Sudan and Ethiopia trade barbs over border dispute

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Al Jazeera | Clashes erupted last year between both forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers.

Sudan has accused Ethiopia of an “unforgivable insult” in its sharpest statement yet since a decades-old border dispute flared late last year.

Clashes erupted between Sudanese and Ethiopian forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers that Sudan says lies on its side of a border demarcated at the start of the 20th century, which Ethiopia rejects.

In a statement on Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it believes “the conflict being trumpeted by the Sudanese government’s military wing could only serve the interests of a third party at the expense of the Sudanese people”.

Sudan’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday by saying “slander towards Sudan and accusation of being an agent for other parties is a grave and unforgivable insult”.

It added: “What the Ethiopian foreign ministry cannot deny is the third party whose troops entered with Ethiopian troops trespassing on Sudanese land.”

Earlier this week, Sudan accused Ethiopian troops of crossing the border after a similar act by Ethiopian aircraft last month, both of which Ethiopia denied.

Ethiopia on Thursday reiterated its accusation that Sudan had invaded in early November, attacked and displaced Ethiopians and took control of vacated military camps.

In its statement, Sudan said Ethiopia had affirmed the 1903 border agreement several times, most recently in 2013.

It accused Ethiopia’s foreign ministry of “exploiting [the border issue] for personal interests and for the specific interests of a certain group”.

Both countries called on each other to pursue legal means to resolve the border issues.

An African Union mediator arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to discuss the conflict, as well as the continuing negotiations between Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Sudan and Ethiopia trade accusations in border conflict

KHARTOUM (Reuters) – Sudan on Saturday accused Ethiopia of an “unforgivable insult” in its sharpest statement since a decades-old border dispute flared late last year.

Clashes erupted between Sudanese and Ethiopian forces over Al-Fashqa, an area of fertile land settled by Ethiopian farmers that Sudan says lies on its side of a border demarcated at the start of the 20th century, which Ethiopia rejects.

In a statement on Thursday, Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said it believes “the conflict being trumpeted by the Sudanese government’s military wing could only serve the interests of a third party at the expense of the Sudanese people”.

Sudan’s foreign ministry responded on Saturday by saying “slander towards Sudan and accusation of being an agent for other parties is a grave and unforgivable insult”.

It added: “What the Ethiopian foreign ministry cannot deny is the third party whose troops entered with Ethiopian troops trespassing on Sudanese land.”

Neither country specified the third parties to whom they were referring in their statements, although the veiled references underscored the potential for any conflict to embroil neighbouring countries.

Ethiopia may have been referring to Egypt, which has been angered by Ethiopia’s construction of a massive hydropower dam on the Blue Nile. Sudan has also expressed concerns over the dam.

Sudan may have been referring to Eritrea, whose troops entered Ethiopia to support beleaguered federal forces in Tigray after a regional force attacked military bases in November, according to the United States and European Union. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea have denied the incursion, although dozens of eyewitnesses say they have seen Eritrean soldiers in Ethiopia.

Earlier this week, Sudan accused Ethiopian troops of crossing the border after a similar act by Ethiopian aircraft last month, both of which Ethiopia denied.

Ethiopia on Thursday reiterated its accusation that Sudan had invaded in early November, attacked and displaced Ethiopians and took control of vacated military camps.

In its statement, Sudan said that Ethiopia had in the past affirmed its commitment to the 1903 border agreement several times, most recently in 2013. It accused Ethiopia’s foreign ministry of “exploiting (the border issue) for personal interests and for the specific interests of a certain group”.

Both countries called on each other to pursue legal means to resolve the border issues.

African Union mediator Mohamed Hassan Lebatt arrived in Khartoum on Thursday to discuss the conflict, as well as the ongoing negotiations between Sudan, Egypt, and Ethiopia over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

The Sudanese foreign ministry said in a statement late on Saturday that Lebatt had emphasized the need to reduce tensions between the two neighbors, and discouraged a military solution to the conflict.

Ethiopian foreign ministry official spokesman Dina Mufti, state minister of foreign affairs Redwan Hussein and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Saturday.

UN says malnutrition ‘very critical’ in Ethiopia’s Tigray

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United Nations says Ethiopia’s embattled Tigray region faces a “very critical malnutrition situation” as vast rural areas where many people fled during three months of fighting remain out of reach of aid.

The U.N. humanitarian agency also said in a new report that Ethiopian defense forces continue to occupy a hospital in the town of Abi Adi, “preventing up to 500,000 people from accessing health services” in a region where the health system has largely collapsed under looting and artillery fire.

Alarm is growing over the fate of the Tigray region’s some 6 million people as fighting is reportedly as fierce as ever between Ethiopian and allied forces and those supporting the now-fugitive Tigray leaders who once dominated Ethiopia’s government.

“The needs are tremendous, but we cannot pretend that we do not see or hear what is unfolding,” Ethiopian President Sahle-Work Zewde said in a statement on Friday after visiting the Tigray capital, Mekele.

