Many westerners trying to make sense of the events in the “dark continent” of Africa have many barriers standing in the way of their minds and reality. This must be the case, for without such filters of spin proclaiming Africa’s problems to be self-induced (or the consequence of Chinese debt slavery), we in the west, might actually feel horrified enough to demand systemic change. We might come to recognize that the plight of Africa has less to do with Africa and more to do with an intentional program of depopulation, and exploitation of vital resources.

Despite a rich history and over a billion people living on the continent, Africa suffers from the lowest per capita rates of electricity and potable water in the world. Of the 30,000 children who die needlessly each day from preventable causes (disease, water availability, hunger, etc), the majority are from Africa. Living standards are in turn abysmally low for the 340 million Africans who live in extreme poverty while insufficient healthcare infrastructure, and sanitation has resulted in a massive rate of infant mortality that reaches as high as 80-100 deaths per 1000 for many African nations.

To the degree that certain uncomfortable facts are kept obscured, this façade has been maintained.

Recently, a stone has been thrown at the glass artifice of false narratives that has attempted to maintain the belief that Africa’s problems arise from authoritarian governments or “not enough democracy”.

On November 23, a zoom conference call involving American, British and Finish and French diplomats went public, having been filmed and leaked by an unnamed participant. What made this zoom call relevant is that the topic of the call dealt with the need for regime change in Ethiopia, and the main speaker of the call was Berhane Gebre-Christos, former Ethiopian Foreign Minister (2010-2012) and now spokesman of the Tigray Peoples’ Liberation Movement. The call itself was hosted by the Peace and Development Center International which is a cardboard cut-out operation partnered with the National Endowment for Democracy and USAID (both proven CIA fronts) and set up days before the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front attacked Ethiopian government’s northern command on November 3, 2020 which launched a year of armed atrocities.

Featured among the participants of the conference call were none other than Vicki Huddleson (former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for African Affairs), Donald Yamamoto (former U.S. Ambassador to Somalia), Tim Clark (former EU ambassador to Ethiopia), Robert Dewar (former British Ambassador to Ethiopia) and a plethora of other rules-based orderistas. The point driven home is the need to force international pressure on the current Ethiopian government of Ahmed Abiy to treat the foreign supported insurgency of the TPLF as a legitimate group in arranging a restructured Ethiopian government OR simply depose of Abiy directly by all means necessary.

Despite the fact that the TPLF have been found complicit in trying to stage a civil war in Ethiopia and also having been caught using child soldiers, and using terrorism, the same Obama-era team running the Biden administration that carved up Sudan and brought about the humanitarian destruction of Libya and Syria have continued to give support to the rebels. Over the past months this has taken the form of sanctions, the cancelling of civilian loan programs affecting millions of lives, and consistently demanding Addis Ababa treats the rebels as a legitimate power broker.

Why the Regime Change Effort in Ethiopia?

The situation in Ethiopia is rather simple to understand as long as you don’t believe western media spin doctors.

For one, Ethiopia is the only nation of all sub-Saharan Africa to have successfully resisted colonization. Ethiopia is thus also among the economically most sovereign nations of Africa, capable of emitting sovereign bonds for large scale infrastructure projects (which it has done since 2011 to build the Grand Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile) and also one of the nations most interested in working closely with China and the emerging Belt and Road Initiative.

In recent years, Ethiopia has also resisted pressure to bend to the depopulation lobby which exerts vast influence across Washington, Brussels and London.

It hasn’t merely said no to depopulation regimes, but has driven forward with the construction of the largest infrastructure project seen on this continent for generations: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Once completed this dam will generate over 6200 megawatts (mW) of electricity for not only its own 118 million people, but for all of the Horn of Africa which currently represents 255 million souls. Most importantly, this dam, the largest in Africa’s history, will become a driver for industrial development for the entire continent, providing electricity for all residents and establishing a successful model for other nations across Africa to follow. With the growth of the multipolar order led by China’s successful win-win model of cooperation, idea of “managing poverty” in Africa is quickly becoming superseded by the higher drive to end poverty through industrial progress. This sentiment was loudly conveyed by leaders of the global south amidst the fanatical drive to impose de-carbonization regimes onto the entire globe during COP26.

Ethiopia has been one of the closest friends to China, which has provided expert training, funding and diplomatic assistance to Addis Ababa in recent years (which is an active member of the Belt and Road Initiative). Among the top Chinese-sponsored projects is the 756 km Addis Ababa- Djibouti standard gauge railway which has connected the landlocked Ethiopia with its Red Sea neighbor and driven home new industrial corridors that the World Bank had never permitted in the nation.

Although the construction of the Grand Renaissance Dam had been envisioned by the great Pan African leader Haile Selassie (and assisted with engineering surveys conducted by the United States of JFK), the project was killed with Selassie’s ouster in 1974, and only revived in 2011 through the tireless efforts of the late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Early on, a talented engineer and nation builder was recruited to oversea the construction of the project named Simegnew Bekele. Sigmenew had overseen the construction of several major hydroelectric dams in Ethiopia and became known as “the public face of the GERD” until he was suicided in his car in 2018. When western powers refused to finance the dam, Ethiopia decided to do it themselves by rallying the population to purchase $5 billion in bonds which is ironically exactly how Abraham Lincoln financed the trans-continental railway during the Civil War and how the USA paid for much of WWII.

China’s presence in Ethiopia frightens many western game masters who are afraid of losing Africa to the prospect of win-win cooperation as they have already begun to lose the Middle East. In March 2021, the two nations signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “protect major projects under the BRI framework”, with Ethiopia’s Commissioner General stating:

“Ethiopia and China are countries with long history, ancient civilization, and splendid culture. To achieve our goal, the support from China and its esteemed embassy plays a significant role… We like to see a continuation of our joint efforts for building a long-term and strategic partnership and today’s event comes at an important moment.”

More recently, on December 2, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited PM Abiy and recommitted China to defend Ethiopia’s sovereignty. Standing next to Abiy, Wang Yi stated: “China will not interfere in internal affairs of any countries. We don’t interfere in the internal affairs of Ethiopia as well”. Speaking to those seeking to sever the two nations, Wang Yi also said the “Ethio-China friendship is very solid and unbreakable.”

Having failed to break the Belt and Road Initiative’s growth within the center of Mackinder’s World Island with Russia stopping the regime change operation in Syria during the dark years of Obama, and now China extending a powerful vision of east-west development corridors through the Middle East, the same bag of tricks has been deployed to Ethiopia using rebel fighters from the Horn of Africa.

The TPLF: More Terror and Less Rebel

The Tigray Peoples Liberation Front (now renamed the Tigray Defense Forces) are not a “democratic peoples’ movement” as western propaganda portrays.

In fact, this group has been caught conducting mass atrocities across occupied cities like Mai Kadra and Lalibela, broken cease fire treaties, using child soldiers and working closely with foreign Anglo-American interests in pushing regime change in Ethiopia as the leaked Zoom conference call demonstrates. Anyone doubting these claims need only read the rigorously compiled essays produced by one of the most competent investigative journalists Jeff Pearce living in Ethiopia whose articles can be found here.

In fact, only one month ago, on November 5, the TPLF announced a new “United Front of Ethiopian Federalist and Confederalist Forces” at the National Press Club in… Washington D.C.! This new insurgency group has attempted to link as many ethnic minority interests of Ethiopia together under one umbrella organization in order to project a semblance of legitimacy to this obviously undemocratic operation. The group’s press release stated: “This united front is being formed in response to the scores of crises facing the country; to reverse the harmful effects of the Abiy Ahmed rule on the peoples of Ethiopia and beyond; and in recognition of the great need to collaborate and join forces towards a safe transition in the country.”

At the press conference Berhane Gebre-Christos threatened the government of Adiy saying: “We’re trying to bring an end to this terrible situation in Ethiopia, which is created single-handedly by the Abiy government. Time is running out for him.”

It’s all Perception

The fact is, that none of these groups has the means to actualize their objectives under current conditions, with the Ethiopian population both in Africa and among the diaspora rejecting the western-directed propaganda. Protests across the world in defense of Ethiopian sovereignty, and the government’s success in combatting these scattered rebel forces indicates that reality is far different from the projection which perception managers wish be believed.

Just as we were told repeatedly that Venezuela would fall to the democratic movement of Juan Juan Guaidó, or that Navalny’s democracy forces would depose of Putin’s authoritarian system, or that Syrian rebel forces would topple the “Butcher Assad”, or that Hong Kong and Taiwan would certainly win their freedom from evil Beijing… the rulers of the unipolar system have shown themselves to be little more than modern day illusionists caught one too many times trying to scam credulous townsfolk.

