{"id":12213,"date":"2021-10-08T12:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-10-08T12:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/?p=12213"},"modified":"2021-10-09T12:11:44","modified_gmt":"2021-10-09T12:11:44","slug":"ethiopias-widening-war-could-be-catastrophic-for-millions-the-u-s-needs-to-step-up-pressure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/?p=12213","title":{"rendered":"Ethiopia\u2019s widening war could be catastrophic for millions. The U.S. needs to step up pressure."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Source: The Washington Post<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

October 7, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rainy season is coming to an end in Ethiopia\u2019s conflict zones, which means that the fighting season could be about to begin. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, freshly sworn in for a new five-year term on Monday, has been massing government forces near Tigray, a rebellious province in the country\u2019s north. Barring de-escalation, the consequences \u2014 especially for the 6 million people of Tigray, at growing risk of famine \u2014 could be catastrophic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

De-escalation seems to be the furthest thing from Mr. Abiy\u2019s mind. Three weeks ago he answered the Biden administration\u2019s push for a negotiated solution with a three-page open letter in which he declared: \u201cEthiopia will not succumb.\u201d<\/a> More ominously, his government recently ordered seven U.N. aid workers in charge of humanitarian relief for Tigray expelled from the country, on the purported grounds that they have sided with Tigrayan rebels. The U.N. Security Council devoted a meeting to that issue Wednesday. U.N. Secretary General Ant\u00f3nio Guterres denounced the \u201cunprecedented\u201d expulsions and warned of an \u201cimmense humanitarian crisis\u201d \u2014 and Ethiopia\u2019s representative responded by accusing the U.N. officials of falsifying Tigray\u2019s plight.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ethiopia\u2019s ouster of the U.N. team came shortly after the chief of the U.N.\u2019s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs had said Mr. Abiy\u2019s forces were mounting a \u201cde facto blockade\u201d of Tigray, making it impossible for more than about 10 percentof needed food aid to reach the area and contributing to a crisis that has left 5.2 million people dependent on outside relief, of whom 400,000 are already living in near-famine conditions, according to the United Nations. Officials fear a repeat of the 1984-1985 starvation that Ethiopia\u2019s then-ruling Marxist military regime engineered, in part to crush Tigrayan resistance, and which killed up to 1.2 million people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tigray People\u2019s Liberation Front (TPLF), which ruled Ethiopia \u2014 undemocratically \u2014 before Mr. Abiy\u2019s rise to power in 2018, is hardly blameless. Its forces responded to a series of heavy-handed measures by the central government with a violent uprising in November 2020, triggering a joint offensive by Addis Ababa and its allies in neighboring Eritrea. The two nations\u2019 campaign was marked by widespread human rights abuses. Yet the TPLF withstood it and counterattacked \u2014 seizing territory outside Tigray and committing atrocities of its own. Thousands are believed to have been killed in the war and 2 million displaced, numbers that are sure to rise if all-out combat resumes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Until recently, Ethiopia was Africa\u2019s fastest-growing economy, demonstrating a potential that makes the prospect of another era of famine and war doubly tragic. Seeking to avoid such an outcome, the Biden administration in mid-September announced new authority for sanctions<\/a> on leaders of any side \u2014 whether Mr. Abiy or his foes \u2014 guilty of human rights abuses, obstructing humanitarian relief or blocking peace talks. Framed evenhandedly, the plan wisely anticipated Addis Ababa\u2019s inevitable charges of bias. President Biden also delayed actual implementation \u2014 for what officials said would be \u201cweeks, not months\u201d \u2014 to give diplomacy yet another chance. Judging by recent events, it may soon be time to stop threatening pressure on Mr. Abiy, and start exerting it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: The Washington Post October 7, 2021 The rainy season is coming to an end in Ethiopia\u2019s conflict<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12214,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[32,86],"class_list":["post-12213","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-english","tag-the-washington-post"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",1257,797,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",300,190,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",640,406,false],"large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",640,406,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",1257,797,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",1257,797,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",825,523,false],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",590,374,false],"woocommerce_thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320-300x300.jpg",300,300,true],"woocommerce_single":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320.jpg",600,380,false],"woocommerce_gallery_thumbnail":["https:\/\/axumawian.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/320-100x100.jpg",100,100,true]},"author_info":{"info":["Axumawian Media"]},"category_info":"Article<\/a>","tag_info":"Article","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12213","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12213"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12213\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12215,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12213\/revisions\/12215"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/12214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/axumawian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}