In one of the frankest public comments yet by Ethiopia’s government, she noted “significant delays that remain in reaching people in need.”

Ethiopia on Friday said humanitarian aid has reached 2.7 million people in Tigray. But the U.N. report calls the current response “drastically inadequate,” even as some progress is made.

With some 80% of the population still unreachable, according to the Ethiopian Red Cross earlier this month, fears are growing that more people are starving to death.

“Next few weeks decisive to prevent famines,” Germany’s Foreign Office said in a brief statement last week after hearing accounts of a European Union envoy’s visit to Ethiopia.

The new U.N. report released Friday says even in areas that can be reached, a screening of 227 children under the age of 5 showed “staggeringly high malnutrition,” though it did not mention the number of cases.

It also says a screening of more than 3,500 children found 109 with severe acute malnutrition. The World Health Organization describes that condition as “when a person is extremely thin and at risk of dying.”

“Malnutrition (in Tigray) is expected to deteriorate as households are limited to fewer meals every day,” the U.N. report says.

The Tigray conflict began at a vulnerable time, just before the harvest and after months of a regional locust outbreak. The majority of the population is subsistence farmers.

The U.N. report cites “bureaucratic obstacles” and the presence of “various armed actors” as complications in the delivery of aid.

Humanitarian workers have described trying to navigate a patchwork of authorities that include ones from the neighboring Amhara region who have settled in some Tigray communities, as well as soldiers from neighboring Eritrea whom witnesses have accused of widespread looting and burning of crops.

Ethiopia’s government denies the presence of Eritrean soldiers, though the Tigray region’s interim government has confirmed it and accused them of looting food aid, according to a recent Voice of America interview.

The U.N. report describes a “dire” situation in which “COVID-19 services have stopped” in the Tigray region, displaced people in some cases are sleeping 30 to a single classroom and host communities are under “incredible strain.”

Sudan-Ethiopia mediation gathers steam

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The Arab Weekly | In Juba, Sudan’s head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will meet South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.

KHARTOUM – Leaders of Sudan and Ethiopia will separately travel to Juba next week to start a mediation bid by the South Sudanese government to defuse a border dispute.

Senior presidential aide Tut Gatluak, who has been travelling between Khartoum and Addis Ababa in recent weeks for talks with their leaders on the dispute, announced the visits on Wednesday.

While in Juba, Sudan’s head of state Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed will meet South Sudanese President Salva Kiir.

Depending on the outcome of these talks, a three-way summit could be held later in Juba, Gatluak said.

Sudan Wednesday recalled its ambassador to Ethiopia, the foreign ministry said, as tensions between the two countries are running high over a border region and Addis Ababa’s controversial Blue Nile dam.

“Sudan has recalled its ambassador to Addis Ababa for consultations over Sudanese-Ethiopian relations,” foreign ministry spokesman Mansour Boulad said.

He said the envoy would return to his post after the “completion of consultations”, without elaborating on the nature of the discussions.

Khartoum’s move comes amid rising tensions with Addis Ababa over the Al-Fashaqa border region, where Ethiopian farmers cultivate fertile land claimed by Sudan.

The two neighbouring countries have been trading accusations of violence in the area and territorial violations.

On Sunday, Khartoum claimed that Ethiopia had allowed its troops to enter Sudanese territory in an act of “aggression” and “regrettable escalation.”

Last month, Ethiopia alleged that Sudanese forces were pushing further into the border region.

Khartoum has since last month banned aircraft from flying over the Al-Fashaqa area after alleging that an Ethiopian military aircraft entered its airspace, a claim denied by Addis Ababa.

Al-Fashaqa, which has seen sporadic clashes over the years, borders Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region, where deadly conflict erupted in November between Ethiopia’s federal and Tigray’s regional forces.

The fighting sent some 60,000 Ethiopian refugees fleeing into Sudan.

The tensions come at a delicate time between the two countries, which along with Egypt have been locked in inconclusive talks over the massive Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile River.

This month, Sudan warned Ethiopia against going ahead with the second phase of fil

ling the mega dam, saying it would pose a “direct threat to Sudanese national security.”

Ethiopia, which says it has already reached its first-year target for filling the dam’s reservoir, has recently signalled it would proceed with the filling regardless of whether or not a deal was struck.

Khartoum hopes the dam will regulate annual flooding, but fears its own dams, including the Roseires and Merowe, will be harmed if no agreement is reached.

‘Horrible’: Witnesses recall massacre in Ethiopian holy city

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Bodies with gunshot wounds lay in the streets for days in Ethiopia’s holiest city. At night, residents listened in horror as hyenas fed on the corpses of people they knew. But they were forbidden from burying their dead by the invading Eritrean soldiers.

Those memories haunt a deacon at the country’s most sacred Ethiopian Orthodox church in Axum, where local faithful believe the ancient Ark of the Covenant is housed. As Ethiopia’s Tigray region slowly resumes telephone service after three months of conflict, the deacon and other witnesses gave The Associated Press a detailed account of what might be its deadliest massacre.

