On Monday, June 21st, Ethiopians went to the polls to select a parliament, which will elect a prime minister, even though US officials told them not to, warning of chaos and violence. Maybe they think it’s arrogant of the United States to presume to be the global arbiter of peace, justice, and democracy.
The African Union sent an election observer mission headed by former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who told press midday on Monday that it was going well, far better than previous Ethiopian elections.
Birtukan Mideksa, chair of the Ethiopian National Election Board
Lawyer, judge, and politician Birtukan Mideksa, chair of the National Election Board, no doubt agrees. In 2005, she helped found the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) Party, ran for parliament a second time, claimed the election was rigged, and was then among thousands imprisoned by the US puppet government of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in the ensuing crackdown. She was sentenced to life in prison, pardoned in 2007—after signing a controversial document regretting past mistakes—but sent back to prison for life in 2008. International human rights advocacy, including that of Amnesty International, led to her release and exile in the United States, where she attended the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and spent time employed by the National Endowment for Democracy, the CIA cutout that claims to promote democracy around the world while in fact promoting US global hegemony.
It’s not clear whether her brief tenure with NED should be a red flag or simply something to keep in mind as her political career advances. The United States foreign policy establishment often likes to invest in any promising African leaders even if they are opposed to a government the US is supporting at the time, as was the case with Mideksa. And the leaders they invest in don’t always toe the line over time. Somali President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed, aka Farmaajo, is a case in point. Abiy, Farmaajo, and Eritrea’s President Isaias Afwerki are now alarming US political and military elites by forming an alliance and threatening to chart an independent path in the Horn of Africa.
In any case, Mideksa seems to be enjoying rock star status in Ethiopia today. The BBC ran a lengthy profile of her including many of the aforementioned details.
Election could establish legitimacy of Prime Minister Abiy and the Prosperity Party
Sitting Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s Prosperity Party is widely expected to win a majority large enough to make him prime minister and increase both his legitimacy and the party’s. Abiy has served as Ethiopia’s caretaker prime minister since April 2018, when a popular uprising finally forced the Tigray People’s Liberation Front from power after 27 years. In 2019, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for negotiating peace with Eritrea, a former Ethiopian colony.
Under the rule of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, commonly known as the TPLF. EThiopia was a key US ally and military proxy in the Horn of Africa and on the African continent, putting boots on the ground under US command in both Somalia and South Sudan. The US and NATO have been hostile to Prime Minister Abiy, seemingly because of his alliance with Eritrea, the only African nation that refuses to cooperate with AFRICOM, the US Africa Command, or submit to the debt peonage that the International Monetary Fund and World Bank have imposed on other African nations.
Last year Prime Minister Abiy postponed elections because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but the US’s former ally, the TPLF, held elections in Tigray Regional State nevertheless and then attacked a federal army base in the state capital, Mekelle, ambushing and killing Ethiopian National Defense Forces who had been sleeping. Prime Minister Abiy responded, as any head of state would, by sending in the national army to put down the insurrection, and fighting is ongoing. Eritrea was drawn in after the TPLF fired rockets across its border at the Eritrean military.
Elections were not held on Monday in Tigray because of the civil conflict. They were reportedly not held in Somali State because of logistical problems or in Harrar City because of an unresolved lawsuit over who can vote. It was also reported that some did not vote in Benishangul-Gumuz region because ethnic violence prevented voter registration. However, these regions are all expected to elect parliamentary representatives by September, and many Ethiopians expressed enthusiasm for what they consider the country’s first real, competitive election. Fitsum Alemu, a member of the Ethiopian diaspora living in Virginia, told me that he didn’t expect the election to solve all of Ethiopia’s problems, but that voting was so important to members of his family that they stood in line for several hours in the rain to vote in Addis Ababa.
Benyam Kitaw, a member of the diaspora living in Los Angeles, said, “All the people I spoke with in Ethiopia stated that they are excited about voting and the prospect of true democracy starting to take hold there for the first time. Democracy may be bumpy and have flaws, but progress towards the common Ethiopian finally having their vote counted means that Ethiopia is closer to self-determination, and this is a very good thing.”
