The brutal dictatorship the world keeps ignoring

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The Washingtonpost | Adam Taylor | June 12, 2015 |  >>> 

On Monday, the United Nations released the results of a year-long investigation into human rights in Eritrea. What it found was horrific. Detailing “systematic, widespread and gross human rights violations,” the U.N. commission of inquiry argued that Eritrea was operating a totalitarian government with no accountability and no rule of law.

“The commission also finds that the violations in the areas of extrajudicial executions, torture (including sexual torture), national service and forced labor may constitute crimes against humanity,” the report said.

However, it appears the report failed to produce any mainstream outrage. Unlike similar U.N. reports on alleged crimes against humanity in North Korea, or online criticism of human rights abuses in places such as Saudi Arabia or Qatar, the horrific accusations against Eritrea didn’t produce a viral outcry.

Why not? It certainly doesn’t seem to be because of the severity of the accusations. Crimes against humanity are pretty much as serious as you can get, and it’s hard to read the United Nations’ full report and not be shocked.

It’s hard to imagine now, but hopes were initially high for Eritrea in 1993 after it gained independence from Ethiopia after 30 years of civil war. Since then, however, President Isaias Afwerki has clamped down and allowed no room for an opposition. The U.N. report described a Stasi-like police state that leaves Eritreans in constant fear that they are being monitored.

“When I am in Eritrea, I feel that I cannot even think because I am afraid that people can read my thoughts and I am scared,” one witness told the U.N. inquiry.

The system leads to arbitrary arrests and detention, with torture and even enforced disappearances a part of life in Eritrea, the U.N. probe found, and even those who commit no perceived crime often end up in arduous and indefinite national service that may amount to forced labor. Escape is not a realistic option for many: Those who attempt to flee the country are considered “traitors,” and there is a shoot-to-kill policy on the border, the report said.

It’s also worth noting the significant effort and risk put into creating the report: The Eritrean government refused to allow the United Nations access to the country to investigate, so the U.N. team interviewed more than 550 witnesses in third countries and accepted 160 written submissions. Many approached by the United Nations declined to give testimony, even anonymously, citing a justifiable fear of reprisal.

Still, experts don’t seem too surprised at the lack of outrage generated by the report. “Clearly, Eritrea doesn’t capture the imagination, or rouse the conscience of Americans, much in the way North Korea does,” Jeffrey Smith, an advocacy officer at the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights, explained. “President Afwerki, while unquestionably a chronic human rights abuser and eccentric despot, isn’t portrayed by the American media in the same way that Kim Jong Un is.”

“North Korea also makes headlines for other reasons — namely its nuclear ambitions and the ongoing threat it poses to regional stability in East Asia,” he added. “Similarly, while Eritrea is certainly a police state similar to North Korea in many ways, it’s largely kept out of the headlines because Africa in general doesn’t feature highly on the agenda of policymakers here in the United States.”

The fact is, while the scope and authority of the U.N. report lent its allegations an added weight, academics and human rights researchers had long written similar things about the Eritrean state without a significant mainstream response in America or Europe.

In 2014, for instance Human Rights Watch called Eritrea “among the most closed countries in the world” and pointed to “indefinite military service, torture, arbitrary detention, and severe restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and religion.” Reporters Without Borders has repeatedly ranked it as the worst country in the world for press freedom — worse even than North Korea.

“The U.N. report? We knew it already,” said Ismail Einashe, a Somali-British journalist who works with Eritrean migrants. “Too little, too late.”

Despite this, some reports on the country ignore this and focus on another aspect of Eritrea: Its unlikely tourism sector. International isolation, a history as an Italian colony and reported Qatari investment may have made Eritrea a unique if distasteful vacation destination: As one travel blogger put it last year, the capital of “Asmara felt much more like Naples than North Korea.”

Sara Dorman, an expert in African politics at Edinburgh University, doesn’t think much of either comparison.

“I don’t think it’s particularly helpful,” she said of the country’s reputation as the “North Korea of Africa.” At the same time, she stressed that Eritrea really does deserve to be seen as a special case. “As somebody who studies authoritarian regimes elsewhere in Africa, the Eritrean regime’s control over its population is qualitatively different than other African states,” Dorman said, before pointing to features such as the scale of Eritrea’s intelligence service and the practice of punishing entire families for the crimes of one member.

There are plenty of historical arguments for why the world should pay more attention to what’s happening in Eritrea. Former colonial rulers Italy and Britain have an obvious legacy there, and so does the United States, which allowed Ethiopia to incorporate Eritrea with the aim of keeping the U.S. Kagnew Station military base in the country. In addition, Eritrea has a difficult recent history with its East African neighbors: It’s currently under U.N. sanctions for supporting al-Shabab, the Somali Islamist group, and others in the region.

But one important reason to pay attention has become an unavoidable reality for Europe. Eritreans make up a large share of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean in flimsy boats to seek asylum in Europe: More than 22 percent of those who made the journey in 2014 were from the country, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, second only to Syrians. They flee not because of a civil war like that in Syria, but because of the immense restrictions the Eritrean state puts on their lives. As one escaped Eritrean put it, life there is a “psychological prison.”

Despite this, a number of European nations have recently tightened the restrictions on Eritrean migrants, many citing a Danish immigration report from last November that prompted criticism from human rights groups. The European Union is also considering increasing the amount of aid it sends to Eritrea via the European Development Fund. Experts like Dorman hope that the U.N. report may lead some in Europe to reconsider.

“If organizations don’t take note of this report, we really have to wonder about how they make these decisions,” she said.

Still, even if they don’t, the report does have one very vocal audience: The Eritrean government and pro-government media. In a statement published on Tuesday, Eritrea called the U.N. report a”cynical political travesty” that was an attack “not so much on the government, but on a civilized people and society who cherish human values and dignity.”

Finnish EU envoy to investigate ‘dire’ Ethiopia war

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EU Observer | The security situation in Ethiopia was “dire”, as Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto prepared to travel to the region on an EU fact-finding mission.

Finnish FM

Finnish foreign minister Pekka Haavisto | Wikimedia Commons

“Nearly three months after the start of the conflict … the security situation in Tigray [a region of Ethiopia] remains dire, with reports of localised fighting especially in rural areas,” Haavisto told EUobserver.

“There is news circulating that hundreds of thousands of people have yet to receive [humanitarian] assistance,” he said.

But “access to the affected regions remains limited due to the challenging security environment and bureaucratic obstacles,” he added.

War broke out last year between the government of prime minister Abiy Ahmed and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), a local power which defied his rule.

The TPLF leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, said on Sunday (1 February) that the Ethiopian army was guilty of “genocide” and “massacres”.

He also said three foreign powers were fighting on Ethiopia’s side, while urging the international community to investigate “the atrocities” he spoke of.

An Ethiopian government spokeswoman told the BBC that Gebremichael’s words were “the delusions of a criminal clique” and accused the TPLF of “horrendous crimes” in return.

Ethiopia has also denied that Eritrean and Somalian forces, as well as Emirati drones, were fighting on its side.

But the US state department has confirmed that Eritrea was involved.

And Tigrayans who fled to neighbouring Sudan have told Human Rights Watch, an NGO, that Ethiopian forces were guilty of indiscriminate shelling and extrajudicial killings.

For his part, Finland’s Haavisto said: “The regional impacts of the Tigray conflict are of growing concern”.

“Reports indicate that more than 58,000 refugees have fled to Sudan and tensions in the border areas are growing dangerously,” he added.

The Nordic diplomat planned to go to “Ethiopia and its neighbouring regions” in the “next few weeks”, he said, after EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell tasked him with the mission last week.

Haavisto is to travel with Alexander Rondos, an EU special representative for the Horn of Africa.

An internal EU report, last November, said Europe feared “the unravelling of the Ethiopian state” and the creation of millions of refugees if the war got worse.

And it feared instability could spread to neighbouring Djibouti, Eritrea, and Somalia.

The Ethiopia conflict is just one of several in the EU’s southern neighbourhood, including ones in Libya, Israel, the Sahel, and Syria.

Meanwhile, Europe’s eastern flank is also becoming increasingly volatile.

Warfare recently erupted in Azerbaijan and goes on unabated in eastern Ukraine.

A political crisis in Belarus and mass-scale demonstrations in Russia have also posed questions about the future of the ruling regimes there.

Russia diplomacy
Russia, on Sunday, arrested another 4,000 people in nationwide protests calling on authorities to free opposition hero Alexei Navalny.

“Russian citizens’ right to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression should be respected,” Haavisto told EUobserver.

Borrell, the EU top diplomat, is himself going to Moscow at the end of this week to urge Navalny’s release and to discuss “strategic” issues.

And Haavisto said it was important for the EU to keep up Russia diplomacy despite the deteriorating ties.

He also highlighted the need for “people-to-people contacts” between ordinary Russians and Europeans, “which have taken a big setback from the Covid pandemic”.

“We have a lot of experience on this, as Finland issues the highest number of Schengen visas in Russia,” Haavisto said, referring to Europe’s ‘Schengen’ free-travel area.

Through Eritrea, China Quietly Makes Inroads Near the Red Sea

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The Diplomat | China is finding an eager partner in Eritrea, an autocratic state generally overlooked entirely by world powers.

As Iran continues to dominate headlines across the Western world, China’s far quieter quest to influence Africa and Asia has escaped the news media’s attention of late. The many examples of this Chinese strategy include the world power’s relationship with Eritrea, a country on the Horn of Africa that rarely features in geopolitical discussions. Nonetheless, officials in Beijing intend to turn what some analysts still label “Africa’s North Korea” into a centerpiece of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s costly economic megaproject inspired by the Silk Road.

In May 2019, Eritrean Foreign Minister Osman Saleh Mohammed and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met in Beijing to laud what Eritrean officials dubbed “a healthy and strong partnership for the benefit of their two peoples.” Just five months later, Chinese Ambassador to Eritrea Yang Zigang said in an interview with Eritrea’s state-owned media that “China has consistently supported Eritrea’s nation-building endeavors by providing Eritrea with many kinds of assistance.”

The months of diplomatic niceties between China and Eritrea preceded a much more substantive development barely noticed by Western news agencies. In early November, the China Shanghai Corporation for Foreign Economic and Technological Cooperation — known as “China SFECO Group” — began building a 134-kilometer road in coordination with ranking Eritrean officials, an initiative heralded by Yang. He has displayed a keen interest in Eritrean infrastructure, noting on the embassy webpage, “Eritrea is endowed with two great natural harbors, Massawa and Assab.”

Eritrea has long expressed its enthusiasm for the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s bid to expand its sphere of influence by investing in countries across the Global South. A representative from Eritrea’s ruling party traveled to Beijing’s Belt and Road Forum in 2017. The Eritrean Information Ministry, meanwhile, praised China’s effort in 2019, calling it a step toward “open, inclusive, and balanced regional economic cooperation” and “integration of markets.”

t first glance, a little-known one-party state with an ailing economy would seem an odd choice for Chinese investment. Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has only succeeded at turning his country into a pariah state during 27 years of brutal rule, and the World Bank Group considers Eritrea “one of the least developed countries in the world.” Even so, Chinese President Xi Jinping likely sees his investment in Afwerki’s regime as an opportunity to secure an ally on the Red Sea.

Chinese tacticians have been eyeing the strategic region for some time. In early 2016, China concluded a deal with Djibouti, one of Eritrea’s neighbors on the Red Sea, to construct a military base – China’s first overseas military facility. The much-discussed Chinese outpost, which itself borders a similar American facility, became operational a year later. China has deployed soldiers throughout East Africa, even sending peacekeepers to secure Chinese-staffed oil wells in South Sudan.