For weeks, rumors circulated that something ghastly had occurred at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in late November, with estimates of several hundred people killed. But with Tigray cut off from the world and journalists blocked from entering, little could be verified as Ethiopian and allied fighters pursued the Tigray region’s fugitive leaders.

The deacon, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he remains in Axum, said he helped count the bodies — or what was left after hyenas fed. He gathered victims’ identity cards and assisted with burials in mass graves.

He believes some 800 people were killed that weekend at the church and around the city, and that thousands in Axum have died in all. The killing continues: On the day he spoke to the AP last week he said he had buried three people.

“If we go to the rural areas, the situation is much worse,” the deacon said.

The atrocities of the Tigray conflict have occurred in the shadows. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for making peace with neighboring Eritrea, announced the fighting as the world focused on the U.S. election. He accused Tigray’s regional forces, whose leaders dominated Ethiopia for nearly three decades before he took office, of attacking the Ethiopian military. Tigray’s leaders called it self-defense after months of tensions.

While the world clamors for access to Tigray to investigate suspected atrocities on all sides and deliver aid to millions of hungry people, the prime minister has rejected outside “interference.” He declared victory in late November and said no civilians had been killed. His government denies the presence of thousands of soldiers from Eritrea, long an enemy of the Tigray leaders.

Ethiopia’s narrative, however, has crumbled as witnesses like the deacon emerge. The foreign ministry on Thursday acknowledged that “rape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings” could occur in a conflict where “many are illegally armed.” Its statement blamed Tigray forces for leaving the region “vulnerable” and said any serious offense will be investigated. It did not mention Eritrean soldiers.

Axum, with its ancient ruins and churches, holds major significance for the Ethiopian Orthodox faithful, who believe that the Ark of the Covenant, built to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments, is located there.

“If you attack Axum, you attack first of all the identity of Orthodox Tigrayans but also of all Ethiopian Orthodox Christians,” said Wolbert Smidt, an ethnohistorian who specializes in the region. “Axum itself is regarded as a church in the local tradition, ‘Axum Zion.’”

In a normal year, thousands of people would have gathered at the Zion church in late November to celebrate the day Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant was brought there after it disappeared from Jerusalem in ancient times.

Instead, the church had become a refuge for people who fled the fighting elsewhere in Tigray. They sheltered there as worship services were underway two days before the anniversary.

Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers had arrived in Axum more than a week earlier, with heavy bombardment. But on Nov. 28 the Eritrean soldiers returned in force to hunt down members of the local militia who had mobilized against them in Axum and nearby communities.

The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled.

Full Coverage: Ethiopia
“I escaped by chance with a priest,” he said. “As we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.” They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide.

Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day.

“They started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,” another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the AP. “It was a horrible act to see.” He watched the fighting from his hotel room, then ventured out as it eased.

“On every corner, almost, there was a body,” he said. “People were crying in every home.”

Another witness, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said soldiers killed a man at his home near the Zion church. “How can I tell you? So many dead,” said the man, who has since escaped to the Tigray capital, Mekele.

After the killings in Axum came an uneasy period with soldiers roaming the streets and families searching for loved ones. At night, hyenas descended from nearby hills.

The city began to smell of death as some bodies went untouched for days.

“I saw a horse cart carrying around 20 bodies to the church, but Eritrean soldiers stopped them and told people to throw them back on the street,” said Getu, the university lecturer.

Witnesses elsewhere in Tigray have reported being unable to bury bodies, calling it an added insult. They say soldiers tell them that “no one mourned our fighters, so why should we let you mourn?”

Finally, when the soldiers left the city to pursue other fighters, residents mobilized to bury the bodies, the deacon said.

“We could not do a formal burial,” he said. “We buried them en masse” in graves near the Zion church and others.

Some of the dead were among the hundreds of thousands of people in Tigray displaced by the conflict and not known to Axum residents. Their identity cards were collected in churches, where they await the discovery of loved ones.

The deacon said residents believe the Eritrean soldiers were taking revenge for the two-decade border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea that played out nearby and ended after Abiy became prime minister. Some of the soldiers told residents they had been instructed to kill people as young as 12, he said.

Another witness, a 39-year-old who gave only his first name, Mhretab, and escaped weeks ago to the United States, asserted that Ethiopian federal police did nothing to rein in the Eritrean soldiers.

“I said to them, ’Listen, you’re Ethiopian, they’re destroying Ethiopian cities. How is this possible?‴ Mhretab recalled.

”They said, ‘What can we do? This shouldn’t have happened from the beginning. This is from above,’” indicating that it had been decided by senior officials, he said.

He said he ferried bodies to a mass grave by the Zion church and estimated that he saw 300 to 400 there.

The deacon believes that the Eritrean soldiers, in their hunt for Tigray fighters, have killed thousands more people in villages outside Axum. “When they fight and lose, they take revenge on the farmers and kill everyone they can find,” he said. “This is what we’ve seen in the past three months.”