US says an honest and peaceful election is impossible under current conditions, but Obama and Rice praised TPLF’s 100% “election victory”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and USAID Chief and former UN Ambassador Samantha Power said that the Tigray conflict, and more, made an honest and peaceful election impossible and demanded that Abiy postpone the election.
However, in 2015, when Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn and the TPLF claimed to have won an impossible 100% of the vote, Barack Obama called it democratic. Susan Rice, who was then Obama’s National Security Advisor, addressed reporters prior to their trip to Kenya and Ethiopia and said that the TPLF’s 100% victory suggested some procedural problems, but she didn’t doubt the rightness of the outcome. When a reporter asked whether she considered that an honest election, she responded “100%,” and then laughed, helping to make herself one of the most despised US officials in Ethiopia and on the African continent.
Ann Garrison is an independent journalist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2014, she received the Victoire Ingabire Umuhoza Democracy and Peace Prize for promoting peace through her reporting on conflict in the African Great Lakes Region. Please help support her work on Patreon. She can be reached on Twitter @AnnGarrison and at ann(at)anngarrison(dot)com.
Its been a week since the elections of June 21 came to an end . According to the national election Board (NEB), additional regions are scheduled for elections in August 2021. Most Ethiopians nationwide and in diaspora waiting for this day followed periodic reports from the NEB and quite a few reporters from international and national news organizations (VOA,DW, AL Jeezira, ETV, ATV, OBN, etc) kept the world informed in real time as the elections took place throughout the day. Ethiopians saw thousands of people all over the country queued to vote at designated stations. Enthusiasm expressed by voters as shown by early morning queues prior to the 6:00 am scheduled voting start time, the massive turn out , the long lines , the favorable voter interviews of the process ..all made it look like a celebration. The voters endured rain or shine and stood in line into the night……all inspiring for Ethiopia’s well wishers.
The NEB reported election results will be forthcoming in the next five to ten days.
Paternalistic U.S. government political posturing toward Africa has a history of turning into fatal consequences for the masses of African peoples. A decade ago, several of the same individuals who now hold positions in the Biden administration were accomplices in the U.S.-led NATO decimation of Libya, which was rationalized under the guise of protecting “pro-democracy” activists from massacre by the so-called dictator Colonel Muammar Gadaffi. Hiding behind a modern-day version of the “White Man’s Burden,” otherwise known as “Responsibility to Protect” or R2P, the United States and its NATO allies killed and maimed thousands of Libyans, with U.S. leaders like Secretary of State Hillary Clinton taking special satisfaction in the sadistic video recording of Gaddafi’s murder.
Given the catastrophic effects of the U.S.-NATO intervention in Libya, the Black Alliance for Peace’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and BAP member organization Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity (HOA PALS), condemn, under no uncertain terms, any and all forms of intervention and meddling in the conflict in Ethiopia. As it did against Libya, U.S. imperialism is weaponizing disinformation and misinformation to exploit and distort the complexity, historical context and political realities in the Horn of Africa to create the pretext for more direct intervention.
“Should those responsible for undermining a resolution of the crisis in Tigray fail to reverse course, they should anticipate further actions from the United States and the international community. We call on other governments to join us in taking these actions.” —U.S. Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, May 23, 2021 press statement
The attack on the federal base by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) that started the conflict is now being used as a de-facto instrument of U.S. policy in Ethiopia to justify “humanitarian intervention.” In this way, the primary contradiction in the Tigray region reflects broader dynamics in the Horn of Africa as a whole and can be boiled down to the common denominators of global capitalist hegemony and Western imperialism by way of its proxy actor, the TPLF. Western powers only curtail the right of self-determination for the Horn of Africa and Global South states.