Chinese-Eritrean relations appear focused on economics for the time being, but the possibility of militarization looms on the horizon. China and Eritrea cooperate in a variety of sectors, including energy and public health. The East Asian world power has a long history with its East African partner, arming Eritrea not only during its 30-year war of independence from Ethiopia but also during its second war with Ethiopia in the late 1990s. In more recent years, China has offered to mediate territorial disputes between Eritrea and Ethiopia, a sign of China’s wider ambitions.

In Africa and Eritrea in particular, China’s distinct foreign policy has given it a critical advantage over its Western rivals. Xi is more than willing to ignore Afwerki’s well-known abuses of human rights, such as conscripting tens of thousands of Eritreans and forcing them into what the United Nations terms “slave-like” labor. Though Eritrea has a population of just 6 million, only Syrian applicants for asylum outnumber Eritreans in Europe. Fifty thousand live in Germany alone.

While some Western countries have tried to engage with Eritrea in the last few years, they have faced backlash. European officials suffered significant embarrassment when The New York Times revealed that an Eritrean project funded by the European Union and facilitated by the UN relied on the labor of conscripts. Many European countries view Eritrea as a source of mass migration and a key front in their bid to stop it. Unlike China, which Afwerki has tried to court through his emphasis on Eritrea’s “strategic location,” Europe seems to have few long-term goals there.

The United States, China’s main rival in Africa, has indicated little interest in Eritrea. The State Department has admitted that “[t]ensions related to the ongoing government detention of political dissidents and others, the closure of the independent press, limits on civil liberties, and reports of human rights abuses contributed to decades of strained U.S.–Eritrean relations.”

As long as China keeps overlooking Eritrea’s dismal record on human rights, the two countries’ relationship seems likely to blossom. Despite a remarkable increase in goodwill toward the East African autocracy following Eritrea’s conclusion of a peace treaty with its longtime adversaries in Ethiopia, Afwerki has few friends in the international community. For its part, China has long stated its reluctance to interfere with or even comment on other countries’ internal affairs. That position has endeared Beijing to autocrats around the world.

For now, China only has one opponent in the race to establish a sphere of influence in Eritrea: the United Arab Emirates. The UAE operates an air base and a military port in the East African country in addition to its military base in Somalia. In a sign of China’s growing reach, however, the UAE is participating in the Belt and Road Initiative. Considering that China’s ambassador to the Middle Eastern regional power vaunted their relationship as “at its best period in history” in 2019, the prospect of a confrontation between the two countries over Eritrea seems dim.

SFECO Group’s project in Eritrea marks a new level of cooperation with China. As American and European officials turn their attention to the Middle East, China’s staying power in the Horn of Africa is growing. The Chinese presence in Djibouti sparked alarm across the West. In Eritrea, though, China is reaping the benefits of other world powers’ lack of interest in a rogue state. Unlike its Western counterparts, China has its sights set on the Red Sea.

China’s second Africa policy paper

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China Daily | December 2015 |

JOHANNESBURG — The Chinese government on Friday released its second Africa policy paper as Chinese President Xi Jinping and African leaders gathered here for the second summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

The full text of the policy paper is as follows:

The Chinese Government published its first Africa policy paper in 2006. Over the past decade, the policy has been carried out fully and effectively, playing an important guiding role in the all-round development of China-Africa relations. This year marks the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). The Second FOCAC Summit will be held in South Africa in December. As the first China-Africa summit to be hosted on the African continent, it will be a landmark event conducive to strengthening China-Africa unity and spearheading China-Africa cooperation.

Against this backdrop, the Chinese government wishes, with release of its second Africa policy paper, to further clarify China’s determination and goodwill to develop friendly and cooperative relations with Africa and expound the new vision, approach and measures of China’s Africa policy under the new circumstances with the aim of guiding the multi-faceted exchanges and cooperation between China and Africa in the years to come.

Part I. Establishing and Developing Comprehensive Strategic and Cooperative China-Africa Partnership and Consolidating and Bolstering the Community of Shared Future between China and Africa

China and Africa have always belonged to a community of shared future. Over the past five decades and more, they have always been good friends who stand together through thick and thin, good partners who share weal and woe, and good brothers who fully trust each other despite changes in the international landscape. The traditional friendship between China and Africa is deeply rooted in people’s minds and has become an invaluable asset for both. China and Africa have long valued sincerity, friendship and equality, which constitute the underlying rationale for China-Africa relations to grow stronger with time. Based on this tradition, China and Africa will be committed to mutually beneficial cooperation and common development under the new circumstances, adding new substance and injecting inexhaustible impetus to China-Africa relations.

In 2006, the Chinese government proposed a new type of China-Africa strategic partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, economic win-win cooperation and cultural exchange. In the past decade, China and Africa jointly formulated and implemented a series of major measures to deepen cooperation, which greatly promoted the rapid development of their friendly and cooperative ties across the board. Political mutual trust between China and Africa has been strengthened. Their coordination and cooperation in international and regional affairs have become closer. Their pragmatic cooperation has borne abundant fruit. China has been Africa’s largest trading partner since 2009. In 2014, China’s trade volume with Africa rose to four times that of 2006. People-to-people and cultural exchanges have flourished with nearly 3 million visits made between China and Africa every year, garnering greater social and popular support for China-Africa friendship. The scope and depth of China-Africa exchanges and cooperation has been unprecedented. China’s contribution to Africa’s economic growth has significantly increased.

Tremendous changes have taken place in China and Africa in the past decade, with both shouldering new development tasks. China is striving to achieve the “two centenary goals” and realize the Chinese dream of great national renewal in accordance with the strategy of completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, comprehensively deepening reform, advancing law-based governance and applying strict party discipline. Africa is committed to accelerating its industrialization and modernization and forging ahead to fulfill the dreams outlined in Agenda 2063. Both the Chinese dream and the African dream aim to enable people to live a more prosperous and happier life.

The development strategies of China and Africa are highly compatible. Given their respective strengths, China and Africa need each other for cooperation and development. Rare historic opportunities for mutually beneficial cooperation and common development have emerged. China’s comparative advantages in development experience, applied technology, funds and market can help Africa overcome the two major bottlenecks constraining its development — backward infrastructure and inadequate professional and skilled personnel. They can also help Africa translate its natural and human resources advantages and potential into a driving force for development and benefits for people’s livelihoods, thereby speeding up industrialization and agricultural modernization, and doing a better job in pursuing economic independence as well as self-reliant and sustainable development and achieving lasting peace and stability.

The international situation has undergone dramatic changes over the past decade. The transition to a multi-polar world has gained momentum. The rapid development of emerging markets and developing countries has become an irresistible trend in history, making them a pivotal force for safeguarding world peace and promoting common development. The UN has adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, mandating the realization of inclusive and sustainable development in all countries. Africa has become one of the continents with the fastest economic growth and greatest development potential. It is an important player on the stage of world politics, a new growth pole for the global economy and a center of human civilization with diverse cultures. China has risen to become the world’s second largest economy. It is an active player in the current international system that has helped build it and contributed to it. The current global governance system, however, has yet to fully accommodate the changes. There is a need to increase the representation and voice of developing countries including China and African nations in international affairs. China and Africa should make the most of their advantages in political mutual trust and economic complementarity to push for the all-round development of China-Africa cooperation, strengthen South-South cooperation, promote North-South cooperation, and set a good example for the development of a new model of international relations centered on mutually beneficial cooperation.

China-Africa relations have now reached a new historical starting point. Given their shared development tasks, highly compatible strategic interests, and broad prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation, the Chinese and African people will advance side by side with an ever-growing sense of purpose. China is willing to work with African countries to build and develop a China-Africa comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership featuring political equality and mutual trust, win-win economic cooperation, mutually enriching cultural exchanges, mutual assistance in security, and solidarity and coordination in international affairs. China is devoted, as are African nations, to promoting an all-round development of China-Africa friendly cooperation, working together to pursue development and fulfill dreams, jointly delivering more benefits to Chinese and African people, and making greater contributions to world peace, stability, development and prosperity.

Part II. Upholding the Values of Friendship, Justice and Shared Interests and Adhering to the Principles of Sincerity, Practical Results, Affinity and Good Faith

Enhancing solidarity and cooperation with African countries has always been the cornerstone of China’s independent foreign policy of peace, as well as China’s firm and longstanding strategic choice. Under the new circumstances, China will adhere to the principles of its Africa policy — sincerity, practical results, affinity and good faith, uphold the values of friendship, justice and shared interests, and push for new leapfrog growth of its friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation with Africa.

“Sincerity” means China insists on the principles of equality, mutual trust, solidarity and mutual support, and will always be Africa’s most trustworthy friend and sincere partner. China respects African countries’ independent choice of the way to development as well as their practices and efforts to promote economic and social development and improve people’s living standard. It stands ready to exchange governance experience with African countries on the basis of equality and voluntarism, and promote mutual understanding and acceptance of and learning from each other’s political system and development path. China has always sincerely supported Africa’s development. It never interferes in African countries’ internal affairs, never imposes its will on them, and attaches no political strings when providing aid to Africa. On issues involving each other’s core interests and major concerns, China will enhance communication and coordination, mutual understanding and mutual support with African countries, and safeguard the common interests of both.

“Practical results” means that China aims to achieve practical and efficient results, seeks cooperation and mutual benefits, upholds the principle of honoring commitments with real actions and results, implements the guidelines and measures for mutually beneficial cooperation with Africa to the letter, and strives to realize the common development of China and Africa while helping Africa achieve independent development. Adhering to the traditional Chinese philosophy of “building a nest to attract the phoenix and teaching people how to fish,” China will support African countries’ efforts in infrastructure and human resources development to help them overcome these two major bottlenecks that have long been constraining Africa’s development, and promote China-Africa industrial alignment and capacity cooperation to facilitate Africa’s industrialization and agricultural modernization. China will adhere to the idea of pursuing peace through development and promoting development by maintaining peace, and support Africa’s efforts to seek independent and sustainable development, resolve African issues in an African way, and play a more constructive role in regional hotspot issues.

“Affinity” means the hearts of Chinese and African people are connected, and they will live together in harmony, promote inter-cultural dialogue, and enhance exchanges of ideas, policy alignment and mutual understanding to provide a solid popular and social basis for China-Africa friendship. China will strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Africa in education, science, culture, health and other social and cultural fields, expand exchanges between Chinese and African people, increase think tank, university and media exchanges, and support sub-national contacts and cooperation. Chinese and African employees working on each other’s soil will be encouraged to get along well with local people, and seek coexistence and common prosperity. The Chinese government encourages Chinese enterprises and citizens in Africa to care more about the well-being of local people and repay local society, create a good environment for the Africans working, studying and living in China, and constantly extend and consolidate the social basis of China-Africa friendship.

“Good faith” means China cherishes good faith and settlement of problems in an appropriate manner. It views and promotes China-Africa relations from strategic and long-term perspectives, and seeks joint efforts with Africa to create a good environment for friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation. China stands ready to strengthen policy coordination and communication with African countries, adheres to the principles of mutual respect and win-win cooperation, faces squarely and sincerely the new developments and problems confronting their relations through equal and friendly coordination, and ensures that both sides benefit from sincere, friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation.

Upholding the values of friendship, justice and shared interests is a hallmark of China’s policy toward other developing countries. While valuing friendship and justice as well as shared interests, China places more importance on the former. The core principle is to connect assistance to developing countries, including those in Africa, for their independent and sustainable development with China’s own development, achieve win-win cooperation and common development, and promote more balanced, inclusive and sustainable development of the world at large. China will never repeat the past colonial way in its cooperation with Africa and never pursue development at the cost of Africa’s natural and ecological environment or long-term interests.