Getu echoed that belief, citing his uncle, who survived such a rural confrontation.

The deacon has not gone to the villages outside Axum. His work remains with his church, where services continue even as he says the Tigray conflict is as fierce as ever.

“We’re also protecting the church,” he said. “Even now, I’m talking to you from there. We are not armed. What we do is mostly watching. And, of course, praying that God protects us.”

U.S. Leadership Can Help End the Crisis in Ethiopia

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Bloomberg | Editorial Board | President Biden must persuade Prime Minister Abiy to end the violence.

Ethiopia’s worsening civil war, which has already drawn in Eritrea and is now spilling over into Sudan, threatens to destabilize the entire Horn of Africa, with alarming humanitarian consequences. American leadership is urgently needed to restore peace.

The conflict began last November, when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into the northern province of Tigray, the home of his most powerful political opponents, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. Eritrea, which formally ended a long-running war with Ethiopia two years ago, provided its new ally with reinforcements. Tens of thousands of Tigrayans fled to neighboring Sudan, straining the limited resources of one of the world’s poorest countries. Still more were displaced internally and housed in refugee camps.

The Tigrayan capital fell quickly, but sporadic fighting has continued. Abiy has prevented human-rights monitors, humanitarian aid groups and United Nations agencies from fully accessing the province. There are credible reports of atrocities committed in Tigray by Ethiopian forces and their proxies. The European Union has accused Eritrean troops of “exacerbating ethnic violence.” A famine looks increasingly likely.

Now the prime minister has ordered tanks and artillery to the border with Sudan. As with the offensive into Tigray, his government claims to have been provoked by the other side, but there’s more than a little suspicion of an Ethiopian land grab. The two countries have long-standing disputes over territory. They have also quarreled over water resources since Ethiopia built a giant dam on the Blue Nile. Along with Egypt, Sudan fears the decimation of its agricultural resources if Ethiopia proceeds with plans to fill a huge reservoir in front of the dam.

The African Union has been unable to resolve any of these issues, not least because other member states are leery of antagonizing the country that hosts their organization. The EU has suspended nearly 90 million euros ($108 million) in aid to the government in Addis Ababa, to no apparent effect. The UN has done little more than wag a disapproving finger.

That leaves President Joe Biden’s administration. As Ethiopia’s most important ally, the U.S. has substantial leverage over Abiy’s government. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has spoken to Abiy about the humanitarian crisis in Tigray, and his department has called for the withdrawal of Eritrean troops. Having thus put the government on notice, the administration should be prepared to impose punishment if Abiy fails to respond adequately.

A good first step would be to join the EU in suspending assistance until the UN and other aid agencies are allowed free access to Tigray. If necessary, the U.S. should freeze the preferential trade benefits Ethiopia enjoys under the African Growth and Opportunity Act. It should also demand independent investigations into the alleged atrocities, and appropriate punishment for those found guilty. Any Ethiopian adventurism in Sudan should be met with even harsher penalties, including economic sanctions.

Simultaneously, the U.S. should push for negotiations — between Ethiopia and Sudan, and between Addis Ababa and the Tigrayans — to resolve old disputes. If the African Union cannot mediate such talks, then the U.S. should be prepared to do so.

Blinken has said the U.S. should “not be AWOL as problems emerge” in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia presents an urgent challenge to that commitment.

US: Aid pause to Ethiopia no longer linked to dam dispute

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The United States says it has decided to “de-link” its suspension of millions of dollars of aid to Ethiopia from that country’s dispute with Egypt over a massive hydroelectric dam project.

But the State Department early Friday said that does not mean all the roughly $272 million in security and development assistance will immediately start to flow, and it depends on more recent “developments” — an apparent reference to the deadly conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

The State Department said humanitarian assistance remains exempt from the aid suspension. It said it has informed Ethiopia’s government. A spokeswoman for Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ethiopians were furious after former President Donald Trump last year directed the suspension of aid to their country in a rare example of his direct involvement in an African issue. Ethiopia had left a U.S.-led attempt to mediate the dispute with Egypt, alleging bias. Trump also caused an uproar by saying downstream Egypt would “blow up” the dam project that Cairo  considers an existential threat.

Ethiopia asserts that the $4.6 billion Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that it has nearly completed on the Blue Nile River is essential for development and the pulling of millions of people out of poverty. Egypt says it threatens its water supply.

Ethiopia is now under pressure from the U.S. and others including the European Union and United Nations over the deadly fighting in its northern Tigray region, where some 6 million people have been largely cut off from the world since fighting began in November between Ethiopian and allied forces and Tigray ones.

Witness accounts have emerged of massacres, people beginning to starve to death and the presence of thousands of soldiers from neighboring Eritrea, which Ethiopia’s government has denied.

The U.S. has said Eritrean soldiers should “immediately” leave Ethiopia. And earlier this week, a State Department spokesperson said “we remain gravely concerned by the widespread humanitarian suffering and reported human rights abuses in the Tigray region.”

