the Ethiopian government is blocking international aid convoys from reaching Tigray and that Prime Minister Abiy must step down. Yet Abiy won a landslide victory earlier this year, and was only inaugurated in October. While there were clear drawbacks with the process (voting did not take place in war-ravaged regions like Tigray, for instance), it is difficult to interpret his party winning over 90% of the seats contested as anything other than a national mandate.
Media’s demonizing chorus
Thus, the conflict is ultimately a struggle between two political forces for the control of Ethiopia’s economy. Yet this is not at all how corporate media have presented the issue, preferring instead to frame it as the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments exterminating an ethnic minority group. CNN, for example, wrote:
Eritrean troops aren’t just working hand in glove with the Ethiopian government, assisting in a merciless campaign against the Tigrayan people; in some pockets they’re fully in control and waging a reign of terror… [that] bears the hallmarks of genocide and has the potential to destabilize the wider Horn of Africa region.
The New York Times has followed a similar line in much of its reporting. Embedding themselves with the TPLF, they described their companions as “a scrappy force of local Tigrayan recruits” that had, against the odds, “scored a cascade of battlefield victories against the Ethiopian military, one of Africa’s strongest.”
Many Ethiopians have been critical of this coverage. Dr. Kassahun Melesse, an Ethiopian economist from the Oregon State University, noted:
Let alone the framing, the mainstream media got the most fundamental fact about the military conflict wrong: the date the military conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces and the TPLF began. For instance, in virtually all of its reporting on conflict, The New York Times has stated that the federal government launched the war on Nov. 4, 2020. And because the media got this basic fact wrong, all the major theories and framing based on this premise are wrong.”
Taye was even more blunt. “Western mainstream media continue to fabricate lies and disseminate disinformation intended to demonize the Ethiopian government,” he said.
One example of bias pro-Abiy Ethiopians have pointed to is the Times’ apparent whitewashing of the TPLF’s alleged use of child soldiers. Possibly referring to this, the Times describes the TPLF as consisting largely of “highly motivated young recruits.” Even more incriminating, the article’s co-author shared a series of (since deleted) images on his Instagram to promote the story, one of which shows not only children but obviously pre-pubescent boys carrying rifles, complete with a caption seemingly describing them as “highly motivated young recruits.” The TPLF maintains that it does not use child soldiers.
via @besabestin, a New York Times photographer shared this image of the “highly motivated young recruits” he was talking about. pic.twitter.com/RQJfkmRXpn
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) December 7, 2021
Unfortunately, many individuals challenging the established Western media narrative are now being excised from social media, including massive accounts – like @HornofAfricaHub, Simon Tesfamariam (@STesfa) and Abdirahiman Warsame’s @SomalianFacts – some of which had millions of followers. Ethiopian journalist Hermela Aregawi claimed that Twitter Senior Program Manager Martha Wolday, herself a Tigrayan, appeared to be abusing her position to ban anti-TPLF and pro-Abiy voices and suppress the anti-interventionist hashtag #NoMore.
Libya: a warning from history
At the height of the Arab Spring in 2011, demonstrations against Muammar al-Gaddafi broke out across Libya. Gaddafi had historically been a thorn in the side of the West, refusing to follow orders and attempting to unite both the Arab and African worlds against the established order. Seeing their chance, Western nations immediately began warning that the dictator was on the verge of massacring all those protesting his rule. Immediately, media were filled with lurid and false stories about Gaddafi giving his soldiers Viagra before making them rape protestors. We were, if accounts were to be believed, on the edge of genocide.
Obama era officials like Samantha Power and Susan Rice were among the loudest voices demanding a military response, invoking the controversial “Right to Protect” doctrine, which stated that NATO could intervene anywhere in the world to prevent human rights violations.
Media interest in Libyan human rights went through the roof, peaking in mid-March at the time of the intervention, before falling off a cliff and barely being discussed in the decade since, according to data from Google Trends. Despite the PR blitz, Americans remained dead against military intervention. Thus, it was intially sold to the public as merely imposing a “no-fly zone” on the country, to prevent Libyan planes from bombing forces we now know to have been U.S.-supported Jihadists.
