59 - Other Senseless, Devastating Wars
The globe is punctuated by senseless wars largely – as in Ukraine – begun to satisfy leadership egos more than strategic imperatives. The civil conflicts in Ethiopia and the Yemen are egregious examples of miseries made by leaders, not long-suffering citizens. Both have had devastating humanitarian consequences. Fortunately, the Yemeni cease-fire was extended today for another two months; but nothing so productive has yet occurred in Ethiopia.
Ethiopia Attacks its Own
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, as we wrote before (#28, “Putin-like Compatriots Elsewhere, III: the War in Tigray and Ethiopia,” April 12) seems more determined than ever to make all of his disparate peoples bow down. As we indicated earlier, Abiy’s avoidance of a lasting peaceful embrace with Tigray has now been compounded by the central government’s attacks on the adjoining Amhara province. Abiy wants his paramount leadership recognized; instead, his untimely actions may lead to the complete dissolution of the Ethiopian enterprise that Emperor Haile Selassie took so many decades to construct from the 1920s.
Abiy provoked a devastating and needless war by invading Tigray, Ethiopia’s northernmost and one of its smallest regions, in late 2020. He also invited the neighboring one-man-run nation of Eritrea to join his Ethiopian troops in a vast campaign of ethnic cleansing, massacre, and rape throughout 2021 and well into the beginning of this year. Until a truce was struck a few months ago, Tigrayans went hungry or died of starvation in their thousands; Abiy blocked aid shipments into Tigray. Lately, because Ethiopia has renewed its on and off slowing and hindering of truck convoys bound for Tigray from Addis Ababa, the country’s capital, Tigrayans are again experiencing major food shortages.
The largest referral hospital in Tigray shut down a few days ago because it could not obtain medical supplies, sutures, or food for its staff. There was no fuel, no power, and no oxygen, so it “suspended” operations.
Compounding Tigray’s continuing misery, Eritrea this weekend shelled a border town in northern Tigray, hitting a school housing displaced families and killing at least one girl. Eighteen persons were injured. Whether Eritrea’s unprovoked bombardment occurred with Abiy’s knowledge is unknown. But it is an early sign that the civil war in Tigray, with Eritrea wanting to join Abiy in battering Tigray and Tigrayans to make up (as we said in an earlier Newsletter) for Tigray’s hold over both countries from 1991 to 2018, may burst open once again.
Abiy also has to contend with unrest in the vast Amhara region. It extends from the southern reaches of Tigray almost all the 500-mile distance to Addis Ababa. Haile Selassie was an Amhara and his empire was largely subject to rule by Amharic speakers.
Militant Amhara, many connected to the Fono youth movement, appropriated Tigrayan territory along the Sudanese border during the Ethiopian army’s bruising battle with Tigrayan fighting forces. Now Amharans want to keep that once western province of Tigray, provoking skirmishes between Tigrayans and Amhara.
That conquest, and Abiy’s warring ways, have also aroused a new or resurgent Amharan nationalism, much led by Fono. In another heavy-handed response to this rise of ethnic nationalism, Abiy’s security operatives this weekend arrested 4,000 Amhara throughout the region, hoping to decapitate the surging movement. They arrested a prominent Amharan general, Abiy’s officials are also seeking to restrict gun ownership, thus depriving Amhara militias of weapons.
The Oromo region, home to Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group (to which Abiy belongs), is also restive. As in 2017 and 2018, Oromo have been protesting against the autocratic nature of Abiy’s reign even though Abiy, nominally, is one of their own. But there have long been Oromo dissatisfied with Abiy’s personalist leadership. Most Oromo are Muslim, Abiy is a Pentecostalist. But he has detained Oromo opponents often.
Abiy’s government cut the internet and mobile telephone transmissions in Tigray during the war. Even since the truce began two months ago, communications to and within Tigray have not been easy or smooth, largely because of official interference. Over the weekend, too, Abiy’s people shut dozens of national media outlets and arrested eighteen journalists. The police accuse those publications and media of what is usual in authoritarian polities – “of spreading hate and fear.”
A new American envoy – a former ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo – has been sent to Addis Ababa by President Biden to try to bring lasting peace to Ethiopia, to try to keep it from falling apart and dissolving into its dominant ethnic parts, and – perhaps – to help Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate in 2019, to come to his senses and to stop causing or exacerbating conflict, or consorting for ill-purposes with Eritrea. Abiy also needs to focus on the drought-caused great hunger that is spreading in southern Ethiopia, as well as his controversy with Egypt and Sudan over distribution of the bountiful waters of the Blue Nile River, now channeled and impeded in their flow by the successful erection of the Great Renaissance Dam across its width.
The Yemen
Across the Red Sea from Ethiopia and Eritrea lies the war in Yemen, now paused thanks to month-long cease fire that was in part brokered by the U. S. Department of State. Secretary of State Antony Blinken hinted yesterday, in a private but on-the-record television interview session, that Washington would attempt during an upcoming visit to Saudi Arabia to end that war permanently. It has been raging since 2015, when Houthi militants swept out of the nation’s northern reaches, captured Saana’a, the capital, and overcame resistance from the country’s former Arab rulers and their soldiers.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, initially with U. S. air refueling and intelligence gathering assistance, attempted to help the regular Yemeni army unseat the Houthi rebels. They bombed and strafed from the air. Saudi Arabia blockaded Yemen’s main Red Sea port, preventing relief supplies from reaching those who were starving or sick.
Today the Yemen, with a pre-war population of 31 million, constitutes one of the globe’s greatest humanitarian crises. Relief organizations report that nearly 24 million Yemenis require immediate food assistance. Eighteen million lack access to clean water. Nearly 400,000 Yemenis have died in combat or from starvation. The war has displaced 4 million people from their homes.
The ceasefire that was signed in April and renewed today has provided an important respite. No one really wants the war to resume (nor in Ethiopia), but the Houthi are a special sect of Shiite believers. Iran supports them as co-religionists, and also as part of its enduring battle against Sunni Saudi Arabia and the American “great Satan.” Secretary Blinken suggested that President Biden and his own efforts would – despite the conflict in Ukraine – shortly be directed to seeking permanent peace in Yemen and a major opening for the humanitarian relief that is desperately required. Only then, with Houthis governing northern and central Yemen and adherents of Abed Hadi and the old constituted government of Yemen ruling the south, can Yemen even begin to rebuild.
Ending the Ethiopian and Yemeni wars are of great importance globally. If Washington can find ways to end those civil and internationalized combats, continuing to prosecute the battle against Putin should be easier, and morally even more defensible than before.