The spokesperson urged “an immediate end to the fighting in Tigray, full and unhindered humanitarian access, an independent investigation into the human rights violations and abuses and for those responsible to be held accountable.”

Abiy Ahmed: The First Nobel Laureate On Trial at the International Criminal Court?

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National Interest | Ethiopia’s prime minister may want to coast on the laurels of the Nobel Prize but, realistically, he may very quickly become the first Nobel laureate to face war crimes charges.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee announced on October 11, 2019, that Ethiopian prime minister Abiy Ahmed had won that year’s Nobel Peace Prize “for his efforts to achieve peace and international cooperation.” The committee wanted to highlight Abiy’s initiative to end Ethiopia’s border conflict with Eritrea and “to recognize all the stakeholders working for peace and reconciliation in Ethiopia and in the East and Northeast African regions.” But they picked the wrong man.

In June 2020, Abiy extra-constitutionally postponed elections. When Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region refused and, on Sept. 9, 2020, held its own parliamentary elections marked by long lines and high participation that the opposition Tigray People’s Liberation Front won. Abiy responded two months later by cutting Tigray’s internet access and phone lines and sending in the Ethiopian Army to oust the elected government from Mekelle, the provincial capital. Multiple reports confirm that Eritrea’s military also entered the region, operating side-by-side with Ethiopian troops as they sacked and looted towns and villages in the region. On Jan. 13, 2021, Ethiopia announced that its forces had killed Seyoum Mesfin, the country’s long-serving former foreign minister, while fighting. Subsequent photos suggest that Abiy’s men had summarily executed Mesfin.

While Ethiopia repeatedly said that the situation in Tigray was calm, reports continued to circulate alleging that Ethiopian forces had engaged in widespread human-rights violations. With the restoration of communication to the region, it now appears these reports were legitimate. Ethiopians now circulate videos of summary executions. This video circulated today purports to show the summary execution of two men in the Tigrayan market town of Adwa. The greatest war crime, however, appears to be a massacre of more than eight hundred Tigrayans at the Church of St. Mary of Zion in Axum, reputed to be the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant, shortly after Ethiopian forces entered the area. Reached by phone by the Associated Press, a church deacon recounted the massacre:

The deacon recalled soldiers bursting into the church, cornering and dragging out worshippers and shooting at those who fled. “I escaped by chance with a priest,” he said. “As we entered the street, we could hear gunfire all over.” They kept running, stumbling over the dead and wounded along with others trying to find places to hide. Most of the hundreds of victims were killed that day, he said, but the shooting and looting continued the following day. “They started to kill people who were moving from church to home or home to home, simply because they were on the street,” another witness, visiting university lecturer Getu Mak, told the Associated Press. “It was a horrible act to see.”

The deacon confirmed that he had counted the bodies of those killed in the massacre, and alleged that Ethiopian forces left bodies in the streets for days where they were feasted upon by hyenas. With growing witness accounts, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry has now tweeted that “Rape, plunder, callous & intentional mass killings, as observed & verified in #Mikadra, & every other imaginable crime might happen in #Tigray” although it continued to deny both the regime’s own culpability and ignore eyewitness accounts of Eritrean forces participating in human-rights abuses.

Just as the Norwegian Nobel Committee once honored Burmese politician Aung San Suu Kyi only to learn she was an apologist to genocide, so too must it confront Abiy’s increasingly murderous record. Paul Rusesabagina, the hotel manager made famous in “Hotel Rwanda” and lionized by Western politicians is likewise now facing accountability for his support of armed groups and designated terrorists.

Abiy’s apologists criticize Ethiopia’s constitutional federalism and still describe Abiy as a reformer. Suspending elections and unilaterally changing the law without regard to any constitutional process, however, is the mark of dictatorship rather than reform. Engaging in ethnic cleansing, rape, and murder against regional opposition puts Abiy in the class of Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s former president who was indicted while still in office for his genocidal campaign against Darfur.

Abiy and his forces still ban journalists from traveling to Tigray and other provinces where locals allege Ethiopian and/or Eritrean forces have massacred civilians. Abiy may deny such events, but innocent parties seldom ban journalists who could confirm the truth of their statements. Rather, the travel bans and communication cut-offs are likely meant to help Abiy to escape accountability for his actions. Filibustering the outside world will not work, however, nor will the truth fade from the memory of surviving victims or the family members of those killed in Tigray. Abiy may want to coast on the laurels of the Nobel Prize but, realistically, he may very quickly become the first Nobel laureate to face war crimes charges at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

Michael Rubin is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a frequent author for the National Interest

 

In a Dangerous Game of Cat and Mouse, Iran Eyes New Targets in Africa

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NYT | Fifteen people arrested in Ethiopia were part of what American and Israeli officials said was a foiled Iranian plot against diplomats from the United Arab Emirates.