Of course, NATO’s intervention quickly escalated far beyond a no-fly zone, turning the tide of the war and helping the beleagured Jihadists take Tripoli and depose Gaddafi. Since then, Libya has descended into chaos, replete with slave markets where one can buy humans for as little as $400. Today, Rice and Power are back in charge and there is already serious talk of imposing a no fly zone on the Horn of Africa. For many Ethiopians, things are starting to feel worryingly similar to 2011.
US legitimizes TPLF insurgence
The Tigray People’s Liberation Front came to power in 1991 after a long and bloody conflict against the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam. The same conflict ultimately led to the independence of Eritrea from Ethiopia.
During their 27 years in office, the TPLF enmeshed itself into the state, with Tigrayans continuing to occupy senior positions across the country. Throughout this time, Ethiopia was a loyal ally of the United States, in contrast with the Marxist-Leninist Mengistu. Ethiopia helped the U.S. carry out its foreign policy objectives across the region. This support led to the United States turning a blind eye to many of its excesses. In 2015, for instance, President Barack Obama endorsed the country’s elections, where the TPLF coalition won 100% of the seats, as legitimate, while his State Department described Ethiopia as a “democracy.” This was in contrast to Human Rights Watch, which claimed it was “one of the most inhospitable places in the world for people speaking out against government policies, as well as for any human rights research and advocacy,” noting that the TPLF held thousands of political prisoners in the country’s prison system.
Melesse said that, by refusing to formally take a side between an elected government and a group that it has declared a terrorist organization, the U.S. has effectively legitimized the TPLF struggle. The reasons for this position, he argues, include “the return of several Obama-era officials in the U.S. State Department, USAID, and other U.S. government agencies who are sympathetic to the causes of the rebels in Tigray,” and “the misguided view within the U.S. foreign policy establishment that conflates support to the people of Tigray with support to the TPLF.”
Samantha Power Ethiopia
Samantha Power meets with ministers from donor countries to drum up financial support for Tigray. Photo | DVIDS
In November, the TPLF met with nine opposition political groups in Washington, where they signed an agreement to work together to depose Abiy and to form a rival government of their own. “As a response to the major crisis facing various nations of the country and to reverse the harmful effects of Abiy Ahmed’s autocratic rule, to our peoples and beyond, we have recognized the urgent need to collaborate, join our forces towards a safe transition in the country,” a spokesperson told gathered reporters. The symbolism of holding the event in Washington could hardly be missed.
The government fired back, claiming that their war was not only against the TPLF, “but also with colonialism of the powerful states of the West.”
US “Help” unwelcome
The background of this conflict also includes the wider geopolitical struggle between the United States and China. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative, a long-term plan to develop much of Afro-Eurasia and bring it economically closer to China, Beijing has been investing massively across Africa, with Ethiopia one of the continent’s top recipients of Chinese investment. Between 2000 and 2018, Ethiopia borrowed $13.7 billion from China, compared to $9.2 billion from the U.S. Most of that money has gone into huge infrastructure projects or to developing Ethiopian manufacturing.
Chinese money has helped build more than 50,000 kilometers of new roads since 2000, including an $86 million ring road for Addis Ababa. It has also funded the construction of a $475 million light railway system for the capital and the 750 kilometer Addis Ababa to Djibouti railroad, which will greatly boost trade and has reduced transport times from three days to ten hours. The Chinese-built port of Djibouti is rapidly becoming one of the world’s most advanced and busiest trading centers.
Walking the streets in Addis Ababa, individuals are as likely to see Chinese brands as American ones. Huawei and Tecno far outrank Apple in smartphone sales, with Infinix and Itel poised to overtake the California giant as well. China has signed dozens of memoranda of understanding with Ethiopia, helping it to become, by most measures, the country’s number one import and export partner. Currently, there are more than 10,000 Chinese firms doing business in the country.
The big loser in this is the U.S., which was long ago overtaken as Ethiopia’s primary economic partner. Americans have warned that this relationship is little more than debt-trap diplomacy, and that China is engaging in neocolonialism across Africa.
In recent years, the United States has become increasingly alarmed by China’s economic rise, and has attempted to stymie it. In addition to sanctions on Beijing, it has also tried to block the growth of Chinese tech companies like Huawei and TikTok, all the while building up its military in the South China Sea, under the guise of protecting Taiwan. Thus, there are fears that, as it is losing economic control over Ethiopia, the U.S. could be preparing to reassert control militarily.