Providing support and assistance to African countries for their independent and sustainable development conforms to the interests of both African people and the people of the entire world, and is the common responsibility of the international community. While engaging in cooperation with Africa, China always respects and protects the fundamental interests of African countries and their people, upholds fairness and seeks justice for Africa. It also pursues mutual benefit and win-win results, and sincerely supports and assists Africa in its efforts to realize peace, stability and development.

The one-China principle is the political precondition and foundation for the establishment and development of China’s relations with African countries and regional organizations. The Chinese government appreciates the fact that African countries abide by the one-China principle, support China’s reunification, and refuse to have official relations and contacts with Taiwan. China is committed to developing friendly cooperation in an all-round way with all African countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

China appreciates the constructive actions of the international community to support and assist Africa in realizing lasting peace and sustainable development. It will strengthen coordination and cooperation with other countries as well as international and regional organizations on the basis of the “Africa-proposed, Africa-agreed and Africa-led” principle and with an active, open and inclusive attitude. China will explore tripartite and multilateral cooperation in Africa so as to jointly contribute to peace, stability and development on the continent.

Part III. Promoting the All-Round Development of China-Africa Cooperation

1. Enhancing political mutual trust

(1) Intensifying high-level exchanges

While bringing into play the role of high-level exchanges in providing political guidance, China will maintain the momentum of frequent mutual visits and dialogue between Chinese and African leaders, with a view to facilitating communication on bilateral relations and major issues of common interest, solidifying traditional friendship, and bolstering political mutual trust. China advocates mutual understanding and support on issues involving their respective core interests and major concerns. It calls for safeguarding shared interests, pursuing development together, and deepening cooperation. All these aim to lay a solid political groundwork for the development of bilateral relations between China and individual African countries as well as the overall China-Africa relationship.

(2) Boosting experience sharing in governance

China is of the view that countries should respect and support each other’s efforts to explore and improve development paths and political systems suited to their national conditions. It is ready to engage in a variety of experience-sharing programs with African countries. Through these programs, they will draw wisdom from each other’s civilizations and development practices, increase exchanges of governance experience, and promote common development in accordance with the principles of communication on an equal footing, mutual learning, and shared progress.

(3) Improving intergovernmental consultation and cooperation mechanisms

China will make the most of the coordinating role of bilateral mechanisms such as political consultations between foreign ministries, joint (mixed) committees on trade and economic cooperation and high-level economic and trade cooperation mechanisms, and mixed committees on science and technology. It will further diversify and improve intergovernmental dialogue and consultation mechanisms to promote China-Africa intergovernmental dialogue and cooperation.

(4) Promoting exchanges in various sectors including those between legislative bodies, consultative bodies, political parties, the military and local governments

In keeping with the purpose of deepening understanding and cooperation with mutual respect, China favors increased multi-level, multi-channel, multi-form and all-dimensional friendly exchanges between the National People’s Congress of China and organizations such as the parliaments of African countries and the Pan-African Parliament. These will help further substantiate the China-Africa comprehensive strategic and cooperative partnership.

China stands for expanded and strengthened exchanges between the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and relevant institutions such as African national parliaments, the Pan-African Parliament, the Economic, Social and Cultural Council of the African Union (AU), and the economic and social councils of individual African countries.

The Communist Party of China stands ready to expand and deepen diverse forms of exchanges and cooperation with friendly political parties and organizations in African countries based on the principles of independence, equality, mutual respect and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs. It is committed to exploring a new platform for collective communication and dialogue with the aim of enhancing mutual understanding and friendship and deepening exchanges of governance experience. This will also enable them to better understand and recognize each other’s governance systems and philosophies, learn from each other, improve governance capacities together and contribute to the development of state-to-state relations.

Efforts will be made to maintain the momentum of mutual visits between Chinese and African military leaders, and push for strengthened policy dialogue and increased exchanges between young officers.

China supports the establishment of an increasing number of twin province/state and twin city relationships between China and African countries in a bid to strengthen ties between Chinese and African local governments and facilitate exchanges and cooperation in local development and administration.

2. Deepening cooperation in international affairs

China will further enhance exchanges and cooperation with African countries in international institutions such as the UN and on other international occasions. It will maintain communication and coordination with African countries on prominent international and regional issues. It stands for mutual understanding and support on major issues concerning their respective state sovereignty, territorial integrity, national dignity and development interests, while safeguarding their shared interests as well as those of developing countries.

China will work in concert with Africa to uphold the international order and system underpinned by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. It is firmly supportive of increasing the representation and voice of developing countries in the international governance system. Supporting comprehensive reform of the UN, China maintains that priority should be given to increasing African countries’ representation and voice in the UN Security Council and other UN agencies to address the injustices Africa suffered historically. It is committed, as African nations are, to defending the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, upholding international fairness and justice, and making the world order more just and reasonable.

China calls on the international community to continue to step up the global economic governance reform-in particular, to deliver the promised IMF quota reform as soon as possible-so as to increase the representation and voice of emerging markets and developing countries. It calls for strengthened dialogue between the G20 and Africa and is supportive of Africa’ s participation in G20 affairs.

China will join hands with Africa to call on members of the international community to realize that they are all in the same boat and should therefore share rights and responsibilities. In this spirit, it calls for efforts to implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted at the UN Sustainable Development Summit, strengthen all countries’ capacities for development, ameliorate the international environment for development, optimize development partnerships and improve development coordination mechanisms. All these aim to achieve balanced, sustainable and inclusive growth, jointly create a path of development that is fair, open, comprehensive and innovative, realize common development and advance the common interests of mankind. China will continue to uphold and advocate the principles such as equality, mutual trust, win-win results, solidarity and cooperation while promoting South-South cooperation at a higher level, in a broader scope and on a larger scale under the new circumstances.

China reaffirms the fundamental role of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the international response to climate change. It agrees to jointly maintain the solidarity of developing countries, while upholding the principles and provisions of the UNFCCC and its Kyoto Protocol, especially the principles of equity, “common but differentiated responsibilities” and respective capabilities. It is resolved to work for the establishment of an equitable, reasonable, cooperative and mutually beneficial international climate management system, and promote all-round, effective and sustained implementation of the UNFCCC. China has taken note of the progress made in the UN Convention to Combat Desertification in Countries Experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa. It agrees to jointly safeguard the interests of developing countries and push for the convention’s full and effective implementation.

3. Deepening economic and trade cooperation

(1) Helping boost Africa’s industrialization

China will make prioritizing support for Africa’s industrialization a key area and a main focus in its cooperation with Africa in the new era. Allowing industrial alignment and capacity cooperation to play a leading role in bringing about overall development will help accelerate the industrialization in Africa, thereby providing a solid foundation for Africa’s economic independence as well as self-reliant and sustainable development. In light of their national conditions, development needs and feasible international rules, China will vigorously support the efforts of African countries to improve their “soft” and “hard” environment for investment and development, optimizing laws and regulations on and government services for attracting and protecting foreign investment, and removing the two major bottlenecks impeding development, namely, backward infrastructure and inadequate professional and skilled personnel. Efforts will be made to promote industrial alignment and capacity cooperation between China and African countries in an orderly fashion, with the aim to facilitate Africa’s industrialization and economic diversification, and increase the level of production, living standards and employment in African countries. China is supportive of African countries’ development of special economic zones, industrial parks and science and technology parks to attract investment and talents. It will guide, encourage and support the efforts of Chinese enterprises to jointly build economic and trade cooperation zones in Africa to serve as important platforms for promoting China-Africa industrial capacity cooperation and attracting more Chinese enterprises to invest in Africa, build production and processing bases and localize their operations in Africa, contribute to the increase of local employment, tax revenue and foreign-exchange income, and promote the transfer of industries and technologies.

While sticking to the values of friendship, justice and shared interests, win-win cooperation, the principles of openness and inclusiveness, and market-based operation, China will give priority to building pilot industrial capacity cooperation demonstration zones in African countries with appropriate conditions. China will work together with chosen African countries to bring into full play their governments’ role in guidance, coordination, management and service, increase exchanges of experience in macroeconomic management, and innovate on the cooperation mechanisms in investment protection, finance, taxation, customs, visa, immigration and exchanges of police officers to help African countries enhance capacity building in law enforcement and improve management and services. They will also work in concert to achieve an early harvest in their industrial capacity cooperation, accumulating development and cooperation experience, providing a demonstration effect and playing a leading role in bringing along cooperation with other African countries.

(2) Helping boost Africa’s agricultural modernization

China will prioritize support for Africa’s agricultural modernization in its cooperation with Africa in the new era, with increased input and expanded cooperation to help African countries resolve the development problem of this basic industry that has a bearing on their national economy and people’s livelihoods as well as economic independence. China is willing to share its experience and technology in agricultural development with African countries, and supports their efforts to improve their agricultural technology and techniques to produce and process agricultural, livestock and fishery products. This will help them build an agricultural value chain and increase independent grain production capacity to boost food security, enhance the competitiveness of cotton and other specialty industries in the world, generate more income and improve the livelihood of farmers. China will improve and continue to carry out agricultural technology demonstration projects in Africa, implement the High-Quality and High-Yield Agriculture Demonstration Project, bolster research and development, promotion and extensive use of seeds, send senior agricultural expert teams and agricultural vocational training teacher teams, and expand the scale and effect of training in agricultural management and technology. It will build and improve bilateral mechanisms for agricultural cooperation with Africa, give play to the strengths and roles of each side, and strengthen supervision and evaluation of cooperation projects to increase the quality and level of cooperation. China will encourage and promote China-Africa trade in agricultural products. It will encourage and support Chinese enterprises to engage in crop farming, grain storage, stockbreeding and fishery, and invest in the processing of agricultural products in African countries, helping create more jobs for local people, increase the added value of local products and generate more foreign-exchange income, and boosting Africa’s agricultural modernization. China will also help African countries promote irrigation techniques, effectively use water resources, and improve their capacity to prevent floods and combat droughts.

(3) Participating in Africa’s infrastructure development across the board

China will encourage and support Chinese enterprises and financial institutions’ expanded involvement in infrastructure development in Africa, give full play to the role of policy-based finance, and innovate on investment and financing cooperation models. While sticking to market-oriented operation, as well as the principles of overall cooperation with emphasis on selected areas and a focus on benefits, China will encourage and support the efforts of domestic enterprises to adopt various models to participate in the construction of railways, highways, telecommunications networks, electric power facilities, regional aviation networks, harbors, water works and other infrastructure projects as well as water resources development and protection in Africa. They will also be encouraged and supported to participate in investment, operation and management of these projects. It will encourage bilateral cooperation in the planning and designing, construction, technical standards, supervision, large equipment utilization, and management and operation of the projects.

China stands for pushing forward infrastructure and industrial development in Africa in a coordinated way, with a focus on intensive operation and economies of scale. It will prioritize support for the construction of infrastructure facilities for special economic zones, industrial parks, science and technology parks, etc., to provide favorable conditions for Africa’ s industrial development and China-Africa industrial capacity cooperation. It will facilitate cross-border and cross-regional connectivity in infrastructure to help accelerate the process of African integration.