NAIROBI, Kenya — When Ethiopia’s intelligence agency recently uncovered a cell of 15 people it said were casing the embassy of the United Arab Emirates, along with a cache of weapons and explosives, it claimed to have foiled a major attack with the potential to sow havoc in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

But the Ethiopians omitted a key detail about the purported plot: who was behind it.

The only clue was the arrest of a 16th person: Accused of being the ringleader, Ahmed Ismail had been picked up in Sweden with the cooperation of friendly “African, Asian and European intelligence services,” the Ethiopians said.

Now American and Israeli officials say the operation was the work of Iran, whose intelligence service activated a sleeper cell in Addis Ababa last fall with orders to gather intelligence also on the embassies of the United States and Israel.

>>Read more: Iran denies plotting to attack UAE embassy in Ethiopia

They say the Ethiopian operation was part of a wider drive to seek soft targets in African countries where Iran might avenge painful, high-profile losses such as the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, said to have been killed by Israel in November, and Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian spymaster killed by the United States in Iraq just over one year ago.

Citing Western intelligence sources, Rear Adm. Heidi K. Berg, director of intelligence at the Pentagon’s Africa command, said that Iran was behind the 15 people arrested in Ethiopia and that the “mastermind of this foiled plot,” Mr. Ismail, had been arrested in Sweden.

“Ethiopia and Sweden collaborated on the disruption to the plot,” Admiral Berg said in a statement.

Iran denied the accusations. “These are baseless allegations only provoked by the Zionist regime’s malicious media,” said a spokeswoman for the Iranian Embassy in Addis Ababa. “Neither Ethiopia nor the Emirates said anything about Iranian interference in these issues.”

The United Arab Emirates angered Iran when it normalized relations with Israel in September as part of a series of agreements brokered by the Trump administration in its final months and known as the Abraham Accords.

A spokesman for the Ethiopian police, which named just two of the 15 people arrested, declined to say why Ethiopia did not finger Iran for the plot. Several diplomats said that Ethiopia, as Africa’s diplomatic capital and home to the headquarters of the African Union, tries to avoid getting publicly embroiled in delicate issues involving major powers.

Even so, Ethiopia’s National Intelligence and Security Service said that a second group of plotters had been preparing to hit the Emirati Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan. A Sudanese official confirmed that account.

>>Read more: Ethiopia Thwarts Iranian Plot to Attack UAE Embassy

A senior United States defense official linked the arrests in Ethiopia to a failed Iranian plan to kill the United States ambassador to South Africa, which was reported by Politico in September. The American and Sudanese officials agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because of its diplomatic and intelligence sensitivity.

Still, much about the Ethiopian arrests and alleged Iranian role remained murky. The Ethiopian police have yet to formally charge the 15 plot suspects, only two of whom have been identified. Israeli officials say that as few as three of them may be actual Iranian operatives, with the others having been caught in the Ethiopian dragnet.

And the arrests in Ethiopia come at a time of heightened political sensitivity in Iran and the United States, as the Biden administration considers its posture toward Tehran and whether to revive the Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran that President Donald J. Trump scrapped in 2018.

Adding to the pressure on President Biden, Iran’s intelligence minister suggested last week that his country might seek to obtain nuclear arms if American sanctions were not lifted soon.

While Admiral Berg confirmed several details about Iran’s role in the Ethiopian arrests, other military and diplomatic officials in Washington declined to discuss it.

In contrast, officials in Israel, whose government is openly hostile to any thaw between Washington and Tehran, highlighted the purported plot as further evidence that Iran cannot be trusted.

For all its efforts, Iran has yet to deliver on its promises of vengeance for its high-profile losses, beyond a missile attack on American forces in Iraq in January 2020, days after General Suleimani was killed.

>>Read more: The United Arab Emirates is waging a war for influence over the Horn of Africa.

Any plan to hit the U.A.E., as suggested by the arrests in Ethiopia, would be a curious choice, given its potential to undermine Mr. Biden’s putative nuclear diplomacy with Iran, said Aaron David Miller, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Other analysts, though, said that the U.A.E. was high on Iran’s list of enemies and that the embassy in Ethiopia might present an unchallenging target at a time when Ethiopia is distracted by a war that has been raging in its northern Tigray region since November.

“Africa is a relatively easy place to operate, and Ethiopia is preoccupied with other issues,” said Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. officer now with the Brookings Institution.

The murky episode seemed destined to become the latest in a series of cat-and-mouse episodes between Iranian and Israeli operatives on African soil in recent years.

During the 1990s, Iran enjoyed close ties with Sudan under the autocratic ruler Omar Hassan al-Bashir, and in the next decade it was able to dock its warships in Eritrea.

Israel struck back in 2009 with airstrikes against a convoy of smuggler trucks in Sudan  that aimed to stop Iranian-supplied weapons from reaching the Gaza Strip, American officials said.

But Iran’s ties to the Horn of Africa have withered in recent years, and Israeli and Emirati involvement has grown.

The Emirates helped mediate a landmark peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea in 2018, and now it is Emirati warships that are docked in Eritrean ports.