We condemn all military violence, extrajudicial killings, sexual violence, displacement, theft, discrimination, harassment and intimidation perpetrated on innocent Tigrayans, as well as any and all unnecessary violence perpetrated on other Ethiopians and Eritreans in the ongoing conflict as a result of their ethnic, religious, or national identity, refugee status or political affiliation. We unequivocally support and uplift mutual cooperation, solidarity, and peace among all parties and people in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and the broader Horn of Africa region.
We support African-led, localized conflict resolution that is not tied to advancing imperialism, neo-colonialism or any other nefarious Western agendas. We believe in the inherent agency and ability of Africans on the continent to reach a resolution to the conflict peacefully and independently of Western aggression, destabilization, and extractive and exploitative economic interests.
The United States and its EU-NATO allies know no compassion or genuine concern for the Black lives in Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa or anywhere else Black people are in the world. Their true concerns are always selfish, racist and reflective of their objective geopolitical interests. In Ethiopia and Eritrea, their interests are:
To control or have undue influence over the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint critical to securing global energy;
to challenge the robust presence of China; and
to impose AFRICOM in the only country left in Africa that has evaded its control, Eritrea.
Africa is not underdeveloped and fraught with militarized instability because there is not enough involvement by Western Europe and its evil settler-colonial spawn, the USA. Anyone who believes that must also believe Africans are inferior savages. The fact is Africa is underdeveloped and destabilized precisely because of centuries of European colonialism and decades of U.S. and Western European neocolonialism. Any disposition held by Africans that lends legitimacy to intervention, sanctions, or the fake moral or altruistic dominion of Pan-European, white supremacist capitalist interests in Africa are based either on severe ignorance or treacherous opportunism.
U.S. foreign policy in Africa always involves enveloping any part of the continent that poses a threat to its geostrategic interests into its sphere of forever wars. In 2011, Black anti-imperialist forces were unable to effectively counter the plan by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination to destroy the revolutionary Pan-Africanist nation of Libya. This was partially because the action had the political cover of the first Black president, which confused and disarmed left opposition and made them objective collaborators with U.S. reaction.
BAP’s U.S. Out of Africa Network and Horn of Africa Pan-Africans for Liberation & Solidarity refuse to allow this fatal mistake to be made again. Hands off Ethiopia and Eritrea! #ShutDownAFRICOM! #USOutofAfrica!
Banner photo: People walk from a rural area towards the town of Agula in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, where the Relief Society of Tigray was distributing food. (Ben Curtis/AP)
Western governments are currently stooped in meddling in the internal affairs of Ethiopia. US presence, first by crude and ugly interference of its previous administration duo of President Trump and Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s attempt at arm-twisting PM Abiy on the Grand Ethiopian Renaisance Dam (GERD) negotiations …(first US by feigning as observers, then becoming defacto ‘impartial judges’ , and finally as unabashed defenders of Egypt’s interest).
Furthermore , when that did not work, bombing the GERD was suggested by president Trump, a presi- dent nicknamed by his former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson a “f**ken moron”. These acts are nothing short of meddling in the internal affairs of Ethiopia!
This was followed by the new president Joe Biden’s administration and his new Secretary of State AntonyJ. Blinken who became Ethiopia’s (humanitarian champion) declaring “grave concern about the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crisis”, “the risk of famine in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and insecurity in other parts of Ethiopia”. The Secretary insisted on “Eritrean troops withdrawal from Tigray immediately, in full, and in a verifiable manner.”
We do have man made humanitarian crisis in Tigray but it is obvious for everyone to see, the scale of the Secretary’s piped up assertions of Tigray’s growing humanitarian disaster and human rights abuses don’t match the clamor of the US & EU diplomats make it out to be through their media outlets. If what is coming out of their bullhorn was true, it would by comparison dwarf that of Yemen’s disaster.
The world clearly sees Yemen’s disaster and we haven’t heard from Blinken a demand for the ongoing humanitarian disaster there and documentation of “ human rights abuse and the need for justice and accountability measures to hold those responsible to account”.
