Ethiopia Conflict By US Design – OpEd
Eurasia ReviewNov 28, 2021
On Tues., two envoys to the Horn of Africa - the US's Mike Hammer and the EU's Annette Weber - urged the Ethiopian government to resume basic services in Tigray to promote peace talks with rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF).
Hammer and Weber traveled to Mekele, the capital of Ethiopia's war-torn Tigray region, to advocate for the planned peace talks between the Ethiopian federal government and the TPLF.
It's absurd that the EU and the US, of all powers, are now setting themselves up as mediators of peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia. It was the West that previously interfered and took sides unilaterally with the TPLF, but the campaign to overthrow the democratically elected Abiy Ahmed failed miserably. The West has been complicit in serious human rights abuses and any of its advice on peace and dialogue should be taken with caution.
The West is doing as much as it can to work diplomatically for peace, after formerly failing to stand up for its values when Abiy Ahmed, with his Eritrean and other allies, committed the most serious human rights crimes in Tigray. The Ahmed regime was willing to accept all this and the deaths of thousands of Tigrayans just because the TPLF stood in the way of his vision of a centralized Ethiopia.
There is a 48% chance that there will be a bilateral ceasefire of at least 30 days in the Tigray war before 2023, according to the Metaculus prediction community.