In November, following a call between the Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, and Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a team of Israeli drone pilots arrived in Ethiopia to help eliminate the locusts that have plagued the country’s farmers.

Weeks later, Yossi Cohen, the chief of the Mossad, Israel’s covert intelligence service, met with his Ethiopian counterpart to discuss what they termed “counterterrorism operations.”

Elsewhere in Africa, Israeli intelligence officials say they frequently tip off friendly countries about suspected Iranian activity.

In Kenya,  two Iranians arrested in 2012 and charged with possession of 15 kilograms of explosives are now serving 15-year prison sentences. Kenyan officials said the men were members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps Quds Force. Their lawyers said they had been interrogated by Israeli intelligence while in Kenyan custody.

Four years later, in 2016, Kenya deported two Iranians who had been arrested outside the Israeli Embassy with video footage of the facility. Iran said the men, who had been traveling in an Iranian diplomatic car, were university teachers.

Iranian agents have been suspected in attacks or thwarted attacks in countries including Georgia, Thailand and India. On Feb. 4, a Belgian court stripped an Iranian envoy of his diplomatic status and sentenced him to 20 years in prison for having organized a thwarted bomb attack aimed at an Iranian opposition rally in France in 2018.

That failed plot and another in Denmark prompted the European Union in 2019  to impose sanctions on Iran’s external spy service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security. Israeli officials say the same agency orchestrated the operation in Ethiopia.

Sofia Hellqvist, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Police Authority, referred questions about the arrest of Mr. Ismail, the alleged ringleader, to the authorities in Ethiopia.

A spokesman for the United Arab Emirates did not respond to a request for comment.

Given the stakes, it was unclear why the Iranians might risk a rapprochement with the Biden administration by mounting an operation now.

Farzin Nadimi, a specialist on the Iranian armed forces with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Iran may wish to send a message to the Biden administration officials that “unless they reach a deal with Iran quickly this is what they get: a dangerous neighborhood.”

Uganda, Ethiopia, Egypt… the hidden cost of internet blackouts

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African Report | Communication technology is a double-edged sword. It can empower people to access and share information globally, or be used as an instrument of political and economic control. While hopes were raised by the Arab Spring a decade ago, the years since have seen multiple internet blackouts in many African countries.

In the past ten years, the practice of jamming cyber communication has become a new tool by certain nations and governments.

Perhaps the most famous example of all is Egypt during the Arab Spring in 2011. For five days, the Egyptian government shut down all internet communication, to disrupt the 2011 protests.

Eventually, this cost the Egyptian economy $90m, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Had the blackout gone for a whole year, it would have put a dent in Egypt’s GDP of around 3-4%.

“Most of the blackouts were across the entire [country] so it affected every person, business, and organisation. They were not targeted on particular institutions but affected everyone in that place,” says Darrell M. West, the vice president and director of governance studies at the Brookings Institute.

Mohamed Basiouny, an owner of a cyber cafe confirms what West says, adding that the shutdown did trickle down to impact everyone: “Cyber cafes [were] playing a central role at the time so, it was not just kids fooling around on the internet. ” Like many others, Basiouny’s business relied on internet communications. “No internet, no money – it’s as simple as that,” he adds.

Ethiopia’s blackout history

In the same vein, the Ethiopian government cut off internet across most of the country after the fatal shooting of musician and activist Hachalu Hundessa.

The singer is affiliated with the Oromo movement that took down the previous prime minister.

The blackout took place on 30 June 2020 and went on for 23 straight days, interfering with Ethiopians’ rights to access information and muzzling any vestige of freedom of expression.

As for the country’s economy, NetBlocks estimated the losses to surpass Br3bn ($102m). Later in the year, the northern region of Tigray witnessed another blackout as Ethiopia’s prime minister and Nobel peace prize laureate Abiy Ahmed announced a “red line” had been crossed by the TPLF leadership.

The ensuing internet blockage curtailed media coverage of the Tigray region that saw thousands killed or displaced. Businesses largely reliant on internet connections and communication also suffered the financial consequences of being shutdown during the conflict.

“These shutdowns are not, and will never be, haphazard. They are well planned and specifically targeting the people in question. In this instance, it is the people of Tigray and their businesses,” says IT consultant and former employee at the Ethiopian Chamber of Commerce and Sectorial Associations (ECCSA), Samuel Maasho*.

According to Maasho, Abiy was intentionally targeting the region’s gold producer and a huge textile factory, both of which funnel funds to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. “This alone can paralyse a whole country, let alone a region like Tigray,” he says.

New tactical response

The scale of such practices is a much bigger problem today than it was a few years ago says West. According to his research in 2016: “Many of the shutdowns are occurring on a nationwide level as opposed to what used to be in local communities. Shutdowns are being put in place to quell political protests, stop coverage of human rights abuses, and to limit some economic activities.”

Similarly, Ramy Raoof, a privacy and digital security researcher and tactical technologist at Amnesty International, sees internet shutdowns more as a tactical response, than a tool itself, to have instant control-impact.

