Ethiopia's fake CIA Christian Abiy Ahmed works for AFRICOM

[TonyGosling]

Nobel-winning Ethiopian PM has overseen country’s descent into barbarity and madness
Finian Cunningham
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/505921-nobel-ethiopia-abiy-ahmed/

is an award-winning journalist. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain's Independent, among others.
6 Nov, 2020 19:32

Nobel-winning Ethiopian PM has overseen country’s descent into barbarity and madness
Oromo Women in the UK stage a protest outside Downing Street against Ethiopian Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed's abuse of human rights of people in their homeland. © LightRocket via Getty Images / Keith Mayhew / SOPA Images; (inset) Abiy Ahmed © Pool via REUTERS / Michel Euler
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The Western media have hailed Ethiopia’s Premier Abiy Ahmed as a “liberal reformer” ever since he rose to power in the East African country nearly two years ago.
Remarkably, despite the chaos and conflict that has accompanied his leadership, the same media tend to portray the mayhem as somehow due to opposition to his benign reforms.

This week, federal military forces have launched operations in a northern region of Tigray. Western media amplified Abiy’s claim that the state of emergency was necessitated because Tigray militia had attacked federal forces first. Tigray leaders say that is turning reality on its head, claiming that they are the victims of aggression sanctioned by the central government in Addis Ababa.

The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) were formerly the main ruling faction before Abiy’s ascent to power. So it is easy in the simplistic Western narrative to portray the latest conflict as a contest between a reforming pro-West PM and a revanchist old regime.

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After all, Premier Abiy was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize last year for his efforts to supposedly normalize relations with neighboring Eritrea with which Ethiopia fought a border war nearly two decades ago. He was generally feted as a democratic progressive bringing years of hostility to an end. That “normalization” has yet to produce any meaningful result in terms of restoring neighborly relations. It was more a public relations exercise to burnish Abiy’s image as a benign pro-democracy, pro-peace figure.

I lived in Ethiopia’s Tigray region for eight years including during two years of Abiy’s premiership. I have witnessed the entire country slide into bloody internecine wars between the many nations that comprise Ethiopia’s 110 million population. All this carnage involving thousands of casualties – rarely reported in the media – occurred precipitously after Abiy became leader.

The way Tigray people see it, Abiy, who is alleged to have spent periods of time as an intelligence officer seconded in the US while a member of the TPLF-led former government, is working for a foreign agenda to undermine Ethiopia’s independent politics and economic development.

During nearly 27 years of TPLF-led government following a revolutionary war ending in 1991, Ethiopia was an important strategic partner for Chinese investment in Africa. Much of its impressive development was financed with Chinese loans – not with private Western capital. Although China still remains a top foreign donor.

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Only months after Abiy became prime minister through parliamentary horse-trading, Simegnew Bekele, the chief engineer of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam across the Blue Nile, was assassinated. That threw the project for Africa’s biggest hydroelectric plant into turmoil. It was suspected that Abiy and his Egyptian, Gulf Arab and Eritrean allies could have been complicit in sabotaging the prestige project which would have consolidated Ethiopia’s independent development. That project had been initiated by the former TPLF-led government. Abiy’s first overseas trip as new PM was to visit Cairo where he hinted to the Egyptian leadership that the dam would be scaled back. He went on to make disparaging comments about the project’s feasibility.

Recently, Abiy’s government appears to have resumed support for the ambitious dam, thereby riling up the Egyptians who fear it will reduce downstream flow of the Nile River, as well as irking Washington which has backed Cairo’s claims. But given the national fervor among Ethiopians for the dam’s completion, Abiy has had little choice but to appear to go along with it.

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Under Abiy’s rule, political violence and assassinations have turned Ethiopia from a once stable, peaceful giant of African development into a basket-case of failure and insecurity.

He has directed much recrimination against the Tigray region and its still-dominant TPLF, accusing the latter of orchestrating political violence. A massacre last week in the west of the country – far from Tigray – was blamed on the TPLF by Abiy and his supporters. That in turn was used to justify sending in federal forces this week into Tigray. When the Tigray defenders arrested the federal troops – reportedly killing some of them – Abiy claimed that the Tigray region is out of control and that he is trying to save Ethiopia’s “national unity.” And the Western media in deference to the Nobel laureate is giving his spurious version of events undue credibility.

For many Ethiopians, Abiy Ahmed is seen as an imposter figure – Tigray sources even allege he could be a CIA agent – who has overseen the weakening of a proud independent nation, the only African nation that was never fully colonized by Europeans. His Nobel gong and Western media indulgence is part of the cover for what is otherwise a sabotage operation to turn the country into a failed state henceforth to be dependent on Western capital and geopolitics.

Should we be surprised? War criminals and conmen – from Henry Kissinger to Barack Obama – are often decorated with the accolade.