(4) Strengthening China-Africa financial cooperation

China will give full play to financing platforms and tools, which include preferential loans and other means of policy-based finance, the China-Africa Development Fund, special loans for African small and medium-sized enterprises, the Africa Growing Together Fund, China-Africa industrial cooperation fund, and the BRICS’ New Development Bank, and seek innovation in its financial cooperation with Africa. It will support the efforts of Chinese financial institutions to increase exchanges and seek co-financing cooperation with their counterparts in African countries and African regional and global financial and development institutions, and support Chinese and African financial institutions in establishing joint-stock banks based on commercial principles. China will strengthen currency cooperation between the central banks of the two sides, discuss with African countries the arrangements for expanding cross-border local currency settlements and currency swaps, and encourage Chinese and African enterprises to settle their trade and investment in local currencies. It will also support reciprocal establishment of financial institutions, and increase support to financing insurance. China will step up coordination and collaboration with African countries in international financial organizations and mechanisms to improve and reform the current international financial system and increase the representation and voice of developing countries.

(5) Promoting the facilitation of China-Africa trade and investment

China will encourage more African commodities to enter the Chinese market and continue to grant zero-tariff treatment to 97 percent of taxable items from the least developed countries that have established diplomatic relations with China, according to the implementation of exchanged notes by both sides. Both Chinese and African enterprises are encouraged to make the most of harbor advantages to build regional logistics and wholesale centers. China will strengthen quality control of the goods exported to Africa and build more sales channels, reinforce cooperation in inspection and quarantine with African countries, and jointly crack down on counterfeit or substandard import and export goods. China will boost customs cooperation with Africa, increase information exchange, mutual recognition of supervision and mutual assistance with law enforcement, jointly combat commercial fraud and create a law-abiding and convenient trade environment. China will help African countries enhance capacity building in customs, inspection and quarantine, provide support to improve trade facilitation, and help boost trade within Africa. China will continue to support the development of the African Free Trade Zone and regional integration, and discuss the establishment of institutionalized trade arrangements with countries and regional organizations in Africa.

While aligning Africa’ s needs with China’ s advantages and adhering to the principles of equality, mutual benefit and win-win cooperation, China is committed to improving the quality and efficiency of China-Africa economic and trade cooperation, helping Africa speed up its industrialization and agricultural modernization, and encouraging and supporting the efforts of Chinese enterprises to expand and optimize their investment in areas such as industry, agriculture, infrastructure and energy in Africa. It will continue to provide concessional loans and export credit insurance support to qualified projects and moderately increase the concessionality of its concessional loans.

(6) Bolstering resource and energy cooperation

On the basis of the principles of win-win cooperation, green development, low-carbon emissions and sustainable development, China will expand and deepen mutually beneficial cooperation in resources and energies with African countries. It will help African countries strengthen their capabilities in exploration, development and processing of resources and energies, increase the added value of their primary products, create more local jobs, generate more foreign-exchange income, and turn their resource and energy endowment into achievements in sustainable development and benefits that can be shared by African people. China will innovate on the models of resource and energy cooperation with Africa, and expand whole-industry-chain cooperation in energy and mining sectors. It will support the construction of national or regional power grids in Africa, boost cooperation with Africa in the development of renewable energy and low-carbon, green energy such as wind power, solar power and hydropower, and promote rational development and utilization of renewable energy sources in Africa in order to serve Africa’ s industrialization.

(7) Expanding cooperation on the marine economy

China will help fully tap into the abundant marine resources and development potential of relevant African countries and support them in strengthening capacity building, planning, designing, construction and exchange of operation experience in marine fishing, offshore aquaculture, seafood processing, maritime transportation, shipbuilding, construction of harbors and harbor industrial parks, exploration and development of offshore oil and gas reserves, as well as management of the marine environment. It will support the efforts of Chinese and African enterprises to carry out mutually beneficial cooperation in various forms. It will also help African countries develop the marine economy in light of local conditions and explore new areas for Africa’ s economic growth and China-Africa cooperation, so that African countries’ abundant marine resources can better serve their national development and bring more benefits to their people.

4. Strengthening development cooperation between China and Africa

(1) Continuing to increase development assistance to Africa

As the largest developing country, China has provided assistance to African countries for a long time and will continue to do so within its capability. China has also received support and assistance from African countries in a timely manner whenever it is stricken by a big natural disaster. It stands ready to continue to provide and gradually increase emergency aid and necessary assistance to African countries in a spirit of sharing weal and woe and standing together through thick and thin with the latter. While providing the assistance in light of its own financial capacity and economic situation and the pressing needs of African countries, China sticks to the principles of no political strings attached, non-interference in others’ internal affairs and no demands imposed on others. China will come up with innovative assistance models and optimize assistance conditions. China’s assistance will be primarily used in the areas of human resources development, infrastructure, medical care and health, agriculture, food security, climate change response, desertification prevention and control, and wildlife and environmental protection, and for humanitarian purposes, with the aim to help African countries alleviate poverty, improve people’s livelihoods and build up capacity for independent development.

China will honor its promise to exempt the intergovermental interest-free loans borrowed by the relevant least developed countries, landlocked developing countries and small island developing countries in Africa that are not returned when they mature at the end of 2015.

(2) Supporting Africa in strengthening its public health system and capacity building

Drawing on the experience in joint fight against Ebola and malaria, China will deepen and expand health cooperation with Africa. It will strengthen communication with Africa on medical and health policies, and support Africa’s efforts to strengthen its public health and disease control and prevention system and capacity building. China will actively participate in the preparation for the establishment of an African Center for Disease Control and Prevention, and assist African countries to improve the level of laboratory technology and deliver training to medical personnel, with a focus on assisting in prevention and control of non-contagious chronic diseases, malaria and other insect-borne infectious diseases, cholera, Ebola, AIDS, tuberculosis, and other preventable infectious diseases and newly emerging diseases. By making full use of its own strengths, China will support, on a priority basis, the efforts of African countries to enhance their core capacity in border health quarantine, build infectious diseases monitoring stations, provide medical services to women and children, and improve the departments and services in the existing medical facilities. China will continue to support African countries in health infrastructure development. It will continue to send medical teams to African countries, launch cooperation between counterpart Chinese and African hospitals, and enhance exchanges and cooperation between modern and traditional medicine with a focus on improving local medical services. It will also continue to promote the “Brightness Action” campaign to provide free cataract operation and other short-term free medical services. China stands for increasing paired exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and African medical institutions and drug administration agencies, and supports their cooperation with international and regional organizations such as the World Health Organization and the African Union. It will encourage Chinese pharmaceutical enterprises to invest in Africa in a bid to lower the cost of medicines in Africa and increase the affordability of medical and pharmaceutical products in Africa.

(3) Expanding cooperation in education and human resources development

China will expand cooperation in education with Africa, supporting educational development in the continent. It will provide more input in light of the social and economic development needs of African countries so as to achieve greater results, and help train more much-needed professionals for African countries, in particular, teachers and medical workers. While enhancing exchanges and cooperation between education administration agencies and institutions on both sides, China will continue to implement the “African Talents Program”, gradually increase the number of government scholarships for applicants in African countries, and encourage local governments, institutions of higher learning, enterprises and social organizations to set up scholarships. It welcomes more African young people to study in China, encouraging and supporting them to play a bigger role in the pragmatic cooperation between China and Africa. China will encourage colleges and universities on both sides to establish partnerships, support exchanges between Chinese and African teachers and students, and magnify the effect of the 20+20 Cooperation Plan for Chinese and African Institutions of Higher Education. Following the principle of integrating learning and knowledge application, China will scale up cooperation in teacher training and vocational education with African countries with the aim to expand the channels for human resources development.

(4) Sharing and popularizing the experience in poverty alleviation

Poverty is the common challenge confronting China and Africa. China will fulfill its promise to the international community to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It will actively implement the Program for Strengthening China-Africa Cooperation on Poverty Reduction issued by China and the AU, strengthen China-Africa poverty alleviation cooperation, give play to the role of international poverty alleviation platforms such as the International Poverty Reduction Center in China jointly established by China and the United Nations, and encourage and support governments, academic institutions, enterprises and non-governmental organizations on both sides to carry out diverse forms of experience exchanges and pragmatic cooperation on poverty alleviation. These will facilitate the sharing of China’s successful experience in achieving large-scale poverty reduction by alleviating rural poverty through development. China will strengthen cooperation on demonstration projects to support African countries in enhancing their capability of independent poverty alleviation and development.

(5) Stepping up science and technology cooperation and knowledge sharing

China will continue to push forward implementation of the China-Africa Science and Technology Partnership Plan, and encourage strengthened science and technology exchanges and cooperation between China and African countries in the fields of agriculture, water resources, energy, aviation and aerospace, telecommunication, environmental protection, desertification prevention and control, medical care and marine sector. It will support African countries in building up their capacity in science and technology, and work with them to set up joint laboratories, joint research centers, and science and technology parks in key areas. It will continue to sponsor outstanding young African scientists to conduct short-term research in China, step up training on applied technology and relevant policies, and jointly establish advanced-technology application and demonstration bases. China will promote the dissemination of China’ s science and technology research results and the popularization and application of advanced and applied technology in Africa.

(6) Enhancing cooperation on climate change and environmental protection

China will boost and consolidate cooperation with Africa under the UNFCCC and other relevant mechanisms, and push for both sides to carry out consultations, exchanges and cooperation projects in relation to addressing climate change. China will innovate on cooperation areas, deepen pragmatic cooperation, and work in concert with Africa to enhance the capacity for tackling climate change. China stands for closer policy dialogue, and closer bilateral and multilateral coordination and cooperation with Africa in the area of environment. It calls for strengthened cooperation in education and personnel training on ecological protection, environment management, pollution prevention and control, bio-diversity and water resources conservation, and the prevention and control of desertification, as well as in demonstration projects in these areas. It will push forward environment-friendly industrial capacity cooperation and transfer of applied technology. While enhancing exchanges on environmental protection laws and regulations, China will engage in dialogue and cooperation on the conservation of endangered species of wild fauna and flora, step up intelligence sharing and capacity building in law enforcement, and crack down on transnational organized crimes related to endangered wildlife trafficking. While implementing the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora and dealing with other related international affairs, China will strengthen communication and coordinate positions with African countries, in a bid to work together to promote the protection and sustainable exploitation of global wild fauna and flora.

5. Deepening and expanding cultural and people-to-people exchanges

(1) Expanding exchanges and cooperation in culture and sports

China will maintain the momentum of high-level contacts, and implement bilateral cultural cooperation agreements and their implementation plans. Encouraging and supporting African countries for Chinese-language teaching, China will continue to set up more Confucius Institutes in African countries, and encourage and support the opening of Chinese cultural centers in Africa and African cultural centers in China. It will support the holding of the “Year of China” events in Africa and the “Year of an African Country” events in China, raise the profile of the “Chinese/African Cultures in Focus” events, and enrich the program of China-Africa mutual visits between cultural personnel and the China-Africa Cultural Cooperation Partnership Program, with the aim to achieve better results in cultural exchanges. China stands for respect of each other’s cultural diversity, and will promote China-Africa cultural inclusiveness and common prosperity, thereby enhancing understanding and friendship between Chinese and African people. In addition to promoting exchanges between cultural institutions and personnels, China will strengthen cooperation with Africa in cultural industry and personnel training.

According to the principle of focusing on key areas and doing things within its capability, China will strengthen exchanges and result-oriented sports cooperation with African countries and continue to provide assistance to support the development of sports in African countries.

(2) Expanding tourism cooperation

China will work with African countries to provide convenience in visa application and other services to facilitate travels by their nationals to their respective countries and regions, support tourism promotion activities in each other’s countries and regions, encourage airlines on both sides to open more air routes and operate more flights between China and Africa, and expand personnel exchanges and visits. China welcomes and is willing to give positive consideration to applications of qualified African countries for Approved Destinations Status for outbound Chinese tourist groups, and support Chinese and African enterprises to engage in mutually beneficial cooperation in tourism infrastructure development, thereby improving and optimizing the environment for tourism.

(3) Broadening cooperation on press, radio, film and television

China will push forward diverse forms of exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and African media outlets, creating necessary conditions for this purpose and providing guidance and convenience. Dialogue and consultation between relevant government departments will be strengthened for the purpose of deepening media cooperation, enhancing cyberspace management and sharing experience in handling the relations with media, with a priority given to support capacity building of African media. Support will be provided for the sound development of the China-Africa Press Center, with the aim to increase objective and balanced media coverage on the development of China and Africa and on China-Africa relations so as to promote mutual understanding and recognition between Chinese and African people. China will encourage Chinese and African media organizations to step up cooperation in areas such as journalism studies, personnel training, content exchanges and joint news gathering and production, and new media. China will strengthen technological exchanges and industrial cooperation with Africa on radio, film and television, and encourage connection and contacts between Chinese and African radio and TV broadcasters. It will continue to promote the digitization of radio and TV broadcasting in Africa, provide related financing, technical support and personnel training, and encourage Chinese and African enterprises to engage in joint venture cooperation.

(4) Encouraging exchanges between academia and think tanks

China will encourage Chinese and African universities to carry out joint studies to enhance research strengths of both sides. China will actively implement the China-Africa Joint Research and Exchange Plan and the China-Africa Think Tanks 10+10 Partnership Plan. It will support Chinese and African research institutes and think tanks to engage in multi-forms of exchanges and cooperation, such as joint researches, seminars, and publishing of books. Priority support will be given to joint researches and result sharing in areas that are conducive to promoting China-Africa friendly cooperation, such as governance, development paths, industrial capacity cooperation, and comparison of cultures and laws.

(5) Enhancing people-to-people exchanges

China will continue to enhance people-to-people exchanges to increase mutual understanding between Chinese and African people and push forward cooperation on improving people’s livelihoods. It encourages the implementation of the Proposals on China-Africa People-to-People Exchanges and Cooperation, China-Africa People-to-People Friendship Action and China-Africa People-to-People Friendship and Partnership Program, and supports non-governmental organizations and social groups to engage in diverse forms of friendly exchanges and public benefit activities.

It will promote exchanges between Chinese and African youths and contacts between Chinese and African government departments for youth affairs and youth organizations of political parties, and promote exchanges between outstanding youths from all walks of life in China and Africa. It will encourage and guide Chinese young volunteers to go to African countries to deliver volunteer services, and engage in poverty alleviation, education assistance and other activities.

China will continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with Africa to promote gender equality, deepen exchanges between women’s organizations and high-level dialogue on women’s issues, maintain good cooperation on multilateral women’s affairs, and work with Africa to promote women’s cause in China and African countries. It will continue to provide necessary assistance to African countries to benefit women and children, and strengthen cooperation in skills training.

China will engage in exchanges with Africa in such areas as service systems for persons with disabilities and social security policies for them. For this, efforts will be made to step up cooperation in areas including rehabilitation, education, employment, social insurance, and development-oriented poverty reduction.

China will intensify friendly exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and African trade unions.

6. Promoting peace and security in Africa

(1) Supporting Africa in realizing peace and security

China supports African countries’ efforts in independently resolving their continent’s issues in their own way. Based on the principles of respecting the wills of African countries, not interfering in African countries’ internal affairs and observing the basic norms governing international relations, China will play a constructive role in maintaining and promoting peace and security in Africa. It will explore means and ways with Chinese characteristics to constructively participate in resolving hot-button issues in Africa and exert a unique impact on and make greater contributions to African peace and security. The Special Representative of the Chinese government on African Affairs will continue to play a contributing part.

China will strengthen dialogue and consultation with African countries and regional organizations on peace and security issues, pursue the principle of securing peace through development and promoting development with peace, and implement the consensus on achieving common, cooperative, comprehensive and sustainable security. It will support the efforts by African countries, the AU and sub-regional organizations to build capabilities in safeguarding peace and stability in Africa, and other relevant efforts. It will implement the Initiative on China-Africa Cooperative Partnership for Peace and Security and continue to provide, within its capabilities, support to Africa for its development of collective security mechanisms such as the African Standby Force and the African Capacity for Immediate Response to Crises.

China will uphold justice and safeguard the common interests of Africa and developing countries in multilateral organizations such as the UN. China attaches great importance to and supports the UN’s important role in safeguarding peace and stability in Africa, and will continue to support and expand its participation in the UN’s efforts in Africa aimed at maintaining and building peace.

(2) Deepening military cooperation

China will further strengthen military exchanges and cooperation with African countries. It will deepen military-related technological cooperation and carry out joint military training and exercises. China will scale up training of African military personnel according to the needs of the African side, and innovate on the training methods. It will continue to help African countries enhance their capacity building in national defense and peacekeeping to safeguard their own security and regional peace.

(3) Supporting Africa in confronting non-traditional security threats

China will strengthen cooperation with Africa in intelligence sharing and capacity building, and improve capabilities to confront non-traditional security threats together with African countries. It will support the international community’s efforts to crack down on piracy, continue to send naval vessels to participate in the missions for maintaining navigation safety in the Gulf of Aden and in waters off the coast of Somalia, and assist African countries in ensuring navigation safety in the Gulf of Guinea.

China will support the efforts of African countries and regional organizations in improving counter-terrorism capabilities and fighting terrorism, and help African countries develop their economy and root out the causes of terrorism, with the aim to safeguard regional security and stability and promote long-term peace and sustainable development in Africa. It will strengthen counter-terrorism exchanges and cooperation with the AU and priority countries in the region.

7. Strengthening exchanges and cooperation in consular, immigration, judicial and police areas

China will support institutional arrangements for the facilitation of personnel exchanges with Africa and guarantee the expansion of friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation and orderly personnel exchanges between the two sides.

China will work with African countries to establish more consular organizations in each other’s territory in a planned manner. It will strengthen consular consultation with African countries for both sides to have amicable discussions on urgent problems or issues of common interest in bilateral or multilateral consular relations. China stands for closer exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and African immigration departments to fight illegal immigration, supporting African countries to strengthen capacity building in enforcement of immigration-related laws.

China stands ready to promote exchanges and cooperation between Chinese and African judicial and police departments and the two sides may learn from each other in legal system development and judicial reform. It will support the efforts of Africa to strengthen capacity building in riot control, maintenance of stability and law enforcement. It stands for concrete and effective measures by both sides to protect the safety, rights and interests of personnel and organizations from the other side on their own soil.

China will work with African countries to enhance cooperation in judicial assistance and extradition and repatriation of criminal suspects. They will expand cooperation in signing judicial assistance treaties, cracking down on crimes, and pursuing fugitives and recovering criminal proceeds. They will work in concert to crack down on cross-border crimes and ensure the order of and the just and legal rights involved in trade and economic and personnel exchanges. It calls for the two sides to increase communication and cooperation in the areas of jail management, community correction, drug rehabilitation and transfer of convicted persons.

Part IV. FOCAC and Its Follow-up Actions

Since its establishment in 2000, FOCAC has become an important platform for collective dialogue between China and Africa and an effective mechanism for their pragmatic cooperation, thanks to the efforts of both sides. In the past 15 years, China and Africa have co-hosted the Beijing Summit and five ministerial conferences, drawn up a series of important programmatic documents on cooperation, and promoted the implementation of measures supporting African development and deepening the friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation between the two sides, reaping fruitful results.

China and Africa have held dialogues through equal-footed dialogue mechanisms such as the Ministerial Conference, the political consultation between Chinese and African foreign ministers on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly sessions, the Senior Officials Meeting, and the consultation between the Secretariat of the Chinese Follow-up Committee of FOCAC and the African Diplomatic Corps in China, further enhancing mutual understanding and political mutual trust. The forum has served as a platform for all-round pragmatic cooperation, pushing for leapfrog increase in China-Africa trade and mutual investment and promoting mutual benefit and common development. The forum has been a bridge for closer people-to-people exchanges and friendship between China and Africa, promoting bilateral exchanges in all areas, and consolidating and expanding the social and popular support for the friendship between China and African countries. It has helped enhance communication and collaboration between China and African countries in the international arena, facilitating them to work together in safeguarding the overall interests of the two sides and developing countries.

China is willing to work with African countries to enhance the mechanism building of the forum, expand areas and ways of cooperation, enrich mutual cooperation, promote the establishment and improvement of sub-forum mechanisms in the fields of industrialization, agricultural modernization, infrastructure, human resources development, industrial capacity cooperation, finance, science and technology, education, culture, health, poverty reduction, law, locals, youth, women, people-to-people exchanges, think tanks and media, and deepen cooperation in relevant areas. All these are aimed at enabling China-Africa cooperation to be more pragmatic and effective and achieve more tangible results under the framework of the forum, thereby bringing greater benefits to the Chinese and African people.

Part V. China’s Relations with African Regional Organizations

China values and supports the AU’s leadership in building a united and strong Africa and promoting African integration, its centrality in safeguarding peace and security in Africa, as well as a bigger role for the organization in regional and international affairs. It appreciates and supports the AU’s adoption and implementation of Agenda 2063 and its first 10-year plan. The creation of the Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the AU in 2014 has taken China-AU relations to a new stage. China is ready to increase high-level exchanges with the AU, give full play to the China-AU strategic dialogue mechanism, and enhance political dialogue and mutual trust. It will promote cooperation with the AU in areas such as development planning, experience sharing in poverty reduction, health, peace and security, and international affairs.

China appreciates the positive role of African sub-regional organizations in promoting peace, stability and development in their respective regions. It stands ready to strengthen friendly exchanges and cooperation with these organizations, and support their capacity-building efforts.

China is eager to establish and improve various dialogue and cooperation mechanisms with the AU and sub-regional organizations in Africa, thereby enhancing China-Africa cooperation at both regional and sub-regional levels in a wide array of fields including political affairs, the economy, trade and culture.

Militants Storm Hotel in Somali Capital and Blasts Rock Area

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NYT | The authorities said there were reports of at least two dead and 11 injured at the Afrik Hotel. A militant group, the Shabab, was believed to be behind the attack.

NAIROBI, Kenya — Militants with the extremist group al-Shabab stormed a major hotel in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, on Sunday evening, the authorities said, raising fears of growing violence in the Horn of Africa nation as it faces a bitterly contested election season and the withdrawal of American troops.

The attack, which began at around 5 p.m. local time, took place at the Afrik Hotel, which is on the road to the city’s major international airport and a popular meeting place for politicians, lawmakers and members of the security services.

Images and video shared on social media showed smoke billowing into the blue skies. Heavy gunfire and blasts were heard in the hotel’s vicinity, according to Ismael Mukhtar Omar, the spokesman of Somalia’s ministry of information.

Authorities said that the Shabab militant group, which is Al Qaeda’s most powerful ally in Africa and has wreaked havoc across East Africa, carried out the attack. Security forces were continuing to engage them inside the hotel Sunday night. A Somali police spokesman, Sadiq Adan Ali, said in a statement that most of the people who were at the hotel had been evacuated.

Abdulkadir Adan, the founder of Aamin Ambulance, Mogadishu’s only free ambulance service, said in a text message that his team had removed the bodies of two people killed in the attack, and had taken another 11 who were injured from the site of the violence.

Mohamed Nur Galal, a former top military general, was killed in the attack, Mr. Omar confirmed in a post on Twitter. Among those rescued were senior federal and regional government officials along with security officers, he added.

The attack came just weeks before a crucial parliamentary and presidential election that has been plagued by disputes over how to properly conduct the voting, creating an impasse that risks delaying the vote and pushing the government past its constitutional term limit.

The disagreements, embroiling the federal and regional governments and opposition parties, have alarmed the United Nations, the United States, the European Union and African states, which have called on the various parties “to resolve the remaining electoral implementation issues in order for credible and inclusive elections to proceed.”

The elections were scheduled for Feb. 8, but that timeline looks unattainable now. President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed has called on regional leaders to meet starting Monday to deal with the electoral crisis.

The tensions over the elections came to the fore last week after heavy infighting broke out between Somali forces and those from the southern region of Jubaland. Somali officials blamed the violence on groups backed by neighboring Kenya, allegations that officials in Nairobi denied. Somalia has severed diplomatic relations with Kenya after accusing it of meddling in its internal affairs.

Somalia is facing a host of other crises, including the coronavirus pandemic, swarms of desert locusts that are destroying crops, and the displacement of tens of thousands of people by seasonal floods late last year.

The Shabab militant group also continues to remain a threat, targeting civilians, government officials and peacekeeping forces besides carrying out attacks on restaurants, hotels and other establishments.

The Qaeda-linked group has financial muscle, too, as is collects millions of dollars in tariffs and payoffs to finances its operations, according to a United Nations Security Council report from last year. The group has been moving this money through Somalia’s banking system and is investing in local businesses and real estate.

Former President Trump, in the waning days of his term, announced an abrupt withdrawal of the 700 American troops from the country, leading observers to worry the pullout would embolden the Shabab and push them to carry out more attacks against the weak but internationally-backed government.

How War in Ethiopia Impacts Red Sea and Horn of Africa Power Politics: The Battle in Tigray and Beyond

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Terrorism Monitor | Michael Horton

Ethiopia is a key prize in the scramble for influence and power in the Horn of Africa and broader Red Sea region. With its natural resources, population of 110 million, and well-equipped military, Ethiopia has become an African power. The nation’s capital, Addis Ababa, moreover, hosts the African Union headquarters, and the country is one of the few African nations never to be colonized. [1] Ethiopia has accordingly long played an outsized role in African and sub-regional politics.

For much of the last decade, successive Ethiopian governments have navigated treacherous regional and global politics by maintaining relations with diverse geopolitical actors. On the global level, Ethiopia has been—and remains—an important U.S. ally, while China accounts for the largest volume of foreign direct investment into Ethiopia. [2] At the regional level, Ethiopia has avoided becoming entangled in the Gulf’s acrimonious power politics between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and their two main adversaries, Qatar and Turkey. All four of those countries nevertheless provide Ethiopia with financial aid and private investment across multiple areas, especially its important agricultural sector. Turkey and the UAE, despite being regional rivals, also both maintain high-level military-to-military relations with Ethiopia.

The ongoing war in Ethiopia’s northernmost Tigray region will test Ethiopia’s strategy of balancing the interests of outside powers with its own need for domestic investment. At the same time, the war, which began on November 4, will present these same outside powers with new opportunities to enhance their relationship with Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali (East African, November 7). However, those and other outside powers will also have ample opportunity to create instability in Ethiopia if they so choose.

Ethiopian Foreign Policy from Balancing to Entanglement

The war in Tigray pits the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) against the Ethiopian government. The TPLF, which dominated Ethiopian politics for much of the last three decades, is a formidable political and military power in its own right. While the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) has made quick progress in capturing major cities in the Tigray region, this was likely due to strategic withdrawals by the TPLF (Nazret, November 19). Such a strategy aligns with the TPLF’s long history of guerrilla warfare.

Barring some negotiated settlement between the TPLF and the Ethiopian government, the war in Tigray will likely evolve into an insurgency that will spill beyond the borders of Tigray. At the same time, the war in Tigray, even if it is contained to TPLF redoubts in the mountains, will attract the interest of outside powers. This is already the case with Eritrea, which has deployed troops within Ethiopia’s borders to help the ENDF bottle up the TPLF. In addition to its three decade-long battle for independence from Ethiopia, Eritrea and Ethiopia fought over disputed border towns from 1998-2000. Eritrea, which was once allied with the TPLF, is now supporting Abiy Ahmed, who signed a peace agreement with Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki in 2018 that ended the two countries’ longstanding border conflict (Addis Fortune, September 22, 2018).

The involvement of Eritrean forces in Ethiopia’s war in Tigray could be a harbinger of things to come. The UAE, which maintains military bases in Eritrea, may also be aiding Abiy Ahmed’s government. Conflicting and unconfirmed reports, for example, indicate the possible deployment of UAE-operated drones from the UAE base in Assab, Eritrea to Tigray. [3] The UAE, which is locked in a cold war with Qatar and Turkey, could try to enhance its relationship with Ethiopia by supporting its fight against the TPLF at the cost of Ethiopia’s relationship with Qatar and Turkey.

Turkey, however, like the UAE, enjoys excellent military-to-military relations with Ethiopia. Due to Ethiopia’s involvement in Somalia, with which it shares a long and largely unguarded border, Turkey works closely with the Ethiopian military and intelligence services. Turkey also regards Somalia, where it maintains its largest overseas military base, as the lynchpin in its strategy to preserve and grow its influence in the Horn of Africa and Red Sea region (Terrorism Monitor, November 20). In mid-November, Ethiopia withdrew large numbers of troops it had deployed in its ethnically Somali Ogaden region and Somalia itself to redeploy them to Tigray (Somali Affairs, November 3). Somalia-based al-Shabaab, therefore, will benefit from gaps left by the Ethiopian forces, and the relationship between Ethiopia and Turkey may deepen as Ankara seizes on opportunities to help Addis Ababa bolster security along its border with Somalia. Turkey also has greater ability than either the UAE or Saudi Arabia to offer the Ethiopian military what it lacks and most desires: drone technology and the expertise to use it (Terrorism Monitor, October 13).

Further afield, China, which has invested billions of dollars in almost every economic sector in Ethiopia, will act to protect those investments. China will make every effort to support stability in Ethiopia. Given China’s pragmatic foreign policy in Africa and in Ethiopia in particular, this support will be cost-effective and possibly covert. There is little doubt that China will aid Abiy Ahmed’s efforts to contain and defeat the TPLF. However, such aid will, as is customary with Chinese foreign policy, come with strings attached. [4]

Water Wars and Instability

On the other side of the equation, Ethiopia’s regional rivals will view limited instability in Ethiopia as a benefit. Ethiopia has completed its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) and, as of July 2020, began filling the dam’s immense reservoir (Nazret, July 16). Egypt views the dam, which impedes the flow of water into the Nile’s primary tributary, the Blue Nile, as an existential threat. [5] Thus far, the two governments have failed to reach an agreement over how they will share the Nile’s water resources.

Over this summer, Egypt reportedly proposed to build a base in the unrecognized Republic of Somaliland (The East African, July 28). It is unlikely the government of Somaliland will accept the proposal. However, it reflects Egypt’s interest in enhancing its relations with other nations in the Horn of Africa and expanding its military’s regional reach as a way of checking what it sees as growing Ethiopian power.

For its part, Sudan, which will benefit from cheap electricity and flood control provided by the GERD, has been more willing to negotiate with Ethiopia on the dam. However, Egypt wields considerable influence in Sudan. The war in Tigray, especially if it is prolonged, may undermine the Ethiopian government’s ability to press forward with what Egypt views as an uncompromising agreement on GERD and hinder Sudan’s possible accommodation with Ethiopia on the dam.

Ethiopia’s Outlook

Ethiopia’s successful foreign policy, which is based on balancing the interests of rival countries in its natural resources and strategic position in exchange for access and investment, could be compromised by sustained war in Tigray. The TPLF is a sophisticated political and military organization that possesses the knowledge and institutional memory that will allow it to engage rival internal and outside powers. Abiy Ahmed’s government will find it requires more and new types of aid to deal with the challenges posed by the TPLF. Receipt of this aid, be it military or financial, will constrain Ethiopia’s nimble and independent foreign policy.

Notes

[1] Ethiopia was occupied by the Italians from 1936-1941. See Jeff Pearce, Prevail: The Inspiring Story of Ethiopia’s Victory over Mussolini’s Invasion (Skyhorse Publishing, 2014).

[2] In 2019, China accounted for the largest volume of foreign direct investment (FDI) in Ethiopia, followed by Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

[3] There are conflicting and unconfirmed reports in Western media on the possible deployment of UAE-operated drones from the UAE’s base in Assab, Eritrea to Tigray. See, for example: https://www.voanews.com/africa/expert-no-evidence-uae-drones-are-being-used-ethiopias-tigray-conflict; https://www.bellingcat.com/news/rest-of-world/2020/11/19/are-emirati-armed-drones-supporting-ethiopia-from-an-eritrean-air-base/; and https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ethiopia-conflict-idUSKBN27V05M. While deployment of UAE-operated and Chinese-manufactured Wing Loong II drones would be consistent with the UAE’s deployment of drones over Yemen and Libya, it is unlikely at this stage. What is more likely is that the UAE is using surveillance drones within Eritrean territory to monitor incursions into Eritrean territory by TPLF forces.

[4] This is not to say that other countries providing aid, like the United States, do not also expect some kind benefit in return. However, China is particularly adept at incorporating countries into its financial and political web at relatively minimal expense to the Chinese treasury. See Tom Burgis, The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarch, Corporations, Smuggler, and the Theft of Africa’s Wealth (Public Affairs, 2016).

[5] For an overview of the complexity surrounding GERD and downstream riparian environments, see: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19089-x

Ethiopia’s Long War

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London Review of Book | Maaza Mengiste

I have​ a hazy childhood memory of soldiers breaking into our house. They had come to question my grandfather, who they believed was hiding someone they wanted to arrest. It was not long after the start of the 1974 revolution in Ethiopia that would depose Emperor Haile Selassie and install a military junta led by Mengistu Haile Mariam. The new regime, which called itself the Derg, was hunting down dissidents deemed ‘enemies of the state’. There were nightly gun battles near our home in Addis Ababa between rebel groups and government forces.

I was standing next to my grandfather in the dining area when the door burst open and three soldiers forced their way in. I remember one of them distinctly. He was slender-faced and young, his eyes so wild that he, too, might have been scared. My mind has superimposed his face on the other two men, so that when the memory arises, as it often does, the soldiers are identical triplets screaming at us in unison. My grandmother shouted for me and my grandfather shoved me behind him. I was shaking and I remember his hand reaching back to steady me as I pressed against his leg. I watched the young soldier advance. He pushed my grandfather aside and dropped to his knees on the ground in front of me. He had a downy moustache on his upper lip. He bent close, smiled, and all harshness left his voice: ‘Is there someone else here?’

There was someone else in our house, a stranger hiding in a small room that was normally used for storage. I had been forbidden from going near there, but that hadn’t stopped me. One day, when the door had been left slightly ajar, I peeked in and – if memory serves – made eye contact with an injured man, wrapped in bandages. I knew the answer to the soldier’s question, but I also knew that wasn’t what I should say. I shook my head. The soldiers left and went to another house. In the silence that followed, my grandparents embraced me and assured me we were safe. Then they both insisted we would never talk about what had happened. And we didn’t. I never learned who the man was, or what happened to him.

In the years since, I’ve tried to make sense of that moment. My grandparents are dead. My parents weren’t at home when it happened. There is no one left but me to carry the memory, which has grown heavier over the years. I have had to wade through the many events that separate it from everything that came afterwards. The revolution swept through my family. Some relatives were jailed, others were killed. The Derg didn’t allow funeral rites for those it called enemies. Silence and fear worked together to keep grief so contained that it was not until the summer of 2005, while driving with my mother in Addis Ababa, that I learned I had three uncles who died during the revolution. We were stuck in traffic behind a police truck. Several young men, a few of them with bruised and beaten faces, stared at us from the back of the open bed. ‘I have seen so many of these,’ my mother said. Then she told me about her brothers and the games they used to play. Later, when I asked her to tell me more about her favourite brother, she sang a childhood song, tears running down her face.

A few years ago, I went to see the African Union’s new headquarters in Addis Ababa, an impressive building with a grand auditorium, funded by China. It has a memorial to victims of human rights abuses, which acknowledges that the AU is built on the site of Akaki Prison, Ethiopia’s central jail, known as Alem Bekagn, or ‘Goodbye to the World’. The date of its construction is unclear, but it outlasted a succession of rulers: fascist, monarchical, dictatorial and authoritarian, until it was permanently closed in 2004 under Meles Zenawi. It gained notoriety in 1937 during the Italian occupation, when an assassination attempt on Marshal Rodolfo Graziani led to the retaliatory Yekatit 12 massacre. An estimated 30,000 people were killed during these brutal reprisals. Unknown numbers of innocent people were imprisoned, tortured and executed in Akaki or sent from there to concentration camps.

The details we have from that period come from personal recollections and family stories, but these accounts were largely set aside in 1941, when Haile Selassie reclaimed the throne and the occupation ended. He directed Ethiopians to look to the future, to forgive the Italian invaders and leave the past behind. There was no reckoning with the aftermath of the war. There was no attempt to address – and perhaps alleviate – the deep social and ethnic divisions that continued after the Italians had left and were exacerbated by each successive ruler. Haile Selassie used the prison to hold criminals and political opponents, as did the Derg. (Meles Zenawi used another notorious detention centre, Maekelawi.) The memorial’s website correctly calls it a ‘citadel of oppression’, but despite the decades of deaths and disappearances at Alem Bekagn there has been no attempt at reparative justice to honour those incarcerated there, only the relentless narrative of national progress and uncolonised independence.

Ethiopia has seen nothing comparable to the work that took place in Rwanda after the genocide or in South Africa under the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The perpetrators of the worst crimes of the Derg era have not been properly punished. The stories from this period have been suppressed – partly out of fear and trauma, but also as a consequence of a culturally accepted unwillingness to show weakness. The weight of historical trauma can feel overwhelming. After the Italian occupation and the Derg years, it was easier just to keep moving forward, as my family and so many other families have done. But then in 2018, Abiy Ahmed was named prime minister and with him came unprecedented optimism and the possibility of reconciliation through political reform. To understand the momentousness of that moment, and the disappointment that has followed in its wake, requires a confrontation with the past.

In the 1970s, early in the revolution, Meles Zenawi, then a medical student at Addis Ababa University, fled to Tigray to continue the struggle against the Derg. He joined the armed resistance that was solidifying around a political ideology grounded in ethno-nationalism – the nascent Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The civil war lasted more than fifteen years; by the time the Derg was overthrown in 1991 the country was shattered – socially, economically, culturally. At least half a million people had been killed. Untold thousands had been imprisoned or had gone into exile, and millions more had lived in fear, suspicion and under constant threat of violence. A decade and a half of censorship and the total suppression of dissent had brought the press to a standstill and constrained all natural expressions of grief, anger and other emotions.

Meles, who led the transitional government set up in 1991, was prime minister from 1995 until his death in 2012. The TPLF dominated a four-party, multi-ethnic coalition, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Under Meles, Ethiopians saw economic progress and greater freedoms. But those years were tainted by the uneven distribution of wealth, increasing ethnic strife, and government crackdowns on the media, political activists and civil society.

In the months before the 2005 elections, the EPRDF and the opposition Coalition for Unity and Democracy, among others, waged a vigorous and heated campaign across the country. There were televised debates, and the final week witnessed huge rallies. Some polling sites in Addis Ababa were forced to stay open for 24 hours to accommodate the vast queues. On the evening of 16 May, while results were still being counted, Meles declared a thirty-day ban on large gatherings and took direct control of police and militia forces. The EPRDF claimed it had won a majority; the opposition insisted it had won more seats than the official tally. Amid allegations of electoral fraud, young people in cities across Ethiopia defied the ban and demonstrated.

Protests swept the country. On 6 June, government forces arrested thousands of demonstrators, most of them students, in Addis Ababa alone. On 8 June, security forces opened fire on large groups of unarmed protesters, killing at least 22 and wounding more than a hundred. Crackdowns continued, and later that summer, when my mother and I were stuck in traffic behind that police truck full of young men who had clearly been beaten, we were certain we were staring at political prisoners. It wasn’t surprising that the events of 2005 should have taken us back to the Derg years, or that those young men should have reminded my mother of the brothers she had lost. By November, at least 200 people had been killed, 800 wounded and 30,000 arrested, including leaders of the opposition. Thousands fled Ethiopia, many paying traffickers to take them to Libya where they would try to find a way to cross the Mediterranean and enter Italy alive.

Meles’s successor in 2012, Hailemariam Desalegn, faced a vocal and unflinching movement that demanded greater representation and rejected the EPRDF’s development plan for Addis Ababa, which would have encroached on Oromo ancestral land and villages. The Oromo people, Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group, have also been one of its most marginalised and politically underrepresented. The protests, led by young Oromo people, were largely peaceful; they were met with excessive and lethal force. The government crackdown included more restrictions on media freedom. Through it all, the protesters refused to back down, their defiance gaining them worldwide attention. In early 2018, Hailemariam Desalegn resigned.

Abiy Ahmed, an Oromo, was elected by parliament to become the next prime minister. The 41-year-old former lieutenant colonel (and gifted orator) was heralded as a reformist. He released thousands of political prisoners, including journalists and opposition party members. He took steps to improve the relationship between government and opposition groups. He increased the number of women in the cabinet and acknowledged the widespread use of torture by previous administrations. Under his leadership, a truce was declared between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It was an unprecedented series of reforms, unfolded at blinding speed in a country that often moved at a creeping pace. As I watched from New York, where I live, the irony of Ethiopia’s opening up politically as America descended into Trumpism wasn’t lost on me.

In 2019, Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the twenty-year conflict with Eritrea; within a year, he was in the middle of a new clash with the TPLF, a struggle between the former political power and its successor. After gaining office, Abiy dissolved the EPRDF coalition and merged its constituent groups to form a new Prosperity Party. The TPLF declined to join. The power of regions such as Tigray is enshrined in the Ethiopian constitution, written by the EPRDF in 1994, in order to protect ethnic groups in the event of authoritarian rule. Elections were due to be held in August 2020 but they were delayed last May, in the midst of the worsening pandemic (they are now scheduled for June 2021). The TPLF accused Abiy of governing illegitimately and in September went ahead with unconstitutional regional elections. Tensions grew. The Tigrayan regional government prevented a general appointed by Abiy from taking up his post. Some members of parliament proposed designating the TPLF a terrorist organisation, though so far this has been rejected by the government as a whole.

On 4 November, in response to a TPLF attack on government troops in the Tigray region, Abiy began a military operation against the TPFL. The date seemed familiar. I looked through some old notes and saw that on 4 November 1935, 120,000 Italian troops were advancing towards Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital. Tigray had also been the site of the Battle of Adwa in 1896, when Emperor Menelik II defeated Italy’s first attempt at colonisation. The city – and the region – were symbolic for Mussolini. He was determined that his country’s wounded pride should be satisfied there. The northern highlands of Ethiopia are rocky and mountainous, the population stubborn. Though Mussolini declared victory in 1936, the war wasn’t over. Ethiopian fighters took to the mountains, living in caves and carrying on a guerrilla war that eventually ousted the Italians in 1941.

It is likely that some of the residents of the northern highlands who experienced life under the Derg would have remembered, either from direct experience or family accounts, the bloodshed inflicted by the Italians forty years earlier. It is also likely that some of those who are experiencing today’s conflict carry with them memories from the Derg years. To understand what is happening now requires a long lens, but Ethiopia’s pride in its uninterrupted national durée, as evidenced by references in the Bible, the Iliad, Herodotus’ Histories and other ancient texts, can be an impediment to reckoning with that history. It is not enough simply to preface accounts of the current conflict with ancient historical descriptions.

As the fighting continued last November, refugee camps were filling up. Amnesty International reported a massacre of Amhara civilians in Maicadra by Tigrayan militia, which was followed by news of other civilian massacres, Tigrayan and Amhara. Eritrean soldiers were said to have joined the conflict. Scattered accounts of sexual violence against women and girls hinted at more systematic crimes. The government’s communications blackout made it nearly impossible to ascertain exactly what was happening. In the absence of verifiable details, journalists relied on eyewitness testimony from refugees that painted scenes of horrifying cruelty and humiliation. Some of those accounts were refuted on social media. The present seemed to be as confounding as the past. There could be no doubt, however, about the mass displacements and the terror of ordinary people caught in circumstances beyond their control.

Abiy has stressed repeatedly that this is a conflict, not a war, yet in many respects it has proceeded with all the destructive force of war. The federal government has declared victory in Tigray and some of the one million displaced residents of the region are returning home, though others still feel unsafe. Telephone and internet connections have been partially restored. Security has been tightened and international humanitarian convoys have begun to distribute aid. There is an attempt to return to normal, but in the aftermath of this conflict, other conflicts simmer, waiting to erupt. What exactly is normal?

Everything is at stake in discussions of Ethiopia’s political present; not only our future, but our past. What might justice look like? At such a volatile moment, it seems impossible – and naive – to plead for multilateral discussions, to imagine the potential benefits of negotiation. Yet it is difficult to conceive of another way forward that does not, sooner or later, include more bloodshed. Dialogue would be an unprecedented response to conflict in a nation that has built its identity on confrontation and conquest. It would require the audacity and the optimism of Abiy’s early rule. It would require hope and the willingness and courage to delve into the past. Otherwise, what do we do with all that history – all that rage, all these memories? A young soldier with a slender face. Bruised and beaten men in the back of a truck. The site of a prison, a plaque on a wall. A new conflict shrouded in silence. The question is not where to begin, but how.

UAE: The scramble for the Horn of Africa

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MEMO | The United Arab Emirates is waging a war for influence over the Horn of Africa.

Since the 2011 Arab Spring the United Arab Emirates has been taking an active role in a number of hotspots from Egypt, Libya to Yemen. The Gulf nation has spent $26 billion annually on its defence budget since 2016 and this is expected to increase to $37.8 billion by 2025, according to Research and Markets.

A growing security and war industry with military deployments abroad, US generals often refer to the Sheikhdom as ‘Little Sparta’. As of 2020, The UAE has military bases in Eritrea, Djibouti and Somaliland, which further indicates the importance of the Horn of Africa to Abu Dhabi. The region offers excellent access to the Red Sea, the Mediterranean and the Gulf of Aden, all of which are vital to the Emirates’ economic future as a global trading hub. The military bases ensure Abu Dhabi can see off threats to its interests and secure its influence over East Africa at a time when it is expanding its income streams away from the petrodollar.

The 2015 war in Yemen and the 2017 blockade of Qatar have seen Abu Dhabi take a more aggressive role in East Africa.

Countries in the Horn of Africa have by and large welcomed growing ties with the Arab World, but in 2017 following the breaking of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt with Qatar, countries across the world were pushed to take sides.

