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ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – The widespread conflict in Ethiopia that has driven tens of thousands of refugees from their homes, killed hundreds, possibly thousands, and been swept into neighboring countries, is raising questions in Europe about whether to retain tens of millions euros in aid to the country.
On Tuesday, the European Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, will fly to Ethiopia, where he hopes to convince the country’s Minister of Peace, Muferiat Kamil, to end the blockade of international aid organizations for weeks in the region of Tigray, in northern Ethiopia. He will then fly to Sudan on Wednesday, where he will meet with Sudanese government officials before visiting refugees in Kassala and Gedarif states on Thursday. Sudan is a temporary home for approximately 45,000 refugees who have fled the conflict.
“I wish to urge the Ethiopian authorities once again to allow full and unrestricted access for humanitarian workers and humanitarian aid to all areas affected by the fighting,” Lenarčič told POLITICO on Monday, recalling that Ethiopia is home to the second population largest refugee population in Africa. “I intend to raise this issue with the Ethiopian Minister of Peace, whom I hope to meet in Addis Ababa on the way to Sudan.”
For its part, the Ethiopian government rejects any suggestion that the security crackdown was illegitimate or that it should be financially punished. “My message for the friends of #Ethiopia is that we can be poor but we are not a country that will negotiate our sovereignty. Threatening Ethiopia for coins will not work, ”Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said. tweeted Monday.
After months of political tension, the conflict in Ethiopia began on November 4 when Abiy, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, declared war on Tigray’s dissident leaders, accusing them of attacking a military base. The eruption of violence came after about two years of escalating tensions between the government and the country’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which led Ethiopia for nearly three decades.
What was supposed to be a fast-paced clinical affair targeting what the government has described as a corrupt criminal cabal has turned into a sprawling conflict with thousands of deaths, according to several foreign diplomats, and rockets fired across international borders. .
Both parties have been accused of committing war crimes. Reports that dozens of Eritrean refugees in Ethiopia have been abducted prompted the UN refugee agency to raise the possibility of “major violations of international norms” in the country. And last week, two Eritrean refugees were killed and four more seriously injured when fighting broke out near a camp in north Tigray, according to two senior UN officials and a humanitarian worker briefed on the incident.
Some warn that the death toll could be much higher than has been reported. A diplomat based in the capital Addis Ababa, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had received reports of “a horrible smell” in the hills behind the city of Alamata south of the regional capital Mekelle, where trucks loaded with militias Amharans have joined government forces. to fight the Tigrayan forces. The International Committee of the Red Cross has reported a huge shortage of medical supplies in hospitals in the region.
“The situation in Tigray is analogous to post-Saddam Iraq, with members of the military entering the opposition after being purged,” said Dan Connell, a visiting researcher specializing in Ethiopia and Eritrea at Boston University. “It is an understandable move on some levels, but extremely dangerous and will come back to haunt Abiy.”
The Ethiopian government says it has started targeting aid to areas of the Tigray region it controls. “Regarding the next step of the government, it is made clear that rehabilitation and reconstruction works have already started, displaced people are being returned to their villages and administrations are being restored at all levels,” said Ayele Lire Jijamo, Minister Plenipotentiary from Ethiopia. embassy in Belgium.
However, aside from the risk of the violence spreading to other parts of Ethiopia, Abiy’s personal reputation as a Nobel Peace Prize winner has been affected by the fact that the Nobel Committee took the rare step of publicly expressing its profound concern and call on all parties to “end the escalation of violence.”
Europe’s mediation role has been elevated due to the political vacuum in the United States as a new administration prepares to take office. Last week, Commissioner Lenarčič met with Ethiopian Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen in Brussels, and told him that the conflict in Ethiopia could no longer be considered an internal matter as Abiy has continually claimed, according to an official from the UE present in the room. The commissioner said that the risk that the conflict could destabilize the entire region, along with the risk that Ethiopia could violate international humanitarian law, meant that the conflict had acquired international significance.
The EU has provided Ethiopia with 815 million euros for the 2014-2020 budget period, plus more than 400 million euros from the EU Trust Fund for Africa, and senior officials in Brussels hope to use the financial weight of the EU as a lever. to reduce escalation. conflict.
An EU official said a political decision would be made in the coming weeks on whether Addis Ababa should continue to qualify for budget support from Brussels. “We are eager to have a common EU position on this,” the official said. “There will be consultations between capitals and there could be a decision to stop budget support.”
Last week, the European Parliament raised the possibility of implementing “specific targeted measures”, including sanctions, in case human rights abuses are discovered.
Ethiopia’s international partners are unlikely to withdraw their aid entirely, but they will likely take some concrete steps to demonstrate their concerns about the government’s tough response to the situation in Tigray, including its impact on the civilian population, analysts say.
For Brussels, the political transition in Washington cannot come soon enough to help share the diplomatic burden. “One of the biggest problems is that, like the Middle East, the United States is not playing a useful role,” Connell said at Boston University. “That will change in January. And perhaps the conflict will not end until then ”.
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