The tune is a little different in the United Nations. “On March 4, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) held a closed-door meeting on Tigray, as it did on April 15, to discuss the unfolding crises in the region but they failed to reach a resolution calling for ending the violence as Russia and China opposed the adoption reasoning that this is Ethiopia’s internal matter.” (ETHIOPIAN REPORTER 7 April 2021By Brook Abdu)
To push his demands further, Secretary Blinken has appointed “a Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa” and the notorious Ambassador Feltman would go to the horn of Africa , it was communicated, to pressure PM Abiy to implement US demands. Ambassador Feltman would travel to Ethiopia and his mission is to continue with the stated aims of breaking up PM Abiy’s military defense posture i.e. the alliance of Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and Eritrean forces and to put a damper on the strident and growing Ethiopian nationalism on the GERD issue and Ethiopians approval of the law and order campaign in Tigray.
Also, under the guise of negotiating, Ambassador Feltman will be looking for an internal ally or some remanent of the TPLF cadres or volunteer trainers to push US agenda. It seems that his visit maybe the kick-off the US search for traitors if it is not in the works already.
It is obvious that the TPLF leadership’s head has been cut off (some captured in the woods are in prison awaiting their day in court, others met their demise in the backwoods of Mekele, still others act as straw men playing a game of “now you see me, now you don’t” on social media.
Hammered by the combined force of the Ethiopian National Defense Force, the Amhara militias and the Eritrean forces, today’s remaining TPLF units don’t see much light of day as a result of the Ethiopian air force raids that keeps them in check.
TPLF hit and run guerrilla tactics can hardly be distinguished from hits of local thieves and bandits, whose activities emerged when TPLF’s frightened heads let loose all criminal elements(estimated upwards of ten thousand) from prisons in and around Mekele as Mr. Debretsion and cohorts sped out on noisy pick up trucks as they left Mekele.
Ignoring Ambassador Feltman’s threat and pressure, PM Abiy and his party are gearing up for the Ethiopian elections in early June 2021. US and EU want to dictate on how to run the Ethiopian elections , but it was rebuffed by the Ethiopian government. US and EU’s role appears diminished in the Ethiopian elections and they seem to be engaged in trying to find ways to delegitimize the election process.
In fact, a signed letter by five democratic senators has urged Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman (on his way to the horn of Africa) by calling for the postponement of Ethiopia’s national elections and that it shouldn’t go forward.
Ethiopians however are looking forward to a historic election on June 5, 2021 propelling them towards a country that is more on a democratic path.
Hager Wodad, Los Angeles CA, USA
Ethiopians Recent Journey to A Historical Election
May 27,2021
The West (US and EU) is furious at the Chinese government’s contribution to Ethiopia’s development and growing friendship and is getting cantankerous and want to take it out on PM Abiy .
Unhinged about the Chinese penetration in Africa and more so in Ethiopia, the current unease of US state department officials expressed by anti Abiy’s government language, political war and distortion has puzzled Ethiopians and friends of Ethiopia.
The recent US Department of State statements/policy plans on the current situation in Ethiopia declares “The United States has deepening concerns about the ongoing crisis in Ethiopia’s Tigray region as well as other threats to the sovereignty, national unity, and territorial integrity of Ethiopia.” Over the past thirty years, US policy contribution towards supporting Meles’s TPLF/EPRDF regime in Ethiopia at the expense of all democratic demands by the Ethiopian people is the reason for the significant present day debacle/crises in the country.
Besides being the financier and suitor, successive US administration policies supported and armed PM Mele’s TPLF/EPRDF regime to enhance “war on terrorism” in Somalia. PM Meles opened war on Somalia’s shabab and also used the weapons and training to punish internal dissent.
The Ethio-Eritrea war of 1998-2000 which was mocked by some of the US media outlets as “two bald men fighting over a comb” is too recent to forget. The war cost a hundred thousand lives. Throughout these years, US administrations supported PM Meles’ repressive rule that suffocated Ethiopians democratic demands.