[TonyGosling]

War in Ethiopia Threatens to Engulf Horn of Africa

Finian Cunningham - November 16, 2020
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2020/11/16/war-in-ethiopia-thre atens-to-engulf-horn-of-africa/

The two-week-old civil war in Ethiopia is now embroiling neighboring Eritrea. The two countries previously fought a two-year border war (1998-2000) which resulted in 100,000 dead. But in a bizarre twist, the Ethiopian central government in Addis Ababa is siding with Eritrea to now wage a war against its own people in the northern Tigray region.

The Ethiopian central government has also requested South Sudan to deploy 4,000 troops to augment its forces in the offensive against Tigray.

Leaders of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) admitted firing several rockets at an airport in Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, over the weekend. There were apparently no casualties, but the TPLF said the airport was a legitimate target because it is being used to dispatch warplanes belonging to Ethiopian federal forces to attack Tigray. Civilian centers in Mekelle, the regional capital of Tigray, have been hit with air strikes. Washington condemned the attack on Asmara as “unjustifiable” but has not condemned air strikes on Tigray.

Tigray leaders say they are fighting a war on two fronts: against Ethiopian federal forces coming from the south, and against Eritrean military crossing the border to the north.

More alarming, there are reports of the United Arab Emirates deploying combat drones to support the Eritrean-Ethiopian axis. The UAE maintains an air base in Eritrea’s Red Sea port city of Assab from where it has been flying drones in the Yemen war against Houthi rebels.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has rebuffed appeals from the United Nations for peace negotiations. He has accused the TPLF of treason and terrorism, and is calling his offensive on the region of five million people a “law and order operation”. That is contradicted by a policy of what is blatant siege tactics and collective punishment against the civilian population. The region has been cut off from electricity and water supplies. Abiy’s warplanes bombed a hydroelectric power station last week in Tekezé, Tigray, and a sugar factory. His forces bombing civilian centers amounts to war crimes and state terrorism.

So much for Abiy being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year and Western media spinning his image as a “liberal reformer”. Abiy got the prize for his supposed peace-making with Eritrea soon after he became Ethiopia’s prime minister in April 2018. How he came to power is shrouded in mystery, involving backroom political deals. He was not elected.

Anyway, the curious thing about his so-called detente with the Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki is that so little is known about their private discussions. No details about the purported peace settlement have ever been published. Abiy, who comes from the Oromo ethnic group, never consulted with the Tigray people on what he discussed with Afwerki, even though it was the Tigrayans who suffered the brunt of the 1998-2000 border war. It was strongly felt that Abiy was cutting a deal to suit his own interests. Oddly, too, the seeming rapprochement was sponsored by the United Arab Emirates whose royal rulers donated an ornate gold medal and chain each to Abiy and Afwerki for their “peace efforts”. (A payment-in-kind worth several million dollars.)

But in practical terms, the people of Tigray and Eritrea (both are ethnic Tigrayans and share common family ancestry) have not seen any normalization in relations. The border remains closed and families are still prevented from traveling to visit each other.

This suggests the Nobel prize to Abiy was more about public relations to build up a benign international image. The accolade has come in useful during the recent offensive against Tigray. Western media routinely mention his Nobel prize alongside his claims of conducting a “law and order operation” against the “terrorist TPLF”. The Nobel gives him a vital credibility. Without it, his actions would be more clearly seen for what they are: crimes against humanity.

Since Abiy came to power, Ethiopia has been thrown into turmoil and violent clashes between its many ethnic groups. The Western media typically report that the mayhem is a result of “reforms” which are credulously said to have “lifted the lid” on internal tensions. It is never explained by the media how exactly these “reforms” somehow magically “lift the lid” on tensions.

What his reforms amount to is the formation of one-party rule under his leadership. He dissolved a coalition of parties last year known as the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) to form the Prosperity Party under his leadership. Abiy was previously a minister of science and technology in the EPRDF government, which contradicts claims that the old regime was privileging the TPLF faction. In any case, the Tigray faction refused to join his new unitary party. Then Abiy cancelled elections slated for this year, allegedly due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The TPLF accused him of seeking dictatorial powers and it went ahead with regional elections in September. He has never been elected by a popular vote.

That seems to have triggered the drive by Abiy to finally bring the TPLF opposition to heel.

Abiy’s targeting of the TPLF has been on the cards since he came to power more than two years ago. In Ethiopia’s nine regional administrations, it has been relatively easy for him to sack incumbents and to replace them with his own lackeys. That reshuffling caused much of the inter-communal violence, or what the Western media coyly refer to as “lifting the lid” on tensions. Not so the Tigray region, which has always been strong politically and militarily. The Tigrayans have long suspected Abiy as being a Trojan Horse figure whose purpose is to weaken Ethiopia’s political and economic independence in order to realign the strategically important nation away from partnership with China to be open for Western capital. Ethiopian sources say Abiy was recruited by the CIA when he previously served as a Lieutenant Colonel in military intelligence and liaised with American counterparts, before moving into politics. Ironically, he accuses the Tigray opposition of treason.