For its part, the Chinese government has unequivocally backed Abiy. “China will steadfastly stand with the Ethiopian people, and keep to the consistent position of opposing external intervention in Ethiopia’s internal affairs with the disguise of human rights or democracy,” Zhao Zhiyuan, Chinese ambassador to Ethiopia, said last week.
However, it would be a mistake to label Abiy as some sort of communist Trojan Horse. As Melesse noted, this rupture with the U.S. was unexpected, as his government, “both in ideology and practice is more aligned with the West’s capitalist, liberal democratic order than was the TPLF-led regime it succeeded.” The new prime minister has passed a number of pro-market reforms and privatized government-owned businesses. He has also been willing to borrow money from both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, two institutions often seen as extensions of American power.
HAPPENING NOW: At least 500 members of Ethiopian & Eritrean diaspora are outside the State Dept demanding the US stop supporting TPLF terror & stop its economic aggression in the region.
“Joe Biden: Hands Off Ethiopia!”
“Hands off Eritrea!”
“USA! Stop supporting TPLF!”#NoMore pic.twitter.com/7hxS6WjgKi
— Wyatt Reed (@wyattreed13) December 10, 2021
The conflict in Tigray and other regions has devastated Ethiopian society. With the TPLF in a strong position and promising to march all the way to Addis Ababa to depose Abiy, it is unlikely that there will be any decisive military victory one way or another any time soon. This means that the humanitarian crisis will continue. Tens of thousands of refugees have fled to neighboring states, while continued violence threatens supplies of food and medicines.
While many clearly need help, judging by the large rallies held across the world, including in Washington, demanding “No More” U.S. intervention in Ethiopia and Eritrea, it seems clear that they are aware that the Biden administration’s idea of “help” might not be exactly what they had in mind.
Feature photo | A protester from Ethiopia’s community in Lebanon holds a placard against the U.S. and other western country’s intervention in her country in Beirut, Lebanon, Dec. 5, 2021. Hussein Malla | AP
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... -ethiopia/
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Ethiopia: ‘UN WFP and USAID Have Been Using Humanitarian Crisis to Prepare Grounds for Western Intervention’
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on DECEMBER 13, 2021
Pavan Kulkarni
People participate in a rally to condemn the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) and Western intervention in the internal affairs of Ethiopia in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Dec. 5, 2021. Photo: Xinhua/Wang Ping
Horn of Africa TV’s editor, Elias Amare, talks to Peoples Dispatch on the latest military developments in Ethiopia, the setbacks faced by the TPLF and the collusion of international aid agencies
The UN World Food Program’s (WFP) suspension of food aid to Dessie and Kombolcha after the liberation of these two strategically important cities in the war-torn northern Ethiopian state, Amhara, is a “travesty of the highest degree”, said Horn of Africa TV’s editor, Elias Amare.
The UN has cited as its reason the looting of WFP’s warehouses and the intimidation of its staff in these cities by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The TPLF started the war by attacking a federal army base in Tigray in November 2020, and subsequently invaded the neighboring states of Amhara and Afar in July 2021.
However, the UN’s decision to suspend aid to the two cities came after the TPLF was pushed out of it by the joint force of the national army and Amharan militias. “All this while, when the TPLF had been occupying these cities and other towns in Amhara and openly raiding the UN’s storage facilities, they said nothing about it,” Amare told Peoples Dispatch in a phone interview.
Suspending food-aid to cities brought back under government control – while continuing to send aid into TPLF-controlled Tigray where over a thousand aid-trucks are allegedly being commandeered by TPLF for military purposes – “is a crime,” he said. “It amounts to using food-aid as a weapon of war.”
Despite the support the TPLF is receiving from allegedly partisan international bodies and from the US, which is using its “client states in the region” to diplomatically isolate and encircle the Ethiopian state, Amare remains confident that the TPLF is losing.
While the fight is ongoing in Weldiya [about 120 km to the north of Dessie], the TPLF’s forces “are in a disarray” he said. “More importantly, the federal government’s forces have taken control of the highway connecting Weldiya to Tigray’s capital, Mekele. So their logistics line and their route to retreat has been choked. Apart from this, it is mostly some villages along the border with Tigray and some mountain areas that remain under TPLF’s control in Amhara. Soon, TPLF will be kicked back to its base in Tigray.”
Amare believes the government will pursue the TPLF into the state of Tigray, and not stop at the border and seek negotiation – an end towards which the US appears to be mobilizing the diplomatic positions.
