Ethiopia Nears Victory in its Civil War, US Scrambles to Control the Outcome
Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
War between Ethiopia and the TPLF may be coming to an end, but the US is using sanctions to have the final word despite the apparent defeat of its proxy.
The Ethiopian and Eritrean armies now seem close to winning a two-year war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF,) a US-backed clique that ruled Ethiopia brutally for 27 years, from 1991 to 2018. As I write this, on October 24, 2022, Ethiopian and Eritrean forces are in control of most major cities in the Tigray Region. They are reported to have surrounded Mek’ele, the Tigrayan Region’s capital, but it’s not clear whether or not they are inside.
On Saturday, October 22nd, huge crowds rallied for Ethiopian sovereignty in Addis Ababa and across the country, holding up signs that read “No More to a Proxy War,” “USA Respect Ethiopian Sovereignty,” and “No Intervention in the Name of Humanitarian Aid.” Establishment outlets including the Associated Press and Bloomberg News felt compelled to report the rallies.
The West, most of all the US, has given political, diplomatic, and narrative support to the TPLF throughout the war, and now they’re scrambling. UN Secretary General António Guterres and Western officials and NGOs keep calling for a “cessation of hostilities,” which seems to be a demand that Ethiopia and Eritrea stop short of victory.
Every day the propagandistic attacks become more shrill and extreme. Former US diplomat Elizabeth Shackelford wrote, in the Chicago Tribune , “[Anonymous] sources from the area claim Ethiopian and Eritrean forces (their allies) have been instructed to kill three Tigrayans each, including elderly and children, and that victims’ limbs and skulls are on display.”
Peace talks are set to begin in Pretoria, South Africa, on Tuesday, October 25, 2022 and Reuters reports that the TPLF delegation has arrived on a US military aircraft, accompanied by Mike Hammer, the US special envoy to the Horn of Africa.
One sign held high at Saturday’s rally in Addis Ababa read, “We Oppose HR 6600 and S 3199 Bills.” These are the sanctions bills that have been hanging over Ethiopian and Eritrea’s head for nearly a year. Earlier this year, I spoke to people in internally displaced persons camps in Amhara Region, who knew that the US was threatening them with these sanctions bills.
HR 6600 is the House bill, S 3199 the Senate bill. S 3199 has been revised to be even more threatening than it was when New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez introduced it in November 2021, and he recently resolved to push for its passage.