As Geopolitics.Press outlined in extraordinary detail, the replication of perception management operations used in Syria have taken the form of the Command and Control Fusion Center (C2FC) based in Kenya which gives the U.S. Government the ability to “conduct cohesive multi-pronged operations against the Government of Ethiopia across the domains of economic, information, diplomatic and kinetic warfare”… [the C2FC] has delegated some of its tasks to disparate subsidiary fusion cells that enjoy some degree of operational autonomy but organizational dependence on the fusion center.”

The Danger of Libya 2.0

If this fails, as it will, the greater danger waiting in the wings, is that the trans Atlantic population will be so confused and misinformed about the nature of the Ethiopian crisis that they will give their consent to a U.S.-led attack onto the nation, as was done in Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11. In a November 9, 2021 Bloomberg op ed former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO, James Stavridis called for American-led forces to intervene into the civil war both “to counter Chinese influence” and avoid a new Rwandan-style massacre from occurring.

African analyst Lawrence Freeman, recently echoed this danger eloquently in an interview with the Addis Media Network on November 18 saying:

“The enemies of Ethiopia will use humanitarian concerns as an excuse to potentially deploy military forces under the pretext of protecting the Ethiopian people from their own government. This doctrine, known as R2P-the responsibility to protect- was created by George Soros and Tony Blair. Samantha Power and others in the Obama administration used R2P to justify the overthrow of President Kaddafi and the destruction of Libya.”

The author delivered an interview on this topic to Ethiopia’s Prime Media which can be viewed here:

By TJ COLES

The World Food Program recently reported that 7 million Ethiopians across three northern states—Afar, Amhara, and Tigray—risk starvation: more than 5 million of whom are in Tigray; a region that borders Eritrea and consists of seven million Ethiopians. The governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea are united against the potentially secessionist Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. As usual in war, ordinary civilians pay the price.

But over the years, the Pentagon has armed and trained the Ethiopian military. While feigning concern for human rights, Washington appears to be taking a “wait-and-see” approach, especially as the current Ethiopian government has fallen out of favor with the US. History shows that successive US governments have had an ambivalent relationship with Ethiopia, but over the last three decades have modernized the nation’s military and expanded their footprint under the guise of peacekeeper training programs and the blurring of civil-military infrastructure and aid projects.

Ethiopia: a “centerpiece of US policy” after WWII

Ethiopia is Africa’s second most populous country and seventh largest economy in terms of GDP, with the top one percent owning as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent. The average annual income of its over 110 million people is $850, with 26 million Ethiopians mired in absolute poverty. 

Its people include ethnic Oromo (around 35 percent of the population), Amhara (28 percent), Tigray (7 percent), Sidama (4 percent), and Welayta (3 percent), with dozens of other groups including Somali making up the remaining percentages.

The CIA described post-WWII Ethiopia as “the centerpiece of US policy in the Horn of Africa.” It borders Britain’s former colonies Kenya, Sudan and oil-rich South Sudan, and Somalia, which has a coastline on the strategic chokepoint, the Gulf of Aden. It also borders and used to control the former Italian and British colony, Eritrea, which has a coastline on another chokepoint, the Red Sea, and borders the former French colony, Djibouti, which sits on both the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. Djibouti hosts a US military base, as well as China’s sole foreign military base.

From the outset of the post-WWII, US-led world order, the US foreign policy establishment sought to balance its relationships with Ethiopia, then ruled by Emperor Haile Selassie, and Eritrea, which Selassie annexed. At the United Nations, Washington suggested that Ethiopia be granted access to Eritrea’s ports but that occupied Eritrea gradually become a “federated” region of Ethiopia.

The main US military interest in Eritrea at the time was the Kagnew Station in the capital, Asmara. Kagnew afforded the Pentagon communications and interception capabilities across the continent and parts of the oil-rich Middle East, including spying on Soviet moves. Selassie sent over a thousand troops to back the Americans during the Korean War (1950-53) and later in Congo.

In 1953, Ethiopia signed a Mutual Defense Agreement with the US, receiving millions of dollars-worth of arms and training for 23,000 troops under a Military Assistance Advisory Group designed, in large part, to keep the country out of the Soviet sphere.

Because Ethiopia was not considered to be vitally important to the US, quantities of military aid were considerably smaller than Selassie would have preferred. Selassie feared a lack of American support in the event of an Eritrean or Somali invasion. Nevertheless, US Lt. Col. W.H. Crosson worked with Selassie loyalists to crush an internal coup against the Emperor in December 1960. Fearing that Selassie’s regime could fall, planners suggested that the US “seek to establish effective relations with the emerging group of middle-level, educated, reform-minded government and military officials who are the presumptive heirs to power.”

As we shall see, the current Washington policy towards potential allies also appears to be one of stepping back and waiting to see who wins.

The US manages “an embarrassing but reliable client”

Foreign “aid” may have the unintended consequence of helping poor people, but the underlying objective is propaganda. “Aid” has become a psychological weapon designed to present a positive image of what amounts to an occupation force. The second objective is to lay the infrastructural and cultural groundwork for private companies to take over public utilities and services.

The US Agency for International Development (USAID) began operations in Ethiopia in 1962. A report two years’ later explained that “US objectives in Ethiopia” include maintaining access to Kagnew, nudging Selassie to adopt “reforms” so that the impoverished do no overthrow him, all the while preventing “civil disorder,” denying the Soviets access to Ethiopia, and ensuring the “[a]doption by the Ethiopia Government of positions favorable to U.S. interests.”

“Aid” in the form of water, sanitation, education, and medical assistance designed to foster “a pro-Western orientation” continued to flow.

In 1974, the young Marxist Colonel, Mengistu Haile Mariam, an ethnic Oromo, led the Coordinating Committee of the Armed Forces, Police and Territorial Army (Derg) and overthrew Selassie. The events triggered the so-called Ethiopian Civil War, which actually involved rival Eritrean independence groups who battled until the ephemeral peace of 1991. Two academics from the period note: “the U.S. supports the Ethiopian military government by sending munitions to prolong the war. It is certain that Eritreans will neither forget nor forgive.”

A US Army publication notes that Derg soldiers, “a number of whom were trained by the U.S. military either in Ethiopia or in the US, … touched off a bloody purge in which thousands of Ethiopians were killed or tortured.” The “purge” included attacks on fellow Marxists of a different faction who were ethnic Tigray, leading them to form the Tigray People’s Liberation Front.

In the words of the Library of Congress’ Federal Research Division, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger expressed “uneasiness with Ethiopia’s violations of human rights and growing leftist tendencies.” Their strategy consisted of waiting and seeing how Mengistu’s regime played out, whether it would spout socialism while bending to Washington’s will or whether it would move closer to the USSR.

Until the Revolution of 1977, the CIA regarded Mengistu as “a difficult, occasionally embarrassing, but relatively reliable client of the US.” After the Revolution, Mengistu turned to China, Cuba, and the Soviets. The CIA saw Ethiopia as a lost cause. “The elimination of Mengistu … would probably be followed by a military government with generally similar objectives.”

Between 1981 and ‘82, US “aid” to Ethiopia was terminated.

US schools peacekeepers in Ethiopia with an “absence of peace-enforcement training”

In 1991, an umbrella of ethnic political groups calling itself the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, led by the ethnic Tigrayan, Meles Zenawi, overthrew Mengistu. In 1993, US “aid” resumed on the condition of massive privatization to advance business interests like the pesticide industry.

Following the Rwanda genocide and the new doctrine of “humanitarian intervention” recently tested in Somalia through the US military’s “Operation Restore Hope,” American military training resumed, but this time under the PR-friendly banner of “peacekeeping.” It turned out that peacekeeping meant subsidizing weapons contractors.

In 1996, former Secretary of State Warren Christopher launched ACRI: the African Crisis Response Initiative, which “offers training and equipment to African nations who seek to enhance their peacekeeping capabilities.” In 1998, 70 US trainers began instructing Ethiopian battalions and brigades. The Bill Clinton White House noted at the time: “Non-governmental and private organizations are invited to participate in the training.”