That is the geopolitical backdrop to the flare-up of war in Ethiopia. Washington and Gulf Arab states are aiming to decouple Ethiopia from China’s plans for global economic development, known as the “new silk routes”.

In doing so, however, Africa’s second most populous nation is being plunged into catastrophic war which is also threatening to engulf the Horn of Africa. It’s scorched-earth geopolitics.

[TonyGosling]

Geopolitics Shadow Ethiopia War
17.Nov.2020 - by Finian Cunningham
https://sputniknews.com/columnists/202011171081192395-geopolitics-shad ow-ethiopia-war/

The news that Russia is to build a naval base adjacent to the Red Sea underscores the geopolitical background to the recent escalation of conflict in Ethiopia.

The Horn of Africa with its intersection of trade routes is the subject of intense geopolitical contest. China and more recently Russia are offering economic partnership for development, while the Western powers, primarily the US, view the interplay with the usual zero-sum mentality not willing to tolerate any other “interloper”.

Ethiopia sits at the center of this geopolitical chess game in the Horn of Africa, resonating with the old scramble for Africa among European colonial powers in the late 19th century.

Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with the defenсe ministry leadership, heads of federal agencies and defenсe industry enterprises at the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the resort city of Sochi, Russia.
© SPUTNIK / ALEKSEY NIKOLSKYI
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Russian President Vladimir Putin this week gave approval for construction of a naval hub in Port Sudan in agreement with the government in Khartoum. The new facility will extend Russia’s military reach in the strategically important Red Sea – a vital shipping route linking the Indian Ocean with the Mediterranean.

The move is part of a wider push by Russia to develop trade and commercial links with Africa. A landmark summit hosted in Moscow at the end of last year projected new partnerships with Africa’s 54 nations.

This marks something of a revival in Russian relations with the world’s second-largest continent of some 1.2 billion people following years of absence after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Russia’s rebounding relations follows the already firm inroads that China has made among African nations, from offering financial grants and soft loans in return for access to the continent’s vast natural resources.

China and now Russia’s partnership plans for Africa have been warily observed by the United States and European powers. China has replaced the US as the top investor and trading partner in Africa.

A key partner for China in recent decades has been Ethiopia which because of its strategic position in the Horn of Africa and because of its natural leadership role for the rest of continent (the African Union is headquartered in Addis Ababa), it is viewed as the “gateway” to Africa.

The new government in Ethiopia under prime minister Abiy Ahmed – who came to power in early 2018 – has thrown the erstwhile partnership with China into uncertainty.
There are signs that Abiy is leading his country away from China’s economic benefaction and realigning it with Western capital. This has immense geopolitical significance because such a move would be seen as a blow to Beijing’s global economic plans known as the “new silk routes” linking Eurasia with Africa.

The previous government in Ethiopia was dominated by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which forged strong economic relations with China over a three-decade period. The TPLF in its stronghold in the northern highlands of Ethiopia has suddenly become embroiled in civil war against the central government in Addis Ababa led by Abiy Ahmed.

As long as the Tigray region remains a strong oppositional force in Ethiopian politics, then the strategic reorientation of Ethiopia away from China towards Western capital is not a smooth one and indeed might be thwarted. To that end, it seems, the Abiy-led central government has moved to decisively demolish the TPLF with its latest pretext of “fighting terrorism” and “enforcing law and order”.

South Sudan's Foreing Minister Avut Deng Achuil and Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov shake hands after a news conference following their meeting, in Moscow, Russia.
© SPUTNIK / VITALIY BELOUSOV
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When Russia announced a new military partnership with Sudan last year with a view to building a naval base on the Red Sea, that development would have caused much alarm in Washington. The US and its Gulf Arab client regimes are waging a war in Yemen for the control of the Red Sea.

China opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti – northeast of Ethiopia – which gives a prominent presence in the Red Sea. With Russia also about to increase its presence, Washington was no doubt compelled to make a chess move.

It seems no coincidence that the Trump administration announced last month that it was lifting decades of sanctions off the Sudanese government in Khartoum. That was on October 19. Then almost two weeks later, the war in Ethiopia erupted between the central government forces and the Tigray region.

The conflict in Ethiopia has appalling humanitarian implications given the country’s past horror of famines. The war also looks to be spreading out to embroil Eritrea which lies on the Red Sea north of Ethiopia.

But as ever, war and human suffering are the consequence of imperialist machinations.