The Impending Catastrophe of US' s Current Policy on Ethiopia

BY SOLOMON DIBABA

It is almost 118 years since Ethiopia and the US inked the first diplomatic relations on December 27, 1903 along with a “Treaty of Amity, Reciprocal Establishments and Commerce. On January 6, 1909, a US Legation was established in Addis Ababa and after four decades on November, 9, 1949 and Ethiopian Legation was established in Washington. The Point IV Agreement was signed between the two countries to work in partnership on education, agriculture, defense and other areas of development. In 1953, a Military Advisory Assistance Group code named MAAG was formed to assist Ethiopia on military matters. Between 1909- 1973, a US ground satellite station was established in Asmara to serve as a monitoring and listening post for US military and intelligence units to keep track of the activities of the former USSR and other countries which the US thought were sources of threats for her national interest in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea Littoral States.

A show down between the two states surfaced up in 1973, saw the overthrow of Emperor Haile Sellassie by a military coup d'état. In 1977 the Carter Administration ignored Ethiopian plight facing major geopolitical belligerence from Somalia backed by the Soviet Union. The rupture in friendly relations between the U.S. government and Derg, happened when the United States failed to honor the delivery of defensive military hardware to Ethiopia with the excuse of the Carter Doctrine of détente with the Soviets (Nye 2004).

Ethiopia was forced to go to Moscow, declare Marxism and Leninism, and offer Ethiopia’s government as an ideological client state of Soviet Union. The Soviet Union supplied Ethiopia by airlifting armaments worth 8 billion USD. The former German Democratic Republic, South Yemen and troops from Cuba supported the Ethiopian army which managed to suppress Ziad Baree’s dream of Greater Somalia in 1977. This period was a period of major betrayal of Ethiopia by the US which resulted in Ethiopian government embracing Scientific Socialism. The TPLF chose to sit on the fence and never cared to side with the peoples of Ethiopian when the western world headed by the US, NATO, The Arab League, Egypt allied and collaborated to destroy the statehood of Ethiopia.

TPLF dominated EPRDF ousted the Derge from power in 1991 through the close assistance of the USA, and the coordination of the then Under Secretary of State for African Affairs, Herman Cohen. Through specific political manipulation in and outside of Ethiopia, the London Conference endorsed the formation Transition Government headed by TPLF’s Melese Zenawi. The US managed to install pro-western transition government in Ethiopia with full alliance with the EPRDF.

TPLF ruled Ethiopia under the guise of EPRDF based on a constitution which allowed the self-determination of nations, nationalities and peoples as provided in article 39 of the constitution. When the TPLF government mercilessly conducted gross human rights violations and robbed the public property of the peoples of Ethiopia for over 27 years, the western countries and the US uttered no word in condemning the atrocities perpetrated by the EPRDF cadres and generals who managed to accumulate huge amount of financial resources and property in the name of democracy, federalism and good governance which they never practiced. Throughout all these years, the US was interested in keeping EPRDF on power in spite of the wide range of intelligence information it had on the crimes that TPLF has been committing in secret and official prisons it has managed.

Today however, when TPLF’s forces attacked the Northern Command, the Trump Administration depicted a false picture in which the Ethiopian army attacked TPLF and never condemned an attack on a friendly country. The US never acknowledged Ethiopia’s law enforcement actions in Tigray and accused Ethiopia of ethnic cleansing and genocide ignoring the fact that these crimes are actually committed by TPLF itself. The US was officially dead silent on the massacre in Mai Kadra, Humera and Metekel it sponsored. As part of its regional strategy to dismantle the political order in Ethiopia, the US allied behind Egypt and Sudan in countering Ethiopia’s legal right to build GERD and other dams in the country.

The international media outlets which are in service of TPLF and not the truth joined the global conspiracy against Ethiopia to reinstall the fascistic regime of TPLF to give it a second chance of dictatorial and hegemonic rule. Over the last three decades, the US was busy interfering into the internal affairs of countries and created political chaos and disintegration of public order in Iraq, Yemen, and Syria and recently Afghanistan and Libya. Now they are trying to implement the same policy of political balkanization in Ethiopia pausing as the champions of peace and reconciliation.

The point is, why is the US behaving as it is doing now? What are the impending serious dangers in this?

There are several reasons on why the US is plotting to destabilize the Horn of Africa and even the rest of the continent. Primarily the US attempts to plant puppet governments in the Horn and the rest of Africa to ensure that the US interest and not the interests of the peoples in Africa is properly met. Through these regimes, the US intends to compete with China which has far wider expanse of investments and future prospects of investment which are all free from political preconditions or prerequisites.

The US is attempting to apply the cold war policy of containment on Ethiopia by using sanctions and orchestrated media propaganda on the country. By reinstalling TPLF dominated government in Ethiopia, the US is trying to organize neo-colonial socio-economic policies that would make the country totally subservient to the US interest in Africa by using Ethiopia’s rootedness and positioning in the AU. The US is already focusing on importing a transition government for Ethiopia from Washington by organizing old politicians drawn from different ethnic groups without even caring to realize the interest of the people of Ethiopia who have now elected their own leaders.

However, the US is already taking actions that would finally not only tarnish US relations with the Ethiopian government and its people but also governments in all African countries that favor managing their own administration by themselves. Furthermore, by pulling out from Somalia and providing media and diplomatic support for totalitarian regimes on UNSC forums and by flirting with terrorist organizations like TPLF, the US is indirectly preparing a breeding ground for more terrorists to destabilize Africa and turn the continent into a regime of terror.

The entire actions and diplomatic maneuvers that are being conducted by the western powers and the US will lead to a regional war that could never be stopped or controlled. The US is now supporting TPLF to enable it to come to power.  However, the entire population in Ethiopia is in total mobilization to defend their country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

By supporting TPLF in a blindfolded manner, the US is repeating mistakes that it has committed in many countries wishing to dictate its interests on the peoples of the world by inciting bloodshed across the world. It is therefore incumbent upon the US to review its current policy on Ethiopia in a more balanced and rational way

The people of Ethiopia have now proved that they are ready to defend their sovereignty and territorial integrity more than ever. However, what the US is doing now in trying to give orders to a legitimate government of Ethiopia will result in a drastic change of attitude by the people of Ethiopia on a country and people they used to consider as friendly peoples and country. The people of the US should be able to differentiate between rhetoric, lies and propaganda by the TPLF against the reality on the ground. The Biden Administration is playing with fire that it could never control.