The weapons company Northrop Grumman boasted that that it “has supported the African Crisis Response Initiative/African Contingency Operations Training and Assistance program since its inception in 1998 and designed the initial training and materials as well as conducted computer assisted peacekeeping exercises.” Marine Captain Emmanuel T. Carper said of the PR: “In order to make ACRI more palatable and assuage fears of U.S military occupation of Africa, the decision was made to put ACRI under the management of the State Department,” instead of the Pentagon.

The program was delayed because in 1998, Eritrea fought what became a two-year border war with Ethiopia. In the end, the US was forced to cancel its ACRI program because “peacekeeper” training would look like what it actually was: warfighter training.

However, the US and Ethiopia initiated an annual exercise called Natural Fire the same year that ACRI fell apart. Now, under the auspices of “Justified Accord,” various African nations host annual joint exercises that include the militaries of non-African states, such as the UK and the Netherlands. In addition to training for “peacekeeping,” such as contributing to the African Union’s Somalia Mission, academic classes also refine military doctrine.

US Air Force Colonel, Russell J. Handy, cites ACRI’s “absence of peace-enforcement training,” which suggests that “peacekeeping” was a PR façade.

Under George W. Bush (2001-09), ACRI became ACOTA: Africa Contingency Operations Training Assistance. In 2004, Marine Captain Carper, was assigned to ACOTA.

“I was the only active duty Marine on a team of 11 people. Nine were contractors from Northrop Grumman Technical Services,” Carper reflected.

Peacekeeping, he said, turned out to be training for “crowd control” at a base on the Bilate River in Ethiopia’s central-southwest region. Carper concluded: “ACOTA was not an effective allocation of resources for a long term capacity building program, because it does not combat the root causes of insecurity in Africa which are poverty, illiteracy, and disease.”

Political warfare masked as humanitarian aid

Donovan C. Chau is an Associate Professor of Political Science at California University, and former Subject Matter Expert at the Army Medical Research and Development Command. In 2007, he wrote for the US Army War College’s Institute for Strategic Studies.

Chau explained that US military personnel had been digging water-wells and rescuing cheetah cubs from cruelty. At the same time, China was digging boreholes in Nigeria. Chau defines both powers’ acts as “political warfare”: “Both the United States and the [People’s Republic of China (PRC)] were using nonviolent means in a coordinated (or semi-coordinated) manner to directly affect the targeted population. They were using political warfare to achieve their national objectives.”

Under the “political warfare” concept, troops on the ground are repackaged as providers of humanitarian relief in zones prone to drought, famine, viruses, and underinvestment. This occupation-by-assistance doctrine is a form of psychological warfare that cements bonds between local populations and foreign (in this case US) soldiers, who blend civilian infrastructure and logistics programs with quasi-occupation. Other units call it WHAM: Winning Hearts and Minds.

In addition to WHAM/political warfare, the US Army Africa’s Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) launched a “train the trainer” program.

The US Army said that with 200,000 personnel, the Ethiopian National Defense Forces are, “in the eyes of U.S. policymakers, a force for stability,” meaning a potential proxy for US wars in Africa. In Guam, America’s Micronesian island territory, the 1^st Infantry Division 1^st Battalion, 16^th Infantry Regiment, and the Guam National Guard trained Ethiopian soldiers “in basic infantry tactics, non-commissioned officer skills and officer logistics.” The US Army specifically cited “Muslim militants in Somalia, and the ongoing threat of war with its breakaway rival, Eritrea,” as justifications for military involvement in Ethiopia.

In June 2009, following requests from the Ethiopian government, the CJTF-HOA authorized non-commissioned officers (NCOs) to “mentor” their Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) counterparts. NCOs from the 2^nd Battalion’s 18^th Field Artillery Regiment, Fort Still, Oklahoma, participated in a “train the trainer” program, teaching students about the roles of sergeant majors; a new rank in the ENDF. AFRICOM sergeants also assisted, teaching “operations, communication and logistics.”

In August, the program was expanded to include the Ethiopian Defense Command and Staff College. Initiated by US Army Central, four Army Reserve lieutenant colonels and a US Air Force lt. col. trained their would-be counterparts in “strategy, leadership, joint operations, military communication, research methods and English.” In October 2009, AFRICOM assumed command of “train the trainer.”

AFRICOM takes charge

The Stuttgart, Germany-based AFRICOM assists the African Union’s Peace Support Operations Division through its C4 doctrine: Command, Control, Communications and Computers. These communications are coordinated through Addis Ababa’s Peace Support Operations Center.

The transition to a whole-of-government approach included exercises broadcasting information about viral outbreaks. In such scenarios, the militarization of everything — from public health messaging to literal bridge building to famine relief — is normalized. In 2010, 36 states met in Ghana for Africa Endeavor, an AFRICOM-led military coordination exercise with the African Union’s Standby Force. Endeavor used Ethiopia as a base from which to facilitate the Union’s first successful satellite link-up.

As the modernization of the military continued into 2011, international “aid” programs, including those of the World Bank and UK Department for International Development, supported Ethiopia’s so-called Protection of Basic Services (PBS) project: a scheme to push 1.5 million farmers and pastoralists off their lands into villages, supposedly for their own health. In Gambella in the west, PBS was “accompanied by violence, including beatings and arbitrary arrests, and insufficient consultation and compensation,” in the words of Human Rights Watch.

In Negele, a town in southeastern Ethiopia, the US Naval Mobile Construction Battalion (“Seabees”) led a bridge building project to connect two villages. Under this propaganda-in-action model, residents “welcom[ed] the Civil Affairs team and the Navy Seabee team to their community and expressed that the Negele community is now their home.” Civil Affairs Team chief, Major Antonio Gonzalez, noted that in addition to the bridge, US-led teams have distributed mosquito nets and founded a Veterinary Civic Action Program.

In August 2012, Specialist Anthony Serna of the 345^th Tactical Psychological Operations Company (Airborne), said: “One of the biggest things I want to accomplish … is to get the local media involved; where traditionally I would put out a mission directly. (I want to) bring the reports to the local [Medical Civic Action and Veterinary Civic Action Programs] so they can tell their people in their own words with their own feelings.”

In other words: Set the scene and let the “natives” tell the Pentagon’s story so it doesn’t seem like propaganda.

In an example of merged military roles, Serna met with Civil Affairs Team Specialist Alissa Anderson and Seabee Petty Officer Kasey Dotson. Anderson said: “I feel that now I’m getting the full spectrum of what the military can do.”

The cynicism of “political warfare” knows no bounds. In September 2012, Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa soldiers were sent to deliver “care packages to a local orphanage” in Dire Dawa in the northeast.  US Army Captain and 3-124^th Cavalry Chaplain, Brett Anderson, said of US forces and the orphanage: “we spend a lot of time there.” Lt. Jose Muñoz revealed that the Seabees had “installed showerheads and electrics for a water pump.”

A schoolboy saw the US forces and was asked what he wanted to be when he matured. “Construction,” he said.

The US watches the blood flow in the Tigray war

The 28-year rule of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), the ethnic umbrella party, ended in 2019. The Tigray PM, Meles Zenawi, died in 2012. With US military support, his successor, PM Hailemariam Desalegn, an ethnic Wolayta, oversaw what Human Rights Watch describes as “crackdowns on opposition political party members, journalists, and peaceful protesters, many of whom experienced harassment, arbitrary arrest, and politically motivated prosecutions.” Victims included Muslims who were abused under “anti-terror” legislation and ethnic Oromo, whose Liberation Front threatened the power of the central authorities.

The young ethnic Oromo, Abiy Ahmed Ali, took office in 2018, winning the Nobel Peace for negotiating a settlement with Eritrea, whose government had been supporting Oromo independence movements in a strategic move against the central Ethiopian regime. Abiy dissolved the EPRDF and formed a new coalition, the Prosperity Party. Refusing to join, the once-dominant Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) saw Prosperity as an effort to destroy the ethnic federal model and an attempt to centralize power.

In November 2020, Tigray forces were held responsible for attacking a military base. President Abiy, the Nobel Peace Laureate, sent troops to the Tigray region. Failing to mention the years of US training, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) acknowledges that “[a]buses against civilians in Tigray by government-aligned forces have reportedly fueled insurgent recruitment.” Politically, many ethnic Afar and Amhara were aligned with the neighboring Tigray. Abiy has de facto embargoed the three regions, leading the Tigray Defense Force to try to break the blockade. In May 2021, Abiy designated the TPLF a terrorist group.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently alleged “human rights violations, abuses, and atrocities” carried out against the Tigray people by the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea while emphasizing the importance of “the sovereignty, national unity, and territorial integrity of Ethiopia.”