During this period, all we heard from the western media airwaves was adulation of the TPLF’s regime with “fastest growing economy”, never putting pressure on PM Meles’ for more democracy in the country and turning a blind eye on his bloody dictatorship and the ‘no war no peace’ situation with Eritrea.
Also, PM Abiy does’n t have a friend in the likes of Ruben, Alex de Waal, Martin Plaut, Cohen etc., and the sharp shooting TPLF lobbyists in DC who are on board with US State department policy that “PM Abiy Ahmed has condemned Ethiopia to dissolution” and “PM Abiy may have cemented his legacy not as a Nobel Peace Laureate, but rather as the man who ended a countrywhose history dates back millennia”.
Some in these group with a perfunctory knowledge of Ethiopia’s history or more recent struggles of its people for modernity, democracy and development over the past few decades, would realize Ethiopians are resilient people and every generation asserts its own imagination about the nation’s destiny. As Ethiopia looks forward to national elections now rescheduled for June 21, the group’s doomsday babble about PM Abiy’s legacy rings hollow.
I can’t be sure , but assume learned men like those in the group understand that the TPLF/EPRDF lost power by rebellion of Ethiopians from all corners of the country tired of its twenty- seven years of corrupt, repressive and cruel reign.
They would also know the mass movement that began 2016 culminated in TPLF’s overthrow despite US support throughtout its reign. Those in the coalition of the EPRDF tailgated the mass movement, and except for the TPLF, the remaining ones in the EPRDF’s coalition coopted the popular mass movement that eventually brought PM Abiy to power.
Disturbed by its predicament, the TPLF settled in its regional state capital Mekele, used it as home base to attack PM Abiy’s government directly and indirectly for three years (i.e., since PM Abiy’s ascent to power).
Voices in the group claim that “Abiy’s stated reason for his assault on Tigray was the rebuff of that province’s leaders to his efforts to delay elections.”. This is not the reason for the “assault” and
in fact, the main reason given by PM Abiy was to enforce the law through “a law and order campaign” after TPLF’s attack on the ENDF northern command. The group should ease off with these kinds of false narratives and they should know Ethiopians are aware of the ongoing chorus of paid intellectuals and lobbyists crowding the airwaves pushing with “strong language” to undermine the peaceful efforts of PM Abiy.
Ethiopians know numerous efforts in settling differences peacefully by PM Abiy were rejected and many calls for dialogue by efforts of Ethiopia’s respected elders, representatives of different religious faith were also thwarted by the TPLF leaders.
No Ethiopian missed the tears of PM Abiy’s peace minister pleading for peaceful settlement while in fact, the TPLF was preparing for war and believed it will march into Addis in a couple of weeks after its attack on the northern ENDF.
After TPLF’s attack on the ENDF northern command, a bite that eventually destroyed TPLF’s leadership, PM Abiy’s counter attack, described as a law enforcement action, left the remaining TPLF low level cadres roaming the country side of Mekele looting, sabotaging infrastructure and fabricating fake news. The TPLF is now designated a terrorist group by the Ethiopian parliament.
On May 26 , 2021 Senator Jim Inhofe (Oklahoma) , as if to remind the US State Department officials spoke on the senate floor saying that the Ethiopian government wants a peaceful resolution to the problem. He also said to equate the TPLF terrorist group in Tigray with the Ethiopian government is wrong and outrageous. Furthermore he said “I oppose the heavy handed visa restrictions from the Biden Administration. Ethiopia needs our support as they work to end the sectarian violence. Actions like this don’t help us get closer to a peaceful resolution”.
The US State Department official’s stated “Despite significant diplomatic engagement, the parties to the conflict in Tigray have taken no meaningful steps to end hostilities or pursue a peaceful resolution of the political crisis”.
This kind of hostile pressure on PM Abiy knowing the utter destruction of the TPLF leadership and rejection of the remaining terrorist cadres roaming the woods along with those who committed henious crimes in prison is unfair to PM Abiy’s government. It may turn out to be counter productive and as Ethiopia nears its historic national elections, we may see peaceful demonstrations across the Ethiopian
