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House Foreign Affairs Press Release: McCaul Responds to Reports of Ethnic Cleansing and Massacres of Civilians in Tigray Region
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Press Release House Foreign Affairs Committee Media Contact: 202-225-5021

Washington, DC – House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul has released the following statement in response to reports of ethnic cleansing and mass violence in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.

“The horrors detailed in the reports coming out of the Tigray region are incredibly concerning and I am looking into them further. For far too long, the government of Ethiopia and other armed actors have blocked access by journalists and independent monitors to investigate these chilling accounts. I urge the Biden Administration to take decisive action to hold those accountable for any atrocities committed. This must be a high priority as the U.S. takes on the role of UN Security Council Chair next month.”

NYT: Ethiopia’s War Leads to Ethnic Cleansing in Tigray Region, U.S. Report Says

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An internal U.S. government report found that people in Tigray are being driven from their homes in a war begun by Ethiopia, an American ally — posing President Biden’s first major test in Africa.

The New York Times | Declan Walsh | Published Feb. 26, 2021 Updated Feb. 27, 2021, 12:43 a.m. ET

NAIROBI, Kenya — Ethiopian officials and allied militia fighters are leading a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing in Tigray, the war-torn region in northern Ethiopia, according to an internal United States government report obtained by The New York Times.

The report, written earlier this month, documents in stark terms a land of looted houses and deserted villages where tens of thousands of people are unaccounted for.

Fighters and officials from the neighboring Amhara region of Ethiopia, who entered Tigray in support of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, are “deliberately and efficiently rendering Western Tigray ethnically homogeneous through the organized use of force and intimidation,” the report says.

“Whole villages were severely damaged or completely erased,” the report said.

In a second report, published Friday, Amnesty International said that soldiers from Eritrea had systematically killed hundreds of Tigrayan civilians in the ancient city of Axum over a 10-day period in November, shooting some of them in the streets.

The worsening situation in Tigray — where Mr. Abiy, winner of the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, launched a surprise military offensive in November — is shaping up to be the Biden administration’s first major test in Africa. Former President Donald J. Trump paid little attention to the continent and never visited it, but President Joseph R. Biden has promised a more engaged approach.

In a call with President Uhuru Kenyatta of Kenya on Thursday, Mr. Biden brought up the Tigray crisis. The two leaders discussed “the deteriorating humanitarian and human rights crises in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and the need to prevent further loss of life and ensure humanitarian access,” a White House statement said.

But thus far Mr. Biden and other American officials have been reluctant to openly criticize Mr. Abiy’s conduct of the war, while European leaders and United Nations officials, worried about reports of widespread atrocities, have been increasingly outspoken.

On Tuesday a European Union envoy, Finland’s foreign minister, Pekka Haavisto, told reporters the situation in Tigray was “very out of control,” after returning from a fact-finding trip to Ethiopia and Sudan. The bloc suspended $110 million in aid to Ethiopia at the start of the conflict, and last month the E.U.’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, warned of possible war crimes in Tigray and said that the crisis was “unsettling” the entire region.

Ethiopia routinely dismisses critics of its campaign in Tigray as stooges of its foes in Tigray. But on Friday afternoon, in response to the Amnesty International report, Mr. Abiy’s office said it was ready to collaborate in an international investigation into atrocities in Tigray. The government “reiterates its commitment to enabling a stable and peaceful region,” it said in a statement.

Mr. Abiy’s office also claimed that Ethiopia has given “unfettered” access to international aid groups in Tigray — in contrast with U.N. officials who estimate that just 20 percent of the region can be reached by aid groups because of government-imposed restrictions.

The new U.S. Secretary of State, Antony J. Blinken, spoke with Mr. Ahmed by phone on Feb. 4 and urged him to allow humanitarian access to Tigray, the State Department said.

Alex de Waal, an expert on the Horn of Africa at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, said it is time for the United States to urgently focus on the crisis in Tigray, before more atrocities are committed and the humanitarian crisis lurches toward a famine.

“What is needed is political leadership at the highest level, and that means the U.S.,” he said.