Trying to balance all sides is a common theme. “[F]or the first time years,” says the CRS, the US “aid” program in Ethiopia does not include the International Military Education and Training program, implying that the atrocities against Afar, Amhara, and Tigray are being conducting in part thanks to previous US training.

But why would Washington care about the atrocities it spent decades indirectly helping to facilitate? The answer probably lies in Ethiopia’s shifting allegiances.

Noted above is long-standing concern over China’s alleged “political warfare” in Africa. In September 2019, Fort Leavenworth’s Lewis and Clark Center hosted a panel discussion on Russian and Chinese “soft power” in Africa. In an effort to heighten concern among US foreign policy elites about alleged Chinese influence, the panel’s “target audience” included Army schools, Regionally Aligned Forces, universities, think tanks, and interagency partners.

Ethiopia’s friction with the US has been compounded by President Abiy’s recent military contracts with Turkey, which in recent years has drifted from Washington’s orbit, as well as growing alliances with Iran, a long-term US target. Tensions manifested when Ethiopia recently snubbed Samantha Power, the hyper-interventionist head of the US Agency for International Development.

Although Ethiopia is located in a strategically important region, Washington has traditionally taken an ambivalent attitude because the country itself is less relevant to the US domination of Africa. Ignoring its own role in enabling the ongoing wave of human rights abuses, Washington appears to be sitting back and watching the war unfold.

If the historical precedent is anything to go by, the current approach is to forge an alliance with the victor after the bloodletting finally ends.

thegrayzone.com

Inaccurate Assumptions About Algeria

Algerian President Bouteflika’s surprise about-face in going back on his previous decision to run for a fifth consecutive term in office has been the talk of Africa the entire week, with this announcement taking many off guard but nonetheless largely being met with universal applause as the most responsible recourse to avoid an outbreak of violence in this strategically positioned North African state. The country had been experiencing an unprecedented wave of peaceful protests in reaction to his originally declared candidacy fed by the majority-youthful population’s indignation at high unemployment and a stagnant economy, to say nothing of how insulted they felt that an elderly leader who is speculated to be physically and perhaps even mentally incapacitated after suffering a 2013 stroke would be put forth once more as the face of the nation by what are thought to be his powerful military-intelligence “deep state” handlers.

A lot has already been written about what might come next in Algeria, but most observers are either analyzing events in a vacuum or are making predictable comparisons to the 2011 “Arab Spring” theater-wide Color Revolutions, neither of which are entirely accurate because they both miss the fact that Algeria represents the eighth non-electoral regime change in Africa in as many years and is therefore just the latest manifestation of a larger trend that has hitherto not yet been brought to the public’s attention. It’s true that there are shades of the “Arab Spring” in what’s presently taking place in Algeria, but simply stopping there doesn’t do the country justice because it misleadingly implies that foreign powers had a predominant hand in guiding the course of events there. It also overlooks everything else of regime change relevance that took place in the continent over the past eight years and therefore inaccurately assumes that this is a one-off event unrelated to anything prior.

Rolling Regime Changes

For simplicity’s sake, here’s a breakdown of the most pertinent events apart from the Algerian one that was just described, including the two non-electoral regime change attempts that failed, two electoral ones that deserve mention for reasons that will be explained below, and a short international intervention in support of a mostly forgotten regime change operation:

* 2011-2012 “Arab Spring” Events In Tunisia, Egypt, And Libya:

The whole world is aware of what happened during that time so there isn’t much need to rehash it other than to point out the author’s interpretation of those events as an externally provoked theater-wide regime change campaign that was originally intended to replace long-serving secular governments with Turkish-aligned Muslim Brotherhood ones prior to the inevitable leadership transition that would eventually take place after their elderly leaders pass away.

The whole point in preempting this process and artificially accelerating it was to ensure that their successors would remain geopolitically loyal to the US, which couldn’t be guaranteed if this “changing of the guard” was “allowed” to occur “naturally”. Moreover, the US thought that it could weaponize the semi-populist appeal of political Islam in those countries in order to portray its proxies as having the “genuine” support of the public. This nevertheless backfired in Egypt but was ultimately manageable.

* 2014 Burkina Faso:

The sudden onset of progressively violent protests in response to long-serving President Blaise Compaoré’s attempts to change the constitution to run for yet another term quickly resulted in a regime change that was briefly challenged a year later by loyalist special forces in a failed coup. Some observers predicted that the “Burkinabe Revolution” would trigger an “African Spring” against other rulers who had been in office for decades and also were speculated to soon announce their intent to follow in Compaoré’s footsteps and change their own constitutions as well, though this forecast didn’t unfold as expected.

Still, the 2014 Burkina Faso regime change could in hindsight be seen as evidence that genuine (as in, not externally provoked, guided, and/or hijacked) protests are capable of unseating entrenched governments and the permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucratic structures (“deep state”) behind them. It should also be noted that the international community recognized Compaoré’s resignation and subsequent decision to go into self-imposed exile (thought to be motivated by his desire to evade justice for his alleged corruption and other crimes by the post-coup authorities) whereas they were against the military coup attempt by his loyalists a year later.

* 2017 The Gambia:

Most of the world has forgotten about it and barely anyone paid much attention to it at the time anyhow, but a Senegalese-led ECOWAS military intervention toppled Gambian President Jammeh at the beginning of the year after he refused to step down from office following his electoral loss a month prior in December 2016. The leader of this tiny sliver of an African state was also becoming internationally reviled by the West even before the 2016 election because of his decision to withdraw from the Commonwealth of Nations and begin the process of doing the same when it came to the International Criminal Court. In addition, his 2015 declaration of an Islamic Republic also earned him the West’s consternation, not that they needed any other excuses given the aforementioned.

The Gambian case study somewhat mirrors the controversial French-led UN intervention that took place in the Ivory Coast in 2011 following a similarly disputed election a few months prior, though the Ivorian leader wasn’t as lucky as his Gambian counterpart in that he was captured by French-backed forces and extradited to The Hague, where he was charged with war crimes but eventually acquitted earlier this year. The lesson to be had from both the Ivory Coast and The Gambia is that international coalitions can be assembled to remove recalcitrant leaders from office who refuse to accept electoral results, though this is less of a “rule” and more of a trend, though one that might gain support at home and/or abroad if it follows highly publicized protests that give the intervention the pretense of legitimacy (whether genuine or not).

* 2017 Angola:

This rising power in Southern Africa experienced a democratic transfer of power that summer from revolutionary leader Jose Eduardo dos Santos to fellow MPLA member and designated successor João Lourenço in what was initially thought by many to be a carefully coordinated “shuffling of the cards” by the Angolan “deep state” but which eventually proved to be a “deep state” coup after Lourenço quickly went to work eradicating the power structure that his predecessor implemented and even going after the former “royal family” (in particular, his daughter [who’s also Africa’s richest woman and its first female billionaire] and son on corruption charges). Suffice to say, this was a shock for many, though generally a pleasant one for most.

The abovementioned events prove that sometimes the “deep state” is the most influential force driving regime change in certain countries, namely those with post-war revolutionary parties that still remain in power. It’ll turn out that Angola might have been an inspiration for what later took place in Ethiopia and just occurred in Algeria, albeit with both unfolding under slightly different circumstances and in varying ways, but the point is that the so-called “powers that be” might either be engaged in serious infighting among themselves and/or decide that the most responsible course of action in the name of national stability is either “shuffle the cards” or carry out a genuine regime change behind the scenes to preemptively or reactively quell (potentially) destabilizing (anti-corruption-driven or election-related) unrest.

* 2017 Zimbabwe:

The tail end of 2017 saw the Zimbabwean military carry out a de-facto coup against nonagenarian revolutionary leader Robert Mugabe during a period of rising civil society unrest in this economically destitute country. Barely anyone disputes that this was indeed a military coup, and one that was possibly partially inspired by Mugabe’s controversial grooming of his wife as his successor at the expense of the ZANU-PF political and military elite, but it wasn’t legally recognized as such abroad because otherwise the African Union and other actors would have been compelled to impose varying degrees of sanctions against the country in response.

This interestingly shows that some military coups are supported by the so-called “international community” while others such as the soon-to-be-described Gabonese attempt earlier this year aren’t, suggesting  that there might be certain criteria involved in determining whether such seizures of power (or attempts thereof) will be (even begrudgingly) accepted abroad or not. The 2005 and 2008 Mauritanian military ones and the 2010 Nigerien one weren’t endorsed by the world but serious actions weren’t taken to isolate them both because they uncontestably succeeded and also out of concern for destabilizing the security situation in the terrorist-afflicted West African region.

