Ethiopia Exposes Western Hypocrisy Over Ukraine

The two-year war in Ethiopia has flared up again in its besieged northern Tigray region where millions of people have been displaced and are suffering from famine. The United States, the European Union, and other Western governments are doing nothing to avert the war in the Horn of Africa.

The scale of suffering and violations in Ethiopia totally overshadows what is happening in Ukraine where the U.S. and its NATO partners are showering billions of dollars in financial aid and military weapons. The indifference among Western governments and media toward Ethiopia’s horror illuminates the rank hypocrisy and cynical political motivations for their purported “concern” about Ukraine.

Concern for Ukraine is a cynical geopolitical game to do with confronting and subduing Russia. We know this because millions of people suffering in Ethiopia register hardly a blip of attention, never mind condemnation, among Western governments and media.

Indeed, the Western lack of concern about Ethiopia is not merely due to apathetic indifference. Arguably, the United States and its dutiful European allies share responsibility for the humanitarian disaster in Africa’s second-most populous nation.

The World Bank has released millions of dollars to the Ethiopian government of Abiy Ahmed despite his army’s ongoing offensive against the Tigray region and despite his policy of laying siege on the entire population of some six million people, preventing any form of humanitarian access. The financial support from the West props up the Abiy government in Addis Ababa.

Washington and the European Union say little if anything in terms of protesting against the genocidal aggression being waged by Ethiopia’s central government against the Tigray.

Not only that but Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is aided and abetted by Eritrea’s dictator Isaias Afwerki to attack the Tigray region. The war has flared up in recent weeks with Ethiopian national defense forces allied with the Eritrean military to launch air and ground assaults on towns and villages.

This is a repeat of the early stage of the war that erupted in November 2020 when Eritrean forces joined Abiy’s army to commit horrific war crimes across Tigray. Abiy and Afwerki flatly denied the violations only to later be found complicit.

The United States and Europe talk about the sanctity of borders and sovereignty in regard to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. (Not mentioning of course that Russia’s actions were provoked by NATO’s weaponizing of an anti-Russian regime in Kiev since 2014.) Yet, Western governments have nothing to say when it comes to Eritrea colluding with Ethiopia to violate Tigray and massacre civilians there.

The people of Tigray, already hungry from two years of siege, are being slaughtered in their homes by Ethiopian central government forces along with their Eritrean accomplices. Decapitations and rape are inflicted. The northern city of Shire was captured this week after days of air strikes on shanty dwellings that left several children dead. Unspeakable crimes are being committed and yet Western governments and media are turning a blind eye to the horror.

That’s because it suits Washington to see Ethiopia being reduced to a failed state.

Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018 and was immediately feted as a “democratic reformer” by Western media. He was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 2019 for supposedly ending historic animosities between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It was a carefully choreographed PR operation.

Abiy’s rise to power was cultivated by Western governments. The former military intelligence officer who was seconded for years in the U.S. was groomed by the CIA. His mission was to destroy Ethiopia’s political and economic independence from within.

Within months of winning the Nobel prize, the “reformer” launched a war on the Tigray region precisely because it remained a political hold-out against Abiy’s power grab. Before the shooting war started in November 2020, the northern region was subjected to a months-long siege during which electricity, telecommunications and other services were cut. This author lived in Tigray during the war build-up and can attest to the background events.

Abiy made claims and Western media lamely reported that Tigray rebels started the war by attacking government forces. The reality is the war was the calculated result of provocations by Abiy to justify genocidal aggression.

Some Western commentators have made the spurious claim that the Biden administration has used the Tigray as a proxy to undermine the central government in Addis Ababa. This rationale has seen the grotesque stance taken by some in the West of supporting the Abiy regime based on the contorted notion of solidarity with African independence against American imperialist meddling.

Such an armchair viewpoint is getting things back to front. The Biden administration and its European allies have done nothing to help the Tigray people. Last year, when the Tigray rebels managed to inflict serious defeats on Abiy’s forces and their Eritrean accomplices, it was Washington that then urged the Tigray fighters to enter into peace talks.

The Biden administration thus intervened to salvage the Abiy regime from near collapse. As it turned out, the proposed peace talks produced no relief for the Tigray, no lifting of the siege, only allowing the central government and its Eritrean allies to regroup and redouble the aggression as they are currently doing.

The Americans have orchestrated a stalemate that prolongs the misery in Tigray. Why? Because ultimately the war has severely weakened Ethiopia and turned it into a failed state.

Before Abiy came to power in 2018, the country had the strongest economy in Africa and was largely partnered with China for strategic development. Ethiopia was seen as the gateway for China to roll out its ambitious investment and trade plans for the whole of Africa.

In just four years, however, Ethiopia has been brought to its knees through civil war and famine. Abiy Ahmed, the Nobel laureate, has overseen that catastrophic demise. And the United States has covered for his crimes all the way because the breaking of Ethiopia is what Washington wanted. The spineless European governments have gone along with whatever the Americans ordain.

Ethiopia is a touchstone for exposing American and European crocodile tears and duplicity over their machination in Ukraine against Russia.

There is a loud echo of history here. In the 1930s with the invasion by Mussolini, Ethiopia, or Abyssinia as it was known then, illuminated the growing fascist politics of Western powers and the bankrupt cynicism of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. Some nine decades on, there are similar lessons.