“TPLF has to be held accountable for the massive atrocities in the Amhara and Afar – killing of civilians, sexual violence and rapes, destruction of medical facilities, schools and what have you,” he said. “It has committed war crimes.. It has openly declared its intention to march on Addis Ababa and overthrow the government. So it is an existential threat.”
Reports of civilians fleeing Tigray into Amhara, Afar and even Eritrea to avoid conscription by the TPLF is an indication of its weakening military and political position inside its home-state.
“Every family is forced to provide at least one son or daughter for conscription. The use of child soldiers is a common practice,” he added. “It’s a very terrible situation inside Tigray. Many families are beginning to openly ask where their children are.”
Frontlines are closing in on this eroding base of TPLF inside Tigray from Amhara in the south and from Afar in the east. Eritrea on its north is supporting the Ethiopian government. While Sudan is alleged to be supporting the TPLF, the region of Welkait and Humera along the border with Sudan is held by a joint force of federal army and Amharan militias, blocking TPLF’s corridor to Sudan.
“They are surrounded. This is the beginning of TPLF’s end,” he said. Following the phone interview, reports emerged on December 12 that the TPLF had recaptured the Amharan town of Lalibela (about 115 km to the west of Weldiya). Asked in a follow up conversation if this could be an indication that the direction in which the frontline is moving is once again changing in favor of the TPLF, Amare replied in the negative.
Rather than having captured the town of Lalibela, the TPLF, he argued, is trying to break through it to find an alternative escape route to Tigray for its forces surrounded in Weldiya, since the highway connecting it to Mekelle has been cut-off.
Having been marginalized by mass pro-democracy protests in 2018, after 27-years of dictatorial rule over Ethiopia, the TPLF, while capable of causing much destruction, is highly unlikely to be able to reign over Ethiopia again.
Nevertheless, Amare maintains, the US continues to support it, “because when imperialism cannot control an area, it seeks to unleash chaos and destabilize it until such time as it can take control.”
Controlling the Horn of Africa is a strategically important objective for the US because the region “is a part of the Red Sea Arena and the Nile Basin. It is part of the Belt and Road Initiative of China. The US believes that in order to control Africa, it has to expand US Africa Command (AFRICOM) across the Horn of Africa.”
But the coming together of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia for the “New Horn of Africa Project”, after the TPLF was sidelined and Abiy Ahmed took charge as Ethiopia’s prime minister, is a major setback to the American ambitions. It is to neutralize this threat to its objectives, posed by the prospects of peace in the region, that the US is attempting to destabilize the Horn of Africa by supporting the TPLF, he argued.
However, the civil society’s resistance to this attempt – started by the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali diaspora who organized the #NoMore movement in the US – has become an important factor that will determine the outcome.
“It started as an opposition to the war in Ethiopia and the destabilization of the Horn of Africa, and grew into a pan-African movement against imperialism. Tomorrow its echoes might be heard in Latin America as well,” he said, adding, “It has the potential to evolve into a global anti-imperialist movement against endless wars.”
Read the edited interview below:
Peoples Dispatch: Can you begin by explaining the strategic importance of the retaking of Dessie and Kombolcha by government forces?
Elias Amare: Dessie is the capital of Amhara’s Wollo province. Kombolcha is an industrial town. It is a center of manufacturing and production. So retaking those two towns means that the entire province of Wollo will be liberated soon.
PD: Which portions of Amhara and Afar remain under the TPLF’s control?
EA: Afar is completely liberated. TPLF has been kicked out of the region. In Amhara, fighting is ongoing in Weldiya [about 120 km to the north of Dessie]. But their forces are in a disarray. More importantly, the federal government’s forces have taken control of the highway connecting Weldiya to Tigray’s capital, Mekele. So their logistics line and their route to retreat has been choked. Apart from this, it is mostly some villages along the border with Tigray and some mountain areas that remain under TPLF’s control in Amhara. Soon, TPLF will be kicked back to its base in Tigray.
PD: Does it seem to you that the government intends to stop at the Tigray border and seek to negotiate, or is it likely to pursue the TPLF into Tigray?
EA: I doubt it would stop at the border. TPLF has to be held accountable for the massive atrocities in the Amhara and Afar – killing of civilians, sexual violence and rapes, destruction of medical facilities, schools and what have you. It has been exposed as an ethno-fascist group. It has committed war crimes. Many human rights organizations are condemning this. It has openly declared its intention to march on Addis Ababa and overthrow the government. So this is an existential threat. I don’t think the government will stop at Tigray’s border.
The Lalibela Airport in Amhara, Ethiopia was ransacked by TPLF forces while under their control. The city has since been liberated by government forces. Photo: Breakthrough News
PD: Inside Tigray, the TPLF remains strong militarily and politically, doesn’t it?
EA: Well, it’s difficult to say because it is inaccessible right now. But from reports we are hearing, civilians are fleeing Tigray to Amhara and Afar region. Some are even fleeing to Eritrea. Fear of conscription by TPLF is the number one reason. Every family is forced to provide at least one son or daughter for conscription. The use of child soldiers is a common practice. It’s a very terrible situation inside the Tigray. Many families are beginning to openly ask where their children are.
Initially, when the TPLF expanded the war into Amhara and Afar after the government’s unilateral ceasefire on June 29, Tigrayans forced to join the war were told that the TPLF would undertake a quick march to Addis Ababa and capture the capital in two or three months. Now it has been six months. They have suffered massive losses and are being forced into retreat.
PD: The frontlines appear to be closing in on the TPLF in Tigray from the south in Amhara and the east in Afar. With its historic enemy, Eritrea as its northern neighbor, it appears that if TPLF’s forces have to retreat and regroup, the best chance is to push across the western border into Sudan, which is believed to be supporting it. How well defended is this border region of Western Tigray, which for now remains under the control of Ethiopian army and Amharan militias?
EA: The Welkait and Humera region, which has come to be known as Western Tigray, was never traditionally a part of Tigray. Tigrayans did not live in this part; it was Amaharan land. Tigray did not have a border with Sudan. The TPLF annexed this land when they took Ethiopian state power in 1991. But this portion of the land has been reclaimed into Amhara during the war.
When the government had withdrawn its forces from Tigray after declaring the unilateral ceasefire in June, it was only from traditional Tigray that it had withdrawn – the land to the east of Tekeze river on today’s Tigray map. To its west is Amharan land, which is very well defended. The TPLF cannot access it anymore. In fact, they had waged several military campaigns since the ceasefire to break through Welkait and Humera and open the corridor to Sudan. They were defeated every time. They are surrounded. This is the beginning of TPLF’s end.
PD: If TPLF’s end has begun, what about the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which had joined forces with the TPLF? OLF is one of the oldest political parties with deep roots in Ethiopia’s largest state, Oromia.
EA: It is not correct to say that OLF [as a whole] has joined the TPLF. OLF has several factions. Only its most extreme [ethno-centric] faction has joined the TPLF, waging an insurgency in the Western part of the country. But I don’t think they are a significant threat. This faction does not have that much of a following in Oromia. It was the TPLF which was a real threat, with all the financing and armed force it had. Once the TPLF is finished off, all other ethno-nationalist insurgencies in the country do not pose a major threat.
PD: What is the picture emerging from the recently liberated towns of Dessie and Kombulcha? Have they suffered serious destruction?
EA: An inventory is being made. The government is yet to come out with figures. But from reports and pictures, we know that destruction has been massive, systematic and wanton. 80% of the enterprises in Kombolcha have been looted. Factories and industrial centers have been destroyed. Any machinery the TPLF could not take with them to Tigray has been destroyed. Other institutions like schools and hospitals have also been vindictively attacked when they had to retreat. Rebuilding these two cities, especially Kombolcha which is an industrial hub, will take many years.
PD: The UN has suspended food aid to Dessie and Kombolcha after they were liberated and brought under government control. This is reportedly because of widespread looting of its storage facilities and intimidation of the UN staff while it was under TPLF’s control. But what is the rationale behind suspending aid after the TPLF has been pushed out of the area?
EA: It is incredible, isn’t it? All this while, when the TPLF had been occupying these cities and other towns in Amhara and openly raiding the UN’s storage facilities, they said nothing about it. But now, after the two cities have been liberated, the UN World Food Program (WFP) has suspended food-aid distribution. Now that the cities are in government control, they should step up the distribution. There are more than a million internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Amhara, sleeping in temporary shelters. They are in critical need of food aid. Suspension of food aid under these circumstances is a travesty of the highest degree. It is a crime. It amounts to using food-aid as a weapon of war. The government, you see, is allowing food aid to go into the TPLF-controlled Tigray from air and via land through the Afar region.