* 2018 South Africa:

Jacob Zuma was pressured to resign in early 2018 due to what many have interpreted as being a “deep state” coup against him carried out by a rival faction of the ruling ANC led by his eventual successor Ramaphosa. Party infighting heated up after the BRICS leader found himself ensnared in corruption scandals that may or may not have been tacitly facilitated by his rivals, with all of this occurring against the backdrop of rising anti-government unrest and the increasing appeal of opposition parties. Whether out of the pursuit of pure power and/or sensing that the party needed to change both its external branding and internal policies in order to remain in power, Ramaphosa eventually deposed Zuma and took the reins of this rising African Great Power despite the electorate never voting him into office.

The 2018 situation in South Africa showed that even the most outwardly stable of the continent’s countries and the one most highly regarded by the “international community” (both Western and non-Western alike, the latter in regards to BRICS) can experience a non-electoral regime change, albeit one that was mostly executed behind the scenes following an intertwined pressure campaign by the public and the ruling party’s rival faction that aspired to enter into power. In a sense, South Africa – which is generally considered to be one of Africa’s most vibrant democracies – set the tone for the rest of the continent because the message that it sent was that all of its peers could potentially do the same without any external criticism being levelled against them whatsoever so long as they pulled it off smoothly and labelled it an “internal affair”.

* 2018 Ethiopia:

Ethiopia captivated the world’s imagination after its post-war ruling party decided upon the relatively young 41-year-old former military intelligence officer Abiy Ahmed to be its new leader following the outbreak of violent unrest in 2016 that threatened to return Africa’s second most populous country to civil war. To make a long story short, Abiy is of the Oromo ethnicity that represents the country’s largest plurality but which has traditionally been underrepresented in its ruling class, especially following the rise to power of the Tigray-led EPRDF, but he swiftly got to work dismantling the party’s “old guard” in what can only be described as a “deep state” coup with overwhelming public support. Importantly, he also made peace with neighboring Eritrea and put the two fraternal people’s lingering tensions behind them as they jointly embarked on crafting a new regional future for the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia set the precedent whereby large-scale unrest might serve as an incentive for responsible factions of the “deep state” to carry out a coup against their ruling rivals, building upon the Angolan antecedent in that the Southern African case didn’t occur in response to any significant protests or outbreak of violence like the one in the Horn of Africa did.  The events in Ethiopia are also evidence that even the most entrenched and militarily powerful “deep states” are comprised of diverse factions, some of which have radically different ideas than the ruling ones, as might turn out to be the case in Algeria too depending on how the situation there unfolds. The main point, however, is that “deep state” factions might use naturally occurring or externally provoked unrest as their pretext for rising to power behind the scenes and ultimately in public.

* 2018 Comoros:

It’s difficult to categorize what exactly took place last year in the island nation, but it can most objectively be summed up as a semi-popular and possibly externally influenced attempt to actively challenge the country’s regional center by a peripheral unit that felt disenfranchised by democratically instituted constitutional reforms that removed the coup-prone state’s rotating presidency clause. There was briefly fear that Anjouan would attempt to secede from the union once more and that this scenario might provoke another international intervention to restore national unity like what took place in 2008, but these were abated after the military quickly restored law and order after dislodging the couple dozen fighters who attempted to take over that part of the country.

What’s important to pay attention to is that intra-state regional disputes could dangerously create the pretext for nationwide or provincial regime changes depending on how the course of escalating political events develops. The Comorian President in this case is thought to have taken advantage of his home region’s demographic (and consequently, electoral) dominance to legitimize his bid to remain in power, demonstrating a variant of other reform methods that have been attempted elsewhere in Africa but custom-tailored to his country’s specific situation. Even though some members of the international community criticized last summer’s referendum, they still accepted it because his initiative did in fact democratically win, even if the odds were stacked in his favor per the demographic factor that was just described.

* 2018-2019 Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC):

There was global trepidation for the past year after former President Kabila delayed his country’s first-ever democratic transfer of power for logistical reasons that he would try to change the constitution to remain in power indefinitely, something that his traditional Western  backers pressured him not to do while his new Chinese patron remained silent about on the basis that its political process is an internal affair (though its strategic cobalt interests there might have played a role in its position to stay on the good side of the government). The country gradually slid into an undeclared state of low-level civil war that could more accurately be described as a hybrid one and which could have exploded on command into a much larger conflict had he not unexpectedly reached a speculated deal with one of the opposition leaders to supposedly allow Tshisekedi to replace Kabila while the former strongman would remain the “grey cardinal” after his party came out on top in the parliamentary elections.

International media and local activists decried this stunt as a blatant undermining of what should have been a democratic transfer of power that some observers said would have rightly resulted in Fayulu winning had the vote truly been free and fair, but that candidate posed the greatest threat to the Congolese “deep state” that owes its lucrative existence to Kabila and was – as the narrative goes – sidelined in favor of Tshsekedi, the son of a well-known opposition leader. This can be seen as a hybrid form of both an “internationally recognized” election and a “deep state” coup, the former of which was universally recognized probably because of the multilateral interests involved in retaining stability in the mineral-rich country (at least for the time being) while the latter was suppressed in order not to sully the optics of the DRC’s “first-ever democratic transfer of power” (and consequently the soft power of those who endorsed Kabila’s cunning plan).

* 2019 Gabon:

As was touched upon earlier, there was a failed attempt to stage a military coup in the economically stratified and politically polarized country of Gabon where an ageing and ailing leader continues to rule as part of a political dynasty that’s been in power for over half a century. The regime change operation was quickly put down by the rest of the military forces that didn’t join in the coup, though the event succeeded in shedding global light on the underlying tensions prevalent in this OPEC member country. It also temporarily raised concerns about whether the French would use their in-country military forces to aid the embattled government and “restore democracy” if the rebels succeeded in seizing power from their proxy.

Because of its sudden onset and abrupt end, the international community had no choice but to reactively condemn it like they always usually do whenever something of the sort happens, but it might have been begrudgingly accepted just like the Mauritanian and Nigerien ones that preceded it earlier along this timeline if it succeeded without any serious resistance. That wasn’t the case in Gabon because it seemed like the military faction of the “deep state” is satisfied with President Bongo, possibly due to some behind-the-scenes patronage relationship, and therefore wouldn’t want to sacrifice their own self-interests even in the name of settling a still-lingering electoral dispute that sharply divided the nation a few years prior.

Key Variables

In view of the insight that can be gleaned from the abovementioned ten examples, it’s possible to identify the key variables that pertain to each targeted leader, the trigger event for the non-electoral regime change operation, and the determining factors behind its success or lack thereof:

Targets:

The typical target seems to be a long-serving elderly leader with speculative health concerns who represents a power structure (whether his own or inherited) that increasingly large segments of the population and/or a faction of his “deep state” has come to believe (whether on their own or with foreign infowar and NGO “nudging”) doesn’t support their interests. They’re also usually plagued by accusations of corruption (whether real, exaggerated, or false) that serve to incite unrest during periods of nationwide economic hardship caused by either systemic mismanagement, Hybrid War, and/or a drop in the price of primary exports (oil, commodities, etc.).

Triggers:

It’s usually the case that something directly or indirectly related to an impending “changing of the guard” or political transition triggers the non-electoral regime change movement, be it efforts by the incumbent to change the constitution in order to run for another term, declaring their candidacy for the x-consecutive time after already serving for many years, fears by a “deep state” faction that the incumbent will lose the next election and therefore lead to their successor possibly dismantling the power structure they inherit (usually on “anti-corruption” grounds for populist appeal), a disputed election, or in the case of the “Arab Spring”, the perception of so-called “regional momentum”.

Determinants:

Most non-electoral regime changes succeed because of factors beyond the public’s view, namely the state of affairs within the “deep state” and in particular the loyalty of the military forces that enjoy a legal monopoly on violence by virtue of their being. It’s important, however, that there’s some “plausible” public pretext for the regime change, be it protests, a corruption scandal, or a disputed election, and the unity of the “deep state” is also another important determinant because rival factions might abuse the aforesaid for their own purposes. Sometimes the threat of sanctions against the incumbent and their clique for using force to quell unrest could widen “deep state” divisions and facilitate regime change.

Who’s Next On The Chopping Block?