“Internet shutdowns are by design unsustainable, technically speaking, and it’s meant as a temporary response with either gradual shutdown or gradual restoration. And even during blackouts the states sometimes only apply 80-90 % of shutdowns because they might want to keep national institutions online to avoid financial disasters,” he tells The Africa Report.

Alternatives for businesses?

Beyond building a reliable system based on offline practices or returning to old habits from phone calls to fax machines, one has to wonder, is there a more sustainable alternative?

“All the tips and approaches the activists would engage with, such as international sim cards, satellite phones and connections, are highly dependent on the context,” says Raoof. “The telecommunication infrastructure works differently [de]pending on the ownership. So infrastructure ownership determines how surveillance and controls take place. In many scenarios these tips are valid momentarily for a limited amount of time until those frequencies are also targeted/shutdown.” He points to the example of Egypt in 2011 when the internet crackdown targeted different parts of the communications infrastructure at different times.

“The whole point of internet shutdowns by governments is to keep individuals and organisations from communicating,” says West. He echos Raoof’s concerns, adding such alternative tools would need to be available to all, otherwise they would be futile.

One example to spark answers are how bigger companies can manage to avoid the worst of the crackdowns.

“We were never impacted,” says *Ahmed Bayoumi, operations manager at one of Egypt’s towering outsourcing call centres, in reference to the internet blackout in 2011. “The government cut off the internet for networks and domestic internet providers. But big corporations like ours that are based on leased lines or direct cables were not impacted,” recalls Byoumi.

Following from that experience, one of the projects he set up in 2015 involves using a microwave tower that is fed directly from the mother source. “This tower is linked to a Synchronous Transport Module 1 (STM1),” he explains. It allows companies to remain connected despite any government-imposed blockage, but it comes with a price tag. STM1 is a network transmission of around 155.5Mbit/s and costs about LE12m ($768,296).

For those companies that cannot afford such access, it’s a lose-lose situation: “It’s very costly for small enterprises. Imagine paying for a marketing campaign via Facebook. And suddenly the internet stops. You can’t possibly retrieve that money,” he adds.

World Bank questions Ethiopia’s stance in telecoms competition

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Capacity | The World Bank has warned the government of Ethiopia not to take measures that hinder the development of telecoms in the country.

It is criticising the restriction of digital financial services to Ethiopian firms and nationals and a ruling limiting investment by independent cell tower companies, obliging the new entrants to use the infrastructure provided by Ethio Telecom.

This “may slow down network roll out, particularly in rural areas”, warns Ousmane Dione (pictured), the World Bank’s country director for Eritrea, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Sudan in a hard-hitting blog published by the bank.

Dione, who has been with the bank for more than 16 years, took on his present role in August 2020, just as the present government of Ethiopia was advancing its plans to licence new operators in the country and to sell a stake in Ethio Telecom.

The World Bank has a key role in this process, points out Dione. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private sector arm of the bank, is assisting the Ethiopian Communications Authority (ECA) with the licence awards. “The World Bank itself is supporting the partial privatisation of Ethio Telecom and the strengthening of ECA as an independent sector regulator.”

The ECA has set 5 April as its deadline for bids for the two new licences. A number of companies have said they are interested in either new licences or in stakes in Ethio Telecom. Airtel has said it will not bid.

“The two new operators would compete with Ethio Telecom in mobile communications, internet and other telecom services,” says Dione in his blog.

“Ethiopia is one of the last countries in the world to have retained a state-owned monopoly provider of telecom network and services, a market which is dominated by the private sector in most countries.”

He says: “Opening the market to private sector competition, and foreign investment, is expected to bring lower prices, higher quality of service and more choice for consumers. It will also lay the foundations for Ethiopia’s future digital transformation.”

But while Ethio Telecom has the most to gain from the expansion of the digital economy, “it is also at risk from losing market share if it fails to compete effectively”, he says. The government of Ethiopia appears to be trying to shelter Ethio Telecom from competition, he notes. “This seems to be the motivation behind policy announcements that seek to restrict the operation of digital financial services to Ethiopian firms and nationals. But this may slow down innovation and investment in the market and may actually hinder Ethio Telecom’s own ambitions to attract a strategic investment partner from abroad.”

He suggests that “a better strategy would be to encourage Ethio Telecom to compete on equal terms with the new market entrants in providing mobile money services, without ownership restrictions”.

In the cell tower market, he advises that “Ethio Telecom will need to collaborate as well as compete with the new entrants. But this is best done by allowing for open commercial negotiations in which the new entrants can make rational decisions whether to build their own infrastructure or buy capacity from Ethio Telecom.”

The government’s policies will allow the state company to charge high prices, and that “will end up harming the company”, he says.

“The new operators will be Ethio Telecom’s biggest customers if prices are set fairly, through market competition,” says Dione. “Ethio Telecom has the potential to become a regional powerhouse, but only if it is well-prepared for the competitive environment.