Date: 2024-12-21 Page is: DBtxt003.php txt00021533
ETHIOPIA
CIVIL WAR
The Backstory headlines: Ethiopia’s Descent Into Civil War
CIVIL WAR
The Backstory headlines: Ethiopia’s Descent Into Civil War
Burgess COMMENTARY
There is a huge amount of instability in the modern world, and very little moral authority in the places where it matters. Maybe I was uninformed and rather naive when I was younger. I was born in the UK in 1940 at the start of WWII. I grew up when the lessons of WWII were fresh and in my education I learned a lot about the run-up to the war and both the horrors and the heroism of those that fought the war.
75 years on, most of that is now mere history and ignored by the majority of the world's population ... and especially this with power and influence. The mistakes of history are going to get repeated, but with military firepower that is way more lethal than most of what was used in WWII.
I did consultancy assignments in Somalia (Somaliland) and Ethiopia in the 1980s and 1990s and learned something about the region. One of the characteristics of some of the Ethiopians that I worked with was that they were surprisingly intolerant. Everyone was 'nice' to me, but I was an outsider and unimportant. Within their own community things were very different and the ethnic divisions within the country ran deep. Part of my work was with the Somali ethnic groups in the Ogaden Region where Somalia and Ethiopia had battled some few years before. Remnants of the battle still littered the landscape just outside Jijiga ... a key town in the region.
Also just outside Jijiga is a reminder of how silly a lot of development expenditure gets to be ... a large concrete dam built with foreign (Italian) aid but absolutely not what was wanted by the people who lived in the region. The local people repeatedly sabotaged the sluice gates so that the dam could never work. This allowed the annual floods to provide water and nutrition to huge areas of desert that were essential to the lives of all the nomadic people of the region. It is appalling how much the city folk, the academics and the experts do not know about the realities of life 'at the bottom of the pyramid'.
Peter Burgess
Foreign Affairs
January 16, 2022
Every Sunday, we’ll guide you through the debates driving U.S. foreign policy and international affairs using pieces from the Foreign Affairs archives—some recent, some decades old.
Ethiopia’s civil war has reached a bloody stalemate. After more than a year of grinding conflict that has displaced millions of people and claimed thousands of lives, neither Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government nor the Tigrayan rebel forces seem any closer to victory—or any more willing to compromise. “All sides now see the conflict in existential terms,” Terrence Lyons wrote late last year. “[T]he country has been polarized by news of atrocities and narratives of victimization,” heightening fears that Ethiopia could be on the path to genocide.
How to Pull Ethiopia Back From the Brink ... Washington Must Help End the War
Terrence Lyons
The country’s descent into chaos was swift. For most of the last two decades, Ethiopia was seen as a model of development success. “It was the only African country to move at a pace comparable to the East Asian tigers—and to do so without a hydrocarbons boom or a huge mining sector,” Harry Verhoeven wrote in 2015. It was also seen as a stabilizing force in the volatile Horn of Africa region and a key U.S. counterterrorism partner: Addis Ababa played “the role of Washington’s regional ‘deputy sheriff’ in the Global War on Terror.”
Protests by the country’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, threatened to derail Ethiopia’s ascent starting in 2014. But the selection of Abiy, who is half Oromo, as prime minister in 2018 seemed to herald the start of a new era of peace and democratization. Abiy pursued “an aggressive reformist agenda” that aimed to “rewrite Ethiopia’s old, authoritarian social contract and unite the country’s fractured society,” Michael Woldemariam wrote that year. And things got off to a good start. As Judd Devermont and Jon Temin observed in 2019, Abiy “released thousands of political prisoners; made peace with Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea; lifted restrictions on civil society; and [began] the process of privatizing the country’s telecommunications company and national airline.”
Can Ethiopia’s Reforms Succeed? ... What Abiy’s Plans Mean for the Country and the Region
Michael Woldemariam
“But behind the optimistic headlines, conflict was brewing,” Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam warned in November 2020. Abiy marginalized the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had once been the most powerful force in Ethiopia’s government, and engaged in dangerous brinkmanship with its leaders. War broke out in late 2020, followed by reports of atrocities on all sides. One year later, Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam wrote that Abiy’s political and military blunders had “called into question his own capacity to govern and, potentially, the very existence of the Ethiopian state in its current form.” Still, U.S. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, argued in December 2021, “it is not too late for swords to be beaten into plowshares and for Abiy and the TPLF to come to the table for dialogue to prevent further escalation of a war that has already claimed far too many lives.”
Can Ethiopia Survive? What Might Happen If Abiy Ahmed Falls
Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam
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The Backstory: Ethiopia’s Descent Into Civil War Foreign Affairs 6:03 AM
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Image January 16, 2022 Welcome to The Backstory.
Every Sunday, we’ll guide you through the debates driving U.S. foreign policy and international affairs using pieces from the Foreign Affairs archives—some recent, some decades old.
Ethiopia’s civil war has reached a bloody stalemate. After more than a year of grinding conflict that has displaced millions of people and claimed thousands of lives, neither Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government nor the Tigrayan rebel forces seem any closer to victory—or any more willing to compromise.