All of this begs the question of which countries might be next to experience their own non-electoral regime changes, with the following ones most closely aligning with the author’s model elaborated on above and being presented in alphabetical order:

* Cameroon:

President Biya won his sixth term in office late last year following a serious breakdown of law and order in the separatist Anglophone region abutting the Nigerian border, which came on the heels of Cameroon finally seeming to surmount the challenge posed by Boko Haram in the northern part of the country. The primary geostrategic consequence of his ouster under the possible scenario of a nascent Color Revolution in the cities merging with the Unconventional War in the rural periphery might be the destabilization of what the author described as China’s plans to create a “West-Central African CPEC”, though if managed properly by the “deep state”, it might contrarily stabilize this megaproject’s viability if the choreography succeeds in placating the population.

* Republic of the Congo:

The other less-discussed Congo located between the DRC and Gabon, this one is presided over by one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders who recently joined OPEC and also put an end to a simmering insurgency in the Pool region surrounding the capital. Unlike Cameroon, it’s less clear what the geostrategic consequences of a non-electoral regime change here could be, but it might potentially be a factor in whether the country continues to remain within the joint orbit of France and China or decisively pivots to one or the other. In this sense, it could change the “balance of power” in Central Africa and contribute to the gradual retreat of Françafrique in the face of overall Chinese gains in France’s historic “sphere of influence” and Russia’s recent ones in the Central African Republic.

* Chad:

Occupying the pivot space between Saharan and Equatorial Africa, President Idriss Deby came to power on the back of a coup in 1990 and has remained in office ever since, mostly relying on the fact that his country’s military is regarded as one of the strongest in all of the continent and has an operational reach as far west as Mali. He’s not without his domestic detractors, however, some of whom have led large rebel formations towards the capital in several unsuccessful coup attempts that were at times thwarted through the intervention of his French ally, such as last month when Paris bombed an anti-government convoy that crossed into northern Chad from Libya. For all of its faults, Chad seems to be “too big to fail” for France and it’s unlikely that the former colonizer will ever let this prized piece of real estate slip from its grasp.

* Equatorial Guinea:

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo has reigned for nearly four decades and survived numerous coup attempts, some of which were planned by mercenaries in this tiny but oil-rich island-coastal nation in the strategic Gulf of Guinea.  Being located where it is and with the resource wealth that it has, it’s an important piece of the African chessboard that France might want to pry away from its American ally in order to reinforce its policy of Françafrique that’s facing its greatest threat ever from China and Russia in Central Africa. Apart from the “friendly competition” between those two Great Powers, there isn’t really much else that can be said at this time about the possible outcome of any non-electoral regime change in Equatorial Guinea.

* Mozambique:

The incumbent leader has only been in power for a few years, but he represents the corrupt and increasingly reviled FRELIMO party that’s been ruling Mozambique since independence, though to their credit, the authorities have been progressively implementing what appears to be a “phased leadership transition” to incorporate the former RENAMO rebel opposition into the country’s “deep state” as part of a peace deal. That said, this responsible arrangement could always collapse at any time, and the country is nowadays threatened by mysterious jihadists who’ve been wreaking havoc along the northern borderland with Tanzania, so “black swan” developments that might trigger a non-electoral regime change are more likely here than in most of the other predicted targets, which could have an impact on global LNG geopolitics given its sizeable offshore reserves (coincidentally located in close proximity to where the new terrorist threat emerged) and regional security.

* Sudan:

Sudan is undoubtedly in the throes of a multifaceted Hybrid War that the author elaborated upon at length in a previous piece late last year and which should be skimmed for reference if one’s interested in the strategic nuances involved, but the latest update is that its “deep state” might be preparing for a “phased leadership transition” in a manner which seemed to have influenced the Algerian one that suddenly followed soon thereafter. Simply put, Sudan is indispensable to China’s Silk Road vision for Africa and is also Russia’s gateway to the continent, so its destabilization and possible “Balkanization” like President al-Bashir warned about a year and a half ago would inflict very serious damage to multipolar integration processes all across the continent.

* Uganda:

Finally, the country that most closely fits the criteria of the author’s non-electoral regime change model is Uganda, the military heavyweight in the transregional East and Central African space that’s been ruled by President Museveni for the last one-third of a century. During the last few years, however, his mostly-youthful population (which is also one of the fastest growing in Africa, notwithstanding the large amounts of migration [sometimes illegal] that it receives) has become restive and most recently (and one can argue, quite naively) placed their hopes in the singer-turned-politician Bobi Wine because they see in him a comparatively younger face of anti-systemic change. However a non-electoral regime change might unfold in Uganda, its consequences would change the entire “balance of power” in this strategic part of the world at the height of the New Great Game and modern-day “Scramble for Africa” in the New Cold War.

Concluding Thoughts

Using the latest events in Algeria as the lead-in to discussing the other non-electoral regime changes and attempts thereof that took place in Africa since the “Arab Spring”, it’s clear to see that three separate – but sometimes interconnected scenarios – have unfolded, be they Color Revolutions like in the aforementioned 2011 events, genuine non-externally-influenced people’s movements like 2014 Burkina Faso, or “deep state” coups such as what took place in 2017 Angola and which later structurally inspired the subsequent ones in Ethiopia and Algeria (both of which were driven in part by the first two scenarios). All countries have power structures (“deep states”), but some are more flexible than others when confronting bottom-up pressure (which may or may not be externally influenced – and in the future, possibly weaponized against China’s geostrategic interests), which usually makes or breaks the regime change operation and will determine whether the forecasted targets will survive if they end up on the chopping block too.

eurasiafuture.com

No matter how scary or violent an internet video from a far away land may be, the reaction of Washington to it is far more terrifying in the long term. Recently, some rather disturbing footage has supposedly come from the tense Tigray region of Ethiopia. The interesting thing here is that it has been brought into the public’s consciousness by United States Senator Chris Coons and Mainstream Media outlets like CNN and the BBC. In the past the combination of media and government seemingly working in tandem to present a problem that requires a bombing solution has happened many times. So what should we think about this new situation in Ethiopia, is this another tragedy worth fighting over?

Image: Protestors in New York are already trying to raise public consciousness of the situation in Ethiopia.

When looking at the language CNN is using to describe the ugly scenes caught on blurry video, the verbiage very much plays to the heartstrings of the audience. We have terminology like “atrocities”, “massacre”, and “mass killing” that naturally pushes on the emotions of any sane morally upright person. But the problem is that any sane morally upright person’s natural sense of reasoning leads them from any tragedy to the desire for “something to be done about it”. This is where the real problem lies but more on this topic later. Another typical tactic (or tendency) being used by the Mainstream Media to describe the Tigray video is placing the opposing view way at the bottom of the article. If human beings were angelic rational beings this would not be a problem but the human mind tends to build a picture of an event based on the information that comes first with all contradictory views later having to unseat or drive out the first view.

This is, in short, is why everyone wants to get to the hearts and minds of children first – storming an empty ideological trench is much easier than one with decades of opinions standing in it with bayonets. To be clear, this does not mean that every article that presents the opposite views of the author second is some grand scheme of manipulation, but certainly when you have 80%-90% of the article pushing one view that briefly touching on the absurd notion that there could be a counter view, then we know that we are certainly the PR zone. This type of strategy is very often used against Russia and China having their official reactions and viewpoints shoved to the bottom with unenthusiastic wording.

So what is to be done about this “deeply disturbing” footage?

How about doing nothing? Let’s not allow our First-World egocentric altruism to blind us from the fact that launching some sort of intervention will cause far more horrors than the occasional deaths of a few dozen men. Perhaps Saddam Hussein was brutal to his political opponents but for all his years in power he never “achieved” anything close to the Iraqi death toll caused by the invasion and destabilization of the nation. Living under a mid-twentieth century Communist dictatorship in its revolutionary phase sounds rather “unpleasant” and one would certainly have to walk on eggshells to keep their brains inside their heads, but being napalmed from the sky on a daily basis still seems like a downgrade for your average bloke in Vietnam.

Image: Can our “great” Western minds really be so sure that we understand the plight of this armed gentleman?

Judging by the racial chaos in American society that relatively recently set the nation ablaze in protest both metaphorically and literally, it is clear that Washington cannot solve its own interethnic problems and yet it is always sure it has the key to the puzzle of racism in regions all over the world that U.S. Senators cannot find on a map.

If we look at the dustry Sudan-Ethiopia-Somalia corner of Africa we see a lot of various ethnic and religious groups with official borders that may be arbitrary. There have also been generations of brutal poverty sitting on top of ancient culture. Perhaps at the top universities of the Ivy League there are professors who have lived in these regions, dedicated their lives to knowing the language(s) and culture and have a solid knowledge of why this area of the world sees so much seemingly (to us) avoidable violence. But those experts are not in Congress nor are they in the top brass of the U.S. Armed Forces. The people who have the ability to enact a U.S. Foreign Policy move in Ethiopia are too ignorant to possibly solve the problems there.

So what’s the plan of action?

Let’s take a deep breath, “check our white privilege” like the Lefties tell us to, and just let this one go. Black Africans are competent just like the rest of us and if anyone can understand the solution to the problems in the Sudan-Ethiopia-Somalia corridor then it will surely be the locals. Furthermore, I think we have all had enough of seeing former marines slowly rot away living under bridges addicted to one thing or another after losing their minds overseas after years of risking it all and seeing their buddies die for nothing.

The Ethiopian government rightly said about this viral violent video that “social media posts and claims cannot be taken as evidence”. So let’s admit that we cannot be fully sure of what’s going on and that our Western involvement will make things work since that is exactly what happens every time we’ve played regime change since the end of WWII. It’s finally baseball season, turn on your TV, crack open a beer, and let the Ethiopians find their own destiny.

An ominous development underway in Ethiopia’s devastating civil war is the intervention by the United States under the pretext of humanitarian relief.

The U.S.’ international aid agency – USAID – announced last week it has deployed a Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) in the northern Tigray region where millions of people are facing starvation.

A humanitarian crisis has been created in Ethiopia after the central government in Addis Ababa launched a military offensive against the Tigray region in November last year. Heavy fighting continues between Tigray militia and the Ethiopian National Defense Force. The Ethiopian government forces are being assisted by Eritrean troops which have invaded Tigray. There are reports of widespread violations against civilians.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed in a phone call on February 27 to open up Tigray to humanitarian access and he expressed deep concern over possible war crimes. Washington then promptly deployed the USAID intervention apparently without authorization from the Ethiopian federal government.

The American move came despite a row during a closed meeting at the UN Security Council last week when it is understood that Russia and China objected to U.S. intervention plans in Ethiopia, which they said was over-riding legal processes and issues of national sovereignty.

USAID said its disaster response team is “assessing the situation in Tigray, identifying priority needs for the scaling up of relief efforts”. Given the dire humanitarian and security situation in Ethiopia that provision is logically paving the way for a major U.S. military intervention under the guise of the “right to protect” (R2P) presumption which has been unilaterally invoked by Washington in other conflicts.

President Joe Biden has picked Samantha Power as the new head of USAID. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and a former national security advisor to President Barack Obama, Power is a stalwart proponent of R2P foreign interventions. Biden also wants to make Power a member of his national security council.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is, like Power, another staunch advocate of “humanitarian interventions”. They were senior members of the Obama administration who formulated American military interventions in Libya and Syria. The “humanitarian” remit is rightly seen as a cynical moral cover for what would otherwise be condemned as American military aggression to achieve Washington’s own political objectives, such as regime change.

USAID – with an annual budget of over $27 billion and operating in over 100 countries – is notoriously intertwined with covert operations run by the CIA.

The damnable thing about Ethiopia’s current crisis is that arguably it was provoked by the United States from its geopolitical ambitions to control the Horn of Africa region and in particular to cut out China and Russia from this strategically important global hub.

Ethiopia’s Abiy Ahmed worked previously as a top military intelligence officer in the Ethiopian army before he became prime minister in early 2018. A long-time bilateral security partnership between the U.S. and Ethiopia made Abiy an ideal CIA asset. He was involved in developing Ethiopia’s telecom spying network in a replication of the National Security Agency in the U.S.. He was also educated at a private American university.

Before Abiy’s rise to political power, Ethiopia had an independent policy on foreign relations, pursuing strategic partnership with China for economic development. Ethiopia – the second most populous country in Africa and home to the African Union – was seen as a crucial link in building China’s new silk routes from Asia to Africa.

Oddly, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize at the end of 2019 for a supposed rapprochement with Ethiopia’s northern neighbor Eritrea. The two countries fought a bitter border war in 1998-2000. In hindsight, the award was a travesty given how Abiy has invited Eritrean troops into Tigray to wage war against the civilian population there, committing horrendous massacres.

But the Nobel prize can be seen as part of Abiy’s image-building by his CIA handlers for their objective of reordering Ethiopia. Tellingly, the Western media during his early months in office gushed with praise about the “young democratic reformer” and “peacemaker”. How foolish and fawning those media look now in light of the mayhem and suffering that Abiy unleashed in Tigray over the past four months.

In truth the war was building ever since Abiy took office. Almost from the get-go, there was a campaign of low-intensity aggression directed against the Tigray region. (This author was living there.) This was while the Western media were hailing him as a “reformer”. Abiy’s campaign of hostility towards Tigray involved the central government cutting electricity, water and communications as well as political assassinations. The purpose was to wear down the region and the people’s support for the Tigray People’s Liberation Front which had been the previous dominant governing party before Abiy’s ascent. The Tigray region represented a bastion of opposition to the plan by Abiy and his CIA handlers to refashion and reorient Ethiopia geopolitically. The power struggle culminated in the full-blown war launched against Tigray on November 4, 2020, under false claims of being a security operation against a “terrorist junta”.

The terrible irony is that the war and humanitarian crisis inflicted on six million people in Tigray was predictable because Abiy seems to have been following an American imperial plan to destabilize Ethiopia for boosting its great power rivalry with China and Russia. The Horn of Africa is a geopolitical hotspot: it provides a commanding position for North Africa and Sub-Saharan mineral-rich countries, overlooking the vital shipping lanes of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and proximate to the oil-rich Arabian Peninsula. Russia last year opened a naval base in Port Sudan on the Red Sea, while China’s only overseas military base is located in Djibouti adjacent to Ethiopia.

Now humanitarian interventionists in the Biden administration are stepping in to “resolve” a mess that the U.S. was instrumental in creating. If the USAID mission is scaled up, as seems intended, then American military could be deployed in Ethiopia giving Washington an unprecedented foothold in a strategically vital region.

It is notable that while the Biden administration seems to be over-riding the authority of the Abiy regime in Addis Ababa, the American objective does not necessarily seek regime change on this occasion. The Biden administration is promoting itself as a mediator in Ethiopia’s civil war, even though this war would not have come about were it not for America’s covert manipulation of Abiy. Recently, the Tigray militia have appeared to be gaining the upper-hand against Abiy’s forces and their Eritrean allies. The American intervention seems prompted in part by concern in Washington to prevent the Abiy regime collapsing in defeat.

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.

After two years as prime minister Abiy Ahmed has overseen the collapse of a once strong and independent country, the only nation in Africa never to have been colonized by foreign powers.

The latest eruption of violence is centered on the northwest Tigray region which borders Eritrea and Sudan. Abiy has sent troops and warplanes to bring the oppositional stronghold under the control of the central government in Addis Ababa. Despite claims echoed by the state-run media that federal troops have succeeded in gaining control, the region remains defiant. Hundreds are reported dead from battles. But it is hard to confirm because the region has been cut off by the Abiy regime.

Incongruously, the prime minister who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 has rebuffed appeals from the United Nations to enter into negotiations with the Tigray leadership to avoid further bloodshed. There are fears that the military confrontation could lead to all-out civil war in Africa’s second most populous nation, dragging in neighboring countries in the unstable and poverty-stricken Horn of Africa.

Who is Abiy Ahmed?

The 44-year-old politician is currently the youngest African leader. He came to power in Ethiopia in April 2018 after much opaque political wrangling within a shaky coalition government. Abiy’s tenure was initially meant to be as caretake premier who would oversee elections. However, more than two years later he has postponed elections indefinitely under the pretext of safeguarding public health from the coronavirus pandemic. The Tigray region is dominated by the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) which was formerly the ruling faction following a revolutionary war that ended in 1991. The TPLF were always wary of a hidden agenda behind Abiy. It refused to postpone elections in September and they claim that Abiy is now ruling like a dictator without a mandate.

Abiy was formerly a member of the TPLF-led coalition regime, serving as a minister of technology and before that as a military intelligence officer. While studying for his MBA at the private Ashland university in Ohio (see notable alumni), it is believed that he was recruited by the CIA. His later work as a government minister establishing national security surveillance systems under the tutelage of U.S. spy agencies would have given him immense political powers and leverage over rivals.