PD: UN Ethiopia had revealed in September that more than 400 of its trucks which entered Tigray since mid-July had failed to return. These are reportedly being used by the TPLF for its military maneuvers. Has there any progress towards securing the return of these trucks?
EA: They have not been returned. And the latest figure now is 1,010 trucks. Ethiopia’s Ambassador to the UN, Taye Atske Selassie, recently said in a statement that 1,010 food-aid trucks of the UN are being commandeered by the TPLF for its military purposes. No condemnation whatsoever from the UN. And yet, they are making noise about three trucks that have apparently gone missing on the government’s side. They are playing politics with relief and food-aid. This had been going on all along the past year of this tragic conflict. There has been no neutrality, whatsoever.
In fact, UN personnel in the Tigray region have exposed the UN organizations to be working in cahoots with the TPLF. And they were suspended for exposing this. The UN WFP and USAID have been using this humanitarian crisis to prepare the grounds for Western intervention. This is what we are nearing, in my opinion.
PD: In the meantime, US Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa, Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman, has been on a tour to Turkey, UAE and Egypt to discuss this war in Ethiopia. How is the geopolitical alignment of Ethiopia’s neighboring countries evolving?
EA: Feltman has been traveling back and forth between Ethiopia’s neighboring Sudan and Egypt, East Africa and the Gulf countries to bring pressure on Ethiopia by encircling it. So I think his recent tour is a continuation of this shuttle diplomacy to isolate Ethiopia in the region. It is a precursor to the imposition of sanctions. But the Ethiopian government has been firm in its position that this war is an internal, sovereign matter and it will not give in to foreign pressures.
PD: It is quite evident that the TPLF retaking state power in Ethiopia is a highly unlikely scenario. Under the circumstances, what interests of the US, or of the neighboring states like Sudan and Egypt, are served by supporting the TPLF?
EA: Sudan and Egypt are simply toeing the US-line. None of their national interests will be served by destabilizing Ethiopia. But client states don’t have an independent foreign policy in such matters of geopolitical importance. They have to blindly follow their imperial patrons. And the US is putting all kinds of pressure on its client states in the neighborhood to isolate Ethiopia and prevent the emergence of what we call the New Horn of Africa: a Horn of Africa that is at peace with itself, stable and without the vicious cycles of conflict between its countries.
This coming together of Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia undermines the expansion of the US military garrisons in this region, which is strategically very important. It is a part of the Red Sea Arena and the Nile Basin. It is part of the Belt and Road Initiative of China.
The US further believes that in order to control Africa, it has to expand US Africa Command (AFRICOM) across the Horn of Africa, the Greater Horn of Africa and East Africa all the way to Congo and the Great Lakes Region. And always, when imperialism cannot control an area, it seeks to unleash chaos and destabilize it until such time as it can take control.
So it is doing everything it can to disrupt the New Horn of Africa Project. It has already sanctioned Eritrea. It is en route to sanctioning Ethiopia. And who knows, with Somalia beginning to reconstitute itself after decades of war, more proxy wars seem to be in offing there too.
PD: The Horn of Africa’s diaspora, particularly the Ethiopians and Eritreans in the US, have started #NoMore movement against the US sanctions on these countries and its support for the TPLF. How impactful has this movement been?
EA: This is really an incredible phenomenon. Within a month since it was started by the Ethiopian, Eritrean and Somali diaspora, it has grown global. Massive demonstrations and protests have been held in Washington D.C, in San Francisco and many other cities in the US and other Western countries, with the slogan: “Hands off Ethiopia; Hands of Eritrea; Hands of Horn of Africa”. They are saying “#NoMore” to western intervention; to economic warfare on countries in the form of sanctions.
Inside the continent, we have also seen demonstrations outside the Horn of Africa in countries as far as West Africa and Niger, raising the slogan “#NoMore Neo-colonialism” in French. Echoes of #NoMore are found in the murals on walls in South Africa. It started as an opposition to the war in Ethiopia and to the American attempts to destabilize the Horn of Africa, but grew into a pan-African movement against imperialism. Tomorrow its echoes might be heard in Latin America as well. It has the potential to evolve into a global anti-imperialist movement against endless wars.
https://libya360.wordpress.com/2021/12/ ... ervention/