“All sides now see the conflict in existential terms,” Terrence Lyons wrote late last year. “[T]he country has been polarized by news of atrocities and narratives of victimization,” heightening fears that Ethiopia could be on the path to genocide.
Image How to Pull Ethiopia Back From the Brink Washington Must Help End the War
Terrence Lyons The country’s descent into chaos was swift. For most of the last two decades, Ethiopia was seen as a model of development success.
“It was the only African country to move at a pace comparable to the East Asian tigers—and to do so without a hydrocarbons boom or a huge mining sector,” Harry Verhoeven wrote in 2015.
It was also seen as a stabilizing force in the volatile Horn of Africa region and a key U.S. counterterrorism partner: Addis Ababa played “the role of Washington’s regional ‘deputy sheriff’ in the Global War on Terror.”
Protests by the country’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, threatened to derail Ethiopia’s ascent starting in 2014. But the selection of Abiy, who is half Oromo, as prime minister in 2018 seemed to herald the start of a new era of peace and democratization. Abiy pursued “an aggressive reformist agenda” that aimed to “rewrite Ethiopia’s old, authoritarian social contract and unite the country’s fractured society,” Michael Woldemariam wrote that year. And things got off to a good start.
As Judd Devermont and Jon Temin observed in 2019, Abiy “released thousands of political prisoners; made peace with Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea; lifted restrictions on civil society; and [began] the process of privatizing the country’s telecommunications company and national airline.”
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Image Can Ethiopia’s Reforms Succeed?
What Abiy’s Plans Mean for the Country and the Region Michael Woldemariam “But behind the optimistic headlines, conflict was brewing,”
Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam warned in November 2020. Abiy marginalized the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had once been the most powerful force in Ethiopia’s government, and engaged in dangerous brinkmanship with its leaders.
War broke out in late 2020, followed by reports of atrocities on all sides. One year later, Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam wrote that Abiy’s political and military blunders had “called into question his own capacity to govern and, potentially, the very existence of the Ethiopian state in its current form.” Still, U.S.
Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, argued in December 2021, “it is not too late for swords to be beaten into plowshares and for Abiy and the TPLF to come to the table for dialogue to prevent further escalation of a war that has already claimed far too many lives.” Image Can Ethiopia Survive? What Might Happen If Abiy Ahmed Falls Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam
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Welcome to The Backstory. Every Sunday, we’ll guide you through the debates driving U.S. foreign policy and international affairs using pieces from the Foreign Affairs archives—some recent, some decades old.
January 16, 2022
Ethiopia’s civil war has reached a bloody stalemate. After more than a year of grinding conflict that has displaced millions of people and claimed thousands of lives, neither Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government nor the Tigrayan rebel forces seem any closer to victory—or any more willing to compromise. “All sides now see the conflict in existential terms,” Terrence Lyons wrote late last year. “[T]he country has been polarized by news of atrocities and narratives of victimization,” heightening fears that Ethiopia could be on the path to genocide.
-------------------------------
Image How to Pull Ethiopia Back From the Brink Washington Must Help End the War Terrence Lyons
The country’s descent into chaos was swift. For most of the last two decades, Ethiopia was seen as a model of development success. “It was the only African country to move at a pace comparable to the East Asian tigers—and to do so without a hydrocarbons boom or a huge mining sector,” Harry Verhoeven wrote in 2015. It was also seen as a stabilizing force in the volatile Horn of Africa region and a key U.S. counterterrorism partner: Addis Ababa played “the role of Washington’s regional ‘deputy sheriff’ in the Global War on Terror.”
Protests by the country’s largest ethnic group, the Oromo, threatened to derail Ethiopia’s ascent starting in 2014. But the selection of Abiy, who is half Oromo, as prime minister in 2018 seemed to herald the start of a new era of peace and democratization. Abiy pursued “an aggressive reformist agenda” that aimed to “rewrite Ethiopia’s old, authoritarian social contract and unite the country’s fractured society,” Michael Woldemariam wrote that year. And things got off to a good start. As Judd Devermont and Jon Temin observed in 2019, Abiy “released thousands of political prisoners; made peace with Ethiopia’s archenemy, Eritrea; lifted restrictions on civil society; and [began] the process of privatizing the country’s telecommunications company and national airline.”
-------------------------------
Image Can Ethiopia’s Reforms Succeed? What Abiy’s Plans Mean for the Country and the Region Michael Woldemariam
“But behind the optimistic headlines, conflict was brewing,” Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam warned in November 2020. Abiy marginalized the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which had once been the most powerful force in Ethiopia’s government, and engaged in dangerous brinkmanship with its leaders.
War broke out in late 2020, followed by reports of atrocities on all sides. One year later, Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam wrote that Abiy’s political and military blunders had “called into question his own capacity to govern and, potentially, the very existence of the Ethiopian state in its current form.”
Still, U.S. Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, argued in December 2021, “it is not too late for swords to be beaten into plowshares and for Abiy and the TPLF to come to the table for dialogue to prevent further escalation of a war that has already claimed far too many lives.”
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Image Can Ethiopia Survive? What Might Happen If Abiy Ahmed Falls Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam