Source: Reuters
By Daphne Psaledakis
State Department spokesman Ned Price said on Friday that while the United States has decided to resume certain types of assistance, including that related to global health and food security, assistance for other programs and most programs in the security sector would remain paused.
“Given the current environment in Ethiopia, we have decided not to lift the assistance pause for other programs, including most programs in the security sector,” Price said at a news briefing.
Blinken has pressed Ethiopia to end hostilities in Tigray and on Wednesday, testifying before Congress, he said he wanted to see forces in Tigray from Eritrea and Amhara be replaced by security forces “that will not abuse the human rights of the people of Tigray or commit acts of ethnic cleansing, which we’ve seen in western Tigray.”
Thousands of people have died, hundreds of thousands have been forced from their homes, and there are shortages of food, water and medicine in the region of more than 5 million people.
The State Department last month said Washington will de-link its pause on some aid to Ethiopia from its policy on the giant Blue Nile hydropower dam that sparked a long-running dispute between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan.
But it cautioned that resumption of assistance would be assessed on a number of factors, including “whether each paused program remains appropriate and timely in light of developments in Ethiopia that occurred subsequent to the pause being put in place,” according to a State Department spokesperson.
Ethiopia’s military ousted the former local ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), from the regional capital Mekelle in November, after what it described as a surprise assault on its forces in Tigray.
The government has said that most fighting has stopped in Tigray but has acknowledged isolated incidents of shooting.
Both sides deny their forces have committed atrocities, and blame other forces for the killing of civilians. (Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Humeyra Pamuk; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in a call with United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, discussed the importance of an international investigation into reported human rights abuses in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, the State Department said on Friday.
It said that in the call, which took place on Thursday, Blinken also called for “enhanced regional and international efforts to help resolve the humanitarian crisis, end atrocities, and restore peace in Ethiopia.”
The United Nations said last week that Eritrean troops were operating throughout Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region and reports suggested they were responsible for atrocities.
Abiy is famous in playing for the gallery to filibuster his opponents hoping memory is short. The only language he knows is playing him hard and firm. I know, the Americans are hoping they will shape him, but this is futile. He is a sick man. In the first we should understand what type of a person he is and why he is acting the way he does.
This is a cheap narcist who sees the world with an eye glass of a child. He strongly believes on what his mother told him when he was 7 years ago. You will be the 7th king is what she said to him. He has narrated this story on several occasions, but people did not take him seriously.
Since then he has been planning how he can adopt a political system that reflected the old Ethiopian political culture of a patronage and long life authoritarian system, entrenching the popularity party and the popularity gospel as the sole player in Ethiopia. He sees the population as instruments for his ambition, they are neither more nor less. He cares less for the death and sufferings of the people as long as they can be used to reach his goals.
There is so many peoples are dying every single day 2000 peoples are dying every single if not more more than 9657 Tegaru people in jail under Amhara milisha I have my own family members the Amhara regional government doing exactly what Esayas doing those 9657 people jailing in containers the little information that I have they about to killed them all please let’s be there voice
The USA can’t stop playing the white man with its 550 000 blacks in its prisons but it is so concerned about rebels in Tigray. Africs needs to press the US, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey for reparations for slavery.
I am not sure the world has ever seen the US State Department become a tool of one ethnic group. This is happening today, not because TPLF is powerful but it has powerful friends who are truly pissed off.
Essentially, every stated wish of TPLF, including their demand to get the Amhara militias out of Wolkait and the declaration of “ethnic cleansing in western Tigrai” have become US policy.
In twenty-seven years of TPLF rule, thousands of Amharas were tortured and killed. Additional thousands were driven out of Wolkait to incorporate these fertile areas into Tigrai.
TPLF’s badly executed misadventure of invading the Northern Command of the Ethiopian Army went horribly badly. After all the bravado and muscle-flexing, TPLF was dealt with swiftly. Ever since, they are back to crying about being defeated, in English, to their friends and telling everyone else in Tigrigna and Amharic about their military victories of wiping out hundreds of Eritrean and Ethiopian divisions!
If Eritrea and Ethiopia lost these many divisions, TPLF would have been back in Mekelle! But the faithful sheep don’t ask. They just consume and regurgitate raw propaganda. Americans, who own hundreds of drones and should know better, have not questioned TPLF when it announced that it shot down a drone and captured two of the drone’s pilots after they landed! To date, TPLF has yet to produce these drone pilots. (you’re not supposed to laugh)
One thing is clear, America may be able to threaten Ethiopia, even send the Marines to assist TPLF. The goal of getting back Wolkait and Raya, however, will never be achieved by TPLF. Amharas tolerated TPLF abuses for the sake of a united Ethiopia. If TPLF and its friends are facilitating the secession of Tigrai, then that point is moot. There are nearly forty million Amharas who can defend their rights with whatever it takes. At this time, I urge TPLF supporters not to tell us about how Israel has been successful. Tigrai is not Israel and Ethiopia does not represent the Arab nations that fought Israel.
Where do we go from here? Ethiopia will face unprecedented challenges through economic sanctions and internal civil unrest. TPLF, through a guerilla war, may capture some towns. The goal of an independent Tigrai that contains Wolkait and Raya, however, will remain a pipe dream. One thing is certain: the suffering of the people of Tigrai will not be over anytime soon. We have also not seen the last of entertaining car demonstrations by TPLF supporters in America. As the war will go on for years, it may be a Republican takeover of the presidency in the US to say, “enough is enough”.
The US should be a leading expert in what constitutes Genocide because it perpetrated one in its own country to Native Americans whose land the entire US was. Ethiopia’s freedom is not for sale or for lease. The US will not succeed in its effort to help TPLF to hide from the truth.