When the United States assumes the chair of the United Nations Security Council in March, Mr. de Waal said, it should use that position to bring international pressure to bear on the belligerents to step back from a ruinous conflict.

Mr. Abiy launched the Tigray campaign on Nov. 4 following months of tension with the regional ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which ruled Ethiopia with a tight grip for almost three decades until Mr. Abiy came to power in 2018.

But many of the worst abuses of the war have been blamed not on the Ethiopian military or the T.P.L.F. — whose armed wing is now known as the Tigray Defense Forces — but on the irregular and undeclared forces that have rallied behind Mr. Abiy’s military campaign.

Within weeks of the start of the conflict came the first reports that soldiers from Eritrea —Ethiopia’s bitter rival until the two countries reached a peace deal in 2018 — had quietly crossed into Tigray to assist Mr. Abiy’s overstretched federal forces.

In western Tigray ethnic fighters from Amhara — a region with a long rivalry with Tigray — flooded in, quickly helping Mr. Abiy capture the area.

Now it is the Eritreans and Amhara fighters who face the most serious accusations including rape, plunder and massacres that, experts say, could constitute war crimes.

The American government report about the situation in western Tigray, an area now largely controlled by Amhara militias, documents in vivid terms what it describes as an apparent campaign to force out the ethnic Tigrayan population under the cover of war.

The report documents how in several towns ethnic Tigrayans had been attacked and had their homes pillaged and burned. Some had fled into the bush; others crossed illegally into Sudan and still others had been rounded up and forcibly relocated to other parts of Tigray, the report said.

In contrast, towns with a majority Amharan population were thriving, with bustling shops, bars and restaurants, the report said.

The American report is not the first accusation of ethnic cleansing since the Tigray crisis erupted. But it does highlight how U.S. officials are quietly documenting those abuses, and reporting them to superiors in Washington.

The looming specter of mass hunger is also driving the sense of urgency over Tigray. At least 4.5 million people in the region urgently need food aid, according to the Tigray Emergency Coordination Center, which is run by Ethiopia’s federal government. Ethiopian officials say that some people have already died.

A document from Tigray’s regional government dated Feb. 2 and obtained by The Times notes that 21 people starved to death in the eastern Tigray district of Gulomokeda. Such numbers could be just the tip of the iceberg, aid officials warned.

“Today it could be one, two or three, but you know after a month it means thousands,” Abera Tola, the president of the Ethiopian Red Cross Society, told reporters earlier this month. “After two months it will be tens of thousands.”

The political outrage over Tigray, though, especially among European lawmakers, is being fueled by the growing tide of accounts of human rights abuses.

The Amnesty International report published Friday asserts that Eritrean soldiers conducted house-to-house searches in Axum in November, shooting civilians in the street and conducting extrajudicial executions of men and boys. When the shooting stopped, residents who tried to remove the bodies from the street were fired upon, the report says.

Amnesty said the massacre was likely a crime against humanity. Eritrea’s information minister, Yemane G. Meskel, rejected the report, calling it “transparently unprofessional.”

Axum, a city of ancient ruins and churches, holds great significance to followers of the Ethiopian Orthodox faith. When the Eritrean soldiers relented and allowed the bodies to be collected, hundreds were piled up in churches, including the Church of St. Mary of Zion, where many Ethiopians believe that the ark of the covenant — said to hold the tablets inscribed with the Ten Commandments — is housed.

Simon Marks contributed reporting from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

U.N. Report Accuses Blackwater Founder Erik Prince of Libya Weapons Ban Violations, Diplomat Says

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WSJ | Jared Malsin* | Mr. Prince likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban

DUBAI—A United Nations report accuses Blackwater founder Erik Prince of assisting in violations of an international arms embargo on Libya, placing the military contractor at risk of U.N. sanctions, according to a diplomat with access to the report.

The report by the U.N. Panel of Experts that monitors the ban on transfers of weapons to Libya says companies controlled by Mr. Prince provided three aircraft to assist in sending helicopters and military contractors to help Russian-backed Libyan warlord Khalifa Haftar in 2019.

The plan to send Western mercenaries to Libya developed as foreign weapons and fighters poured into the country in 2019 and 2020 from a variety of outside powers, including Russia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, deepening a conflict that has been ongoing since 2014, the report says, according to the diplomat.

Mr. Prince is likely to be referred to the U.N.’s Sanctions Committee, which could order a freeze on his assets or a travel ban, according to the New York-based diplomat and a former official with knowledge of the situation. The permanent members of the Security Council, including the U.S., Russia, or China, could veto any potential sanctions against Mr. Prince, who has had dealings with all three countries.

“Erik Prince had absolutely nothing to do with any operation in Libya in 2019, or at any other time,” a spokesman for Mr. Prince said in an email.

A U.N. spokesman said the organization had no specific comment on the Panel of Experts report.

“It is incumbent on our member states to ensure that the sanctions are respected and enforced,” said U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric De La Rivière.

The report itself has been finalized and submitted to the U.N.’s headquarters in New York. It is unlikely to be altered before it is released to the public in the coming weeks, according to diplomats.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy SEAL, came to prominence during the Iraq war, when Blackwater provided private security guards to U.S. officials and contractors working for the company shot dead more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in a 2007 mass killing in Baghdad. Blackwater has since changed its name to Xe Services and later Academi.

Mr. Prince’s financial and political ambitions rose because of his close relationship to the Trump administration. Mr. Prince is the brother of Mr. Trump’s former education secretary, Betsy DeVos. In December, Mr. Trump pardoned the four Blackwater guards accused in the 2007 killings.

Shell companies

According to the diplomat, the forthcoming U.N. report says companies controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft to people who sent Western mercenaries and military hardware to aid Mr. Haftar in the opening months of the commander’s failed assault on Libya’s internationally recognized government in Tripoli. Launched in April 2019, Mr. Haftar’s attack on the capital plunged Libya into its worst fighting since the armed rebellion that overthrew Col. Moammar Gadhafi in 2011.

According to the diplomat, the U.N. panel’s report says that firms controlled by Mr. Prince sold three aircraft through a series of shell companies to a Dubai-based company, Lancaster 6, which sent helicopters and a group of Western mercenaries to Libya to support Mr. Haftar. The plan unraveled, and the fighters left Libya.

One of the planes, a Pilatus PC-6, was delivered to Libya for use in reconnaissance and intelligence operations for Mr. Haftar’s forces, according to the diplomat with access to the report. A U.S. company, TST Humanitarian Surveys, controlled by Mr. Prince through a U.S.-based attorney, sold the plane to another company in Austria partly owned by Mr. Prince, which then sold it to Lancaster 6 in June 2019, the diplomat with access to the report said. The plane arrived in Libya days later, according to the diplomat.

The other two planes, including an Antonov An-26 cargo plane intended to transport helicopters, arrived in Jordan and didn’t fly to Libya, but were identified in the report as part of a broader plan to send military aid to Mr. Haftar.

The plan also involved several associates of Mr. Prince, according to the diplomat and the former official with knowledge of the situation. The operation was first reported last year by Bloomberg and the New York Times. Until now, U.N. investigators hadn’t directly accused Mr. Prince of being involved in the scheme.

Helicopter deal

Using funds from a Dubai-based company and a cover story involving a fake plan for a geospatial survey in Jordan, the team later obtained in South Africa three Aérospatiale Gazelle helicopters and three Super Puma helicopters. At least one of the helicopters was transported to Libya. The helicopters were purchased for a total of more than $13 million, a price well above their market value and one that suggested profit was a key motive behind the operation.

“This is basically a scheme where they wanted to make money around procurement of weapons,” said the former official with knowledge of the situation.

The role in the effort of companies based in Dubai also highlights Mr. Prince’s close ties to the United Arab Emirates and its ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed. Mr. Prince has been linked to a range of mercenary efforts on behalf of the Emirates, including an effort to combat Somali pirates, according to a previous U.N. report. The U.A.E. also has been a key military backer of Mr. Haftar, sending air defenses, armed drones, ammunition and airplanes to support the militia leader’s campaigns, according to multiple U.N. reports. Mr. Prince visited Abu Dhabi in recent weeks, according to the diplomat.

The U.N. report, the diplomat said, also accuses Mr. Prince of violating a U.N. Security Council resolution by failing to provide information about the alleged violations of the arms embargo when contacted by the Panel of Experts.

In addition to naming Mr. Prince in the report, the U.N. Panel of Experts is also expected to separately refer Mr. Prince to the United Nations’ Sanctions Committee, which will make a decision about whether to impose an asset freeze or travel ban to be implemented by individual countries including the U.S., the diplomat said.

 

* Write to Jared Malsin at jared.malsin@wsj.com

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Five Steps the Biden Administration Needs to Take on the Crisis in Tigray

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Just Security | The unfolding crisis in northern Ethiopia bears all the hallmarks of a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe. Since November, more than 6 million people have been trapped between the guns of Ethiopia’s military forces, marauding Eritrean troops, Amharan militia, and the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The vast majority are now in urgent need of assistance. Yet the Ethiopian government continues to present a narrative that all is well in the north while effectively blocking relief aid. The Biden administration will need to move quickly to avoid further devastation in Tigray.

Much of Tigray remains under an information blackout. But not total. MSF has exposed the situation in Adigrat, a city in eastern Tigray. Witnesses speak of mass atrocities, of wanton extra-judicial killings, and gender violence. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces stand accused of targeting refugees and of deliberately razing their camps to the ground. The United States has demanded that Eritrea withdraw its troops from the region, but to little effect.

The humanitarian toll is already staggering. Two-plus million people have been internally displaced. Over four and a half million desperately need aid. A leaked government document quoted a regional government official acknowledging that people were starving. Medical doctors were said to be pleading for supplies, and body bags. Other reports highlight the fears of an exploding number of COVID-19 cases. In private, a senior United Nations official warned, “It is so bad, I can’t believe what I’ve seen. And there is no capacity, there are no supplies, and even if we had both of those there is no access.”

One hesitates to surmise what is happening across vast swathes of the region where journalists and aid workers cannot go. Ethiopia has a troubled history of blockading relief assistance to civilian populations in the midst of conflict. In decades past, the central government in Addis Ababa destroyed humanitarian stockpiles or otherwise prevented aid from reaching the people of Tigray as part of its counterinsurgency strategy against the TPLF. In the end, it was the people living there that starved – not the insurgents. History is once again at risk of repeating itself.

So far, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for ending the conflict with Eritrea, has been largely impervious to outside pressure, as has Debretsion Gebremichael and the TPLF rebels he leads. The African Union sought to curb the slide to war in November, then largely disengaged. The Trump administration weighed in late in the game and in muted tones. European leaders have denounced atrocities in Tigray and have suspended $100 million in budget support for Ethiopia. But these efforts have yet to be sequenced into a coordinated diplomatic strategy to pressure Abiy to do the right thing.

All this must change – and quickly. The good news is that the Biden administration has already been more engaged and outspoken than its predecessor. The United States must now move swiftly and in concert with its partners and allies to prevent Ethiopia from fully collapsing and the country falling into the abyss. Key members of the Biden’s Cabinet have important roles to play.

First, incoming U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Linda Thomas-Greenfield, can call on the U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator and the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to provide the U.N. Security Council with frank and comprehensive briefings on the humanitarian and human rights situation in areas under the control of the Ethiopian army and forces allied with it, as well as areas under the control of the TPLF. The briefings must then be followed by concrete action. To date, the U.N. Security Council has taken up the situation in Tigray three times, but its members have failed to issue even so much as a statement.

Second, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield can also push the U.N. Emergency Directors to meet and declare Tigray an “L3 Emergency” – the highest level of urgency that allows the U.N. humanitarian agencies to quickly mobilize staff and resources. This move should also trigger a special urgent donor appeal for the crisis in Tigray outside of the annual country Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), which do not include those who have sought refuge in neighboring Sudan. To be effective, this appeal will require early and urgent funding to make a difference.