Somalia

Although the 2017 Gulf Crisis now looks like it is coming to an end, the countries in the Horn of Africa have already paid the price for it. Somalia found itself at the unwelcome end of the dispute.

Like other Horn of Africa countries, the Somali government adopted a neutral stance towards the Qatar dispute. The UAE, however, saw Mogadishu as silently in the pro-Qatar camp and Abu Dhabi was not pleased.

In 2017, as President Mohamed Abdul lahi Farmaajo assumed office, reports circulated that Qatar and Turkey had funded his campaign and further claims of officials appointed to prominent positions within Farmaajo’s administration having ties to Doha and Ankara unnerved Abu Dhabi.

The Somali government alleges the UAE is now actively destabilising the country, accusing it of funding opposition forces. These suspicions intensified after Dubai Ports World, DP World, bypassed the central government of Somalia and signed a deal with the semi-autonomous region of Somaliland to develop and operate Berbera port. DP World even brought in Ethiopian investment and gave Addis Ababa a stake in the port.

Mogadishu declared the deal illegal and tried to block it by taking out a complaint with the Arab League. Somaliland leader, Muse Bihi Abdi, said Farmaajo’s government was declaring war by attempting to block the deal. Under the deal, Somaliland stands to get investments of up to $442 million and a separate agreement with Abu Dhabi to allow the UAE’s military bases in the region could bring in a further $1 billion, according to the International Crisis Group.

Decades of civil war and the presence of extremist groups makes Somalia a very fragile country, fears UAE involvement could harm the country are a cause of constant concern for Mogadishu.

Sudan

In 1989, Omar Al-Bashir, a military commander, launched a coup and seized political power in Sudan. By 1993, he declared himself president and his political party, the National Congress, became the dominant political force. The National Congress is Muslim Brotherhood aligned and as such was generally treated with suspicion by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. However, in the 2010s, Al-Bashir’s regime began distancing itself from the brotherhood in order to improve its relations with the GCC countries.

Closer relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE had a price. In 2015, Riyadh formed a coalition to intervene militarily in Yemen. In 2011, the Yemeni government led by Ali Abdullah Saleh faced mass street protests known as the ‘Arab Spring’, the pressure would force him to step down in 2012. The power vacuum led to large parts of the country being taken over by the Iranian-backed Houthi group. The Saudi-led coalition aimed to crush the Houthis and declared war on them. Sudan became an important member of the war coalition.

In 2018, a popular uprising took place against Omar Al-Bashir and in April 2019 the military forced him from power. The military then formed a new government with civil opposition groups with the aim of transforming Sudan into a fully-fledged democracy and the UAE moved to minimise the potential damage to its interests caused by the revolution.

However, the fall of Al-Bashir means the UAE’s position in Sudan is not guaranteed and some fear the Emirates could try to subvert Sudan’s democratic transition.

Ethiopia

Ethiopia seems to have benefitted hugely from its partnership with the UAE, as the East African country has emerged as a big investment opportunity.

In February 2020, the UAE agreed to invest $100 million to support micro, medium and small scale projects across the country. Additionally, the UAE has pledged to build an oil pipeline between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which will provide the landlocked nation much needed energy.

Indeed this energy deal is possible after the UAE engineered a peace treaty between Eritrea and Ethiopia in 2018. The peace agreement was held up as an example of the UAE’s prowess. Ethiopia managed to gain these benefits while avoiding the polarising effects of the Qatar blockade.

In November 2020, armed conflict broke out in Ethiopia’s Tigray region between government forces and a powerful regional rebel army. The rebels’ leader openly accused the United Arab Emirates of carrying out a drone strike on Tigray, from its base in Eritrea, at the behest of Addis Ababa. While evidence has yet to emerge of the strike, it does indicate there is some local anxiety about the role Abu Dhabi might be playing in this potentially explosive situation.

Ethiopia could cause issues for the UAE and Saudi Arabia, as another close ally of the Gulf States, Egypt, has expressed anger at Addis Ababa’s dam across the River Nile. The Renaissance Dam built by Ethiopia reduces Nile water levels in Egypt, harming its energy, economic and environmental needs. Negotiations to find a solution keep breaking down and regional tensions are high.

The Horn of Africa is the playground for rising UAE aspirations and is a microcosm of what the UAE aims to replicate across the African continent. Much of this is driven by the decline of US influence globally, new regional alliances and powerhouses are emerging to manage international security. However, the UAE does not exercise total control over East Africa and is still in the early stages of developing its reach and influence. The Horn is full of flashpoints and the UAE could either help stabilise or destabilise the region.

Ethiopia accused of using ethnic profiling to target Tigrayans

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Financial Times | Daughter of former PM says she was prevented from leaving country because of her heritage.

The daughter of a former Ethiopian prime minister has accused the government of preventing her from leaving the country because of her Tigrayan heritage, highlighting the ethnic divisions that continue to split the nation in the wake of brutal fighting between government and Tigray forces in the northern region.

Semhal Meles, the 32-year-old daughter of Meles Zenawi, who was Ethiopia’s prime minister for 17 years until his death in 2012, said she was prevented from boarding a US-bound flight from Addis Ababa on Tuesday despite having a valid passport, visa and ticket, in what she called a “curtailing” of her constitutional rights.

In an emailed statement to journalists, she said officials told her she did not have paperwork clearing her for travel, required by anyone who had been previously arrested. Ms Meles was briefly detained by security forces in December.

“To the best of my knowledge I haven’t been included in any wanted list, no arrest warrant has so far been issued against me nor have I appeared in court,” Ms Meles said. “I was illegally and unlawfully profiled.”

Ms Meles’s claims echo those of other Tigrayans, who say they have been prevented from travelling or dismissed from work since the government led by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed launched a military attack on Tigray in November last year. The government said the move was a “law enforcement operation” after the Tigray People’s Liberation Front — which effectively ran the country until 2018, when Mr Abiy took power — attacked federal troops.

Hundreds have died in the fighting and thousands of refugees have fled across the border to Sudan. There have been reports, mostly unverifiable because of a news blackout in Tigray, of atrocities by both sides. Forces loyal to the TPLF have been accused of a massacre of 600 civilians, mainly from rival region Amhara, while refugees have reported executions of civilians by pro-government Amhara militia.

Ms Meles accused Addis Ababa of “the weaponisation of rape and hunger, the targeting of dense urban populations for aerial bombardment, wanton destruction of public infrastructure and widespread looting”.

The government said on Thursday that her account was unreliable. “For three decades, the TPLF has laboured to satisfy an unbridled thirst for absolute power and self-enrichment, fanning flames of ethnic division and hatred,” an official said. “Average Ethiopians . . . have paid dearly for this.”

The government has accused the TPLF of being a “criminal clique”, sponsoring terrorism and fomenting ethnic violence. More than 100 party members have been placed on a wanted list, while senior TPLF officials such as Seyoum Mesfin, Ethiopia’s former foreign minister, have died in unclear circumstances during the conflict.

Mr Abiy’s government has denied targeting Tigrayans on the basis of ethnicity, saying its dispute is with the TPLF. In September last year, the TPLF went ahead with a regional poll that Addis Ababa said was illegal, after the government postponed national elections amid the Covid-19 pandemic.

Before the recent fighting, Mr Meles, who led a guerrilla war that toppled the previous Marxist Derg regime in 1991, was seen as a hero in Tigray. But his legacy remains divisive.

Under his leadership, Ethiopia was widely praised for rapid growth, but the TPLF also oversaw a repressive police state.

The former premier is seen as the father of so-called ethno-nationalism, under which power was devolved to nine ethnically defined regions, an arrangement enshrined in the 1995 constitution. An item of faith for some Ethiopians, the constitution is seen by others as sowing violent divisions.

Ethnic violence, including the burning of churches and mosques, has swelled in Ethiopia since 2016, leading to the internal displacement of 3m people. Mr Abiy has put forward a philosophy of “strength through diversity”, intending to bind Ethiopia under one national identity. But his opponents say this hides an effort to water down regional autonomy and centralise power.

Describing her arrest last year, Ms Meles said 20 federal police officers armed with machine guns arrived at the house in Mekelle, the Tigrayan capital, where she was staying. She was taken to a “makeshift prison” for 48 hours, she said, adding that she was denied access to a lawyer and never told the reason for her detention.

One officer threatened to “sever” her head, Ms Meles said, and along with the son of a former TPLF general who had also been arrested, “we were put on display for members of the federal police and army in an attempt to celebrate the capture of the junta’s children”.

“My dual crime, it seems, is being born into a political family with a Tigrayan identity,” she added.

Ms Meles said the Tigray people viewed November’s operation as an attack on their right to self-determination. “Every Tigrayan family paid a price to enshrine these rights within our constitution,” she said. “And no one here is prepared to betray the sacrifices made by their forefathers.”

Biden Administration Faces Mounting Pressure to Act in Ethiopian Conflict

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The Washington Free Bacon | Millions in peril of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray region

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside the State Department Thursday to demand the Biden administration take immediate action in Ethiopia to combat a humanitarian crisis that has left thousands dead.

The protesters called on newly confirmed secretary of state Antony Blinken to prioritize the deteriorating situation in Ethiopia where troops from the federal government—as well as troops from neighboring Eritrea and Somalia—have cracked down on the Tigray region. Protesters said immediate aid is necessary to prevent millions of Tigray residents from starving to death, presenting the days-old Biden administration with its first international crisis. Attendee Makea Araya said the crisis has placed millions in danger and displaced millions more.

“We need international actors, we need the Biden administration to take action and allow humanitarian access into the region,” Araya said.

The conflict puts millions of lives at stake and threatens the religious and cultural heritage of the world’s largest religions. Tensions between Tigray, a region in northern Ethiopia, and the federal government came to a head when Tigray’s leading political party refused to join the Ethiopian government’s new coalition in 2019. In early November, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed sent troops into the region, sparking violent clashes with the region’s militia force. While the crisis has been raging for months, limited information has emerged about its true scale since communications have been cut off in the region and foreign media and human-rights watchdogs have not been able to access the region. Reports of the massacre of religious worshipers in a famous Oriental Orthodox church and violence across the region are mounting, however.

Selome Girma, a protester, told the Washington Free Beacon that 4.5 million people are in dire need of humanitarian aid and are being cut off from the outside world. Tigray has been plagued by several communications blackouts during the months-long conflict, which the government has blamed on cyberattacks. Girma said the United States should lead the way to break the embargo and allow outside observers into Tigray.

“We are asking the United States to please humbly try to get some sort of international investigation of what’s going on in Tigray,” Girma said.

She said religious and cultural history is also in danger of being destroyed in the conflict. The region is home to several major Christian and Islamic historic sites, including the site of the massacre in the Oriental Orthodox church, which is reputed to be the location of the Ark of the Covenant.

The State Department, which did not return a request for comment, has remained vague on how it will approach the crisis. The department has released a statement calling for foreign troops allied with Ethiopia to leave the region immediately. The administration, however, has yet to lay out a strategy in the event that foreign troops remain in the region. The statement also called for “full, safe and unhindered humanitarian access” to the region, but the administration did not elaborate on how it would ensure this access.

Blinken also tweeted about the conflict in November and briefly mentioned the issue during his confirmation hearing, saying that the United States needed to do more in Africa. He called for more humanitarian access and said he was concerned that the violence could destabilize the region.

Ferez Timay, a longtime Washington, D.C., resident who was born in Tigray, said the Biden administration must do more than issue public declarations.

“We want the Biden administration to act soon because as the hours go, the minutes go, it’s the difference between life and death for the people of Tigray,” Timay said. “We want the Biden administration to act right away.”

The White House did not return a request for comment.