Nobel Prize part of the PR makeover

Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 after almost one year in office as caretaker premier owing to a surprise initiative he embarked on with Eritrean dictator Isaias Afwerki. Controversially, Abiy refused to give press conferences to answer questions on the basis for his award. The settlement was supposed to put at end to a two-decade border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea following a three-year bloody war that ended in 2001. As a result, Abiy was generally hailed as a progressive reformer by Western media. The notable thing is, however, the purported peace deal did not deliver any practical improvement in cross-border relations between Eritrea and Tigray, the adjacent Ethiopian region. All of Abiy’s visits to the Eritrean capital Asmara have been shrouded in secrecy. No peace plan was ever published. And, crucially, Tigray people were not consulted on the deal-making undertaken by Abiy who comes from the Oromo region straddling central Ethiopia.

Regime change

While Abiy was apparently seeking peace outside his nation, the picture inside was very different. As soon as he took power in early 2018, Ethiopia’s tapestry of multiethnic population of nearly 110 million dramatically unravelled from a surge in internecine violence and massive displacement. Prior to that, the federal structure of Ethiopia under the TPLF-led regime (1991-2018) had been relatively stable and peaceful. During those decades, while the socialist orientated authorities maintained close relations with the United States in terms of regional security matters, Ethiopia also pursued nationally independent policies in terms of economic development. Western finance capital was heavily regulated, while China became the main foreign investment partner involved in key infrastructure projects.

A major project is the Blue Nile hydroelectric dam which was inaugurated by the former TPLF prime minister Meles Zenawi who died in 2012. Set to become the biggest power plant in Africa, it was largely self-financed by Ethiopia. Western capital didn’t get a look in.

Dam target

Nearly three months after Abiy’s catapult to power, the chief engineer of the Blue Nile dam Simegnew Bekele was murdered in what appeared to be an assassination. An investigation by the authorities later claimed it was suicide. Few people believe that from the suspicious circumstances, such as security cameras inexplicably failing and his security detail having been abruptly switched just before his killing. His wife was prevented from returning from abroad to attend the funeral.

The motive for the murder of the chief engineer was to throw the dam’s construction into disarray. The point was not stop its construction but to overhaul the financing of the project with the breakthrough input of Western capital to cover the $5 billion mega-dam.

Tigray subjugation the final mission

Over the past two years, the entire federal nation of Ethiopia has been rocked by sectarian clashes. It is impossible to put an exact number on the death toll but it is estimated to be in the thousands. Political assassinations have become all too common whereas before Abiy’s ascent to office such violence was rare. It appears the deadly strife has stemmed from Abiy and his clique systematically replacing the political administrations in the constituent nine regional governments of Ethiopia. He has also sacked lawmakers in the central parliament in Addis Ababa, replacing them with his own flunkies. All the while the Western media have portrayed the moves as “democratic reforms” carried out by the Nobel laureate prime minister. Violence among the various constituent nations of Ethiopia, it is implied by Western media, is the result of revanchist old regime elements instead of being legitimate resistance to Abiy’s power grab.

The Tigray region has always had strong political and military autonomy. Its five million population is unified behind the TPLF leadership. Thus the northwest region represents an obstacle to the regime-change operation in Ethiopia being carried out by Abiy Ahmed and his foreign backers. Those foreign backers include the United States and Gulf Arab oil regimes who are seeking geopolitical control over the strategic Horn of Africa. For that regime change to succeed, Ethiopia’s political independence must be broken. And in particular the national resistance of the Tigray region must be vanquished.

It is sinister indeed that last weekend while Abiy was launching federal forces on Tigray and cutting off transport, electricity and communications, he flew to visit his Eritrean dictator friend, according to Tigray sources. There are deep concerns that the two politicians are forging a pincer movement to attack Tigray from the south and north on the back of a criminal siege strangling the region.

Cairo is urging Addis Ababa for clarification after European satellite images showed water filling the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD). Ethiopia has stated that the higher water levels are a natural consequence of the current heavy rainy season. However, this month was designated by Addis Ababa as a deadline to begin filling the $4.6 billion dam.

Egypt has repeatedly challenged the project saying that it would deprive it of vital freshwater supplies. Egypt relies on the Nile for 90 per cent of its total supply for 100 million population. Last month foreign minister Sameh Shoukry warned the UN security council that Egypt was facing an existential threat over the dam and indicated his country was prepared to go to war to secure its vital interests.

Ethiopia also maintains that the dam – the largest in Africa when it is due to be completed in the next year – is an “existential necessity”. Large swathes of its 110 million population subsist on daily rationed supply of water. The hydroelectric facility will also generate 6,000 megawatts of power which can be used to boost the existing erratic national grid.

Ominously, on both sides the issue is fraught with national pride. Egyptians accuse Ethiopia of a high-handed approach in asserting its declared right to build the dam without due consideration of the impact on Egypt.

On the other hand, the Ethiopians view the project which began in 2011 as a matter of sovereign right to utilize a natural resource for lifting their nation out of poverty. The Blue Nile which originates in Ethiopia is the main tributary to the Nile. Ethiopians would argue that Egypt does not give away control to foreign interests over its natural resources of gas and oil.

Ethiopians also point out that Egypt’s “claims” to Nile water are rooted in colonial-era treaties negotiated with Britain which Ethiopia had no say in.

What makes the present tensions sharper is the domestic political pressures in both countries. Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is struggling to maintain legitimacy among his own population over long-running economic problems. For a self-styled strong leader, a conflict over the dam could boost his standing among Egyptians as they rally around the flag.

Likewise, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is beset by internal political conflicts and violent protests against his nearly two years in office. His postponement of parliamentary elections due to the coronavirus has sparked criticism of a would-be autocrat. The recent murder of a popular singer-activist which resulted in mass protests and over 100 killings by security forces has marred Abiy’s image.

In forging ahead with the dam, premier Abiy can deflect from internal turmoil and unite Ethiopians around an issue of national pride. Previously, as a new prime minister, he showed disdain towards the project, saying it would take 10 years to complete. There are indicators that Abiy may have been involved in a sinister geopolitical move along with Egypt to derail the dam’s completion. Therefore, his apparent sudden support for the project suggests a cynical move to shore up his own national standing.

Then there is the geopolitical factor of the Trump administration. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump weighed in to the Nile dispute in a way that was seen as bolstering Egypt’s claims. Much to the ire of Ethiopia, Washington warned Addis Ababa not to proceed with the dam until a legally binding accord was found with Egypt.

Thus if Egypt’s al-Sisi feels he has Trump’s backing, he may be tempted to go to war over the Nile. On paper, Egypt has a much stronger military than Ethiopia. It receives $1.4 billion a year from Washington in military aid. Al-Sisi may see Ethiopia as a softer “war option” than Libya where his forces are also being dragged into in a proxy war with Turkey.

Ethiopia, too, is an ally of Washington, but in the grand scheme of geopolitical interests, Cairo would be the preferred client for the United States. Up to now, the Trump administration has endorsed Egypt’s position over the Nile dispute. That may be enough to embolden al-Sisi to go for a showdown with Ethiopia. For Trump, being on the side of Egypt may be calculated to give his flailing Middle East policies some badly needed enthusiasm among Arab nations. Egypt has the backing of the Arab League, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Egypt has previously threatened to sabotage Ethiopia’s dam. How it would do this presents logistical problems. Egypt is separated from Ethiopia to its south by the vast territory of Sudan. Cairo has a strong air force of U.S.-supplied F-16s while Ethiopia has minimal air defenses, relying instead on a formidable infantry army.

Another foreboding sign is the uptick in visits to Cairo by Eritrean autocratic leader Isaias Afwerki. He has held two meetings with al-Sisi at the presidential palace in the Egyptian capital in as many months, the most recent being on July 6 when the two leaders again discussed “regional security” and Ethiopia’s dam. Eritrea provides a Red Sea corridor into landlocked Ethiopia which would be more advantageous to Cairo than long flights across Sudan.

Nominally, Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a peace deal in July 2018 to end nearly two decades of Cold War, for which Ethiopia’s Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. However, the Eritrean leader may be tempted to dip back into bad blood if it boosted his coffers from Arab money flowing in return for aiding Egypt.

There will be plenty of platitudinous calls for diplomacy and negotiated settlement from Washington, the African Union and the Arab League. But there is an underlying current for war that may prove unstoppable driven by two populous and thirsty nations whose leaders are badly in need of shoring up their political authority amid internal discontent.