Third, it’s time to send in the humanitarians. In recent years, the government, donors, U.N., and NGOs in Ethiopia used development frameworks and systems to respond to short-term needs caused from drought, flood, and the like. It would be easy to fall back on that model for this crisis, but that would be a mistake. Aid agencies need to flip the emergency switch and bring in dedicated humanitarian teams with the requisite skillsets and capacities. To this end, incoming USAID Administrator Samantha Power should send a DART team – America’s premier crisis response tool – to address the situation in Tigray. The scale, urgency, and complexity of the crisis certainly justify – if not require – the deployment of a DART.

Fourth, the White House must continue to press Eritrea to pull its forces back across the border. It also needs to push for the Ethiopian government to set the conditions in which relief groups can save lives. This means unfettered and blanket access to all affected communities. Ethiopia should issue 6-month visas for relief groups and expedite customs clearances for humanitarian supplies. In addition, humanitarians must be allowed to communicate in the information blackhole Tigray has become. The Ethiopian government must allow aid agencies to deploy telecommunications, including cell towers, sat phones, and HF/VHF radio.

Fifth, Secretary of State Antony Blinken must urgently appoint a special envoy for the Horn of Africa to help oversee a regional diplomatic strategy. Blinken has already told senators that he would consider such a move. A special envoy could also help coordinate efforts of the African Union, the European Union, and Ethiopia’s bilateral benefactors to bring concerted pressure to bear on Abiy and all parties to the conflict to make progress on the humanitarian situation and invest in a national political dialogue in advance of elections now scheduled for June of this year.

There is still time to pull back from the brink, but not much. Without an immediate infusion of assistance, to all areas of Tigray, a humanitarian crisis will become a humanitarian catastrophe the likes of which Ethiopia has not seen in a generation.

US pledges support for Ethiopia’s reforms

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MEMO | US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced his government’s continued assistance to Ethiopia’s ongoing reform measures, Anadolu Agency reports.

After a phone call with Blinken on Friday, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said on Twitter: “Our aspirations to democratize and build a multidimensional prosperous & peaceful country for all will be enhanced through strengthened Ethiopia-US relations.”

A statement by the US State Department said Blinken stressed the significance of the US-Ethiopia bilateral relations.

“Secretary Blinken expressed our grave concern about the humanitarian crisis in the Tigray region and urged immediate, full, and unhindered humanitarian access to prevent further loss of life,” the statement added.

“The secretary also reaffirmed the United States’ commitment to Ethiopia’s reform agenda and our support for upcoming national elections, regional peace and security, democracy and human rights, justice and accountability, and economic prosperity for all Ethiopians,” it noted.

Ex-Peace Corps volunteers plead with US for help on Tigray

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — More than 350 former Peace Corps volunteers and a trio of former U.S. ambassadors have written to U.S. congressmen urging them to condemn the violence in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, warning that “as the fighting ostensibly winds down, we are quite sure that the war will continue on a much more pernicious level.”

The letter seen by The Associated Press also asks lawmakers to press for humanitarian aid to all parts of Tigray, urge the United Nations to investigate and advocate for media access to the region “to document human rights abuses.”

Communications links remain difficult to parts of the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and only a small number of former volunteers have reached friends there. But “we have avoided explicit discussions on what is occurring due to safety concerns and our acute awareness that the Ethiopian government is monitoring all calls,” Isabella Olson, a former volunteer who helped to organize the letter, said in an email to the AP.

Ethiopia’s government has not responded to the letter, she said. The concern about monitoring has been echoed by Tigrayans and others in Ethiopia who say they have faced harassment and ethnic profiling since the conflict began.

As the fighting enters its fourth month, international pressure increases on Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and the anchor of the Horn of Africa, to allow the world to see the effects of the alleged massacres, widespread looting and destruction of health centers, crops and houses of worship. Starvation is now a growing concern.

The fighting began in early November between Ethiopian and allied forces and those of the Tigray region who dominated the government for almost three decades before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. Each side now views the other as illegitimate.

Ethiopia’s government on Wednesday rejected new reports citing Tigray opposition groups as estimating that 52,000 civilians have been killed in the conflict. The government said “we have not found ourselves with significant civilian casualties,” but it did not say how many people have died.

The letter from former Peace Corps volunteers and diplomats urges lawmakers to remember that the strongest allies of the U.S. “are not simply constituted of politicians in Addis Ababa. They are also the students, teachers, farmers and healthcare workers that Peace Corps volunteers collaborated with in the urban and rural communities currently embroiled in turmoil.”

Full Coverage: Ethiopia
Tigrayans reached by the AP in recent weeks have reported fear and exhaustion as the fighting continues and few know the fate of relatives elsewhere in the region. Meanwhile, Ethiopian senior officials have asserted to Biden administration staffers that life is returning to normal.

“It just feels like it’s not my country anymore,” said Danait, a woman who felt her home in the regional capital, Mekele, shake when a nearby church was bombarded weeks ago. “It’s been like 90 days, and nothing is back to normal.” She gave only her first name out of concern for family members.

US urges Ethiopia’s PM to allow ‘immediate’ help to Tigray

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NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a call with Ethiopia’s prime minister on Thursday expressed “grave concern” about the crisis in the embattled Tigray region and urged “immediate, full and unhindered humanitarian access to prevent further loss of life,” a U.S. spokesman said.

There was no immediate comment from Ethiopian officials.

The call is the latest this week that world leaders have held with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed as Ethiopia faces growing pressure to open Tigray to journalists, independent investigators and far more humanitarian aid.

The Tigray conflict, which has entered its fourth month, remains largely in the shadows. Thousands of people have been killed as Ethiopian and allied forces fight those of the now-fugitive Tigray government that once dominated the country’s government for nearly three decades. Most of the population of 6 million need emergency aid.

Abiy also has spoken this week with the French president and German chancellor, whose governments have expressed similar wishes on opening up Tigray.

Starvation has become a major concern in Tigray. “Many households are expected to have already depleted their food stocks, or are expected to deplete their food stocks in the next two months,” according to a new report by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, which is funded and managed by the U.S.

The report posted Thursday says more parts of central and eastern Tigray likely will enter Emergency Phase 4, a step below famine, in the coming weeks.

Meanwhile, the United Nations humanitarian chief has privately told the U.N. Security Council that Ethiopia may not have control of up to 40% of the territory in Tigray and does not have full command of forces from neighboring Eritrea operating there.

Details of the briefing by Mark Lowcock were shared by diplomats who spoke on condition of anonymity because Wednesday’s meeting was a closed-door one.

Available information indicates that Ethiopia’s government now controls 60% to 80% of the territory in Tigray, Lowcock told diplomats. And some of the forces that sided with Ethiopian ones earlier in the conflict are reportedly now pursuing their own goals, he said.

Ethiopia’s government has denied the presence of soldiers from Eritrea, a bitter enemy of the former Tigray leaders, but witnesses have described widespread looting, killing and other abuses.

“Eritrean forces are almost everywhere in Tigray,” one man who managed to travel from northern Tigray to the regional capital, Mekele, told The Associated Press this week. He described widespread looting of health centers and people dying from lack of care, with little to no communication or transport links to rural areas. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of concerns for family members.

A senior official in the interim Tigray government, Mesfin Desalegn, in an interview with the pro-government Abbay Media outlet this week said Eritrean soldiers had entered the conflict “to destroy” the Tigray forces, “but it should have been managed. It should have been controlled.”

People have been “massacred,” he said, describing an atmosphere of “complete vengefulness.” He called for the Eritrean forces to “cease what they are doing.”

The U.S. last month told the AP it had pressed senior Eritrean officials for the immediate withdrawal of their forces from Tigray. The U.S. did not say how Eritrea, one of the world’s most secretive nations, responded. Eritrea’s information minister in recent days has denounced “frenzied defamation campaigns.”

The fighting in Tigray has the potential to destabilize other parts of Ethiopia, Africa’s second-most populous country and the anchor of the Horn of Africa, as security forces are deployed to the region, the U.N. humanitarian chief told the Security Council.

Lowcock also said the U.N. has received reports that food is scarce in markets mainly because it was harvest time when the conflict began. Main supply routes remain cut, cash is scarce and some people are reportedly eating leaves to survive.

Ethiopia’s government has said it is reaching more and more people with aid, and it has privately told Biden administration officials that life is returning to “normalcy.”